meep_launcherJust 2 people.
just 2 people
What does this mean?
If every church houses two homeless people, no more homeless people.
Assuming the distribution is the same for both
(it’s not)
But the point is not invalid. It’s a problem that seems insurmountable but can definitely be tackled.
Although homeless people absolutely can and do migrate. They prefer cities for somewhat similar reasons to everyone else, and with no place they are allowed to live why not squat somewhere with lots of (begging/stealing/dumpsterdiving) opportunities and shorter walks?
I’m also confused by what the image itself is trying to say
🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 🏆If you take 2 of every homeless person in the US into one of every church in the US, there would be no more homeless people in the US.
Maybe OP believes every town in the US has exactly 1 church and 2 homeless people and is mildly infuriated that the church doesn’t allow the 2 homeless people to live there?
Not sure why you'd think OP is saying 1 church per town. Just that there are ~380k churches in the United States, and less than twice as many homeless people.
I agree, far too many people are left out in the cold at night when we have many public, climate-controlled buildings with working bathrooms and possibly even showers that are empty after a certain hour. If the homeless were able to regularly get a good night's sleep and a shower in, they might be more able to hold down jobs and become contributing members of society again.
Schools certainly would be great as a shelter after hours, most have gyms with showers, possibly laundry machines, and certainly ample space for someone to sleep with a sleeping bag. If we could just figure out a way to make sure everything stays clean for students to use the next day, no left-behind drugs, no vandalism, etc. that could be a wonderful solution.
My guess is that in most places the homeless population would easily fit within the gymnasium alone.
If we could just figure out a way to make sure everything stays clean for students to use the next day, no left-behind drugs, no vandalism, etc. that could be a wonderful solution.
Tell me you’ve never worked with the homeless population without telling me you’ve never worked with the homeless population before.
I think OP believes every town in the US has twice as many homeless people as churches, it doesnt need to be exactly 1 church and 2 homeless people.
But either way, that’s probably not true. Since homeless people tend to be in larger cities.
But then again, lots of people become homless in the suburbs and then move to the city to get the social services. If churches in the suburbs housed a few people as they become homeless, it would probably help. It’s better to keep people in their communities so they have a better chance of returning to housefullness.
But probably not that much, since homelessness rates are strongly correlated with housing prices, so expensive cities create more homelessness than cheap suburbs.
They’re implying that there are two homeless people for every church and that every church should house two homeless people to solve homelessness. Not agreeing with OP, just trying to answer your question.
and that every church should house two homeless people
Not even directly house. Even helping support those 2 people would go a long way toward demonstrating that churches actually do some good.
There’s only two more homeless people than churches in the United States. If we make every homeless person a church, we can also have more churches.
I hate the idea of treating homeless like babies. Most of these people got to where they are by choices. If they wanted to stay at the church they probably can. Most churches I know have cots for people down and out. If these people wanted to stay at the church they would have.
SplatterphaceYou have no clue wtf you’re talking about
Ever lived near a significant homeless population?
Motherfucker, I’ve been homeless a lot in my life and I live/work downtown, surrounded by all types of homeless.
Motherfucker,
I’m sure you have us no responsibility for how you ended up homeless. The world just happens to you, and your actions have no influence over your life whatsoever.
I can’t even imagine someone being this tone-deaf, and yet, here we are.
henfredemarsA good friend of mine had the audacity to develop a chronic health condition in America. He should’ve known better.
It was cancer.
Want to know how I became homeless? I turned 18, and my parents said, “Alright have a nice life, you’re 18 now don’t be home when I get back.” After 18 years of teaching me zero life skills. Took me until my late 20s to find stability, meanwhile being constantly harassed by police for looking for a place to rest between time at school and work.
But you know, this is an anecdote and has no value in the vast scheme of things. Data driven results are all that matter, and yet, they still disagree with your assessmen that people are the source of their own situation. Believe it or not, the safety and support systems in the society you live in dictate homelessness, and I can tell you first hand, we have none.
But that’s all the energy I can send to you, its not useful trying to teach chess to a pigeon, at the end of the day you’re going to spread your shit around and knock over the board anyway (a summary of your comments in this thread).
Hope you open your mind some day.
Mic drop.
TLDR.
I need 21 words max
Fair, this is what I get for reasoning with a pigeon.
LMAO did you only get 5 words in and decided to respond? I think you need a TLDR more than me
some homeless people got there by making bad choices.
But, you know what I’ll say it, making a few bad choices shouldn’t convict you to a life on the street and being treated as subhuman by people around you
I agree.
But you also can’t help someone unless they want to be helped. There are people out there who will take every advantage of any resources available while making absolutely no effort to change the pattern of behavior that led them there.
Not only do I live pretty close to a tent city of homeless people, I’ve spent a lot of time in San Francisco interviewing homeless people there back when I was in high school working for the school paper.
You have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.
GladiusBI too live near the San Francisco and know there is no linear answer. Odd how even in an anticdote we still corroborate that there are more factors to why homeless people cannot find housing. Odd. Does that mean we have confirmation bias? Or does that mean facts support our theories?
*Anecdote.
TropicalDingdongIf churches are going to be a tax free non-profit, we need to see ‘services done’ at roughly a similar order of magnitude as their receipts would allow. And no, a couple of cots is not the answer. Perhaps a small apartment building with 8 units that the church owns and operates, and provides permanent residency for a small local population of the unhoused.
Other wise I think they church should be disbanded and its organizers held liable for tax fraud.
Possibly linuxWell I don’t think you should go trying to disband someone’s religion. In my area Churches usually donate people and money to organizations that help the homeless. I’ve worked in the soup kitchens serving hundreds
I mean if they’ve got the receipts of how the money is spent like any other non-profit has to provide, I have no issue with it. If they can’t provide the receipts, that’s a for-profit institution, and should be taxed as such.
By definition of non profit they should not be making profit
If I run a 501-3c (and I have), I have to provide what amounts to a complete budget of where my organizations income came from, where it went to, and how much was spent on things like overhead, office expenses, executive pay, travel, etc. My board is responsible for me getting those numbers right, otherwise we run afoul of the IRS.
Churches are not held to the same standard. A church is effectively granted tax free status on its receipts (income) and is not required to provide any charitable services as a product of those receipts. They are fundamentally different legal entities, however, I’m arguing that they shouldn’t be, and that churches and “faith based” institutions should be held to the same standards as any other charitable organization under the 501c3 definition of a non-profit.
If your church or faith based organization doesn’t exist to provide a charitable mission, then it shouldn’t be free from taxation.
Churches don’t make money. That wouldn’t make any sense unless someone is embezzling
Are you serious??
Mormon church fined over scheme to hide $32 billion investment fund behind shell companies
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a nonprofit entity that it controlled have been fined $5 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission over accusations that the religious institution failed to properly disclose its investment holdings.
There are more empty homes in the US than homeless.
While churches taking extreme advantage of tax exemption is a concern, a concern that should be addressed, this situation pales in comparison to the hoarding, lobbying and zoning that goes into keeping the illusion that housing is a scarce resource up, and prices intentionally high.
A lot of them have severe mental health issues
Most of these people got to where they are by choices.
Objectively false. Huge majorities of homeless individuals face chronic illness, disability, untreated mental illness, or have been abused.
The numbers vary, but most homeless people have a job and still can’t get housing due to overwhelming affordability, a factor which is manipulated against them by zoning laws and corporate ownership.
That rate of homelessness seems like a wild underestimate. However, I don’t know much about the southern united states other than that they basically export the homelessness they create to other states through bussing programs. So this number might be better calculated considering both the spatial distribution of homelessness and the spatial distribution of churches. With out knowing where the churches are and where the homeless are, the number is a bit beguiling. That being said, it does seem that its the areas with lots of churches that create the conditions for homelessness, and then those areas export the problem they create to other areas (rural red states have been bussing the homeless and other ‘undesirables’ to metro areas of blue states for decades, rather than fund and operate local solutions).
SotuandusoThat being said, it does seem that its the areas with lots of churches that create the conditions for homelessness
Huh? Is this like a red state/blue state thing, or do you have something to indicate that towns with more churches generate more homeless? It doesn’t really make sense to me because homelessness is tied to housing prices, and cities are where housing is more expensive, and the ratio of church to population is probably a lot lower in cities.
It’s a red state blue state thing.
Red states (rural areas) deal with homelessness by buying the homeless bus tickets and sending them to metropolitan areas within blue states. Basically, red states create issues with homelessness because of their social policies, then externalize the consequences of those policies. This has been the case for decades. Before 2010 this was almost exclusively a red state issue. They would buy a homeless person a bus ticket to CA or NY and that was that. However, more recently some blue cities like Portland are trying the same strategy.
I thought this was common knowledge around homelessness in the US, that it was a blue state problem caused by red states.
Well it can’t be exclusively caused by red states, but I see what you mean. I’m just not a fan of the implication that churches have something to do with it.
Bruh who the duck do you think is buying the tickets.
It’s not an implication, it’s an direct consequence.
Churches are a toxic venom in the vein of society, this kind of exclusionary behavior is precisely why the exist.
You conflate Christianity with Republicanism. Please do not act like churches are the mastermind behind politicians who use vaguely church-scented branding to try to pander to Christians while acting against many of the principles laid out in the Bible.
I believe that number was accurate in 2022 as noted in the screenshot but has risen to 650,000 since.
𝕲𝖑𝖎𝖙𝖈𝖍🔻𝕯𝖃 (he/him)My home town had four churches and no homeless people. What homeless people are those churches supposed to help?
Meanwhile, in the city I now live in, there’s tons of churches and half of them give free food to the homeless every single day, and there’s lines going around the block at all of them.
There is no magic bullet that can solve homelessness. Anything proposed must be a part of a larger solution. There are tons of proposals that, if actually done and not half-assed, would help immensely.
You are getting downvoted but you are unabashedly correct. The rhetorical goals behind the post are noble, but the suggested solution is infeasible that verges on laughable.
Homeless people need to live in homes, of which there are plenty being hoarded vacant by the ultra wealthy, not churches.
Homes for the homeless fixes homelessness. Guess what giving a homeless person a church to live in makes them? Still homeless.
In the worst case interpretation, this meme is using churches as a polemical meat shield to protect neoliberal and corporate interests.
I do not understand these downvotes. Like how dare you see churches that actually help the poor like they’re supposed to?
Knee jerk emotional voting. People don’t like seeing information that contradicts their deeply rooted beliefs, and downvoting is emotionally less costly than performing self-investigation.
Don’t get me wrong I would love if every problem in America could be patched by taxing some sussy non profits. But there’s no evidence for that.
At best it’s a comfy position that lets you “not my problem” your way through life, at worst it’s propganda to divert attention from the system of capital that is actually keeping the lower class unhoused and constantly struggling.
Not trying to be a smartass here, it’s genuinely just human nature to choose an emotionally efficient worldview. One-on-one conversations and counter propoganda are one solution to getting folks to see truth. It just takes energy.
ShaggySnacksIt’s people downvoting because “Religion = bad”.
When in reality it should be “Religion = institutions and instructions can be either good or bad or mix of both.”
It hurts because a good number of religions DO = bad, but we lack the intellectual vigor to identify which ones and call on their downfall. An the result is we get blanket statements and assumptions that do nothing but give a pass of diversion to immoral soul sucking capitalists, all of whom are directly responsible for the housing crisis.
Those churches might have already helped. I’m no fan of religion for it’s various stupidities, but I am a fan of organized good will.
This is an silly post with silly implications, even though I appreciate its rhetorical goals
The really c/mildlyinfuriating fact is there are more empty homes in the US than homeless.
Based on currently available numbers, there are about 31 vacant housing units for every homeless person in the U.S. src
You don’t even need to involve churches. You need to hold individuals and businesses who hoard real estate for profit accountable.
I appreciate the background sentiment of this post, but check your predetermined biases before you use the text of this meme to inform your opinion on policy.
TrickDacyI don’t follow what’s silly here. These motherfuckers are not taxed and also not obligated to give back and that should matter. Tax them, would be the obvious solution
ScrubblesYeah the moral bit is we know people who hold housing for profit are douches. Churches are worse because they think they’re doing the Lord’s work and love talking about caring for people, but very few actually do any good.
very few actually do any good.
Cite this and I will change my opinion.