Watching the news highlights, watching societies lowlife's and all that lives in-between, I get myself, some number of opinions. The local news highlights have a main course of murder and mayhem, some mention of Taylor Swift, some focus on our street urchin's that we call homeless, and a constant revolving door of council's, multi agency gatherings dealing with the crisis on the streets. It is my opinion that these groups of commissioner's ,elected officials and other agency heads are whipping a dead horse of futility. They are so far removed from understanding the street life, that this is Einstein's theory of insanity, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.
The greatest blindness of our highly paid officials is that the pretty much lump everyone without a home into one category and culture, which is crazy. The people on our streets are individually more diverse than our culture in general, with many sub-groups being 100% incompatible with other subgroups. Until there is a better view and appraisal of the going's on, villages are mostly destined to failure, unless all residents are screened for compatibility. I had the benefit of being homeless for two years due to a hospital injury, even with my high education, I was clueless of what it takes to survive, especially when your brain doesn't work right. It took me 7 years of constant self care and therapy to emerge whole. Very few people have my training as a chemist, a physician, a psychologist, a pastor and experienced natural compounder, and I am impressed that I could successfully integrate over 40 therapeutic courses for my own good. Out medical system and health care system do not provide the necessary tools and funding for remediation and improvement in the treatable portions of our street family.
Instead of continuing all these meetings, our officials should dawn tattered clothing, and hang out with the crowd at some of the many food shares, after a few weeks, you will be included in the friendships and will find new stories to aid your work. In understanding recidivism, the officials need only to find a few sheriff's from our jails to understand the "categories" of inmate's, especially during initial lock down. There are a number of good hearted religious leaders in the area, and they might too share a different story line. I think I remember someone saying in the book of Mathew, that there will always be poor. Kiss of death in this section.
I took part in a government sponsored study of the health care crisis in Clackamas county back in 1974; thats 50 years ago, and other than the changes of drugs and availability of gun's nothing has changed. The 10 areas of the study, stand today, in need of improvement.
The answer may be as simple as "words of love". Until our elected officials recognize all people as members of our own family, there will always be poor, there will be violence and many other consequences of benign neglect.
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