basketball Bill Walton proposes moving homeless away from "civilized taxpayers" to "Sunbreak Ranch"

[hunter]

61. Just how hard is it to build homes?

Nothing fancy, just safe comfortable shelter, a place to keep yourself and your stuff, a place you can call your own.

Heck, a lot of the homeless are capable of building housing on their own -- they just need a place to do it. If they don't know how to build homes and community they can be taught.

Once you've got a safe place to live, a place to shower and wash your clothes, finding work is much easier.

We've also got to accept that some people will always be unemployable for one reason or another, and may not even be partially functional without some sort of mild supervision. Currently we put many of these people in jail or prison at great public expense, or let them die on the streets, which is also expensive.

There was a low spot in my own life when I was living in my car in a church parking lot, mostly because of mental health issues. That was after I'd been "asked" to take time off from college, the implied threat being permanent expulsion. I ended up living in the garden shed of a PTSD Vietnam war vet who probably saw me as a kindred spirit, and that made all the difference. I was still in the habit then of biting any hands that fed me and we didn't part on good terms, but amazingly I was eventually accepted back to college, graduated, started to get some good jobs, and haven't been a crazy homeless guy since.

My mind went a little sideways in adolescence. For too many years after that I put everyone who loved me through hell.

All this drama is so damned unnecessary. Build homes where the work is. Make accommodations for the unemployable. The Nimbys are always wrong.