Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

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I spent years homeless.

A. Most services aimed at the homeless would be sued out of existence if they were intended for middle class clientele. They are frequently quite terrible.

For example: At a free meal from the Salvation Army, an older woman sitting next to me who had just gotten out of the hospital for a heart condition had all her stuff stolen for complying with their crappy policy of leaving her stuff in the unguarded designated area. It was cold and rainy that night and she had just lost all her extra clothes and bedding.

They were giving away bedding and clothes after the meal. No one walked her to the front of the line and said "Make sure she gets what she needs to make it safely through the night."

B. I'm mostly not interested in seeing more homeless services. They are mostly a "fuck you" solution.

If we actually cared about people in the US, we would have free national health care and an appropriate housing supply. We have neither, then we blame poor people as being crazies and junkies when they end up homeless.

Then we add insult to injury by giving them terrible food with long lines and similar "services" for which we expect them to be ever so grateful.

I'm wholly unimpressed with the entire thing. The system is quite broken.

Most homeless services here follow the "beggars can't be choosers" egotism of not attending to people's actual needs but rather looking down their noses on them, treating homeless people like criminals or make them jump through hoops like show animals.

For example, most of the doctor specialist services here have a "full" waiting list just to schedule an appointment and force people to call at a certain time in the morning for a few spots on said list, like animals jockeying to win the lottery.

Oh and the amount of food and cash aid is abysmal, not enough to feed or clothe anyone.

Most services demand either employment or only apply to certain groups, leaving many people to fall between the cracks.

The "social workers" are arrogant, obnoxious bureaucrats who don't listen to their clients but instead hold their aid over their heads and order them around without offering any solutions, strategies, resources or actual help... just judgement and control.

And it takes years to get disability status reviewed and longer to get housing. There are at least 1500 people living rough and 500 people living in vehicles in the area.

I was out of work and almost homeless (mostly extended couch-surfing) when the Affordable Care Act went into effect so I signed up for one of the subsidized low-income plans. They assigned me a primary care provider who was two cities away and told me I would have to see them in order for my care to be fully covered.

Later when I needed to see a doctor I dutifully made an appointment and rode the bus one and a half hours out there only to learn that my assigned provider was a pediatrician and she didn't feel comfortable taking me on as a patient. I contacted the plan provider and they assigned me a new doctor, but when I tried to make an appointment with him it turned out he was no longer practicing medicine. Fortunately one of his colleagues was able to take me and I finally received some care.

Three months later I was informed by his office that they were no longer in-network with my plan because they had had too much difficulty getting them to honor payments. I was assigned another primary care provider but thankfully I got a job not long after that and I never experienced the thrill of discovering whether the last one was a real living doctor or perhaps an inanimate can of Dr. Pepper.

Wow. Just excellent. This is done good journalism material for a stinger op.

On a less morbid note, while queues are slightly longer, nothing like that happens in any of UK, Canada or any part of EU.

USA is the "have no money, get bent" kind of country it seems. Kinda ruins the old American dream for everyone.

On a more morbid note, it's a frightening picture of the kind of country our current UK regime wants to create by leaving the EU at any cost and cosying up to Trump's America. They won't be able to dismantle the NHS all in one go but they'll certainly do everything they can to lower standards for all but the elite.

People voted Brexit like it or not so I think it's time to stop blaming the government for trying to deliver the referendum result. Lies were told of course but that's politics. Maybe investment and wages will increase and people won't care that much about free NHS anymore, at least that's the way I see it sold.

Either way EU will make a free trade deal(more or less limited) with the UK, the only real issue with Brexit is the irish border.

I was homeless too, and I was grateful for what you may have considered crappy meals. I even lived on the streets with my wife for a short time, and we both appreciated low quality service.

It was better than what we had, which was nothing.

I was very grateful for any help we received.

But some "help" is so bad it actually makes things worse. Being forced to leave all your possessions in an unsecured area to get a meal at all is an all-too-common practice. But it's not done everywhere and it's not necessary.

It's like the difference between a "bandage solution" and a "bandage" that isn't sterile. The second actively makes you worse off.

I won't argue that some people have bad experiences but unless the workers stole the stuff then the help wasn't bad itself. Also there may be reasons for those rules that maybe you don't understand.

I had to choose between hunger and safety before and you make that choice and live with it. Blaming others for trying to help you is not useful.

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