Reasons you should not pity the American homeless

What a stupid thing to say.... not 'all homeless people' are this way or that;  just as not all blacks are thugs and not all white people can't dance...

 The problem is group mentality and stereotyping when it comes to any group.   There really is no such thing as 'homeless people' because they are such unique, distinct individuals that there are people that are homeless who do not come from the same backgrounds, lifestyles, upbringings.

Just as you have individuals in a group such as police, there are great officers that are honest and you have punk individuals that abuse their authority and take bribes, but not ALL police or doctors or lawyers are the same.

Some individuals, regardless of the 'group' they are associated with take responsibility for themselves and others do not.

 Anyone that has been homeless or has worked around them, know this.  Often, it is the environment that we, as a community provide to homeless individuals that can either help them or hurt them. 

Example.  We have a shelter system in San Francisco that has been sorely neglected for about 15 years and it was 'set up' to allow a low threshhold for individuals to work in the shelters.  Unfortunately, the community (mostly non-homeless policy makers) decided it was okay to not have hiring standards for shelter staff.  

This lack of hiring standards (and drug testing) allowed scores of recently released felons, known drug addicts, dealers and thieves to 'get into' being employed at the shelters.   This has led to the formation of small groups of criminals to prey on the homeless.   One shelter purportedly used their tax funded shelter as a meth lab operation, complete with an industrial kitchen.  That was not so long ago... in 2001 at the MSC South Shelter at 5th & Bryant.  

Today,  several of the same criminals that sold blankets and beds to the homeless illegally and that ran the meth labs are STILL EMPLOYED at those and other shelters, TODAY.    They have continued their criminal behavior by facilitating the sale of dangerous prescription drugs that may have caused lethal overdoses amongst some shelter residents over the past few years.   They continue to steal from the homeless residents and abuse them because they are angry, screwed up criminals that SHOULD NEVER have been allowed to be employed at a shelter to begin with.

So, as we spend millions of tax dollars and donations to the non-profit and 'church' branded homeless shelters to HELP the homeless,  keep in mind that until they are cleaned out,  more homeless individuals will not get the help they really need and our money are resources will keep flowing into unethical, criminals shelter staff that have no soul and no heart.

We do not employee recent criminals to work in day care centers.  We do not employ recent criminals to work in our foster and elderly care homes.  Why do shelters allow known criminals and recently released felons be in charge of taking care of the most vulnerable members of our community ?

If you want more homeless and less homeless 'getting on' with their lives, keep things just the way they are.

If you want less homeless and more homeless individuals getting off the streets, then we need hiring standards, background checks and random drug testing for ALL SHELTER MANAGEMENT & STAFF.

You know the rest... it's always cheaper to run a clean house than a dirty one, so why don't we focus on fixing those things that are (and have been) wrong with our homeless and housing systems before we start blaming 'all of the homeless' for their current life conditions ?

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