There are no pictures, footnotes, nor other linkage in this piece. There will be in the following pieces of the tag “HousingBromides”

The system being used to put people in line to receive emergency shelter (temporary shelter housing) and permanent housing (long-term housing) is less than efficacious. Particularly in a timely fashion for the person actively seeking assistance.

From my perspective it’s not any different than it was in (2010-2011) and (2017-2018) and now (July-August 2025 - xxxx? 2026). For a person trying to get the assistance the “system” pro-offers, it’s offers extremely dismal outlooks for safety and processing.

Since none of my experience in the “homelessness/unhoused” field includes being a case worker, I rely on the many case workers in the field I come across both virtually and non-virtually. I can only imagine the frustration and bleakness that the broken system gives them as they try to perform their goals.

Let me give a brief definition of “system” as I’m using it. It’s not simply the infrastructure of the technical system used to promulgate and represent the applicants or resources. It’s the infrastructure of the concepts, thought modalities, punitive vs nonpuntive biases within the “founding fathers” of the system. AND, the various and diverse beliefs and certainty traps that humans have been taught — we are not born with beliefs, we learn them, re-learn them and learn differing beliefs as we live life.

If you’d like to dialogue with me on that, opportunity will be upcoming in additional posts with the tag “HousingBromides”.

The sequence of steps and their timing follows the same patterns now as they did in my past. I know this because I have been a participant in the proccess then (2010-2011) and (2017-2018) and currently (July/August 2025 - xxxx? 2026).

Essentially, the same “players” are in the process; the same stigmas (some much more magnified); the same deadwalls & barriers; and the same CES (Coordinated Entery System) processing.

I know about this because when I asked to be entered into the current CES, I was told “you have to be referred”. And, as I sat with a person who is a casewoworker, I found myself looking at the same file on their computer screen with my last photo from one of the last time’s I was “active” within CES.

Some of the obstacles of the entire homelessness/unhoused field are:

1. Accurate information on the customer/client and service providers

2. Automatically being sent to a very small geographical space (I’m talking SPA 4 (Service Planning Area) that spans about 1 mile in circumference. SPA 4 is the Metro Los Angeles area and covers much more than a 1 mile designated area.

3. Unable to ask for assistance from the Inside Safe — one apparently must be referred to the program. What are the parameters and criteria? Who’s making the judgment call? And where is the empowerment in that? (/rant)

4. Transportation — if all one has is their wheelchair or feet and no funding for the bus or ride share transportation, one of the only other ways is through a smart phone — not a simple telephone-call accepting/making phone.

5. Phone or electronic access — This brings into the equation cost, AND, keeping said unit charged.

Let’s have a dialogue. I personally invite you.

I do not currenntly allow for comments on my posts, for the sake of my sanity and the safety of my site — I am in the process of setting up means around that. In the m ean time…
… if you do want to be apprised of how that sharing will take place, please alert me and utilize this form (it does NOT put you on a mailing list).

Do you know that between the age of 2 and 5, children ask around 40,000 (explanatory) questions?1

Some studies show 4-year-olds as as many as 200 to 300 questions a day.2

A 2013 study found 2-year-olds ask an average of 42 new questions daily.3

And another study found that kids between 3 and 5 years old ask an average of 76 questions an hour.4

Yet another study, showed one child asked 3 questions per minute.5

I’ve been labeled as a trying child, on at least two levels.

• From my aspect I tried hard, with intent, and wanting to achieve.

  • I tried, and tried, and tried to “do”, “be”, “fit-in”, “have an effect”, “be acknowledged” .. and a whole slew of other things that would be TMI and vicarious trauma6 in this piece.

• From the aspect (pictured in Figure 1) of my adult-bodied caretakers, I was a very “trying” child from in utero through to the time they were not legally-bound to provide for me.

And then, shazam!7 a book written in 2014, updated and expanded in 2024 by Warren Berger found it’s way into my conscious awareness less than 36 hours ago.

I feel

• smitten

• enthralled

• belonging

Proudly now using “Questionolgist” as a replacement label for “trying”. On all levels.

I ask ?s. Always have.

Remember the kids who asked 3?s a minute. “Me. Me! me-me-me-me-me”

As an adult, while I have slowed down the timing, because I find asking 3?s a minute tends to get me ignored8 much as it did when I was very young, I still ask ?s.

It’s how I blew up chat in the olden days of CompuServe forums (which I moderated in) and Aol forums; 3D virtual world chat text; and also moved into Zoom and now other online meeting spaces.

Guiding with ?s is how I teach, think, and reckon with the world.

And, I leave you with a quote (and, to think I learned of it in a learning space on a 3D Virtual environment after more than 10 years of it’s original publishing in the non-virtual world):

I do not allow for comments on my posts, for the sake of my sanity.
And, if you do want to share your musing of my questions please feel free to utilize this form (it does NOT put you on a mailing list).

Whatever word we use, it means something — and, what the word means to us can be interpreted completely differently by someone else.

Any word.

Including the word: “Word.”

If we are looking for stability, it can be disconcerting to find words do not give the same output every time.

A bane of my existence has been the phrase “use your words“.

We can’t use our words if we don’t have them. (Or if what we perceive as words are not perceived as words by others.)

• We can’t use our words if we don’t have any that correspond to what others perceive as words.

• We can’t use our words if someone else doesn’t understand them.

• We can’t use the words of someone else if we don’t understand those words.

Does the word “bias” stimulate an uncomfortable reaction?
Consider, instead, using the word “perception”.

Words (defined1 for this moment, in this post, as expressions being made of symbols and letters) mean something different to each of us. We learn the meaning of letters and symbols as we experience our world. We are not born with the meaning of letters and symbols as a built-in vocabulary.

Questions we can ask ourselves:

• Where do symbols and letters come from?

• How do we learn letters and symbols?

• Who assigns specific meaning to symbols and letters?

I do not allow for comments on my posts, for the sake of my sanity.
And, if you do want to share your musing of my questions please feel free to utilize this form (it does NOT put you on a mailing list).

We’ll begin with a set of quotes from one of the books I’m currently re-reading, Our Polyvagal World: How Safety and Trauma Change Us,1 by Stephen Porges and Seth Porges.

On the opening page, are two quotes:

No, I haven’t asked the authors why they chose those quotes.

Yet, I share with you why they have importance to me.

Importance
My entire lifetime has been affected (negatively) by people asserting that thinking/reasoning and sensing are on the opposite ends of a linear scale from each other; and that one is better than the other. Thinking was taught to me as “the way” to be an upright, staunch, sane human being. A slew of biases2.

I struggled heavily with it because I “knew” it wasn’t true — and I couldn’t “prove it”; so, not only wasn’t I taken seriously, I was ridiculed, punitively treated, and labeled pejoratively.

As I read this opening page for the first time with the quotes, I felt — a “phew!” — a sensation in my body that I interpret as “I feel safe”.

As we start exploring, I invite your musing with this question:

What if thinking and sensing are moments on a spectrum, neither better nor worse than the other?

I do not allow for comments on my posts, for the sake of my sanity.
And, if you do want to share your musing of my questions please feel free to utilize this form (it does NOT put you on a mailing list).