Outrageous-Outside61 t1_j74rpzv wrote on February 4, 2023 at 1:42 AM

Reply to comment by headgasketidiot in As homelessness crisis deepens, rural children pay the price by FearandLoathinginBTV

Well I would say we fundamentally disagree on this. I do appreciate your sentiment and think your heart is in the right place. I would recommend volunteering and donating money to credible charities instead of pushing for our local taxes to support people moving in to the state for the soul purpose of the Covid housing vouchers.

State and Local taxes are for our communities. We have enough underfunded programs in the state to worry about before spending it on people who have never been a member of our communities. I’m not coming at this from some heartless aspect of it either, I’ve participated in many church fundraisers for community projects addressing these issues, I’m also a volunteer fire fighter and have been involved with setting up warming shelters. I’m just not okay with the idea of our state taxes going to fund programs that are incentivizing people to move in to take advantage of said programs.

Also, the reason why I said my comment on needing to show a bill to attain residency was in direct response to your comment “are you going to ask them to show a bill to prove their residency” honestly, i do not think these housing vouchers ever should have existed. There are much more effective ways to tackle homelessness than providing no strings attached hotel rooms. It’s not healthy for our communities, the homeless people receiving those vouchers, as well as our budget.

headgasketidiot t1_j758nnh wrote on February 4, 2023 at 4:04 AM

I fundamentally disagree with you that those people aren't part of our communities. They're living here. To actively reject them from our community for the sole purpose of denying them housing is cruel.

To put it another way, if those same people moved here and didn't need housing, we wouldn't be saying they're not members of our community. I don't want to be part of a state that specifically defines community to exclude people for their poverty. That's gross.

As for your suggestions to work with relevant organizations, that is what I do. I work mostly with human rights nonprofits. My experience there taught me that until we learn to organize our society around the things that actually matter -- camaraderie, friendship, mutual aid, etc -- this problem and those like it will always plague us. If we continue to organize ourselves around money and violence, like we do now, we'll always be able to think of the things that matter as being someone else's job, like a charity's (which everyone knows will never have the resources they need to really fix problems), therefore absolving us of guilt while we callously argue that some of the homeless who are in our community do not deserve shelter because they're not really members of our community.

Outrageous-Outside61 t1_j75e8z5 wrote on February 4, 2023 at 4:52 AM

Well let’s agree to disagree.

And idk, takes quite a few years for me to accept someone as part of the community regardless. Shit, I moved from Chelsea to Marshfield 2 years ago and I’m an outsider here, 30 minutes away from my home town 😂