freedomdwarf1
Posts: 6845
Joined: 10/23/2012 Status: offline
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FR~ From OP's link: We've seen examples where the government has prioritized public spending on anything and everything except housing its own citizens. Strangely enough, there are basically three categories of "homeless". 1) Not actually wanting to be in your own home or being deliberately obnoxious so that nobody wants you. 2) Not affording your rent so you are made homeless by being thrown out. 3) Being a new immigrant. There are a number of people who actually (deliberately) don't want to have their own home. Strange but true. These are the ones you read about who live under bridges and in bus shelters for years. There are those who are offered temporary housing and refuse. There are also those who have some sort of issue (drugs, alcohol etc) who refuse treatment and end up with nobody putting up with their nasty and self-destructing behaviour and end up having nowhere to go. The next group are by far the biggest. It often happens because of the austerity measures and cuts instigated by the crappy government. In many cases, it is people losing their jobs or being put onto shorter work hours. There are also those who are having benefits cut or capped and cannot afford their rent and thus evicted. Most of these are because they rent from private landlords who have no compassion and are greedy. Can't blame the landlords for that; they just want their money. The situation has been exacerbated by a severe shortage of affordable social housing that has been getting worse, year on year for decades, by both ruling parties when they have been in power. The third group are not so numerous in themselves but actually compound others in the middle group. And this is down to stupid EU rules. If you are an immigrant, you get priority housing under EU regulations. If you ask anyone in the housing office, they'll tell you everyone is treated the same and assessed by the same rules. Really?? Well, it's true - but only to an extent. Everyone is assessed for housing needs and priority by a points system - and for equality, that's where the fairness ends. If you are an immigrant, you are given extra points just for being one. So two people, one immigrant and one native born, the immigrant already has a distinct advantage when being considered for housing. Also, the immigrant is considered 'at risk' whereas the native born isn't - that's even more points. If something becomes available, the immigrant will always win when everything else is the same. So yes, both assessed equally under the points system; but the immigrant gets more points without doing anything and that skews the 'equality' when it comes to housing allocation. And poor old native person remains homeless. And before some nay-sayers say it doesn't happen like that, it does!! Been there, and seen it happen in reality - native born are often fucked over when there are shortages of housing. It's not illegal to be homeless as the title suggests. However, places to survive at (by being made illegal to be there) are being pared into non-existence.
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“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” George Orwell, 1903-1950
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