Reply #7: It is odd that you mention this, as I am presently co-authoring an [View All]

[nealmhughes]

academic journal article about the issue/"problem"(in academic lingo) of unfettered access for the homeless/others differentiated as "others" or "outsiders" by public libraries. One of the things I have discovered in my research is a very real difference in public services for homeless/down and out men v. women who are not ex-cons or mental patients whom noone monitors for medication usage. I term it "Neo-Edwardianism" and also "Neo-Elizabethian" attitude towards a difference in support for the "deserving" v. the "undeserving" poor.
If anyone at all could have it "good," then perhaps women who have from abusive relations with any minor children are the most likely to get social services that are neither degrading nor done with a sense of resignation of the hopeless condition of their clients. Abused women have a wide range of social services, mostly from NGOs, but also the resources of food stamps, day care, Section 8 housing, etc. from the government, that quite frankly men in a similar condition do not.
Homelessness is part of a syndrom: lack of shelter is the final stage of it. It usually starts with drug abuse or crime, then incarceration, leading to poor employment potential, which leads to more drugs and more crime, more incarceration, with mental illness often accompanying and and/or all these stages.
The "system" is set up, and by system, I mean the entire North American social structure, with but few exceptions, with mercy for few: men are considered to be able to "dig ditches" -- although where these jobs are and where they pay enough for a roof over one's head, enough pay to get to the job, etc. Ex-cons are taboo in the modern workplace, unless one is a corporate criminal or a blood-stained war monger, in which case one gets a presidential pardon and an executive position.
Drugs breed crime for $ which breeds jail, which means a daily fight for survival instead of an educational opportunity, which breeds release with no employment, which leads back to drugs....ad infin, until the "three strikes" rule kicks in and one is now a guest of King George or Jeb for life...or else on the street.
All we need is public hangings to recreate the chaos of crime-riddled and poverty stricken the Early 17th Century -- people are now cheap, and obsolete, just as they were then when they left the farms and came to the cities.