Helping the Homeless: Another Step

Quote of the day:
“You don’t exist until you’re on TV.”
--Wiley Miller in Non Sequitur, June 19, 2007.

Quote of the day no. 2 (a reprise from April 6, 2007):
“Cities that have tracked chronically homeless people estimate that a typical transient can cost taxpayers $20,000 to $150,000 a year. You could not design a more expensive, wasteful of ineffective way of providing healthcare to individuals who live on the street than by having librarians dispense it through paramedics and emergency rooms.”
--Chip Ward, former assistant director of the Salt Lake City Public Library, from Tomdispatch.com.

This quote came to mind as I read the AP story today about a “home for the homeless” in Seattle. It is far from a typical homeless shelter, most of which strictly prohibit use of alcohol or drugs.

There are some house rules to keep people safe and to keep the neighbors happy, but this Seattle facility is essentially apartments with very low rents. The idea is to keep alcoholics off the street, which will keep them safer and out of emergency rooms.

The estimated cost per resident per year is $11,000, financed with taxpayer money and private donations. There has been some objection to the public funding of this, even though taxpayers are already paying approximately $100,000 a year for each homeless person living on the street.

Kudos to officials in Seattle for an effort that is both very sensible and kind. The AP story said there is a similar program in Minneapolis. Hats off to them, too.

Morally Wrong, or Sick?

Quote of the day:
“Over the years, some convergence of gangsta rappers and shock jocks and bloggers have given more and more people license to use words that were once washed out with soap, or blocked with bleeps. Sex sells, hate sells and the combination is boffo biz.”
--Ellen Goodman in Friday’s Boston Globe.

Quote of the day no. 2:
“What is cheating? We need to forget about the past and let us play the game. We’re entertainers. Let us entertain.”
--Barry Bonds

Where is the line drawn between consciously bad (or criminal) behavior and mental illness? This question gets ready answers from extremists on each side. Some think all criminals should be locked up, period. On the other side, some think that bad behavior is always caused by mental illness.

As always, the truth exists somewhere in the large middle, and it can be hard to discern. Here is one observation, from Chip Ward, former assistant director of the Salt Lake City library (from Tomdispatch.com):

“Take the case of a young man who entered the library spouting racial and ethnic slurs. He loudly asked some Latino teenagers doing their homework when they had crossed the border, and they reported his rude behavior.

“When a security guard approached, the young man started yelling obscenities and then took a swing at him. The guard tried to calm him, but on the next lunge, the guard took him down, cuffed his hands behind his back and called the police. They recognized the man. He had been let out of jail just two days earlier.

“That man’s behavior, of course, was not a measure of his character but of his psychosis. He was sick, not bad.

“If we accept that schizophrenia, for instance, is not the result of a character flaw or personal failing but of some chemical imbalance in the brain--an imbalance that can strike a person regardless of his or her values, beliefs, upbringing, social standing or intent, just like any other disease might strike one--then why do we apply to mental illness a kind of moral judgment we wouldn’t use in other medical situations?

“We do not, for example, jail a diabetic who is acting drunk because his body chemistry has become so unbalanced that he is going into insulin shock.”