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I’ve worked with hundreds of homeless people, usually trying to help them before the cops sweep their camp, or keeping their car rolling so they can keep living in it.

There was a ubiquitous set of conditions:

can’t afford housing even though they had a job.
lost identifying documents, usually in a sweep, and working on replacing them. You can’t get work without these.
no reliable postal address
no support network

I’ve never met anyone who wanted to be living on the street.

I’m not talking about crust punks train hopping. I’m talking about the people who missed a day of work for whatever reason and couldn’t make rent one month. Now they’re in a tent near available services because the shelter kicked them out after the max stay of a week.

Being a therapist gives you no expertise here and it seems to me that a therapist who sees punishment as a viable means for behavioral change is kind of shit at their job.

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Tedesche@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
It sounds like wherever you are does not have adequate services for their homeless population. That’s a serious problem, and I would obviously advocate for the expansion of said services over sleep-prevention measures added to park benches.

But I am a therapist with experience working with homeless people, and contrary to what you apparently think, my experience does give me expertise on their lives. Where I live, they do have options. I’m sorry your state doesn’t serve its homeless population as well as mine. We can both agree that’s a bad thing. What we disagree on is that this simple park benches feature is/isn’t an “attack” on homeless people. I also hold the position that methadone clinics are a disservice to opioid addicts—due to my extensive experience with that population who are still addicted to opioids, and whose methadone clinics actively encourage them to remain on methadone rather than titrate off of it. Are you going to tell me that being against that is an “attack” on heroin addicts?

I’m sorry you’ve had the experiences you’ve had, but my position is entirely defensible, and you haven’t presented me with any evidence to the contrary. Moreover, your contention that I’m a “bad” therapist because of it speaks volumes about your naïveté regarding my profession.

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