Also on today’s menu:
Dangerously Mentally Ill End Up On The Streets
Bolduc: Biden Committed Impeachable Offenses
US-PLO Meeting Focuses On Peace
At minimum wage, a worker would have to put in at least 80 hours a week to afford a one-bedroom apartment in the Lakes Region, according to Daisy Pierce, executive director of Navigating Recovery. To afford a “fair market” apartment, a worker would need an annual income of $51,000.
That was one of the points made during a Laconia forum on homelessness in which members of the community discussed why the number of unsheltered children, adults, and families has risen from 80-100 prior to the pandemic to the 300-400 range today.
Gail Ober, a former member of Laconia’s Master Plan Steering Subcommittee, said a proposed ordinance would have made it easier for people to build accessory dwelling units on their property “without having to go through a lot of the processes in the land use department, which are very intimidating.” The Laconia City Council tabled the measure.
Addiction or substance misuse is commonly cited as the reason for homelessness, but only about 3 percent of the homeless are there for that reason. Most people lose their homes due to low pay, high housing costs, unexpected expenses, or mental illness.
Dangerously Mentally Ill End Up On The Streets
Michael Shellenberger writes in Common Sense that the share of homeless people in New York with serious mental illness has been estimated at 17 percent, and that the two major contributors to the problem are the country’s failure to create “a functioning mental health care system” and the “powerful groups [that] have effectively prevented dangerously mentally ill people from getting treatment.” The result is a growing number of fatal attacks on others.
The United States created large psychiatric hospitals to provide care to people who, until then, had often been neglected, abused, or even killed, but, by the middle of the 20th century, “the reputation of psychiatric hospitals was in tatters — and deservedly so. Conditions in many of them were appalling, even barbaric. People who were not severely mentally ill were sometimes subjected to years of involuntary hospitalization,” Shellenberger writes.
Over the next two decades, state mental hospitals released patients — some to group homes, but with many ending up on the street or incarcerated. Many of the group homes subsequently closed, in part because of state and federal reimbursement rates of just $1,058 per person per month, along with rising property values that made it more appealing to sell than to keep operating the facilities. Furthermore, advocates for the mentally ill successfully fought for laws to severely restrict the ability of family members and police to require that the mentally ill get treatment.
“An often unacknowledged irony is that the homeless mentally ill themselves are at grave risk on the streets where they are frequently victims of violence and crime,” Shellenberger says.
Bolduc: Biden Committed Impeachable Offenses
Now that he has secured the Republican nomination for the United States Senate, retired Brigadier-General Donald Bolduc is pivoting to appeal to voters in the general election. While he previously embraced the former president’s claims of a stolen election, Bolduc recently said that new research convinced him that the 2020 election was not stolen, after all.
During a campaign stop this week at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Hudson, where the crowd expressed an anti-Washington sentiment, Bolduc pivoted again, saying he doesn’t know what happened. “I can’t say that it was stolen or not. I don’t have enough information, but what I can say is that we have irregularity.”
Instead of focusing on the question, however, he said the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency needs to be recognized if he is to be held “accountable for what he has done to this nation over the last two years.”
“I am convinced that some of those things are impeachable offenses,” Bolduc said.
US-PLO Meeting Focuses On Peace
In a statement about the White House meeting between Jake Sullivan, assistant to the president for National Security Affairs, and Hussein Al-Sheikh, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the administration says that the two discussed “U.S. interest in supporting peace and stability, preserving the path towards negotiations for two states, and advancing equal measures of security, prosperity, and freedom for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”
Sullivan emphasized the need to take steps to de-escalate tensions in the West Bank by countering terrorism and incitement. All parties, he said, should refrain from “unilateral actions that threaten stability.”
He also supported strengthening Palestinian institutions, “including reinforcing commitment to non-violence,” according to the statement.
Café Chatter
On Destroying The Economy: Regarding the Economy, ask ten Economist and you will probably get ten different answers why we are in this recession. Seems we always want to blame someone else though, Trump, Republicans, Democrats, Free Staters and even Libertarians. I can tell you this, since Biden took office we have steadily gone down hill, all his fault or not, that is the truth. What we are being fed from all sources could be lies and selling of fear, who for sure knows the truth but those who have caused this problem and it’s not over.
Regarding the Pillow Guy Mike Lindell of My Pillow, when a court denies to hear a case, that is not justice, but justice denied and that is NOT a good thing.
— John Sellers
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