The tax base didn't flee to Baltimore County, it disappeared since the 70s along with the manufacturing and industrial jobs that once sustained a city population of 1M. No jobs, no taxes.

Thanks! I have an incredible group that's like a 7-10 depending on the night, but I'm always looking to scratch that itch a bit more. I'm lucky to have played nearly every Friday for most of the last 5 years.

Are y'all more like Critical Role or Dungeons and Daddies? Where would you put yourselves on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being rules lawyers and 10 being a silly improv game occasionally punctuated by dice rolls?

Hot Pot Hero is the only hot pot place I know that can accommodate large groups (10+), but if anyone knows any others, please share!

I can't, sorry, I've been out of school about a decade. I couldn't succinctly explain it. It shouldn't be too hard to Google if you want to follow up on it. I can tell you for sure it was already in anthropology's rear view mirror over 15 years ago.

Broken window theory is deeply flawed and not accepted by contemporary academics. It confuses the symptoms of poverty for the cause.

Hard to focus on anything that's not immediately in front of you when you're trying to survive crushing poverty. No one is waking up going "boy, it's great to be an asshole with no money today." Some people are assholes, of course, but you're painting with a very broad brush.

Effective at what? Ending poverty? Treating the symptoms? Absorbing foundation dollars? Suing poor people over their medical debt?

Nah, fuck that. If I don't want to answer your call, I want you to know it. You're not getting my voice.

Agreed! Our system is cruel, it fails to meet people's needs, and it's in need of deep reform.

Yeah, it's a common belief that most homeless folks are homeless because they have mental illness, drug addiction, or other issues besides a lack of housing. For sure these problems are much more prevalent in the homeless population than the general population, but as I said, systemic issues and housing affordability are huge factors. Fewer folks are aware of how many homeless people are working, but still unable to afford it.

The sort of widespread, visible, chronic homelessness we see today hasn't always existed in this country. Used to be that homelessness was something experienced by relatively few people and as a relatively short term problem. It really began to emerge in the 60s as public housing began to be dismantled. Since then, the HUD budget has been slashed by about 90%, and we've lost more units of public and subsidized housing than we currently have homeless people. There are many other factors as well, including the proliferation of addictive drugs in impoverished communities, the closing of sanitariums with no substitute, but the big one is that the market has failed to made housing affordable. We absolutely know how to solve this problem- we need to spend more money and make sure people have affordable housing, even if its not profitable to do so. There's just no political will to do it.

>How many chronically homeless folks would you say are in Baltimore City?

I don't claim to have an accurate number.

>Also, what is the conditions of the shelter you have experience with?

I've been fortunate enough to not have to utilize city shelters. My knowledge comes from talking with dozens of people who have. No hot water, no hot food, no social distancing, no hand soap... a huge lack of basic needs. These conditions existed before the pandemic, but they got a lot worse. Three weeks into lockdown we were distributing masks at Our Daily Bread and the employees came out to get them, too. They said no one from the city had contacted them, they didn't have supplies, and we were the first ones to actually provide any help to them whatsoever in that time.

>Percentagewise how many of those chronically homeless are due to severe chronic mental illnesses that realistically won't allow them to work even if medicated?

I don't have that information. I doubt it's very high. I do know off the top of my head that the majority of homeless folks are employed, which indicates to me that low wages and poor housing affordability are significant systemic factors, and it's not just individual issues at play.

So then you do agree it doesn't affect the argument. Great!

Didn't you yourself say that the argument was correct, but you're rejecting it anyway due to word choice?

Who cares? That doesn't impact whether the rest of their argument is right or wrong. It's totally irrelevant to what's actually being discussed here.

I've already addressed this.

>You are correct that homelessness isn't the only problem a homeless person might be experiencing, but the solution to homelessness is still housing.

Both! I work for a nonprofit focused on issues of poverty, and I've supported Housing our Neighbors, a homeless led group dedicated to ending homelessness and organizing the homeless. If you want to be involved in treating the causes of homelessness and not just the symptoms, that's the best group I know.

Now you're talking about something else entirely.

There is enough viable vacant housing stock to end homelessness, even accounting for the majority of vacants being in disrepair. You are correct that homelessness isn't the only problem a homeless person might be experiencing, but the solution to homelessness is still housing.

Thankfully some of us are working on ending homelessness and not just renaming it.

Like I said, you need an argument, not just your feelings about words.

Let me know when you're ready to say anything about why they're ridiculous, then.

No it doesn't. Arguments undercut arguments, not feelings about buzzwords.

There are seven vacant homes for every homeless person in Baltimore, so even if it's true the overwhelming majority should be condemned, it's still a viable part of the solution.

Because this is based on the Point In Time count, this doesn't mean much. They survey folks in city shelters and public places they already happen to know homeless folks gather. It's not a very accurate number.

As someone who works with homeless folks on a regular basis, I haven't heard that things are getting any better. There was some success moving some people into permanent housing during COVID once we fought to finally get the city to stop leaving homeless folks to die in overcrowded shelters where social distancing was impossible. A disproportionate number of COVID deaths in the city were from homeless folks who couldn't protect themselves. As I recall, as of July 2020 when we got them to empty the shelters, around half the COVID deaths were among the homeless.

It's just as likely these numbers are the result of the conditions on the nights of the survey or the mass deaths of the homeless during COVID as it is the result of city action.

Just making sure! Everyone deserves the joy of knowing that piece of shit experienced some cause and effect.