Gopman's interesting turn around...

[handmade34]

http://www.businessinsider.com/greg-gopman-solving-homelessness-in-san-francisco-2015-1

Last year I wrote a rant on Facebook voicing my displeasure with San Francisco’s homeless community. It went viral. People thought I was a monster. And in turn, I spent the last year learning about homelessness and what could be done to make things better.

When I started this journey, it was obvious there was something I was missing. Where others devoted their lives to helping the homeless, I didn’t care at all. They were by all means, not my problem.

But over time, and with a lot of help from friends, research, and volunteering, I came to see the many reasons why people become homeless, and the near impossible road to recovery they all share. That they’re a group of people suffering, depressed, and lost in a system that they can’t find their way out of. And that it’s everyone’s responsibility to figure out a way to help.

So now I’m back, asking for a second chance and hoping to help start a civic conversation about what we can all do to help the homeless.

[bemildred]

1. Give them money.

It works for banks, it will work for the homeless.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

2. and coaching

Help managing it, help navigating beaurocracies and other social responsibilities/expectations where they may lack skills.

People net a network of support to re-enter society.

[bemildred]

3. And a community to be part of. nt

[BlancheSplanchnik]

5. yep. definitely. n/t

[bemildred]

4. San Francisco port-a-potty program offers homeless privacy, normality

an Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen bemoaned in 1985 that his beloved city — particularly "the seamy streets of the Tenderloin" — risked the moniker of Latrine-by-the-Bay, in part because of official resistance to public toilets.

In the three decades since, the prevalence of human feces and urine in the neighborhood known for its large homeless population has posed a persistent policy and public-health dilemma.

The same could be said for Los Angeles and many other cities.

But on a recent evening, 49-year-old Mischa Fisher gazed at the Tenderloin Pit Stop with adoration. Homeless, Fisher has been compelled to do her most private business furtively in doorways or alleys when there is simply no other option.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-sf-mobile-toilets-20150127-story.html#page=1

[greiner3]

6. My father was a dedicated social worker at the local mental VA hospital;

And he lost all of his hope in society when Reagan began to close down all of the federal mental hospitals.

My father predicted in the mid 80s that this measure alone would result in the increase of homeless veterans and their violent responses in trying to deal with a world that both despised and feared them.

I leave it to you to determine if his prediction came to pass