What's the problem they could just go to the homeless shelter.

There is nothing shady and/or abusive about how those are run, right?!

*add - /dark sarcasm

"a 2021 study from the University of Chicago estimates that 53% of people living in homeless shelters and 40% of unsheltered people were employed, either full or part-time, in the year that people were observed homeless between 2011 – 2018."

https://endhomelessness.org/blog/employed-and-experiencing-homelessness-what-the-numbers-show/#:~:text=The%20truth%20is%20that%20many,observed%20homeless%20between%202011%20%E2%80%93%202018.

Yay capitalism!
Where you can be employed 40 hours a week and still have to choose between food & shelter because you can't afford both.

That's not exactly good for long-term stability, and it puts the system at one good economic downturn from collapse.

We have plenty of historical precedence for this too, and next year might be a repeat of 1929 or 2008.

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For fucks sake could the Tories drag the UK any lower?

"I'm not just an employee, I'm a client! "

Dont underestimate the Tories. They can always go lower

Job security paradox

Ah importing American stats to make the UK look the same. Nice.

Just as bad here in the USA. Social Work us brutal atm. Many worked doing COVID including myself. The pay is bad. It's weird watching staff that make the same as the clients/residents they are serving at certain places.

Nobody wants to stay on as the pay is so bad why bother?

What is government supposed to do about the salaries at charities? It's a private entity and probably not part of a union.

They should increase minimum wage and introduce maximum rents.

Don't bring up rational solutions to irrational people.

Think of the corporations!

We just had a company meeting for IT, and someone asked about raises and when and how much. Got a general response about 3% being the national norm. Someone called them out on it and said that's still a 5% pay decrease with inflation as it is. They stopped the meeting lol.

The company only makes a few billion in profit a year. They can't afford raises or good medical coverage. Gotta give those investors their cash rewards and 20+ millions bonuses to upper level management.

Yup, my aunt and uncle work and live in their car. They make minimum wage in Denver where their income is too low to qualify for an apartment. They alternate between living in their car and living in cheap motels when they can afford it.

I wouldn't work for a CHARITY expecting much in the way of compensation. It's like going to church, and complaining about the entertainment.

I interviewed for an IT job at a shelter a while back, full time would have left me homeless or starving.

People need to eat and pay rent if they work a job. You can't expect people to give their whole lives to a charity, that's honestly too much to ask. If the labour is supposed to be a charitable donation, you're not going to be able to get people to accept that (thus these strikes). There aren't enough altruistic with their time, independently wealthy people out there for that to work at the scale of the whole charity industry and all the man hours needed to make them work, nor would it be desirable. Some people will volunteer hours at a food bank for example, but you still need some core actual workers there to ensure the whole operation continues, people who are there regularly. It's like that in any operation.

Might as well refer to as corporate feudalism at that point. I guess this is what the late stage of capitalism is now?

> work

You would think a homeless charity of all places wouldn't be stupid enough to not offer a living wage

It is not right for people with jobs to make so little that they are homeless.

Yeah, but who cares about long term, when we can make the magic bar bigger for this quarter than the last!

Goddamn. The game "Liberal Crime Squad" was supposed to be satire damn it, we're not supposed to have literal CEO Castles!

It's charity work. Why would the pay be anything other than low?

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Here’s research literally from the charity in the OP showing the amount of people who are in work yet still homeless. That good enough for ya?

Its an official union balloted strike.

The charity in question are called “Shelter”, but they don’t run shelters for rough sleepers. They provide other housing and homelessness services.

Jesus. This is why Im moving out of computer repair. Only the end of guys out where I am make good money repairing and setting up networks along with cyber security.

In my experience, most people simply google the problem (and not to knock it, it works) or buy something new.

$38k a year to be the sole IT staff for what is almost certainly a rough network (if they won't pay for IT staff how much have they been paying for IT infrastructure?), a lousy workplace in the city, and they even suggested the possibility of running tech classes for the residents.

The local *jail* was offering twice that for IT staff, and I didn't take that either.

Ugh. Ive done unarmed guard work that paid more than that. Twice that however, is something Id consider. What made you decide to pass on that?

It’s pretty genius from the charity, you have to keep the homelessness numbers up so you keep getting business!

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I just figured charities use a lot of volunteers. It seems like the only people who make money in this field are C level types, who make millions per year. I didn't mean people don't deserve a living wage, but charity work is its own reward.

Somehow, the CEOs make off with millions in salary, while the well-meaning folks doing the actual work eat shit. It's amazing what percentage of donations ends up in the banks accounts of C level executives.

Thars okay though, its been really good for the shareholders these past few quarters!

Missed the context that this was not in the United States - where Homeless Shelters are fucking something else dude

A tasting: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/16/homeless-shelters-orange-county-aclu-report-condemns

Serious question…if they can work out of their car, why not leave Denver for cheaper pastures? Minimum wage in Mesa County would go so much further. Grand Junction rent is half Denver’s.

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You need to be able to apply for jobs in those places first, otherwise it’s likely too risky to up and leave. Can’t afford to wait around for weeks or months to get a call back from an employer if you need to buy food in the meantime.

The article says they have enough reserves to pay the workers adequately. Ok fine. But what if they didn’t? Inflation isn’t a random unknown occurrence. You have got to control prices and costs, full stop. It does not make sense for people not to be able to afford to live.

That's fair, even a union as big as the freaking Railroad Workers one here can't get more than one lousy day off.

The American Dream.

Charity work is voluntary work. Most of the time they don't pay at all.

Mostly didn't want to have to deal with the kind of coworkers I'd have in a jail. Beyond the personality tropes you find with the people attracted to those roles, the local jails are constantly in the news for assault, drug dealing, the occasional fucking about and getting a prisoner killed. Just had one guard get convicted for blacking out driving home, crashing and killing a kid.

I can make that kind of money being an administrator basically anywhere, it's not worth it to work in a literal prison with even bigger asshole colleagues than normal.

There is no such thing as "40 hour a week voluntary work". Thats called a job.

If they want someone to be there 40+ hours a week then they need to pay WAGES because that is A FUCKING JOB.

This is not a scenario where these workers give an hour of their time every other day, they work full time and don't get paid a living wage.

Don't know if they still exist but they used to have recruitment companies starting at 40-50k for contract. I was preparing for an interview before being prevented during an attack. Tried again were offering 75k or something and was immediately attacked by a new set of roommates and denied medical care while they screamed they didn't want to pay or assist later having conducted repeated attacks over being wrong.

Yeah but what about my AA gun for my safehouse home?

You know what, I might actually be cool with having “Flag Murder” on my otherwise pristine rap sheet.

Truly one of the most heinous of crimes! lol

Nobody takes weeks to hire a minimum wage employee because any warm body will do. It doesn’t take weeks to find a minimum wage job for the same reason. Truly, I’m not trying to be an asshole, but I’m talking about a three hour drive down I70 to reduce cost of living by more than half. A 16 y/o with zero work or life experience starts at $16/hr statewide at our largest grocery chain. Two people pulling $16/hr could afford an actual roof in Grand Junction.

>According to Bellemare, in the age of TCF, contra Marx, workers can be paid below subsistence levels, wherefore, they must now work a multiplicity of jobs and more hours in order to make ends meet.

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I've worked in non profit for 10 years, I've had several coworkers that were always on the edge of homelessness. Constantly living paycheck to paycheck, like many other Americans. On top of that it is an extremely stressful job. Working in shelters is dangerous, there is a ridiculous level of burnout in the field.

Head out to like canyon city and you can afford an actual house too.

It's like company scrip, but the opposite

The more, the merrier, right?

I can't imagine living in my car in one of the most expensive cities in the world, instead of just driving a couple hours in any direction and being able to afford an apartment.

You don't even have to go so far you can't visit family or whatever. It's just astonishing.

You're presupposing that that they simply haven't considered the possibility of leaving Denver, or that they're just too stupid to realize that other places with cheaper housing exist. Either way, not helpful at all. There are a million reasons why people (including very poor people) choose to live in urban areas. And many of those potential reasons are extremely personal, and can't be shared to strangers online.

I'm sorry for being so critical but i see posts exactly like yours every time someone talks about having financial troubles in urban areas, sometimes even when people talk about less-shitty rural areas. Posts like this are always irritating because they shift the cause of poverty away from its actual sources and onto individuals, specifically individuals choosing to live in urban areas.

You probably don't have bad intentions but please try to use your empathy and be more thoughtful.

Tbf it might make more sense but considering people in that situation in America will be suffering already, their thinking might be a little impaired by the stress of trying to survive. Also just uprooting your life and moving away from where you live is no easy thing, especially if you're moving from your needed support network who and essentially going to somewhere new where you don't know anyone and so are isolated whilst still being vulnerable, because a new city racks up the hours and costs quite quickly. There's also an element of risk in moving somewhere new, and if everything goes pear-shaped then you could find yourself at square one and even worse off then before.

...what?

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It’s easy to suggest someone take bold actions when you don’t have to deal with the consequences.

This article about the UK but sure, America bad

Normally I'd agree because it's expensive to move. But if you're already living in a car, you're not going to have to worry about... "What if I lose my job and then have to get rid of my belongings and live on the streets?"

Same issue with case management services. I do harm reduction work/research and over the last few years the turnover in case management for my unhoused research participants has been insane. None of them (of those who have a case worker) seem to have the same one for more than a few months. When I check the agencies, I inevitably find out that they quit. Nobody can handle 100+ cases on poverty wages. It's one of the biggest barriers to unhoused folks getting housing. Without consistent case management there's never any follow-up and so only the least "acute" cases end up leaving the streets because they require the least resources and time from stressed case workers.

I’m curious how much you make for social work.

I just started a little over a month ago for a company that does contractual work for DCS. I get a company car and make like 23$hr with a 1500$ sign on bonus. But my biggest benefit is that I got a company car that they pay for all mechanical problems and gas, I pay like 196$ a month for it, but I figured it was a deal and have been saving more money than I ever have

Edit: company car can be used for personal use

Not really sure why you're touting high school education as a metric. Unless you're like a farmhand or janitor (and even then, I'd expect you to know how to read chemical warnings just in case), I would expect high school education to be like the bare minimum for a more-than-minimum-wage job (edit: accidentally wrote "more than highschool job", lol).

When I used to score standardized tests, there was a type of test paper we referred to as "The Attack of The Saurus." It referred to students who were trying to use a lot of big words, but didn't quite have them mastered.

Just thought I'd mention it. No reason.

I dunno, quite a lot of people lack proper reading comprehension. That's a skill expected of someone with a high school education.

>Posts like this are always irritating because they shift the cause of poverty away from its actual sources and onto individuals, specifically individuals choosing to live in urban areas.

The discussion was not about the sources or causes of poverty, but what people are going to do to get out of poverty now that they're in it. Wanting something you can't afford, even if the reason is extremely personal is effectively the same as choosing poverty. If you cash your entire paycheck and spend it on steak on pay day, you have no one to blame for your hunger the next day but yourself. If you choose to be homeless because you would rather live in a car in a city even though you can't afford that city but could afford another, then you're not only in denial, but are selfish. You are selfish because as non-tax paying car dweller you still draw resources from the community to sustain your car based lifestyle while the rest of the tax payers still have to pick up the tab for all the goods and services you are consuming but do not pay for.

This is not a question of empathy or lack there of. It's a question of people making choices that benefit them but cost others. These people are not stupid, far from it. They are free riders enjoying all the ancillary benefits of living in a large urban center while avoiding paying the true cost of existence and forcing everyone around them to subsidize them. People who insist on living in places they can't afford have the financial maturity of a preschooler: "But I want it!!!"

I always said that if I was ever president I would issue an executive order that LCS had to be installed on all government computers (obvious exceptions) to remind every government worker what they were fighting/working for.

A friend in Sweden was living in the wrong town for his occupation. Also saddled with debt and couldn't move. The local unemployment office payed his rent and covered other expenses. They have gotten their money back several times since then.

This response only makes sense if you completely ignore the first paragraph of my post.

Also, oftentimes people in this situation have unstable cars, so driving long distances could be more detrimental if the car breaks down

It’s actually amazing to me how many of our local service agencies have staff that are also clients due to low pay.

Well, logistically it is better that someone who works in the system be familiar with said system, making formerly homeless people the perfect pool for employees. However by not paying them enough to live on, you ensure they'll never be out of said system.

Us poor people are a commodity now, we are not considered human by society at large, we are just a token to trade.

Is there a charity for homeless charity staff?

> Unite said the imposed pay deal was “a huge real-terms pay cut”, adding that the latest annual retail prices index (RPI) inflation rate announced last month was 14.2%.

We're never going to get inflation down if all people are compensated for it. 3% sucks this year, but it's supposed to suck.

Will their car make a 3 hour drive?

Repeatedly been getting attacked by roommates during job applications. High paying salary for donations. Wanted to start an org later to get people interested in stem and offer resume help.

I’m not presupposeing anything. I asked for a logical reason why two people who are homeless wouldn’t relocate three hours to potentially not be homeless. You interjected all that other outrage and insult on your own. If you see many posts asking the same question as mine over and over, perhaps it’s time to answer it if you want people like me to continue shelling out empathy and resources in an attempt to solve the problem. I’m not blaming this couple for their poverty, I’m asking why they wouldn’t take steps to improve their own lot when the current situation seems so untenable. Poverty stricken people will cross the globe for a shot a better life, why won’t Americans cross a city line?

Just some info to straighten out your apparent assumptions about me, I lived in a VW Rabbit in Loudoun County, VA for two years trying to catch up after a job loss. Took me that long to realize it was never going to happen in the richest county in the US. I moved to Greeley, CO with $300, got a job waiting tables and was under a roof in three months because the COL was 1/3 that of LoCo. Life has only gone up since then. I don’t just have empathy, I’ve got the life experience.

I'm not ignoring it, I am addressing it directly and saying you're wrong and your reasons are BS. Money spent on the homeless is a finite resource, something I am well aware of working in healthcare and being married to a social worker who works with the homeless. Fully functioning and employed adults who could house and sustain themselves if they moved but choose to be homeless take resources away from vulnerable people who literally have no options. These excuses propagated by people like yourself only enable the perpetuation of poverty, and add to the sense of lawlessness seen in many cities where the "rules" only seem apply to some of the people.

I make the same as you. My pay is not entry level. Ive been with the company for years. I started around 10 an hour.

Oh dang, okay! Is this pretty typical of social work jobs?

What's your point?

I've been homeless before, it sucks.

I had no phone, no car, no help, and I thought I might die, or get raped by the hundreds of predatory men you meet on the streets. (Nobody likes to talk about that eh?)

My point is, nobody should just accept a life on the streets, there's a way out for pretty much everyone, you just gotta fight for it.

That's like workers at the tent factory getting laid off and end up broke living in a tent city.

Low pay, big risk

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Fair, I misread it by erroneously inserting a "school" in there.

That said, these days you can get a master's in business, and it's a complete joke. A master's isn't necessarily difficult to get.

Source:

I bought an Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Arts in Math, Science and Engineering (that's a mouthful), which was a relatively easy degree. Then I bought a bachelor of science in computer science. This was an actual challenge. But still probably a joke compared to stuff like mechanical engineering or biochemistry. And finally, I bought a master's in business. This was a complete joke. Basically high school level stuff. I don't feel accomplished at all and actually sometimes forget that I have a master's, lol.

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Not your fault at all. High education makes sense. I just randomly imagined the school part out of habit, haha.