News & Blogs - Voluntarily vagrant, homeless youth a 'crusty' urban challenge | Squat the Planet

News & Blogs Voluntarily vagrant, homeless youth a 'crusty' urban challenge

PunkrAwk3r

New member
Joined
Jun 12, 2018
Messages
1
Reaction score
1
Location
1442 W St Mary's Rd, Wilkes-Barre, PA 18706, USA
Fox News just put the whole community on blast with this, well that’s my Opinion... either way; it kind of makes us out to be the evil in this world... but it’s the exact opposite; don’t rain on our parade because you wasted your whole life on journalism instead of traveling and seeing the world thru open eyes and soul....

Okay rant over

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/06/11/voluntarily-vagrant-homeless-youth-crusty-urban-challenge.html

1528405998685.jpg


From the parks of Berkeley to the streets of Brooklyn, and in most every large city in between, they have become an almost inescapable part of urban life.

Known by many names – “crusty punks,” “crusties,” “gutter punks,” “crumb bums” and “dirty kids,” to list but a few – this group of young adults has rejected a more traditional 9-to-5 lifestyle in favor of train hopping, panhandling and voluntary homelessness.

And while traditionally tolerated by police and urban residents, these transient groups of the unshaven and unwashed have been involved in a series of incidents in recent years -- accompanied by an abundance of bad press -- that has municipalities across the country puzzling over how to address the problem.

In New York City's East Village, they have been spotted doing drugs in local parks, making camp outside of apartment buildings and sleeping outside storefronts. One crusty traveler’s pit bull even attacked a man and his small dog - killing the other dog.

More on this...
"It's like St. Marks in the '70s," New York City activist Philip DePaolo told the New York Daily News, referring to a once-notorious street in Manhattan. "It's the bad old days all over again. There's crack and heroin all over the neighborhood."

And in Berkeley, Calif.'s infamous People’s Park, there have been widespread complaints about the modern-day hobos openly shooting heroin.

The drug use, the panhandling, the unruly dogs and the crusties' general presence on street corners and in front of stores have all become too much for some cities, triggering local government crackdowns.

“The current status quo of the park serves no one’s interest, least of all the homeless people who occasionally use the park,” Dan Mogulof, a spokesman for UC-Berkeley, told Fox News.

In Berkeley, famously known as one of the country's most liberal and homeless-friendly communities, the City Council recently voted to implement new regulations including: limits on sitting down and lying on sidewalks; a ceiling on how many dogs a person can have along a commercial strip; and designations for what homeless people are allowed to sit on.

“No one in this room believes homelessness is a good thing,” Councilwoman Sophie Hahn said, according to the news site Berkeleyside. “Yet, through massive failures of our society and our way of life, it is a persistent reality in California, and across the United States.”

It's difficult to say just how extensive the problem is. Given the itinerant nature and wariness of those involved, experts can't say how many “crusties” there are across the country. Nor is there an easy explanation for why many of these young adults -- upper-middle-class and rich kids among them -- take up such a difficult lifestyle.

But after speaking with "crusties" around the country, and with researchers who have spent time studying the trend, it's clear there's a consensus that despite a shared penchant for dreadlocks, hiking backpacks and mutts, gutter punks are a diverse lot.

“There is a remarkable variety of kids who become gutter punk,” Jeff Farrell, a sociologist at Texas Christian University who has spent time traveling with them, told Fox News. “Many come from broken homes, or are throwaway kids. But there are also people from affluent backgrounds. This is a very varied set of kids, just like at any high school across the country.”

1528133870242.jpg

Daniel Reitz, 26, is originally from Virginia and has been on and off the streets for the last six years. (Andrew O'Reilly/Fox News)

Whatever their socioeconomic background, there seems to be a shared experience of a rough home life, sometimes abusive parents, drug abuse and unchecked mental health issues.

Sitting on the sidewalk along Telegraph Avenue only a few blocks from the University of California, Berkeley campus, Daniel Reitz talks about how he was sexually abused and separated from his brothers when he was younger.

“I was adopted at age 9. I came from a sexually abusive family,” Reitz told Fox News. “They separated me and my brothers at a really young age and it tore me apart really bad.”

Reitz, now 26, is originally from Virginia and has been on and off the streets for the last six years. He’s hoping to make enough money to get to Reno, Nev., and from there, Washington State, so he can hike the Pacific Crest Trail with his two pit bull mixes, Zeke and Shiloh.

Reitz says that he doesn’t mind the itinerant lifestyle – although he does plan to end his traveling days soon. Still, he gets upset at being labeled a drug addict or criminal because of his choice to be homeless. Reitz acknowledges that he used to drink heavily and abuse drugs, but now says he doesn’t even touch alcohol and only smokes marijuana.

“A lot of people out here stereotype me because they look at me sitting here and think I must be on drugs,” Reitz told Fox News. “They don’t realize that I come from bad circumstances.”

Reitz may have curtailed his drug use, but substance abuse is in fact very common among crusties. Just as the nation continues to deal with the horrors of the opioid epidemic, heroin – and its derivatives -- has become the drug of choice for many of these street dwellers.

Both prescription and illegal opioids are among the main causes of homelessness, according to experts. A 2013 study that looked at the homeless in Boston found they were nine times more likely to die from an overdose than drug users who had homes.

Crusties themselves say the situation on the street has only gotten worse in recent years, as the highly potent narcotic fentanyl is mixed into batches of heroin and cocaine. “In the last year, I have been to more memorials and funerals for friends who have died from overdoes than in all the rest of my life,” said Nicholas, a crusty punk in his 30s.

Nicolas, who panhandles for change on Second Avenue in New York, said he had been off and on heroin for years. “I’m not using right now,” he said. “But it’s something that is tough to kick. It makes a lot of your problems seem to disappear.”

Many activists who work with crusties argue that criminalizing their way of life won't get them off the streets and into more stable lifestyles.

“It’s really tough to reach out to these kids and help because of their itinerant natures,” Mark Horvath, the founder of the nonprofit organization Invisible Voices, told Fox News. “You might only get a few hours -- or even only a few minutes -- to work with these kids.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • Like
Reactions: Dmac
D

Deleted member 20683

Guest
if you can even call what they do journalism. more like turning common prejudices up to 11 and stringing a bunch of semi coherent bullshit together under inaccurate inflammatory headlines
 

Jimmy Beans

Bad Order Hoghead
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Dec 26, 2010
Messages
2,042
Reaction score
4,796
Location
Dick City California
Website
www.youtube.com
I wouldn't worry too much about this article putting anyone "on blast", I mean their average viewer age is like 73 years old isn't it? No 73 year old conservative white man had any sort of good opinions about any of us before this article was written anyway.
 

BelleBottoms

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 26, 2018
Messages
72
Reaction score
125
Location
Chino Valley, Arizona, USA
I wouldn't worry too much about this article putting anyone "on blast", I mean their average viewer age is like 73 years old isn't it? No 73 year old conservative white man had any sort of good opinions about any of us before this article was written anyway.

That may be true, but the people this article is aimed at are also the ones who vote and sit in counsel meetings. IMO, the "homeless problem" is an issue of perspective. You can't "solve" it like you can't make everyone see the same image in a cloud. The efforts of city councils to reform people and redirect their lives seems essentially to be paying lip service to voting taxpayers. ("See, we threw $xxx at this and it didn't go away. Can't say we didn't try.") Reading their proposals to "clean up the streets" reveals an even larger disconnect than that of rich vs poor - it's people vs objects.
 

NIKITA

Member
Joined
Sep 25, 2017
Messages
10
Reaction score
-15
Location
New York, NY. USA
It's common sense of modern era ... Homeless = all sort of problems. BUT if you are in offgrid somewhere in the middle of nowhere it's kinda normal and people around tryna help you out....
 

dprogram

Well-known member
Joined
May 31, 2011
Messages
619
Reaction score
372
Location
Riverdale Park, United States
It's common sense of modern era ... Homeless = all sort of problems. BUT if you are in offgrid somewhere in the middle of nowhere it's kinda normal and people around tryna help you out....


Because you don't "look" like the "problem" where all the rich folk shop. We got some dirt poor rural people quietly surviving in poverty. But no one cares bc are far enough away from mainstream. When mainstream starts spreading out it starts putting all its laws in place to respect fucking property values. Suburbs. Then when the suburbs are no longer the outskirts and the homeless are in their backyard they make more laws to protect property values. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.
 

CrowTheBard

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 28, 2018
Messages
95
Reaction score
280
Location
Lopez Island
I wouldn't worry too much about this article putting anyone "on blast", I mean their average viewer age is like 73 years old isn't it? No 73 year old conservative white man had any sort of good opinions about any of us before this article was written anyway.
Unfortunately, Fox is the most watched news source in the US. Crazy and disheartening, but true. Combating the “Fox News Narrative” is nearly impossible. They set the stories that other cooperate media simply responds to, ensuring everyone is talking about what Fox wants us talking about. And with the rise of “fake news” besmurging any truth or fact that doesn’t fit the narrative we have slid incredibly far down an Orewellian rabbit hole. Our culture has been politicized...Fox has way too much power over the masses.

Cheers,
Crow
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Spazz

Spazz

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 14, 2018
Messages
110
Reaction score
143
Location
Cali, unfortunately.
I'm afraid this doesn't surprise me after Agent Orange's calling us "filth" and promising to sweep us off the streets of "liberal cities" like San Francisco and toss us into concentration camps like he does the kids.

Just a heads up to be careful with family of origin, that friend you've known since kindergarten, etc.

I was completely blindsided and never saw it coming when my own private hell happened last year. Grief fucks with your head, especially when people you expect to help you are complicit or don't believe you.

Rest in pieces, old life; I'm already forgetting what used to be my own name.

Rest in power, Will; you will never be forgotten.

Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.
Blessed is the flame that burns
in the secret fastness of the heart.

Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor’s sake.
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.

-Hannah Senesh
 

About us

  • Squat the Planet is the world's largest social network for misfit travelers. Join our community of do-it-yourself nomads and learn how to explore the world by any means necessary.

    More Info

Help us pay the bills!

Total amount
$10.00
Goal
$100.00

Latest Library Uploads