Giantaxe

"Despite the fact that approximately 40 percent of homeless individuals suffer from a mental or physical disability, and in some cases both, only about 14 percent actually receive benefits from the SSA. "

Denial of Social Security Disability Benefits Perpetuates Homelessness

Michael

Sorry that is the US definition of homeless.

A homeless individual is defined in section 330(h)(5)(A) as “an individual who lacks housing (without regard to whether the individual is a member of a family), including an individual whose primary residence during the night is a supervised public or private facility (e.g., shelters) that provides temporary living accommodations, and an individual who is a resident in transitional housing.” A homeless person is an individual without permanent housing who may live on the streets; stay in a shelter, mission, single room occupancy facilities, abandoned building or vehicle; or in any other unstable or non-permanent situation. [Section 330 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C., 254b)]

What is the official definition of homelessness? | National Health Care for the Homeless Council

The OECD definition is: Homeless households are those households without a shelter that would form within the scope of living quarters.

OECD Glossary of Statistical Terms - Homeless households Definition

A far as the number involuntary confined to mental institutions in Europe, that is from the document that I linked. Although the number in the document is less than 500,000, only about a dozen countries are reporting in Europe so my estimate of possibly 1 million may possibly be wrong.

Michael

Can you find something a little more impartial. The following is at the bottom of every page on the web site.

This is an Attorney Advertisement

Owen778

That's a long post, with some very official-looking links, but I'm afraid it's not a reply to mine. The statistic that you presented was: "From all indications, well over 90% of the homeless in the US that are on the streets are either mentally ill, alcoholics, or drug addicts."

Michael

94.1 percent of people living on the street have behavioral health challenges: 12.1 percent mental health, 12 percent substance use, 70 percent dual diagnosis.

Facts on Homelessness

Any more questions? Everything else is in the links. I don't know how I can get any more official than by posting links to EU and OECD documents. Some times government documents, the OECD, or WHO doesn't have that information so I use the best possible source that I can find. I'm not going to use the Daily Mail, Fox News, the Huffington Post, or the Heritage Foundation since they are all very biased. Since there isn't any official document on people on the street, that is why I stated from all indications, over 90% but that figure may possibly be wrong since there aren't any official governments concerning the homeless on the streets.

kimilseung

Mentally ill are often poor, comes with the territory. Institutionalized people are getting three meals and a roof, wouldn't not looking after the mentally ill make more people poor.

Poverty is comparative to the standard of living of those around you, one would expect the richer nation to have a lower ratio, or I would anyway. I take the point that even living in a car and eating lots of other peoples left overs can be better than living in a shack with little food.

Michael

You may be surprised but the homeless problem in the England appears to be about as bad as the US with the only difference being the US has a higher percentage on the streets.

For the US, an average of about 610,000 are homeless each night according to many different web sites. The federal government doesn't count homeless so there is no official government data on the homeless. For England, according to the Guardian provides two figures (185,000 and 112,000) but the English government counts households at about 60,000. Since I can't use households for comparisons since the US doesn't count households, I'll assume that the smaller 112,000 may possibly be correct. With England having a population of about 53 million and the US with about 320 million, the US is about 6x greater in population. 112,000 * 6 = 672,000 which is comparable to the US. How accurate the comparisons are, I don't know since there are too many variables.

The way the homeless are counted seem to be similar. The US takes a snapshot on different nights and the English took a snapshot on June 30, 2014. Even if there was one person per household, that would be equivalent to 360,000 in the US. The English figure appears to be someplace between 360,000 and 672,00.

National Alliance to End Homelessness: Snapshot of Homelessness

Statutory Homelessness: April to June Quarter 2014 England

The homelessness crisis in England: a perfect storm | Society | The Guardian

Number of homeless in England has risen for 3 years in a row, report says | Society | The Guardian

Pulaski

But Michael's point, which he has repeated several times but which has been misconstrued or ignored every time, is that in the US the help that is available to the mentally ill, who make up the bulk of the homeless population, cannot be forced on the would-be beneficiaries.

So many people in the US are homeless, won't accept help, and can't be forced to accept help. How do those who want to argue with Michael propose that this dilemma be solved?

Maybe the statement that "if you're living on the street you'd have to be mad not to accept government assistance" is more apt than we'd like to believe?

Michael

Thank you. Someone has read what I wrote.

scrubbedexpat091

Depends on the state. In California and I am sure others, there is no serving wage, they are paid the same min. wage as any other min. wage earner earns.

scrubbedexpat091

Canada is pretty much the same with mentally ill, lack of beds for those who do want help, and for those who don't want help, unless an immediate threat to themselves or others, treatment cannot be forced onto a person.

In the 80's and 90's the government at various levels also closed huge amounts of psychiatric facilities just like the US did and the result is now an increase in homeless population in most city's.

It's sad, but the courts have said it clear, treatment cannot be forced unless specific criteria are met.

Michael

Noncompliance is a major reason that neuroleptic drugs are not more effective in keeping people with schizophrenia out of the hospital. Noncompliance accounts for about 40% of all relapse. In addition relapse from noncompliance may be more severe or dangerous than relapse occurring while on neuroleptic medication. Persistent noncompliance may worsen the overall course of the schizophrenic illness, and may eventually make the person less likely to respond to medication.

Schizophrenia.com, paranoid schizophrenia - Schizophrenia Treatment; medications, noncompliance

Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness that affects 2.4 million American adults over the age of 18.

NAMI | Schizophrenia

RICH

No. Poverty is not more apparent to me in US than it was in UK.

Michael

I agree but by using the way poverty is calculated, you can't determine whether one country's poor is better off than another country's poor. By checking poverty percentages, it's unknown whether the French poor are better off than the German poor or the UK poor or the American poor.

You have to go much deeper into statistics to determine that.

Using the poverty rate with the GINI coefficient (distribution of income inequity) doesn't tell a lot either since there is now also the HDI (Human Development Index), distribution of government services, taxes, and many other factors involved. Hong Kong and Singapore have two of the highest GINI coefficients of the richer countries currently at 53.7 and 46.3 respectively so obviously that doesn't tell us much except they are very good at hiding their poor (especially Singapore). Also the GINI coefficient appears to have some major issues in that most countries report only reportable income so countries like India that has "black" money (unreported income) that accounts about half the country's annual income tends to skew it's GINI coefficient significantly. Other countries that allow their richer citizens to hide money offshore also skewing the GINI coefficient. Countries that allow company executives to write off such things as apartments, airplanes, and expensive cars that are primarily used for personal reasons (executives can always think of a business reason for the use) skew the GINI coefficient.

The OECD is now using Median Equivalised Household Income to trey to account for some of the factors above but the only data that is collected that is Equivalised is for Median income and tells us nothing about the poor.

Income Gini coefficient | Human Development Reports

Singapore's falling Gini Coefficient

Beyond The Umbrella Movement: Hong Kong's Struggle With Inequality In 8 Charts - Forbes

Michael

Then you probably aren't one of those people that is making a 6 figure income so you probably have more first hand experience than most of us.