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diskzero a day ago

"Cars are plentiful and cheap in America and can be had next to free in many cases." What is the buzzword bingo and what is my bent?

I think it should be permissible to allow some dude to live out of a 2002 Town and Country that parks at a revolving series of strip mall. I currently work with several people who use a similar method to keep themselves and their kids off the streets.

The phrasing might be bad in that I was pointing out the overall bleakness of the overall situation; no insurance, no registration, no maintenance, but the intent was to show that they are teetering on the brink of falling into an abyss that is very difficult to come out of, not that they were some sort of anonymous nebulous mass.

The main thing I have been struggling with personally with working with this issue (housing, addiction) over 25 years is that it is such a huge, seemingly unsolvable problem that no one is able to address systematically and when I think about the big picture I feel overwhelming helplessness, but find hope working in much more local situations.

The car comment was just an observation to the parent comment, with some additional commentary on how it isn't at all a big luxury, rather a bleak situation where the car owner is in a very precarious situation. Reading it now, I do see how it could be misconstrued as some sort of zealotry of people of a certain bent, but I think I am might be bent the opposite way of what you think!

cucumber3732842 17 hours ago | parent [-]

>"Cars are plentiful and cheap in America and can be had next to free in many cases." What is the buzzword bingo and what is my bent?

The entire sentence after that came across like a giant dog whistle for the kind of people who are never out of arms reach of their clutching pearls. The only word you missed was "blight". I was expecting it to be followed by a call for some sort of government action.

Might just be a reflection of the language of whoever your social circle is but it came across real Karen-ey

diskzero 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Interesting and useful. I would welcome societal action and have no faith the government can do anything at all given the government has no idea what to act on. I have seen the “government” wage a war on drugs, allow encampments to sprawl only to bulldoze them later, allow cars and RVs to serve as ad hoc housing only to tow them away, provide injection sites only to close them down, etc. Whatever the government does it reverses itself and we can’t seem to make progress.

I’ll use the word though; our inability to provide housing and basic essential services to our fellow human beings is a blight.