Berkley RV homeless

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ZinLuvR said:
I was born and raised in the San Fran east bay area.  The bay area has had a problem with the homeless for many years.  I sold my house and left in 2005.  I have been back since chasing work/money until I retired.  I moved from Cali because I didn't want to work until I died.  EVERYTHING in Cali is expensive and just keeps getting worse.  Where I moved the property tax is 10% of what I would have been paying in Cali.  I have not been in the Berserkly area for many years.  The last time I was in that city there was an explosion of homeless camps under the freeway overcrossings.  Seems the city gave the homeless money to buy tents.  The tents were pitched wall to wall under the freeways.  In the east bay where I lived you could watch the "homeless" work the freeway on and off ramps with their cardboard signs.  Seems like they had a system where they took turns manning the corners.  I bought a homeless guy who was asking for money some lunch and asked him about his life.  He seemed to be happy, he had an Obama phone and a bike and slept undercover every night in a shopping center.  Seemed like a nice enough guy who probably would have done well working a regular job, but he was living free and seemed to like it that way.  I never will give money to a beggar, especially one who's sign says they need money for food.  I offer to buy them something to eat, which sometimes they will take and sometimes not.  Cali is nice, can't hardly beat the weather, but if ya can't afford it, move, I wouldn't mind still being in Cali, but I preferred to retire.  Seattle is having the same problem, a girl was found dead in her class C camper a while back.  Living on the street in her RV.  There is no simple fix, the problem has gotten too large at this point.  Should Berserkly given money for tents, no, it just encouraged more homelessness.  So now they have a tent problem and an RV problem.  Seattle's solution, they are going to open city hall to the homeless to spend the night in, but they have to be out in the morning.  Anyone want to take a guess at how that's going to end up?  And who is going to go in and clean up the mess after 100 plus homeless have spent the night there?
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Your story lost all it?s credibility when you said ?Obama phone?  Low income families have been eligible for discounted telephone service for decades. But the program is funded by telecom companies, not by taxes.
 
Gwbeech said:
It's the same old story dog out chirstians because of their beliefs or you're a racist if you don't
Agree with them
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I have no issues with Christian beliefs. However, I thought they were more than beliefs. I thought they were tenets to live one's life by. My mistake.
RIchH
 
The thing I don't get is why all these so called homeless RV people choose to live in places with some of the highest cost of living in the US.  It is not just about the absurd housing cost, food, and everything else is also insanely high there.  There are places in the south where one can still buy a livable house in an ok neighborhood for under $30,000.  Sure it will be an older house, and will be a fixer upper, probably under 1,200 sq feet with 1 bathroom, but they are out there.  I just checked in the town where I live in western Louisiana and there are half a dozen listed for under $30,000 that are in what I consider ok neighborhoods (one is across the street from my nephews house).  Overall not an awful place to live on fixed income.
 
aguablanco said:
I have no issues with Christian beliefs. However, I thought they were more than beliefs. I thought they were tenets to live one's life by. My mistake.
RIchH
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They are and I do.
Please be specific who you are calling out with this blanket comment.
And I thank GOD that I'm not an atheist!
 
FenderP said:
:)) :))

I?m sure the truly compassionate, self identified by their posts, have opened their homes and provided a place for some of the homeless. Otherwise there is no way they could judge the rest of us so harshly.
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No but I do carry food supplies to hand out to those down on their luck,
See this thread for ideas
http://www.rvforum.net/SMF_forum/index.php/topic,114336.msg1033095.html#msg1033095
I am truly compassionate and give what I can to help my fellow human being
 
aguablanco said:
I have no issues with Christian beliefs. However, I thought they were more than beliefs. I thought they were tenets to live one's life by. My mistake.
RIchH
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It's what I expected from a non-believer
 
OK, let?s move on. Make this topic productive or I think it?s run its course
 
I'm surprised that it took the city this long to evict them.  I launch out to Berkeley's ramps and got there once about 3 am so decided to take a nap until day light but a knock on my windshield from the security guard told me no overnight parking...no exceptions.
 
Alpena Jeff said:
They are and I do.
Please be specific who you are calling out with this blanket comment.
And I thank GOD that I'm not an atheist!
Click to expand...

:)) :))
 
One thing I know, I don't know all the answers.

One thing I know,  a couple weeks I was in FL visiting with a family members who work on a nice tech job making over 110k.  He had been offer a job in the Bay area paying him $300k.  He told me he didn't think he could take it because it might not be enough to buy a nice house in the Bay area.  Sounded crazy to me. Maybe this is one of the reasons why there are so many homeless people. As I said, I don't know all the answers.

 
darsben said:
No but I do carry food supplies to hand out to those down on their luck,
See this thread for ideas
http://www.rvforum.net/SMF_forum/index.php/topic,114336.msg1033095.html#msg1033095
I am truly compassionate and give what I can to help my fellow human being
Click to expand...

Good on ya? and God bless you.
 
Sun2Retire said:
OK, let?s move on. Make this topic productive or I think it?s run its course
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But, but, I haven?t even seen the ?G? word yet!  Oh, wait, God. Never mind. Shut it down before Jesus is mentioned.
 
Mean-spirited, unforgiving and unrepentant=un-Christian. People will have to judge for themselves whether they see those traits in any of the posts here, but that judgment is really irrelevant from a religious perspective.  God will look into people's hearts to make his final judgment.

A lot of proclaimed atheists in America share Christian values and a lot of proclaimed Christians don't.
 
RossWilliams said:
Mean-spirited, unforgiving and unrepentant=un-Christian. People will have to judge for themselves whether they see those traits in any of the posts here, but that judgment is really irrelevant from a religious perspective.  God will look into people's hearts to make his final judgment.

A lot of proclaimed atheists in America share Christian values and a lot of proclaimed Christians don't.
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You have spoken truth, sir.
 
A $30,000 home might as well be a $3 million dollar home for somebody who needs to beg change to take a city bus, much less move somewhere. All cities and towns have homeless problems. Some are more visible than others and some are worse than others. There is a big difference between sleeping in an RV because you have nowhere else to go and choosing to live in one because it allows you to go where ever you want. Imagine yourself broken down on the side of the road with no cash, no credit cards and completely dependent on passers by. Now imagine a month later you are still sitting there because you can't get your rig fixed and you don't have anywhere else to go. That's pretty close to being homeless.
 
Ross I agree that it might as well be $3 million for that class of homeless people.  However a lot of the RV homeless class have some type of income, either social assistance, disability income, etc.  Also in addition to home ownership options, there are subsidized housing options, much of which is not all that bad in some parts of the country.  Spartan yes, but some are small complexes located in decent areas, and in many ways beats living in a ran down RV in a parking lot.

 
There are a lot of families out there that are one paycheck from being homeless. Everyone didn't have the upbringing and guidance when they were young to make wise decisions, and many didn't have any advantages from their parents to start out their adulthood. Unfortunately, many lack the mentality to advance very far job wise. They end up with the best job they could get and try to make the best of it. Truth be known, they're not looking for a handout, they just need a break. Some portray the homeless in a stereotypical way and that's not fair to you or them. For the folks that look down on the homeless, do as Gator suggested, walk a mile in their shoes. If you truly want to understand them, volunteer at soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Sit down and talk to them and LISTEN to them. You may very well learn something about them and yourself.
 
I think we are blurring the topic.... there are very different things we are talking about...
1) the under employed
2) the panhandler, beggar, swindler,...
3) the disabled
4) the well intentioned but down on their luck
5) the nomads by choice
...all are very different and one does not = the other.

regarding the whole "lack of compassion" thing....  It all seems a judgement based on absolutes.  I don't think anyone wrote or thought that they are ALL druggies and alcoholics, or all cheats, or whatever.... just that some are, or maybe many are....

I find it interesting with any of these sorts of discussions (not just here, but in life generally) that when things get judgmental, perspectives tend towards absolutes, and lumping dissimilar things together..... for example, a person disagrees with some action that a person does, so that automatically means that the first person is a rascist against whatever race that second person he disagrees with is...
It really doesn't matter that the word racism means that there is a belief that one particular race is 'superior' in some way to another.  You disagree with a particular action therfore you must somehow think that your race is better than that theirs....  it just doesn't make sense. 
It's about the deed, not the genetics.
 
kdbgoat said:
There are a lot of families out there that are one paycheck from being homeless. Everyone didn't have the upbringing and guidance when they were young to make wise decisions, and many didn't have any advantages from their parents to start out their adulthood. Unfortunately, many lack the mentality to advance very far job wise. They end up with the best job they could get and try to make the best of it. Truth be known, they're not looking for a handout, they just need a break. Some portray the homeless in a stereotypical way and that's not fair to you or them. For the folks that look down on the homeless, do as Gator suggested, walk a mile in their shoes. If you truly want to understand them, volunteer at soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Sit down and talk to them and LISTEN to them. You may very well learn something about them and yourself.
Click to expand...

:))
Thank you for your well reasoned insight.
 
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