> Everyone, I have a brief announcement to make. Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the devil, and the government is lying about 9/11. Thank you for your time and good night.

Poverty certainly exacerbates mental illness. Hard to imagine someone with severe mental illness remaining stable when they’re unhoused. But money by itself doesn’t cure mental illness if you’re too far gone to try to get help. Just look at Kanye.

We also have no way of knowing whether she’s seen a dime of her dad’s money since turning 18. He may be unwilling to help her. He may have disowned her. He may have abused her. She may have abused him.

Frankly, that’s all irrelevant. Whatever safety net she had from her family, she obviously fell through them. Society has an obligation to catch people like this. Housing First is morally and fiscally correct policy, but in this case, I’m sure that would not have mattered one bit. Perhaps it would have gotten a social worker involved sooner that could have recognized she needed to be hospitalized, but there’s obviously a deeper problem here than poverty.

BuT wHo WiLl PaY fOr It? Bleats the sheep, who sees nothing wrong with paying $80k a year to incarcerate them.

Our local for-profit (!) shelter nearest to where this tragedy occurred only has 148 beds, completely full every night, with some overflow going to a nearby "christian" run building where anyone lucky enough to be let in the door must sit all night in folding chairs, -never- lie down, and doze as best they are able while all the "losers" in this game of Malicious Chairs freeze outside in tents on the sidewalk outside the shelter or various hiding places in the darkness of the city and outlying areas that the authorities call "camps" but are really just people desperately trying to improvise what shelter they can while being constantly hunted by police, local government and property owners. Manchesters city government actually has a "Help Us Hunt Down The Homeless" (my term) webpage where you can inform on homeless people you see trying to survive outside. No, I'm not making this up. They claim they will do "outreach" but somehow the "outreach" usually quickly devolves into "Blue Lights and Pepper Spray outreach", tents being slashed, penniless people being ticketed, desperate freezing people being chased away to seek another place to hide, etc. If you are at the christian "warming station" you must sign a sheet to patiently queue up to use the single bathroom. There are two bathrooms but they say they are not sufficiently staffed to allow both to be used. If you go outside for any reason you are not allowed back in. While they have their reasons for some of these rules and they certainly aren't getting much help from the city, the overall effect is hurtful to the psyche and body and the willful inadequacy of the state and cities response to overwhelming human need and tragedy is resulting in multiple needless deaths at all times of year but especially winter, of course. There are hundreds trying not to freeze to death out in the open every night in Manchester alone. The heartless among us say they "don't want to come inside", "don't want help". Spend a night with the bedbugs, lice, scabies, flu, tuberculosis, Covid & general indifference at the shelter and you'll understand why some are reluctant to go in there even when they have the opportunity. It's shameful, and our politicians, police and a sizable minority of citizens seem fine with it... until it's their relative that freezes to death. Heck, some of them are probably fine with it even then. More than anything else, we have an Empathy Shortage in this country at least as severe as our housing shortage.