Feral people

[Walking Buffalo]

The problem is once they are heavy into the drugs changes occur in the brain and they no longer have to ability to make rational decisions. So the idea while sound just won't work, they need to be forcefully put into treatment, let them yell and scream all they want, and once they are clean for a fairly long period of time you could release them to see if they can maintain sobriety. If the fall off the wagon, send them back into treatment immediately before they sink real deep in again.

You must realize nobody hires drug addicts.

You must realize how wrong this is....

Addicts are repairing our vehicles, providing health care, legal advise, running your banks and investment portfolios, on and on for "functioning" addicts.

"Feral" and "Non functioning" addicts are also employed, or perhaps more concisely subcontracted....
Drug trade, sex trade, theft trades, and such... and of course, they are "employed" by the Health care, housing and legal system as without the addicts, MANY doctors, nurses, counselors, pharmaceutical providers, judges, lawyers, police, politicians and bureaucrats would be without work.

[Woodchuck Dan]

I started seeing camps pop up in large #'s last sprin bear season ( right now). I put this into a few catagories:
* addiction and mentel illness. What looks like the most dire of the catagories. Mostly in cities as opposed to forrests and rural areas. How we got here and how to fix it, no clue. Folks living on the streets, shelters, tent camps. Can be Highly unpredictable and dangerous at times. A very hi chance of mortality from overdose and degrading health.


* professional squatters. Groups who have the means to be functional but chose not to based on level of entitlement and disagreement with societal norms. Thats the ones who like to look intimidating and get in your grilll when you discover them. Sketchy, possibly violent, definatly supported by crime ( theft and drugs?). Once they dig in they act like its going to take a fight to get them out of an area. Organized and capable. Maybe even errecting buildings to live in. There by choice AND circumstance.

* The newly poor by insane inflation and housing costs. Ive seen these increase the most. Retires, living in campers or cars on low fixed incomes. Mostly wanting to blend in and be ignored. This could be students. too. I see new ones popping up when the trades apprentices are in school. This could include the working poor too. Have low income jobs or at least seeking work.

Mistakes have been made by all and some are a blend of all three sometimes. The numbers seem to be going up in every category. I don't excpect it to get much better anytime soon.

I feel like this is a pretty accurate and non-judgmental depiction of the types of people you find living in the bush.

Just wanted to put my two cents in here. I've spent quite a few years working in mental health - Homeless shelters, safe injection, suicide prevention, mobile street outreach teams.

I would caution people against making snap judgements of unhoused populations. Yes there are individuals who would rather spend a mortgage payment on heroin. There are predatory and just generally shitty street level people. They make up a very small percentage of folks you will run into.

Most of the homeless people I have gotten to know and supported to not fall into the above category. I meet veterans, who have fallen through the cracks of our social system and who carry severe PTSD. I meet people who's partners have died tragically and their lives slowly unravel over the period of roughly 10 years until they are on the streets addicted to opiates. I meet other people whose lives have been cripples by chronic injuries. I meet elderly people whose pensions are insufficient to house them who also have complex health histories.

There are also many folks without family support or education who for a number of reasons beyond their control lost their job. Once the bills started piling up out the door they go. Once homeless, it becomes increasingly more difficult to obtain housing and employment and they spiral farther into this hole. The term is becoming "entrenched". Try finding a place to take a shit when you look like a street person, let alone an apartment or a job. Also, try maintaining sobriety as you become more and more exhausted and sleep deprived as you live in this kind of space.

I meet other people who have education and were making good money and still end up in this situation when a crisis hits their lives.


It is very, very, easy for your life to change rapidly and for you to end up in a situation where you are unhoused and squatting. It's unfortunate that many folks who end up in this situation do not have the life skills necessary to properly dispose of their waste and it damages both the forest and the reputation of people in their situation.

I don't have solutions here. However I think that if you looked honestly at your own life and situation you may find you are not as far away from these people as you would like to be.


*Edit* As an aside - I did seriously consider squatting about 3 years ago when I lost my housing and was bouncing from a series of sub-lets in the country. The biggest barrier for me was the inability to be able to have a vehicle in the winter with access to a road so I could continue to work. The only work around I could think of was to approach someone, pay them a monthly fee for a spot in their driveway, and squat within walking distance of their property.

It still seems to me like an interesting challenge to life off grid on crown land - and to keep a clean camp / low impact in the process. It's so much additional energy to live off grid + the potential for the feds to come and destroy all your work it keeps me in rentals.

[browningboy]

First step make drugs illegal,again, second get a big island where you can’t swim off to mainland and stick them there, they can be “Lord of the flies” and figure stuff out, no drugs on the island but have necessities to get by.
The strong will survive, and that’s who you want to survive.

Obviously no easy answer, costs are very high and the wages that people earned weren’t sufficient as well so it’s a nasty world and it won’t get easier. In reality if we had predators that ate humans for say (like animal kingdom) they would be toast.

[HappyJack]

A question for those with experience:

Those drug addicts you see videos of, the ones with a heads hanging down, messed up, looking like zombies. Can those people ever be cleaned up and return to normal society? Or are they hopelessly addicted?? The first time I saw that video my first thought was 'head shot, put them out of their misery', like you'd do with suffering animal.