San Antonio to build two high tech 24-hour restrooms downtown.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

I have worked with day laborers. I have cut lawns. In fact, no less that a month ago, in the 100 degree heat, I along with 1 immigrant from Mexico and 1 homeless person, cut 11 yards around town. We worked from 6:30am until 7pm with the only breaks for food and water when we were driving to the next job.

There are manual labor jobs out there that do not require you to have interview skills. It is called muscle and will and desire.

If you want that cash, then you will do whatever the job calls for.

Can you show me where I said that people shouldn't work for their money?

[3rdCoast]

I have worked with day laborers. I have cut lawns. In fact, no less that a month ago, in the 100 degree heat, I along with 1 immigrant from Mexico and 1 homeless person, cut 11 yards around town. We worked from 6:30am until 7pm with the only breaks for food and water when we were driving to the next job.

There are manual labor jobs out there that do not require you to have interview skills. It is called muscle and will and desire.

If you want that cash, then you will do whatever the job calls for.

My point with this is I am a high school graduate.

I am 20 years old and am self sufficient.

If I can do these jobs, these hard back breaking jobs, early and often, why cant a homeless person?

And don't say that they are not offered because they are. I am in the truck 3-4 times a week with my boss when we offer jobs to them on the corner of the streets downtown and Walzem and I35 and near SAC. My boss offers them 80 dollars for 8 hours of work. Sometimes even more. And do they take it? Nope, maybe once in a blue moon. The chances are there.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

My point with this is I am a high school graduate.

I am 20 years old and am self sufficient.

If I can do these jobs, these hard back breaking jobs, early and often, why cant a homeless person?

And don't say that they are not offered because they are. I am in the truck 3-4 times a week with my boss when we offer jobs to them on the corner of the streets downtown and Walzem and I35 and near SAC. My boss offers them 80 dollars for 8 hours of work. Sometimes even more. And do they take it? Nope, maybe once in a blue moon. The chances are there.

Again, I point you to post #83.

Where did I say jobs aren't offered?

I've got a question. Why do you offer jobs to homeless people?

Why not put a classified ad out?

[3rdCoast]

What I am asking is how do you think they got the vaccinations to be allowed into school? Did the vaccine just appear out of thin air?

Guess what, those free shot clinics are funded for with money, most from the government and some from donations.

You had a thought when I wrote that some people are homeless through no fault of their own that they were there because of choices and decisions they made.

How are homeless people supposed to provide proof of residence (NISD, the district that I believe you went to and the district I went to, requires that) when they're homeless?

I went to high school at Clemens, so no, no NISD.

I am for helping people get on their feet, but only for so long.

[3rdCoast]

80 for eight hours? i will do that without a doubt. i make like 45 bucks for eight hours. sign me up!

Yea, the days I do that stuff are good.

There are other days when jobs are bigger I really get some paper.

[MannyIsGod]

The point being if you are going to make something illegal, there better be a solution for the person besides breaking the law. You can't just walk into a restroom downtown. I want you to try to use the restroom at the McDonalds by the Alamo and see what happens.

Council passed a law making public defication and urination illegal. What are homeless people to do? You have to give them an alternative.

Now, you can eitehr put up a facility that will be used and will have a low cost to maintain, or you can put up facilities - portable restrooms - which are not going to be used by tourists as much and are going to cost money to maintain and are going to be much more unsanitary and unsightly.

Sure, its expensive when you spin it the way WOAI loves to do. But when you look at the situation and weigh your options, you can understand why they do what they do.

BTW, Tpark. You have not made yourself, you were made. I wonder how your outlook on life would change had you not been born into a business but had a much more difficult time obtaining success. The world can be a cold ing place, and I'd love to see your reaction to some of the things homeless have gone through. I'd love to see you say the things you say here to one of them. Even you don't have that small of a heart.

[MannyIsGod]

Look, life is not only about your choices, but many times the way the cookie happens to crumble on any particular day.

There is no doubt that many homeless people are in the positions they are in due to bad choices, but to make a blanket statement saying they are all lazy is pure stupidity. Life is not made up of multiple choice or true/false questions where there is one corect answer and path to take. Many times you are dealt a ty hand and have to do the best you can with that. Many times even if you want to make the right decisions, it is not completely easy.

These are not excuses, but a testement to the reality that life is neither simple nor easy. Not everyone is capable of recovering from a failed marriage, lost job, or drug addiction on a whim. Not everyone here is ever going to live a truly depressed day in their life. And not everyone here is always going to be able to find a way out of a ty situation without first hitting rock bottom.

So what do you do? Do you turn your back on the people who can't keep up? Would you abandon your child simply because it was born with an imperfection? Would you disown a family member who made some wrong choices and wasn't up to par? Would you completely turn your back on a friend who needed a hand?

While those are all very different situations from dealing with the homeless, they all require compassion. And maybe some of the most self righteos of you posting in here might decide to toss some compassion torward one of those lazy bums because life isn't easy and you might one day need some back.

[Vashner]

Just install the toilets under the various bridges where they live...
Putting some port a potties in there would be a lot cheaper...

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Just install the toilets under the various bridges where they live...
Putting some port a potties in there would be a lot cheaper...

Again, I ask the question.

Who's going to clean and secure them? And at what cost?

[Clandestino]

there are many programs for poor people. the homeless choose not to take them. most homeless choose to be. just like everyone else.. you choose your own life...

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

there are many programs for poor people. the homeless choose not to take them. most homeless choose to be. just like everyone else.. you choose your own life...

Go tell that to those 49% of families with children, Clan.

[Jelly]

Everyone is in their position in life because of choices and decisions they have made in the past.

I've always believed in that for 'normal' people. But homeless people more often than not suffer from debilitating mental illness. I know the chart shows 25% for SA, but I believe that figure is higher, and if it's anything approaching most urban areas, it has got to be between 60% and 80%.

In my three years living in downtown DC, the homeless population (and there are a LOT of homeless there) is overwhelmingly male, usually middle aged or elderly, and the vast majority display signs of mental illness. Schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders can be plainly seen in many of them. Lots of them are Viet Nam vets. A lot of them are drug addicts. Many of them are all three.

In the past, homeless lobbyist groups have been known to distort the demographics of homeless people making them more white, more female, more families, more 'people that just got laid off'. The strategy is to make them seem more 'people like us', in order to generate sympathy and funding for their programs. For instance, if a single mother and her kids are living with friends or family, they will count them as homeless. I'm not saying this is what San Antonio lobbyists have done, but other activist groups have been exposed for such tactics.

What I'm saying is that most of these people probably can't "just go get a job" and their cir stances have nothing to do with decisions they've made. It's coldhearted and ignorant to just dismiss all of them as being lazy and refuse to provide them services.

The other thing is that any city whose primary revenue depends on tourism needs to take whatever steps are useful in making the tourist areas nice places to visit. Homeless people urinating on the streets is bad for business.

Admittedly, my perception of the characteristics of homeless people is based on cities other than San Antonio. If you guys feel that what you see on the streets does indeed reflect the single-mom, families, and laid off worker theory, than most of this post probably doesn't apply.

[ObiwanGinobili]

They have these toilets in San Fransisco and they are freakin AWESOME! they close up and clean themselves from ceiling to floor after every use!!

It's about time San Anotnio got somethign that cool. We are a classy city dammnit, bout time we proved it with some public johns that don't smell like 5 kinds of piss and illicit sex.

[ObiwanGinobili]

there are many programs for poor people. the homeless choose not to take them. most homeless choose to be. just like everyone else.. you choose your own life...

have you been homeless??
wait till you are. then we'll accept your view as gospel.

[/ sweeping generalizations forum]

[Clandestino]

no, i have never chosen to be homeless...nor unemployed. there are so many jobs out there and programs that our tax dollars pay for to help these people, but they choose not to seek them out and find them.. they'd rather panhandle, stay on drugs, just be a bum...

[Clandestino]

i have a friend who was a good athlete, but couldn't even score high enough to on the asvab to qualify for the army... he got a high school diploma, but i'm not sure how... anyway, he is running his own small business now.. anyone can anything they want...

i've been around poor people my whole life... mexican immigrants who came over with nothing, but a family and a willingness to do work... they have homes now and jobs..

i also have seen some members of my own family be worthless bums and choose to partake in activites that have landed them in jail and or poverty... it is their choosing.. i've seen the choices they make and heard the bull excuses...

[3rdCoast]

You can give the poor people the rich people's money, and in five years the rich people will have it back. There are reasons people are poor. The poor have the right to go to school, to get a job, to succeed in society. It's not the government's job to create a safety net

[AlamoSpursFan]

"Homeless folks are actually fourth on the list of people in San Antonio who make use of public toilets."

I had no idea there was such a list.

That's gotta be the tiest consumer survey taker job there is.

[PM5K]

T Park, you have to be the biggest (both literally and figuratively) asshole I've ever known.

You know more about being lazy than anybody I know, maybe if you'd get off your fat ass you could drop a few pounds.

You say things like catering to people who don't want to work:

I was homeless for a while, I worked every day of the week doing day labor and I was most likely doing much harder work for much less pay then most of the people in this thread, how does that make me lazy?

Dumb s? Dumb s are people who lump everyone together. Everyone has a different story and a different reason why they are where they are in life, I got to know some of those people and some of them were lazy dumb s, but some people that have jobs and homes are lazy dumb s.

And since there seems to be some disagreement, you can do day labor and work your ass off and still be homeless. Most day labor jobs pay minimum wage. Sometimes I had the money for a hotel and sometimes I didn't.

[PM5K]

My point with this is I am a high school graduate.

I am 20 years old and am self sufficient.

If I can do these jobs, these hard back breaking jobs, early and often, why cant a homeless person?

And don't say that they are not offered because they are. I am in the truck 3-4 times a week with my boss when we offer jobs to them on the corner of the streets downtown and Walzem and I35 and near SAC. My boss offers them 80 dollars for 8 hours of work. Sometimes even more. And do they take it? Nope, maybe once in a blue moon. The chances are there.

I don't know who you offer these jobs to but there is a room FULL of forty or more people on Fredericksburg and IH10 who would beg you for a job paying ten bucks an hour, I don't think I ever made more than seven dollars an hour doing day labor with that place and if you drove up and offered me that I'd say yes before you ing closed your mouth.

People really need to quit being idiots and lumping everyone together, I can GUARAN INGTEE you that if you go to that place early in the morning on Fred RD you can get dozens of guys that will take that job for a ten spot an hour.

[Clandestino]

why were you homeless and how did you get out?

[MannyIsGod]

Obviously because he was lazy and he choose to stop being lazy.

[TheWriter]

Obviously because he was lazy and he choose to stop being lazy.

It's that simple?

Just set it and forget it?

Now Bob, lets say I'm inviting a bunch of friends over...

[j-6]

I told myself I was going to stay out of this thread since I've ed about T Park enough over the last couple of months, but after I read PM5K's posts, I changed my mind.

First off, I'm not a religious man. I don't believe in some sort of eternal reward for helping the homeless, the crippled, the sick, or anything of that nature. But I do believe that helping the less fortunate makes this world a better place, and each homeless person has the same right to be on this spinning rock as I do.

Anyone that has done some sort of charitable work knows this. I've worked in soup kitchens, AIDS clinics, halfway houses, and both homeless and animal shelters. I'm not bragging here, but until you get a taste of what people live like without a pot to piss in, you have absolutely no right to demean them.

Some homeless people are the way they are through they're own bad choices. Others are that way because of other people's bad choices. But really, that doesn't matter. What matters is that we have the ways and means to help people for whatever reason, and folks hide behind crap like they're lazy, or they're not responsible, or that they've made their own bed and now they have to lie in it.

That is complete and utter bull , and everyone (myself included) that has ever thought that should be ashamed of themselves. If you were ever homeless, like PM5K was, and you needed assistance, you would get on your knees and pray every night for a better life. This is the richest and most powerful country in the world, where us citizens when our air conditioning goes out, or that we don't have a high-definition television set, or that our cable internet is too slow. And we have our fellow citizens starving to death and we're making excuses. We're a bunch of selfish s.

The reason I'm so passionate on this subject is while working in a soup kitchen in Denver years ago, a guy named TJ would come in there wearing a beat-to- UT cap. Now, I only worked there on Sunday nights every other week, but after the second time I saw him I started making small talk. Now chatting with homeless people is kind of a hit or miss thing. Some appreciate the friendly banter, but a great deal are very ashamed of themselves and won't even look you in the eye, just kind of mumbling a response and hurrying off to find a table.

So I started talking with him and it turns out that he was from Austin. I saw him again the next time I was in there and it turned out that UT played Colorado the day before in football, and he got to listen to the first part of the game on a radio at the shelter he went to the night before. We talked for about an hour after I got done cooking, going over how he became homeless, how we got to Denver, family, etc.

I bought a new UT cap and brought it with me to the kitchen the next time I went in, and he never came by. Matter of fact, I never saw the guy again, which could mean a great deal of negative things and one big-ass positive one.

I've also had employees over the years that listed a shelter for their phone numbers and asked for the company address to be put on their paychecks, so they know exactly where it's going. I'm not going to paint a real pretty picture that they were all stellar workers, but I wouldn't generalize the whole mess of them as shiftless, lazy bas s trying to ride the clock and steal money out of my pocket. They have good days and bad days just like I do.

Part of the reason the Iraq war infuriates me is costs $4 billion dollars a month. If we spent one month's worth of what the Iraqi war is costing the government, the United States could eliminate homelessness for a period of eight to thirteen years, depending on economic fluctuation. Anyone who has worked in a homeless shelter the last couple years has heard that repeatedly. The directors won't shut up about it.

I'm not asking you to be a bleeding heart liberal, but don't think of homeless people as disposable citizens just because somebody somewhere ed up and it affected them. Thanks.

[MannyIsGod]

Awesome post. Unfortunetly, there are some people who haven't a shred of compassion to give.