I myself spent myself some time on the streets as a young age, during a time when my bipolar disorder was completly unmanaged and I was not coming at life through a "sane" frame of mind. I've lived with many of these homless people, and they are not as helpless and "victims" of symptoms out of there control. Many of these individuals are in fact on SSDI with the oppurtunity for mental health treatment. I myself had qualified for medicaid and was able to get to a point where my mental health was managed. I remember one month, the shelter when from packed to damn near empty, because SSI checks came in and everybody got motel rooms aned booze. Homelessness in Utah is much easier to get out of than a lot of other cities, because the road home and St. Annes offer you residency as long as you are seeking employment. A large portion of these individuals do refuse to accept any level of help. Years later, after achieving a fair level of success, I lived in new developments that were right in the middle of Rio Grande. Any individual that is living in the parks or outside of the shelter is there for drugs, not to get out of homelessness. There are plenty of resources for the homeless to recover from their situations. It is their choice to use them or not. Difficult circumstances may have put them their, but they are not helpless victims that have no oppurtunity to get there lives under control.
Christian | Salt Lake City, UT | Report Abuse

too many mor/ons / = M
Edmund | Spring Valley, NV | Report Abuse

Your remarks are inaccurate, judgemental and racist at best. Liberal values include concern for the well-being of everyone - even you. I doubt you can say the same about me. Homeless has become rampant in just about every city in this country. Get your facts straight: two major causes: people who make what used to be a middle class income cannot afford to live or live paycheck to paycheck - all it takes is ONE major crisis to cause someone or a family to become homeless. this has been like actual front page news. it's not a secret. Reason#2 - Roughly 40% of people on the street are not mentally and emotionally capable of functioning without housing, medication and other support. They have verifiable mental or physical disabilities not of their own choosing, including veterans who kill themselves because the government doesn't see fit to get them the counseling they need or pay them well enough or provide enough quality medical care after they return. It's not drug and alcohol abuse, although if you're on the street you get by any way you can. Maybe you should go down to a homeless shelter and talk to the staff, learn the facts about what they see, every day what works and what doesn't work, what it's like to listen to these stories, to see people who CANNOT work and never will suffer needlessly and people who through no fault of their own lost everything they worked for and ended up on the street - instead of shooting your mouth off about something you clearly have never actually tried to learn about.
Lori | Tigard, OR | Report Abuse

I too am from Salt Lake City, born and raised in Murray then move to Millcreek, Holladay and now Salt Lake City. I am now moving to Logan Utah. The reason why I am leaving Salt Lake City is because the price for housing is way high, and for a disabled senior citizen I cannot find any open places in Salt Lake City. My problem with the homeless is I park maybe 11 feet away from my bedroom window, I have a camera on it, which has caught many people doing strange things. For instance around 1:00 a.m. one guy picked up a rock to smash my windshield. I promptly got up and knocked on the window and he went away, but later in the day the manager asked if I had seen anything and I said there was a man with a rock getting ready to smash my windshield, she said that it could have been the same guy that hit another homeless man on the head with a rock and killed him (this is just about 20 feet away from my bedroom window) I have caught many homeless urinating on my car. I am so sick and tired of them being on private property and destroying it. They are pulling out bushes taken our chairs that we sit on to enjoy the outdoor air which is getting ridiculous because of all the traffic you can smell the fumes all the time! Logan here I come!!
Mike | Salt Lake City, UT | Report Abuse