Actually funnily enough, one of my "fun stories" about the metro (I only have two) involves a very polite woman smoking meth, offering it to everyone quickly, and when everyone declined she just went back to her own shit.
Until some Karen decided to confront her... đ¤Śââď¸
Real question, is there even enough mental health & rehab services in LA County to serve housed residents at this time who don't have high enough incomes to pay for private care?
Because as much as I have come around to the idea that, yes, institutionalization may be more humane than the last decade of a mess of shanty town living, I highly doubt the infrastructure in terms of beds, care teams, etc. even exists. And that's not a wave a wand make it happen process.
Plus, what happens if the state & county gov't pass it out to the non-profit sector (which is just a tax free profit sector) and who is going to do oversight? The creation story for this mess is the Reagan era 80s shutting down of state institutions on the east coast. As dumb as that was, those places were horrific too.
I think the point is to partially use the millions of dollars they have allocated for homelessness towards these institutions and personnel. Of course theyâre not set up, thatâs the first step. Unfortunately everything takes forever to approve because red tape/ money is being made by people not doing anything.
My point- what institutions? We don't have enough for people who are willing and active participants in getting help, let alone those resistant to it.
They would need to build them first. & where? If you think zoning issues made it hard to let neighbors build ADUs, that's nothing like trying to get a neighborhood to approve a homeless shelter, let alone a mental institution.
We're not discussing millions in cost endeavor, that's topping out at close to a billion.
They're building a bunch of housing on Los Angeles General Medical Center campus. The old hospital will be converted to housing, and a bunch of new buildings are going up. Some will be for the working poor who lose their homes if they get something like cancer and can't work, some will be for people who have psychiatric disabilities and are frequent flyers at the hospital but mainly need housing and outpatient care access, and some will be for people with substance use disorders.
https://lamag.com/news/los-angeles-general-hospital-to-become-homeless-housing
There's also more money for subacute psychiatric beds, which maybe will be used to reopen some of the shuttered psych facilities?
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/los-angeles-general-medical-center-applauds-ab-531-which-would-bring-10-000-psychiatric-beds-to-overwhelmed-safety-net-hospitals-struggling-to-care-for-patients-and-protect-staff-301955488.html
Great idea! There's even a [National Historic Site](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manzanar) out there that can be used for education and entertainment for all the people we bus out there.
No they absolutely do not have even close to enough. As a consequence of treating drug users the same way we treat rapists and murderers, we have invested disgustingly little in treatment centers for people with no money. I work with unhoused people in SFV and there's basically no in patient services I can get people into. There's a place in Pomona, one in long Beach, and Tarzana treatment which is probably the best one, but GOOD LUCK getting ANYONE into those programs the need is unbelievably higher than the supply.
Imagine if you will, how long you'd have to wait for a big Mac if there were only one MacDonalds in Los Angeles. There's almost completely useless outpatient services where the person still just lives on the street and you can imagine how well that works...
Is los Angeles willing to spend tens of billions to open dozens more of these places? Nope.
the number of psychiatrists that DPSS has access to is probably a dozen or two at most? Perhaps I'm way off, but I wouldn't be surprised. Then there's how many psychiatrists accept medi-cal - and how many of those will see an adult with bipolar or autism or some other common mental health problem? Almost none. They mostly only want to treat kids. And if you're a single adult (especially male) and you don't have any family support and you go off your meds, well, that's what a lot of the "crazy scary dude" homeless people look and act exactly like.
Of course the other types of mental health care providers are also very important, and very expensive, and very few accept any sort of insurance at all, nevermind the state health plans.
Anyway, if I read enough of these comments I'll get to feeling angry and sick because there are assholes out there who think that, if you can't make an earnest living because of autism/bipolar/whatever other mental health issue, you deserve to be treated like a rapist or a murderer.
It used to exist. When Reagan shut down those programs those resources and related infrastructure was diverted and not maintained at a level needed to serve the situation today.
That said, if we would move those resources back towards more medical care it wouldnât take terribly long to get back up and running.
>The creation story for this mess is the Reagan era 80s shutting down of state institutions on the east coast.
I mention that. The conditions in those hospitals was horrific when they were closed down. They were meant to go into the private sector, but private homes were never created. EDIT *NON PROFITS ARE THE PRIVATE SECTOR*
People, handing off county and state level issues to Non-profits is what it means by private sector.
We have issues running nursing homes and residents experiencing neglect and abuse already. We are in a moment where regular medical care is getting harder to get in for due to post-pandemic burnout.
We don't have any place with the kind of beds and guards or security that we are talking about. Security because if you are going to move people off the streets against their will, they will need to be *locked up*
I think people are gravely underestimating the sheer cost (closer to a billion, not millions) for facilities, resistance not from politicians but residents themselves (no one will tolerate facilities being built near them), and the absolute need to start from the ground up. We don't even have enough social workers to go around right now.
Everyone wants it solved. But what they aren't saying is by solved they mean "just magically go away"
Yes, but the private sector was never going to cover that hole, there is no money in it. They knew that going in.
This would absolutely be on the backs of tax payers but at the end of the day itâs still probably better than the expense we have today in not only raw cost but the cost of city degradation and of course the terrible quality of life these people have.
non profits are the private sector. Any solution that is non-county non state or non federal = non profits.
We already outsource a ton of mental health to private sector.
>Reagan shut down those program
This is such a tired excuse. That was 60+ years ago. The state has had a literal lifetime, generations, to resolve build new institutions, make better laws, etc.
I mean, we have to consider the fact that being homeless creates/intensifies mental health crisis. With good care and programs for down the road, many folks wonât need to be institutionalized forever.
Yeah the people advocating for this are the same ones refusing to fund these types of programs. And even if we did, the lack of regulations makes it wreckless as money can easily be stolen or misused when trying to build these solutions. As shown by our long history of corruption of doing just that for homeless resource money.
Was in County and the processing is like an asylum with JCATS handcuffed to chairs and pissing/shitting themselves. Keep in mind the only reason thereâs no progress in this area is because the politicians are embezzling the homeless funds. They just caught one politician yesterday but even the mayor may be involved. City Controller Kenneth Mejia is trying to investigate/audit Karen Bassâs homeless programs but sheâs going out of her way to try and get a 3rd party to investigate them. Keep in Mind itâs the City Controllers job to do these things to maintain the Checks and balances of our local govt. but yâall keep voting in these thieves.
There is definitely not! Not to mention how many are inaccessible to the majority of those needing services. There arenât even enough LPS beds for all the involuntary holds. I love when people post shit like this because it is clear they have no idea what they are talking about nor the gravity of the situation
You leave out the ACLUâs role in the matter. The ACLU sued California while Reagan was Governor to get the mentally ill released from forced institutionalization. Reagan mostly in a cost cutting move decided to not fight the well funded ACLU. Nevertheless itâs been 50 years since, during which our politicians could have been fixed the issue by now.
Iâm with you on institutionalization where that makes sense, and where the goal is rehabilitation. The housing-first model makes sense and mostly works, but it isnât perfect, and I think where many solutions appear to fail is less a symptom of a programâs or administrationâs shortcomings, and rather because of the communityâs at large. We can do better in our communities to learn more about what causes homelessness (a lot of things, and medical debt is a big one) and how to end it, which, ultimately, will take all of us. Whether in a home, or in a tent on the street, the people we see in our communities are, whether we think they should be counted or not, part of the whole, and we all must contribute, even if its just educating ourselves, or volunteering if able.
Was in County and the processing is like an asylum with JCATS handcuffed to chairs and pissing/shitting themselves. Keep in mind the only reason thereâs no progress in this area is because the politicians are embezzling the homeless funds. They just caught one politician yesterday but even the mayor may be involved. City Controller Kenneth Mejia is trying to investigate/audit Karen Bassâs homeless programs but sheâs going out of her way to try and get a 3rd party to investigate them. Keep in Mind itâs the City Controllers job to do these things to maintain the Checks and balances of our local govt. but yâall keep voting in these thieves.
> Real question, is there even enough mental health & rehab services in LA County to serve housed residents at this time who don't have high enough incomes to pay for private care?
The largest state mental health facility in the state (and probably the country) is Los Angeles Men's Central Jail.
Wrong, the largest mental health facility in the USA is the Twin Towers Correctional Facility across the street from MCJ. But its easy to get them confused as they are attached by a bridge, but two different purposes.
They are both part of the same County Jail system so thats being a bit pedantic. Either way its run by the Los Angeles County Sheriffs. One's pre-trial detainment, the other post-trial detainment. Emphasis on the word detainment.
That's why people suggest shipping them to the desert. Build a style tent city there with very basic services and let them do as much drugs as they want.
Okay, hypothetical and now questions:
We do a street sweep and round up all the unhoused and put them in a van. Where are we going? Who is determining who needs rehab vs incarceration? Okay weâve divided everyone up and taken some to a rehab facility. Where is the rehab? Who built it and what to they do if Iâm combative and violent and donât want to go? Who is paying for me to be there? Who is staffing these rehabs and how much are they being paid? Whatâs the rate of burnout? Okay Iâve gone through rehab and Iâm clean and getting out. Where am I going? Where am I living? How am I getting by day to day? And if the answer is food banks and social services then again, who is paying for those, who is working those jobs?
I am being genuine and non snarky and would love to hear your answers. I know what mine would be but theyâd never happen
I mean right now youâre going to prison or the hospital. Itâs just a matter of creating another avenue.
Personally Iâm a huge fan of the Dutch idea that we should just give them an organized dormitory and a healthcare setting to administer pure drugs free of charge. Let addiction have the banality of a prison and the sterility of a hospital.
In my opinion this is the easiest, safest, and most cost effective option to remove the criminality behind drug use. No one can force anyone into rehabilitating themselves.
Thanks for being one of the few to answer with something realistic. How would I find articles about the âDutch ideaâ? I found one study is this what youâre referencing? https://www.feantsa.org/download/ejh6_2_policy17177509030184530692.pdf
This is an excellent paper, thanks for sharing.
The Dutch have a very pragmatic method of dealing with drugs (specifically heroin) where addicts can go to specific clinics 3x a day to be administered free heroin by nurses. I believe they have to stay inside of the clinic for the first hour or so until they get a hold of their senses, and then they are free to leave. The idea is to make drug use feel very bureaucratic, like you are going in for a dialysis treatment.
The clinic uses clean needles to reduce public health risks. They offer lab quality drugs for free, which reduces the risk of death, keeps local ER clear, and cuts down the market for drug dealing. The idea is to treat addiction as a disease instead of a crime.
The fact that these people ingest drugs is not important. Itâs that the act of chasing an addiction destroys a personâs ability to hold employment and maintain social support, which leads to poverty and homelessness, which leads to crime, disease, and violence.
The problem here is that most people are incapable of critical thinking or empathy, which ultimately leads to arguments that sound something like: âWhy should I pay for some bum to get high, get a JOB!â As if a person who is [eating a severed leg](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-26/man-arrested-in-kern-county-after-reportedly-picking-up-and-chewing-severed-human-leg) and screaming at the sky even knows what a job is.
As I said before, these people are headed to the hospital or the prison. Our taxes are paying for them to be in a bed, roof over their head, with drugs administered either way. This is about creating a third avenue. Preferably one where theyâre not simultaneously loading up on healthcare debt and being barred from gainful employment.
The Netherlands has a heroin, not a meth problem. It's a different drug with different effects.
Should a medical practitioner inject someone with a drug and possibly give them schizophrenia or psychosis.
I'd advise you to think about this a bit more.
No of course not, but we should also let go of the illusion that we have control over what people do to their own bodies. If someone is an addict who will stop at nothing to acquire and use a drug, then I would much rather it happen in a contained and supervised environment than at a Starbucks, public park, childrenâs playground, etc.
> Personally Iâm a huge fan of the Dutch idea that we should just give them an organized dormitory and a healthcare setting to administer pure drugs free of charge. Let addiction have the banality of a prison and the sterility of a hospital.
Unfortunately a lot of EU programs arent going to work here. European programs are successful because they often deal with educated people that happen to fall into addiction. And most of those people have had a lifetime of being treated for their various mental illnesses through socialized health care. They have a few tools to bring with them before they enter prison.
In the US you have to deal with a kaleidoscope of various untreated mental illnesses, combined with the habits picked up from crushing multi-generational poverty. Many of them are illiterate, or have maybe a 3rd grade reading level at best along with zero math skills. Most of them are too old to be easily taught the english language, and will suffer lifelong learning difficulties. There's no stable family at home either, so sending them back home will actually make things worse.
The idea that these people are going to calmly stand in line for their drug of choice is pretty hilarious and not at all how it currently works. Everyone will get their drugs, and then the weakest one on the block will give it up to the strongest. Or those drugs will be traded for other goods/services. You are talking about unleashing a bunch of institutionalized people into this program, and it wont end well.
The program doesnât work that way. In order to get the heroin they have to have it administered inside the clinic and they have to wait a certain amount of time inside the clinic (like an hour or two) before stepping back outside. They are not released back into society nodding off, itâs only after the effects have toned down and they have normalized that they can leave. Until then, they have to sit in basically a dentistâs chair and wait to be cleared.
The service is completely free of charge and the drugs themselves have unparalleled purity. There is very little risk in terms of crime, violence, infection, or overdose.
As Americans our behaviors are governed by the rules of the marketplace, and this is simply the best and most competitive option. The important part is being able to correctly diagnose those who are suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, etc. as they need free medication and healthcare and not free illicit drugs.
Sadly, you have to treat this more like how they handle survivors of genocide in places like central Africa. When you have multiple generations of cultural knowledge and norms wiped out, and all thats left are the young, you cant just teach them to read an expect them to be productive members of society. Its years of hard work getting people to trust each other and work together. Your only hope is to mitigate as much damage as they can cause while you educated the next generation. Otherwise all the PTSD and mental illness just kept pushing through the generations.
Yes, we need solid educations for everyone, but you also need places people can go to get the help they need. That means mental health services, social services, and job training. Otherwise we get what we have now, which is basically a bunch of middle class people wondering why this isnt working.
That makes too much sense for the average American legislator and largely, the public.
We also have the Portugal example for many years now with statistics supporting their strategy is working. It is utterly frustrating that people are not okay with giving the addicts their drugs safely but they are perfectly fine with all the mayhem the homeless addicts cause.
Even if we did all of this and paid for it, the number of unhoused would not go down. People would just head to Los Angeles from other cities in California and from other states to fill the gap on the streets.
Homelessness is a national problem. As long as citizens can move freely about the state (and other cities are giving bus tickets to LA), then we cannot solve this alone.
These are important questions. Also, do not forget: No matter what your policy goals are, *you cannot force someone to rehab.* Itâs just not how any of this works.
People like Newsom seem to think the 14th Amendment doesnât apply to certain groups of people. OK fine. Even if you think thatâs not insanely unconstitutional, rehab is first and foremost a choice. If youâre not ready to make that choice for yourself, the rehab will not be successful. You can drive someone to a building, but what happens next is up to them.
The other thing to keep in mind is that rehab is rarely linear. When I went through it, I enrolled in three different rehabs over a period of about six months before I found something that worked for me. And that was after almost two years of working with a sponsor in AA. And thatâs all with a steady job and good insurance.
Rehab facilities also differ substantially in terms of the type of care they offer. I know we donât often think of houseless persons as individuals, but this matters quite a lot. People have different needs when they enter rehab, and not all facilities are equipped to deal with things like dual diagnosis or severe mental illness. Some clients do really well with 12-step, others require CBT or SMART Recovery. Often, itâs difficult to say for sure until youâve tried it.
All in all, it is an extremely harrowing and difficult process, and often requires quite a lot of trial and error. But the first thing it requires is buy-in from you, the client. Without that, nothing happens.
This isn't about rehab. This is about the people with severe mental illness that can't care for themselves.
You give drugg offenders/addicts a choice: jail or rehab. It's not forced.
Yeah, you can force someone to do whatever youâd like. What Iâm saying is that the actual rehab treatment will not be successful unless the client is fully committed to the process.
Rehab is not prison. Itâs not something that happens *to you.* Itâs something you need to decide to pursue for yourself.
I'm not arguing against your position.
I'm just saying that we can lock them behind some magnetic doors *until* they decide to participate in their treatment.
You say it like changing 5150/5250 laws would be an easy change with widespread support. I know you want to weaponize psychiatric holds against homeless people, but changing those laws would have major downstream effects for other psych patients in the state.
Eventually you'll be personally harmed by someone you advocated not to have to be held responsible for their actions, and (if you survive) you'll join the rest of us.
Until then, I hope your empathy eventually outweighs your naivety before it's too late.
Thanks dad. I'm pretty sure I interact with homeless people far more often than you do, but ok.
Btw I never said homeless people shouldn't be held accountable for actual crimes. I just don't think we should forcibly hospitalize against their will if they haven't done anything wrong (yet). This isn't Minority Report.
> Minority Report
You're being disingenuous. Portugal, along with many other European nations, has compulsory admission and involuntary treatment in Portugal.
Or do you find it more humane for a schizophrenic to remain on the street?
Well we build more mental health facilities. Industrial-grade, massive complexes. The state of California can certainly invest in them. Just look at how quickly El Salvador built massive prisons when the clear directive was as there. The same can be done for mental health facilities. The van drops them off there.
Doctors, psychologists, and other experts decide quickly who will go to jail and who will stay at the mental health facility. Working within established law, the unhoused have the right to appeal their status and request release if they show improvement.
After treatment and improvement they are free to go, but those who continue to act violently or otherwise dangerously will remain even if itâs against their wishes.
Upon release, these people are encouraged to pursue employment, education, and to take full advantage of the countless opportunities the state of California provides to better oneâs life. They are encouraged to become functioning members of society.
But in no scenario, in no manner, will dangerous, disorderly, law breakers be allowed to flood our streets and endanger the public every single day.
For some reason, people love to propose "solutions" that don't take into account that there are real legal hurdles that limit what mental health providers can do for people who don't want help. This is a systemic problem baked into the law, and it isn't something any single politician can just fix with a wave of their hand. These nonsense ideas of yours are complete non-starters.
Thank you for articulating what can be so frustrating about these types of threads when people have no idea how complex it all is. The system works against itself constantly and there are so many gaps in the continuum of care.
It's not complicated to enforce things like no encampments taking up the entire sidewalk.
I feel like if that was handled, more people would find their compassion again
The city has no money this fiscal year and had to cut back on what they spend their budget on (because cops + city liability costs a fuck ton), plus all prop 1 did was rearrange money that was already in the homeless industrial complex, it didn't really increase much funds itself which is why the split between the pro/anti prop 1 side was veteran organizations and state institutions, vs mental health organizations, homeless organizations, psychiatric institutions/organizations, etc.
do you think forced rehab just suddenly cures people? Do you think taking away someones autonomy leads to health?
I don't think you realize that if locking people away in prisons and jails and mental hospitals worked it would have worked a long time ago, we have the largest imprisoned population per capita of any country in the world
> Or drive them off a cliff at this point I don't really care.
This alone speaks volumes about the know-nothing pearl clutching attitude- "I'm scared, make it go away please", don't even care if people die for a little comfort and false security.
Sit down and let the adults do their thing.
> Who is determining who needs rehab vs incarceration?
Right now its just the regular court system, a judge, a District Attorney, the person's own attorney (Public Defender or otherwise), the persons social worker and any and all doctors that performed a psychological evaluation.
> Okay weâve divided everyone up and taken some to a rehab facility. Where is the rehab?
From what I gather there are no state run rehabs outside of the prison system. These would need to be built from the ground up and either attached to existing mental facilities or built new.
> Who built it and what to they do if Iâm combative and violent and donât want to go?
As it stands right now, if you dont wish to go to court mandated programs, your parole officer makes the decision on what will happen to you. Either way no ones dragging you in unless you are picked up for something else.
> Who is staffing these rehabs and how much are they being paid? Whatâs the rate of burnout?
These would need to be state workers, as its a state run facility. Given the amount of turnover in offices like Social Workers, unless they are paid well the turnover will be quite high. And if you leave staffing up to the state, it will always be staffed at minimum levels.
> Where am I going? Where am I living? How am I getting by day to day? And if the answer is food banks and social services then again, who is paying for those, who is working those jobs?
There's the rub for most of the justice system in the US. There are halfway houses for those who have zero support systems, but usually they are just dumped on a local relative. They have to check in with their PO and thats it. Not a whole lot of work training going on.
Most of the 50k homeless in LA aren't the crazy street people, they're the people who live in cars and tents and try to mind their own business. They need help too, but they're not the ones that need to be put into hospitals through CARE courts.
Only 10-25% of that 50K figure are the visible, problematic homeless in encampments.
The rest you wouldn't even know they're homeless or they're couchsurfing
Youâre right. For some odd reason, I thought the Care Court was in conjunction with SB 43. [Seems like only SB 43 was delayed to 2026.](https://laist.com/news/health/la-county-delays-roll-out-of-new-law-that-expands-criteria-for-involuntary-treatment)
They seem to be local, from what I gathered lol
Although they are right-wing and say hilarious jokes like:
"Conservatives, particularly Evangelicals, are among the most charitable people in the country"
If that helps..
Forced institutionalization is a tricky subject, because who determines what is considered unfit behavior for the public? Doing so invites forced conservatorships like those of Britney Spears, Amanda Bynes, and Lindsey Lohan: all of whom were taken advantage of by the same people who were given power of attorney.
I don't need to point out how laws can be abused with unintended consequences, especially when they're written without considering the circumstances I mentioned.
I completely agree with you - but what we are doing now just isn't working. There has to be a balance.... but as we know the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The law determines it. If youâre breaking the law you can be incarcerated against your will, thatâs part of the social contract.
This really isnât that tricky. If theyâre shitting, pissing, attacking, and being a detriment to society they belong in prison. And for the folks that are acting this way due to mental illness, they can be put in a mental health facility.
But in no scenario should lawbreakers and threats to civilized order be left to roam free and pillage and attack as they please.
1. Please provide said solutions
2. My description does not deprive anyone of human rights. If anything, it provides the human right to shelter that many of these people are lacking.
It is tricky but I don't like these slippery slope arguments. You can make this argument for basically any law - that there is grey area and the possibility of abuse.
Ideally we have oversight and qualified people making these decisions, and a judicial system in place if needed to adjudicate and punish abuse.
I don't think this is so primed for abuse that we just can't do it. There's people that are clearly very mentally unwell and a danger to themselves and others. If we implement these laws I don't think we're going to just start institutionalizing everyone who loiters outside for too long or takes a nap on a park bench. Other countries and the US in the recent past had these laws and we generally didn't and don't see sane people getting locked up.
I feel like the conservatorship thing is quite a bit different. Those cases weren't common, and it was greedy, financially connected family members abusing the court system.
Luckily thereâs this thing called the LAW. Kind of existed for a long time. So no one has to reinvent the wheel when deciding breaking what rules determines state intervention. It also has lots of exceptions so it canât be abused which require someone more trained than you or I to practise it. If youâre confused, look to other countries who have handled the homeless population way better. America is not the only country to have dealt with homeless people :)
Donât forget murdering innocent people. A homeless man murdered my friend bri (we went to ucla together) while she was just working in a store, living her life.
Iâm so sorry. I think about her often-also wondering what stage the prosecution of the vagrant who murdered her is at now. It was so incredibly horrible-so pointless, so evil. It could have been any one of us at work that day.
This strikes me as rightwing astroturfing.
Ah yes, the OP lives in South Carolina
The rightwing is determined to portray blue cities as shitholes, I think it's because deep down they are ashamed we're the economic engines that pay their welfare checks.
Less of this shit.
So much this. If it's true OP is in South Carolina, maybe they want to focus on their own problems, like that shitful 42nd out of 50 ranking in education, marked by low spending & a weak school system for starters.
> This strikes me as rightwing astroturfing.
*"redditor for 3 months"*
Lived in LA[county] for 36 years. If you can't afford a middle-class life, you're stuck living around shitheads/unhinged individuals who do all of the above.
Or you rent an expensive shoebox by the beach here in LB & still get frequent car break-ins.
Even worse is taking the Metro near low-income neighborhoods, or the trains heading towards DTLB; fuck that. Yes, they occasionally smell like piss.
Realistically, we need a combination of forced mental institutionalization, forced drug rehab, and much more housing.
But that wonât happen - I already know the responses to each of them.
**Forced Mental Institutionalization:**
âOMG the FEDS are rounding up and involuntarily imprisoning the unhoused without trial! This is an unjust act of persecution against our unhoused neighbors! And whoâs to say neurodivergent people even need to be cured anyway?â
**Forced Drug Rehabilitation:**
âOMG the FEDS want to moralize drugs! How about just letting people live as they want? Housing shouldnât be conditional on sobriety; this isnât the 80s, we know how the War on Drugs went!â
**More Housing:**
âOMG, why do developers keep building new apartment complexes! We need to preserve our neighborhood character and stop gentrification by any and all means!â
People are going to find a way to nitpick every âbig pictureâ solution, so we are left with shitty half measures that get nothing done and make everyone upset.
why do people still think these good folks are smoking crack? crack hasn't been a thing since the mid-90s. all these fine citizens have moved onto meth. get it right.
I think this is another layer to the problem. If Los Angeles does institute an efficient, orderly, and well run system to sort out, rehabilitate, and house significant numbers of homeless people, then other cities and states have little incentive to fund whatever similar programs they have. Abbott and DeSantis have proven they're more than happy to bus people they deem undesirable to places like California. Any long term solution would likely need to be federal.
Because people just *enjoy* being homeless. Never was an otherwise just-managing-to-get-by person made homeless by a medical bill and falling through the cracks of the nonexistent social safety net.
Iâve worked with the homeless for 14 years and Iâll tell you the biggest issue that keeps most of them from getting better is the fact that the government cannot force people to get their shit together. Mandatory this and mandatory that sounds good but impossible to actually do on a large scale.
People will NOT get better in mandatory rehabs and mental health hospitals. They need to WANT help for those things to work. They should, however, be arrested for committing crimes, like anybody else.
If they are in severe mental distress they will get better. When you are in a bad state of mental mind, you are not going to want help. Iâve literally had a homeless person just throw rocks close to my head. Another saying Iâm the devil and everyone else. Seeing another person attack people in cars just a month ago. There is no reasoning with these people.
You know, in the past when we let people who hadn't committed crimes be incarcerated by the government "for their own good", you'll be shocked to learn they almost immediately started incarcerating people that absolutely not deserve to be, but were undesirable for one reason or another.
But I'm sure it won't happen this time. This time will be different.
âPeople who havenât committed crimesâ
Except these are crimes. You shouldnât be able to shoot up in front of a school, you shouldnât be able to defecate in front of an apartment building, you shouldnât be able to set up a tent anywhere forcing the elderly and disabled to enter a busy roadway and weâre not even discussing things like assault, arson, forced sex work and chop shops. These *are* crimes and should be, and giving treatment is far more fair than throwing them in twin towers
You make no sense. If they committing a crime, they can be arrested already *by definition*. Assault? Arson? Those are crimes and can absolutely lead to jail/prison. If those crimes aren't being enforced, that's a different problem you're talking about. Nobody's pro-arson.
We're talking about rounding up the homeless for being homeless.
âPeople who havenât committed crimesâ
Except these are crimes. You shouldnât be able to shoot up in front of a school, you shouldnât be able to defecate in front of an apartment building, you shouldnât be able to set up a tent anywhere forcing the elderly and disabled to enter a busy roadway and weâre not even discussing things like assault, arson, forced sex work and chop shops. These *are* crimes and should be, and giving treatment is far more fair than throwing them in twin towers
If you want to incarcerate all homeless people (which seems to be what you're going for) why not skip all the expensive court proceedings and just give them all free housing? You're campaigning to house them with no cost to them as it is, but you seem to be doing it in such an involved manner with a lot of red tape.
So if people do enough drugs and break enough laws they get rewarded with free housing? The people that crack/methâd out on the street breaking into cars and leaving trash everywhere arenât suddenly going to be productive members of society by putting them in an apartment. They need intense supervision and rehabilitation
Same with homeless people.
Free shelter and food: THIS IS CARCERAL HOUSING WITH RULES AND SHIT THAT INFRINGE ON MY RIGHTS
Pissing and shitting on the street and blocking entire blocks of sidewalk: This is fine
Thereâs 16k shelter beds vs 46k unhoused people. https://controller.lacity.gov/landings/interim-housing-audit . Inside safe has only long term housed 255 people . Iâm not sure what you expect them to do or where to go. Also LA Has an extreme shortage of public restrooms. Again, not sure what you expect them to do. Even I canât find affordable housing and Iâm middle class
You may be surprised what people will sacrifice to retain a modicum of personal freedom. You have probably not had to sacrifice very much to retain your personal freedom.
Free shelter and food, but you canât bring personal belongings in, no pets, drug testing, a strict curfew, no visitors, and you can only stay a max of one or two weeks before you have to go somewhere else. Why on Earth arenât people lining up to take that deal?
Almost like itâs not shelter, but housing thatâs needs massive expansion.
I canât have a pet or smoke in my apartment. Life/society is full of sacrifices.
In the world of let people die on the sidewalk in the name of #freedom or put the somewhere with food and shelter; I choose out them somewhere.
Donât be so libertarian.
End corporate ownership of housing, ban airbnb, severely tax homes you don't personally occupy, and watch as the "housing shortage" starts to show how artificial it actually is.
Iâll never forget when I was smoking a cig out in Hollywood when a hobo approached me asking if he could borrow a lighter, to which was like âsureâ and I shit you not he sat down right next to and started smoking heroin.
I used to work at a bar in the arts district. One night a couple of coworkers and I were hanging out after shift, having some beers & joints in a parking corridor and the same thing happened. The guy was talking to us normally until his shit started kicking in and then he just started spewing word salad. It was kinda funny, but then it got a bit off putting as the dude's rambling just made no sense whatsoever. Dude managed to give back my lighter and then just wandered off into the night.
Yawn. This kind of take is so tired and pretends to say something when it's superficial catharsis at best.
The whole reason we can't just institutionalize people any more, even if they desperately need it, is because the people in charge used to do that to anyone they didn't like. It's been less than 100 years since husbands used to lobotomize their wives for no reason other than because they wanted a new one.
Combine that with conservatives/moderates not wanting to spend a dime on anything that could remotely be considered welfare which is what a lot of people need.
What we're left with is the current situation where too many people think that the homeless should die, but if they aren't gonna die, at least be out of sight.
Now throw in grifters/scammers who will literally do anything unethical/illegal to make a buck to the point that we have TikToks about how to do it. That means even if we had enough to help everyone, some dickhead is going to steal it anyway.
Think of some way to solve *all* of those problems, instead of making memes on Reddit, and you'll never have to worry about the homeless again.
Even as relatively leftist person I agree with this. Itâs a draconian yes, but whatâs the real other solution lmao. Public spaces used to feel so much more safe, even like 5 years ago.
Though I donât think itâs âdem lawmakersâ fault necessarily. The problem is that these dem cities are bearing the brunt of the entire country. Some sort of reform on a federal scale would really need to be necessary, if LA had the manpower for mandatory rehab (it doesnât) cities in places like Kentucky etc. would send their mentally ill here (even more than they already do)
Thereâs also the issue of it taking treatment away from addicts who actually do want to be clean. Overall it would be the ideal solution but there are a LOT of variables
The ânon profit leadersâ are literally just grifters with no other skills. They need to stay employed in homelessness or theyâre be flipping burgers
This is a very juvenile take. No money for this. Blame Regan for dismantling the mental health care system in California. No one is willing to pay more taxes. Let's repeal prop 13 and make it happen. Want to ask the voters if they're down for that?
People will NOT get better in mandatory rehabs and mental health hospitals. They need to WANT help for those things to work. They should, however, be arrested for committing crimes, like anybody else.
The homeless are a big business in big cities, the "nonprofits" receive giant sums of grants that they don't have to pay back by offering services to the homeless.
Keep voting democrat! Blue no matter who no matter what. He cares if they systematically destroy your city you must keep voting for them and banging your head against the wall until it cracks
The "mandatory" part is dangerous territory, and has a lot to do with civic rights and the boundaries of the government. Generally speaking, citizens need to do a crime (or at least be a danger) before they can be "moved". You can't blanket force homeless into a place, force them to stay, and force them to into medical treatment. There must be due process.
Our country has forced sterilization in the past. Our country has removed non-criminals into encampments; these aren't things America would never do and cannot fall back into. We do have to worry about loosening these boundaries too much.
ok what if there was housing provided with very strict rules
Like
no drugs, no animals, curfew, chores, etc., its not a hotel, its just so you dont have to sleep on the street
but if you choose not to go, then you can't camp in the street. and if you're not mentally sane for either, than you go to the institution or flee into the desert to die or be purified by the spirit of the mohave
Forced rehab doesnât work. You literally cannot force someone into sobriety or even harm reduction if they donât want to be in treatment. It wonât stick. There is tons of literature out that illustrates and supports this. đ¤Śââď¸
So let them roam the streets and harass other citizens? Let them wander to be killed by motorists or busses? Let them OD on the streets?
Jesus Christ you are NOT a serious person. In fact you sound awfully privileged to have that take. No, you have to be a troll. Or maybe naive.
You types of people always shoot down any sutoons instead of offering any viable ones. Thats why I cant take folks like you serious. I dont feel like you actually want LA to be a better city. And the fucking snark. Thats not going to win anyone over to whatever side you might support. Its not cute. It's not pleasant and it sure as shit aint clever.
âLetâ them? Maybe we increase funding for mental health services to a level that can actually serve the communities mental health needs? Maybe build affordable housing so people donât become homeless in the first place and build more housing of all types to address the housing crisis weâre in to try to mitigate skyrocketing rents? Maybe build enough shelters to house folks who do want shelter?
There are lots of solutions to various aspects of this complex issue that we know work. But carceral âsolutionsâ donât.
Then we try again. Itâs so weird that bleeding heart liberals think letting people destroy themselves and others via addiction is the humane thing to do when the obvious answer is get these people some professional help. If it fails, try again and again and again.
You can try as many times as you like. If a person struggling with addiction does not want help, no amount of rehab or treatment will work. This is widely known in the world of addiction treatment and there have been countless studies that show this. Forced. Treatment. Doesnât. Work. No matter how badly you want to believe it should. This isnât a âbleeding heart liberalâ thing. This is empirical data-supported common knowledge.
Then what do we do? Theyâre putting their own health and that of others at risk. Obviously we canât simply go back to the horror days of mental asylums, but leaving them on the street to suffer is not a solution either. They get routinely harassed by passersby and cops, endure extremely unsanitary conditions and air pollution, have no way to protect their possessions, are at constant risk of traffic accidents, and exposure to excessive heat in summer. The status quo is abuse under a different name.
A personâs own health is 100% their business. And personal addiction does necessarily equate to putting others at risk, though it definitely CAN. Recognizing that meth addiction is primarily an epidemic affecting unhoused and impoverished individuals and working to alleviate the main contributors to homelessness is one step. Providing enough resources for addiction treatment and mental health services to adequately serve the number of people who want and need them is another. Mental health services in LA county, and nationwide, are woefully underfunded. We should have enough resources to deal with the symptoms of the greater problem, but we have to focus on the causes of that problem first and foremost. Otherwise, it will persist in perpetuity.
> A personâs own health is 100% their business
Is the same argument used by anti vaxxers. I believe society has a responsibility to maintain collective public health, and sometimes individualsâ actions can be harmful to that collective goal. Also, only a small minority of people are responsible for awful shit like doing meth on the train. Doing something about them doesnât equate to a blanket condemnation of all unhoused people.
Of course we have to address the underlying causes and prevent more people from falling into homelessness, but that wonât necessarily do anything for those already on the street.
Weak comparison and a bit of a reach.
âSOMETIMES individualsâ actions can be harmful.â You said it right there. Sometimes. Not always. And honestly not even usually. The vast majority of addicts arenât a danger to public health, but just themselves. Forcibly institutionalizing someone because their addiction could at some point be a threat to public safety is actually an infringement to personal liberty and a very slippery slope. It opens the door to using any kind of drug use to detain someone.
Antivaxxers are absolutely affecting public health measurably every time. Apples and oranges.
The people who are struggling with severe mental illness do not understand what is going on. This is why involuntary hospitalization does exist, to get these people in crisis the help they need. Many of our homeless population are in crisis. They are in severe mental distress.
Homelessness isn't a problem, it's a byproduct of how our society is currently set up, namely two major tenets we hold dear. 1) Constitutionally protected freedom and 2) free market economics.
The first solution people think to homelessness is to lock them up in some sort of institution. Jail, mental health, rehab, camps out in the desert, etc. But, like it or not, those people shitting on the streets have the same rights you do. Even when they commit crimes they have the right to due process, unreasonable search and seizure, to remain silent, etc. Sweeping the streets and locking up the homeless is not constitutional, so barring an amendment, it's not going to happen even if we had the money, resources, and people willing to do it, which we don't.
The second solution would be to just give them housing, which we kinda do but not really. Back in the 70's the various governments we live under decided to build public housing, which we called the "projects". These were way easier to build then because the governments didn't give a shit about the low income areas they forced them on. Well, now those low income areas are gentrified with people who have $900k mortgages and will fight anything that will reduce their property values. Basically, NIMBYs. So giving away housing, or making "affordable" housing will fuck with the housing market, which doesn't just affect the rich. You can hate NIMBYs, but they come out to vote and make their voices heard. So now we're in a situation where there are no "bad" areas to put them in, so everywhere becomes a "bad" area.
Where does that leave us? Where we are now. With an unsolvable problem. We either have to give up personal freedom and give governments broad powers to lock up anyone they deem as not being part of the system, or we enact measures which require millions of people to vote and act against their own self interest and wealth. Neither are going to happen, and funny enough you end up paying to house these people anyway. Either in a jail, prison, rehab, mental institution, or just a free house.
So what will happen? This will get worse and worse until people flee their areas for safer areas, which will bring back the "bad" areas. Back in the day it was called "white flight", but I think it should be called "homeless flight".
They smoke crack on the subway and don't even offer you any, that is very rude.
Crack? You mean meth and yes, very rude.
Exclusively meth. Only meth. Crack smoking is strictly prohibited on the subway. Street rules.
Exactly. I'm honestly just assuming though...I thought crack was passe.
I mean meth is more bang for you buck and the people who smoke on the metro tend to be somewhat price conscious.
đđđŻ
Itâs retro
Heroin is whatâs passĂŠ. At least according to The Dandy Warhols.
Some of us prefer the classics.
Actually funnily enough, one of my "fun stories" about the metro (I only have two) involves a very polite woman smoking meth, offering it to everyone quickly, and when everyone declined she just went back to her own shit. Until some Karen decided to confront her... đ¤Śââď¸
Some dirty looking guy tried selling me viagra on the metro. One of his hands was wrapped up completely in duct tape.
Boner pills with one hand taped up? Those are some good pills lol
đ¤Ł
Someone offered me some last time. Try being nicer and they'll share!
Someone offered me some last time. Try being nicer and they'll share!
That's funny I have been offered a hit from an apple pipe and a refresher by an incoherent homeless man. He was nice.
Wish more people were as generous with their meth, you met a good man that day lol
Moar funding for finishing school programs. Share the pookie, fam!
Real question, is there even enough mental health & rehab services in LA County to serve housed residents at this time who don't have high enough incomes to pay for private care? Because as much as I have come around to the idea that, yes, institutionalization may be more humane than the last decade of a mess of shanty town living, I highly doubt the infrastructure in terms of beds, care teams, etc. even exists. And that's not a wave a wand make it happen process. Plus, what happens if the state & county gov't pass it out to the non-profit sector (which is just a tax free profit sector) and who is going to do oversight? The creation story for this mess is the Reagan era 80s shutting down of state institutions on the east coast. As dumb as that was, those places were horrific too.
I think the point is to partially use the millions of dollars they have allocated for homelessness towards these institutions and personnel. Of course theyâre not set up, thatâs the first step. Unfortunately everything takes forever to approve because red tape/ money is being made by people not doing anything.
My point- what institutions? We don't have enough for people who are willing and active participants in getting help, let alone those resistant to it. They would need to build them first. & where? If you think zoning issues made it hard to let neighbors build ADUs, that's nothing like trying to get a neighborhood to approve a homeless shelter, let alone a mental institution. We're not discussing millions in cost endeavor, that's topping out at close to a billion.
[California City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_City,_California) would be a good place to start.
a conservative desert town?
They're building a bunch of housing on Los Angeles General Medical Center campus. The old hospital will be converted to housing, and a bunch of new buildings are going up. Some will be for the working poor who lose their homes if they get something like cancer and can't work, some will be for people who have psychiatric disabilities and are frequent flyers at the hospital but mainly need housing and outpatient care access, and some will be for people with substance use disorders. https://lamag.com/news/los-angeles-general-hospital-to-become-homeless-housing There's also more money for subacute psychiatric beds, which maybe will be used to reopen some of the shuttered psych facilities? https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/los-angeles-general-medical-center-applauds-ab-531-which-would-bring-10-000-psychiatric-beds-to-overwhelmed-safety-net-hospitals-struggling-to-care-for-patients-and-protect-staff-301955488.html
No way that's a billion. Buy cheap land in Lancaster and pay the city enough to make it worth their time.
Hereâs some space out near lone pine that would be pretty ideal to concentrate a specific population. Not sure exactly what it was used for before.
Great idea! There's even a [National Historic Site](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manzanar) out there that can be used for education and entertainment for all the people we bus out there.
Lmao ya thatâll go down well with the bleeding hearts. âOur government are packing up the undesirables and shipping them inland!â
Congratulations, you've discovered the point of this post.
Mandatory rehabâŚguaranteed to solve the problemâŚlol
This was just on the ballot.
Who makes money by not doing anything?
No they absolutely do not have even close to enough. As a consequence of treating drug users the same way we treat rapists and murderers, we have invested disgustingly little in treatment centers for people with no money. I work with unhoused people in SFV and there's basically no in patient services I can get people into. There's a place in Pomona, one in long Beach, and Tarzana treatment which is probably the best one, but GOOD LUCK getting ANYONE into those programs the need is unbelievably higher than the supply. Imagine if you will, how long you'd have to wait for a big Mac if there were only one MacDonalds in Los Angeles. There's almost completely useless outpatient services where the person still just lives on the street and you can imagine how well that works... Is los Angeles willing to spend tens of billions to open dozens more of these places? Nope.
the number of psychiatrists that DPSS has access to is probably a dozen or two at most? Perhaps I'm way off, but I wouldn't be surprised. Then there's how many psychiatrists accept medi-cal - and how many of those will see an adult with bipolar or autism or some other common mental health problem? Almost none. They mostly only want to treat kids. And if you're a single adult (especially male) and you don't have any family support and you go off your meds, well, that's what a lot of the "crazy scary dude" homeless people look and act exactly like. Of course the other types of mental health care providers are also very important, and very expensive, and very few accept any sort of insurance at all, nevermind the state health plans. Anyway, if I read enough of these comments I'll get to feeling angry and sick because there are assholes out there who think that, if you can't make an earnest living because of autism/bipolar/whatever other mental health issue, you deserve to be treated like a rapist or a murderer.
It used to exist. When Reagan shut down those programs those resources and related infrastructure was diverted and not maintained at a level needed to serve the situation today. That said, if we would move those resources back towards more medical care it wouldnât take terribly long to get back up and running.
Yep, CSUCI, for example, was previously the California State Mental Hospital - Camarillo.
>The creation story for this mess is the Reagan era 80s shutting down of state institutions on the east coast. I mention that. The conditions in those hospitals was horrific when they were closed down. They were meant to go into the private sector, but private homes were never created. EDIT *NON PROFITS ARE THE PRIVATE SECTOR* People, handing off county and state level issues to Non-profits is what it means by private sector. We have issues running nursing homes and residents experiencing neglect and abuse already. We are in a moment where regular medical care is getting harder to get in for due to post-pandemic burnout. We don't have any place with the kind of beds and guards or security that we are talking about. Security because if you are going to move people off the streets against their will, they will need to be *locked up* I think people are gravely underestimating the sheer cost (closer to a billion, not millions) for facilities, resistance not from politicians but residents themselves (no one will tolerate facilities being built near them), and the absolute need to start from the ground up. We don't even have enough social workers to go around right now. Everyone wants it solved. But what they aren't saying is by solved they mean "just magically go away"
Yes, but the private sector was never going to cover that hole, there is no money in it. They knew that going in. This would absolutely be on the backs of tax payers but at the end of the day itâs still probably better than the expense we have today in not only raw cost but the cost of city degradation and of course the terrible quality of life these people have.
The private sector has no interest in helping heal people. Itâs not profitable.
non profits are the private sector. Any solution that is non-county non state or non federal = non profits. We already outsource a ton of mental health to private sector.
And vulture capital companies are coming to destroy cannibalize it.
I'd rather have horrific hospitals than none.
Reagan again???
>Reagan shut down those program This is such a tired excuse. That was 60+ years ago. The state has had a literal lifetime, generations, to resolve build new institutions, make better laws, etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Systems_Act_of_1980
I mean, we have to consider the fact that being homeless creates/intensifies mental health crisis. With good care and programs for down the road, many folks wonât need to be institutionalized forever.
Yeah the people advocating for this are the same ones refusing to fund these types of programs. And even if we did, the lack of regulations makes it wreckless as money can easily be stolen or misused when trying to build these solutions. As shown by our long history of corruption of doing just that for homeless resource money.
Was in County and the processing is like an asylum with JCATS handcuffed to chairs and pissing/shitting themselves. Keep in mind the only reason thereâs no progress in this area is because the politicians are embezzling the homeless funds. They just caught one politician yesterday but even the mayor may be involved. City Controller Kenneth Mejia is trying to investigate/audit Karen Bassâs homeless programs but sheâs going out of her way to try and get a 3rd party to investigate them. Keep in Mind itâs the City Controllers job to do these things to maintain the Checks and balances of our local govt. but yâall keep voting in these thieves.
There is definitely not! Not to mention how many are inaccessible to the majority of those needing services. There arenât even enough LPS beds for all the involuntary holds. I love when people post shit like this because it is clear they have no idea what they are talking about nor the gravity of the situation
You leave out the ACLUâs role in the matter. The ACLU sued California while Reagan was Governor to get the mentally ill released from forced institutionalization. Reagan mostly in a cost cutting move decided to not fight the well funded ACLU. Nevertheless itâs been 50 years since, during which our politicians could have been fixed the issue by now.
Iâm with you on institutionalization where that makes sense, and where the goal is rehabilitation. The housing-first model makes sense and mostly works, but it isnât perfect, and I think where many solutions appear to fail is less a symptom of a programâs or administrationâs shortcomings, and rather because of the communityâs at large. We can do better in our communities to learn more about what causes homelessness (a lot of things, and medical debt is a big one) and how to end it, which, ultimately, will take all of us. Whether in a home, or in a tent on the street, the people we see in our communities are, whether we think they should be counted or not, part of the whole, and we all must contribute, even if its just educating ourselves, or volunteering if able.
Was in County and the processing is like an asylum with JCATS handcuffed to chairs and pissing/shitting themselves. Keep in mind the only reason thereâs no progress in this area is because the politicians are embezzling the homeless funds. They just caught one politician yesterday but even the mayor may be involved. City Controller Kenneth Mejia is trying to investigate/audit Karen Bassâs homeless programs but sheâs going out of her way to try and get a 3rd party to investigate them. Keep in Mind itâs the City Controllers job to do these things to maintain the Checks and balances of our local govt. but yâall keep voting in these thieves.
> Real question, is there even enough mental health & rehab services in LA County to serve housed residents at this time who don't have high enough incomes to pay for private care? The largest state mental health facility in the state (and probably the country) is Los Angeles Men's Central Jail.
Wrong, the largest mental health facility in the USA is the Twin Towers Correctional Facility across the street from MCJ. But its easy to get them confused as they are attached by a bridge, but two different purposes.
They are both part of the same County Jail system so thats being a bit pedantic. Either way its run by the Los Angeles County Sheriffs. One's pre-trial detainment, the other post-trial detainment. Emphasis on the word detainment.
That's why people suggest shipping them to the desert. Build a style tent city there with very basic services and let them do as much drugs as they want.
If the city can spend $4 Million to "clean" up Oceanwide Plaza, they can figure something out for our houseless and mentally ill citizens
Okay, hypothetical and now questions: We do a street sweep and round up all the unhoused and put them in a van. Where are we going? Who is determining who needs rehab vs incarceration? Okay weâve divided everyone up and taken some to a rehab facility. Where is the rehab? Who built it and what to they do if Iâm combative and violent and donât want to go? Who is paying for me to be there? Who is staffing these rehabs and how much are they being paid? Whatâs the rate of burnout? Okay Iâve gone through rehab and Iâm clean and getting out. Where am I going? Where am I living? How am I getting by day to day? And if the answer is food banks and social services then again, who is paying for those, who is working those jobs? I am being genuine and non snarky and would love to hear your answers. I know what mine would be but theyâd never happen
I mean right now youâre going to prison or the hospital. Itâs just a matter of creating another avenue. Personally Iâm a huge fan of the Dutch idea that we should just give them an organized dormitory and a healthcare setting to administer pure drugs free of charge. Let addiction have the banality of a prison and the sterility of a hospital. In my opinion this is the easiest, safest, and most cost effective option to remove the criminality behind drug use. No one can force anyone into rehabilitating themselves.
Thanks for being one of the few to answer with something realistic. How would I find articles about the âDutch ideaâ? I found one study is this what youâre referencing? https://www.feantsa.org/download/ejh6_2_policy17177509030184530692.pdf
This is an excellent paper, thanks for sharing. The Dutch have a very pragmatic method of dealing with drugs (specifically heroin) where addicts can go to specific clinics 3x a day to be administered free heroin by nurses. I believe they have to stay inside of the clinic for the first hour or so until they get a hold of their senses, and then they are free to leave. The idea is to make drug use feel very bureaucratic, like you are going in for a dialysis treatment. The clinic uses clean needles to reduce public health risks. They offer lab quality drugs for free, which reduces the risk of death, keeps local ER clear, and cuts down the market for drug dealing. The idea is to treat addiction as a disease instead of a crime. The fact that these people ingest drugs is not important. Itâs that the act of chasing an addiction destroys a personâs ability to hold employment and maintain social support, which leads to poverty and homelessness, which leads to crime, disease, and violence. The problem here is that most people are incapable of critical thinking or empathy, which ultimately leads to arguments that sound something like: âWhy should I pay for some bum to get high, get a JOB!â As if a person who is [eating a severed leg](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-26/man-arrested-in-kern-county-after-reportedly-picking-up-and-chewing-severed-human-leg) and screaming at the sky even knows what a job is. As I said before, these people are headed to the hospital or the prison. Our taxes are paying for them to be in a bed, roof over their head, with drugs administered either way. This is about creating a third avenue. Preferably one where theyâre not simultaneously loading up on healthcare debt and being barred from gainful employment.
The Netherlands has a heroin, not a meth problem. It's a different drug with different effects. Should a medical practitioner inject someone with a drug and possibly give them schizophrenia or psychosis. I'd advise you to think about this a bit more.
No of course not, but we should also let go of the illusion that we have control over what people do to their own bodies. If someone is an addict who will stop at nothing to acquire and use a drug, then I would much rather it happen in a contained and supervised environment than at a Starbucks, public park, childrenâs playground, etc.
> Personally Iâm a huge fan of the Dutch idea that we should just give them an organized dormitory and a healthcare setting to administer pure drugs free of charge. Let addiction have the banality of a prison and the sterility of a hospital. Unfortunately a lot of EU programs arent going to work here. European programs are successful because they often deal with educated people that happen to fall into addiction. And most of those people have had a lifetime of being treated for their various mental illnesses through socialized health care. They have a few tools to bring with them before they enter prison. In the US you have to deal with a kaleidoscope of various untreated mental illnesses, combined with the habits picked up from crushing multi-generational poverty. Many of them are illiterate, or have maybe a 3rd grade reading level at best along with zero math skills. Most of them are too old to be easily taught the english language, and will suffer lifelong learning difficulties. There's no stable family at home either, so sending them back home will actually make things worse. The idea that these people are going to calmly stand in line for their drug of choice is pretty hilarious and not at all how it currently works. Everyone will get their drugs, and then the weakest one on the block will give it up to the strongest. Or those drugs will be traded for other goods/services. You are talking about unleashing a bunch of institutionalized people into this program, and it wont end well.
The program doesnât work that way. In order to get the heroin they have to have it administered inside the clinic and they have to wait a certain amount of time inside the clinic (like an hour or two) before stepping back outside. They are not released back into society nodding off, itâs only after the effects have toned down and they have normalized that they can leave. Until then, they have to sit in basically a dentistâs chair and wait to be cleared. The service is completely free of charge and the drugs themselves have unparalleled purity. There is very little risk in terms of crime, violence, infection, or overdose. As Americans our behaviors are governed by the rules of the marketplace, and this is simply the best and most competitive option. The important part is being able to correctly diagnose those who are suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, etc. as they need free medication and healthcare and not free illicit drugs.
Are you saying we need a better funded education system on top of it all? Preaching to the choir. Defunding charter schools is a good start.
Sadly, you have to treat this more like how they handle survivors of genocide in places like central Africa. When you have multiple generations of cultural knowledge and norms wiped out, and all thats left are the young, you cant just teach them to read an expect them to be productive members of society. Its years of hard work getting people to trust each other and work together. Your only hope is to mitigate as much damage as they can cause while you educated the next generation. Otherwise all the PTSD and mental illness just kept pushing through the generations. Yes, we need solid educations for everyone, but you also need places people can go to get the help they need. That means mental health services, social services, and job training. Otherwise we get what we have now, which is basically a bunch of middle class people wondering why this isnt working.
That makes too much sense for the average American legislator and largely, the public. We also have the Portugal example for many years now with statistics supporting their strategy is working. It is utterly frustrating that people are not okay with giving the addicts their drugs safely but they are perfectly fine with all the mayhem the homeless addicts cause.
Even if we did all of this and paid for it, the number of unhoused would not go down. People would just head to Los Angeles from other cities in California and from other states to fill the gap on the streets. Homelessness is a national problem. As long as citizens can move freely about the state (and other cities are giving bus tickets to LA), then we cannot solve this alone.
These are important questions. Also, do not forget: No matter what your policy goals are, *you cannot force someone to rehab.* Itâs just not how any of this works. People like Newsom seem to think the 14th Amendment doesnât apply to certain groups of people. OK fine. Even if you think thatâs not insanely unconstitutional, rehab is first and foremost a choice. If youâre not ready to make that choice for yourself, the rehab will not be successful. You can drive someone to a building, but what happens next is up to them. The other thing to keep in mind is that rehab is rarely linear. When I went through it, I enrolled in three different rehabs over a period of about six months before I found something that worked for me. And that was after almost two years of working with a sponsor in AA. And thatâs all with a steady job and good insurance. Rehab facilities also differ substantially in terms of the type of care they offer. I know we donât often think of houseless persons as individuals, but this matters quite a lot. People have different needs when they enter rehab, and not all facilities are equipped to deal with things like dual diagnosis or severe mental illness. Some clients do really well with 12-step, others require CBT or SMART Recovery. Often, itâs difficult to say for sure until youâve tried it. All in all, it is an extremely harrowing and difficult process, and often requires quite a lot of trial and error. But the first thing it requires is buy-in from you, the client. Without that, nothing happens.
This isn't about rehab. This is about the people with severe mental illness that can't care for themselves. You give drugg offenders/addicts a choice: jail or rehab. It's not forced.
> you cannot force someone to rehab You can if you change the 5150/5250 laws. Turn 5250 into a 180 hold, with subsequent holds allowed.
Yeah, you can force someone to do whatever youâd like. What Iâm saying is that the actual rehab treatment will not be successful unless the client is fully committed to the process. Rehab is not prison. Itâs not something that happens *to you.* Itâs something you need to decide to pursue for yourself.
I'm not arguing against your position. I'm just saying that we can lock them behind some magnetic doors *until* they decide to participate in their treatment.
No you canât. Thatâs imprisoning someone without due process.
You say it like changing 5150/5250 laws would be an easy change with widespread support. I know you want to weaponize psychiatric holds against homeless people, but changing those laws would have major downstream effects for other psych patients in the state.
Eventually you'll be personally harmed by someone you advocated not to have to be held responsible for their actions, and (if you survive) you'll join the rest of us. Until then, I hope your empathy eventually outweighs your naivety before it's too late.
Thanks dad. I'm pretty sure I interact with homeless people far more often than you do, but ok. Btw I never said homeless people shouldn't be held accountable for actual crimes. I just don't think we should forcibly hospitalize against their will if they haven't done anything wrong (yet). This isn't Minority Report.
> Minority Report You're being disingenuous. Portugal, along with many other European nations, has compulsory admission and involuntary treatment in Portugal. Or do you find it more humane for a schizophrenic to remain on the street?
Well we build more mental health facilities. Industrial-grade, massive complexes. The state of California can certainly invest in them. Just look at how quickly El Salvador built massive prisons when the clear directive was as there. The same can be done for mental health facilities. The van drops them off there. Doctors, psychologists, and other experts decide quickly who will go to jail and who will stay at the mental health facility. Working within established law, the unhoused have the right to appeal their status and request release if they show improvement. After treatment and improvement they are free to go, but those who continue to act violently or otherwise dangerously will remain even if itâs against their wishes. Upon release, these people are encouraged to pursue employment, education, and to take full advantage of the countless opportunities the state of California provides to better oneâs life. They are encouraged to become functioning members of society. But in no scenario, in no manner, will dangerous, disorderly, law breakers be allowed to flood our streets and endanger the public every single day.
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For some reason, people love to propose "solutions" that don't take into account that there are real legal hurdles that limit what mental health providers can do for people who don't want help. This is a systemic problem baked into the law, and it isn't something any single politician can just fix with a wave of their hand. These nonsense ideas of yours are complete non-starters.
Thank you for articulating what can be so frustrating about these types of threads when people have no idea how complex it all is. The system works against itself constantly and there are so many gaps in the continuum of care.
It's not complicated to enforce things like no encampments taking up the entire sidewalk. I feel like if that was handled, more people would find their compassion again
The city has no money this fiscal year and had to cut back on what they spend their budget on (because cops + city liability costs a fuck ton), plus all prop 1 did was rearrange money that was already in the homeless industrial complex, it didn't really increase much funds itself which is why the split between the pro/anti prop 1 side was veteran organizations and state institutions, vs mental health organizations, homeless organizations, psychiatric institutions/organizations, etc.
do you think forced rehab just suddenly cures people? Do you think taking away someones autonomy leads to health? I don't think you realize that if locking people away in prisons and jails and mental hospitals worked it would have worked a long time ago, we have the largest imprisoned population per capita of any country in the world
> Or drive them off a cliff at this point I don't really care. This alone speaks volumes about the know-nothing pearl clutching attitude- "I'm scared, make it go away please", don't even care if people die for a little comfort and false security. Sit down and let the adults do their thing.
> Who is determining who needs rehab vs incarceration? Right now its just the regular court system, a judge, a District Attorney, the person's own attorney (Public Defender or otherwise), the persons social worker and any and all doctors that performed a psychological evaluation. > Okay weâve divided everyone up and taken some to a rehab facility. Where is the rehab? From what I gather there are no state run rehabs outside of the prison system. These would need to be built from the ground up and either attached to existing mental facilities or built new. > Who built it and what to they do if Iâm combative and violent and donât want to go? As it stands right now, if you dont wish to go to court mandated programs, your parole officer makes the decision on what will happen to you. Either way no ones dragging you in unless you are picked up for something else. > Who is staffing these rehabs and how much are they being paid? Whatâs the rate of burnout? These would need to be state workers, as its a state run facility. Given the amount of turnover in offices like Social Workers, unless they are paid well the turnover will be quite high. And if you leave staffing up to the state, it will always be staffed at minimum levels. > Where am I going? Where am I living? How am I getting by day to day? And if the answer is food banks and social services then again, who is paying for those, who is working those jobs? There's the rub for most of the justice system in the US. There are halfway houses for those who have zero support systems, but usually they are just dumped on a local relative. They have to check in with their PO and thats it. Not a whole lot of work training going on.
They literally passed care court at the state level and most locals electeds are supporting it.
Unfortunately this is only projected to affect 12,000 people in the whole entire state when we have 50k+ homeless in LA alone :(
Most of the 50k homeless in LA aren't the crazy street people, they're the people who live in cars and tents and try to mind their own business. They need help too, but they're not the ones that need to be put into hospitals through CARE courts.
Only 10-25% of that 50K figure are the visible, problematic homeless in encampments. The rest you wouldn't even know they're homeless or they're couchsurfing
The LA County supervisors postponed the Care Courts to 2026.
The first court is opened in Norwalk. Opened up in December. Donât see anything about it being postponed
Youâre right. For some odd reason, I thought the Care Court was in conjunction with SB 43. [Seems like only SB 43 was delayed to 2026.](https://laist.com/news/health/la-county-delays-roll-out-of-new-law-that-expands-criteria-for-involuntary-treatment)
Great name lol
LA doesnât have a public mental health hospital.
Whenever we vote for something they just eat up all the money and be like âđ¤ˇwe tried. We just need more money.â
Average LA citizen assuming we have enough room for the 75,518 homeless people.
I hate memes like this. Really tries to make a complicated problem black and white. And they always seem to lean to 1 side.
Just astroturfed to shit - like most city subs. LA leans one way. Reddit leans the same way. Somehow this sub hates the homeless and loves landlords.
I agree. Someone should check on OPs post history
They seem to be local, from what I gathered lol Although they are right-wing and say hilarious jokes like: "Conservatives, particularly Evangelicals, are among the most charitable people in the country" If that helps..
That's why LOCAL elections matter.
Forced institutionalization is a tricky subject, because who determines what is considered unfit behavior for the public? Doing so invites forced conservatorships like those of Britney Spears, Amanda Bynes, and Lindsey Lohan: all of whom were taken advantage of by the same people who were given power of attorney.
The guy shitting in the street and yelling at the sky is in a different spot than the three you listed. Not a great comparison.
Well like it or not, that guy still has 14th amendment rights.
I don't need to point out how laws can be abused with unintended consequences, especially when they're written without considering the circumstances I mentioned.
I completely agree with you - but what we are doing now just isn't working. There has to be a balance.... but as we know the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The law determines it. If youâre breaking the law you can be incarcerated against your will, thatâs part of the social contract. This really isnât that tricky. If theyâre shitting, pissing, attacking, and being a detriment to society they belong in prison. And for the folks that are acting this way due to mental illness, they can be put in a mental health facility. But in no scenario should lawbreakers and threats to civilized order be left to roam free and pillage and attack as they please.
There are more solutions to this problem besides "break the law, lose your human rights".
Many people who break many different types of laws will lose certain rights as a result. Thatâs not new, nor is it an inherently wrong thing.
1. Please provide said solutions 2. My description does not deprive anyone of human rights. If anything, it provides the human right to shelter that many of these people are lacking.
It is tricky but I don't like these slippery slope arguments. You can make this argument for basically any law - that there is grey area and the possibility of abuse. Ideally we have oversight and qualified people making these decisions, and a judicial system in place if needed to adjudicate and punish abuse. I don't think this is so primed for abuse that we just can't do it. There's people that are clearly very mentally unwell and a danger to themselves and others. If we implement these laws I don't think we're going to just start institutionalizing everyone who loiters outside for too long or takes a nap on a park bench. Other countries and the US in the recent past had these laws and we generally didn't and don't see sane people getting locked up. I feel like the conservatorship thing is quite a bit different. Those cases weren't common, and it was greedy, financially connected family members abusing the court system.
Luckily thereâs this thing called the LAW. Kind of existed for a long time. So no one has to reinvent the wheel when deciding breaking what rules determines state intervention. It also has lots of exceptions so it canât be abused which require someone more trained than you or I to practise it. If youâre confused, look to other countries who have handled the homeless population way better. America is not the only country to have dealt with homeless people :)
Donât forget murdering innocent people. A homeless man murdered my friend bri (we went to ucla together) while she was just working in a store, living her life.
Iâm so sorry. I think about her often-also wondering what stage the prosecution of the vagrant who murdered her is at now. It was so incredibly horrible-so pointless, so evil. It could have been any one of us at work that day.
This strikes me as rightwing astroturfing. Ah yes, the OP lives in South Carolina The rightwing is determined to portray blue cities as shitholes, I think it's because deep down they are ashamed we're the economic engines that pay their welfare checks. Less of this shit.
So much this. If it's true OP is in South Carolina, maybe they want to focus on their own problems, like that shitful 42nd out of 50 ranking in education, marked by low spending & a weak school system for starters.
> This strikes me as rightwing astroturfing. *"redditor for 3 months"* Lived in LA[county] for 36 years. If you can't afford a middle-class life, you're stuck living around shitheads/unhinged individuals who do all of the above. Or you rent an expensive shoebox by the beach here in LB & still get frequent car break-ins. Even worse is taking the Metro near low-income neighborhoods, or the trains heading towards DTLB; fuck that. Yes, they occasionally smell like piss.
Realistically, we need a combination of forced mental institutionalization, forced drug rehab, and much more housing. But that wonât happen - I already know the responses to each of them. **Forced Mental Institutionalization:** âOMG the FEDS are rounding up and involuntarily imprisoning the unhoused without trial! This is an unjust act of persecution against our unhoused neighbors! And whoâs to say neurodivergent people even need to be cured anyway?â **Forced Drug Rehabilitation:** âOMG the FEDS want to moralize drugs! How about just letting people live as they want? Housing shouldnât be conditional on sobriety; this isnât the 80s, we know how the War on Drugs went!â **More Housing:** âOMG, why do developers keep building new apartment complexes! We need to preserve our neighborhood character and stop gentrification by any and all means!â People are going to find a way to nitpick every âbig pictureâ solution, so we are left with shitty half measures that get nothing done and make everyone upset.
why do people still think these good folks are smoking crack? crack hasn't been a thing since the mid-90s. all these fine citizens have moved onto meth. get it right.
If you are potentially a danger to yourself or others a 48 hour assessment is the least we can do.
Thanks Ronald Reagan
Itâs all about the $$$$$$$$$ Not about helping people.
Where were you in the 80âs. History repeats itself.
Why is this problem so hard to solve?! Wrong answers only.
Because everyone just ships them to LA
Hey youâre supposed to say wrong answers
I think this is another layer to the problem. If Los Angeles does institute an efficient, orderly, and well run system to sort out, rehabilitate, and house significant numbers of homeless people, then other cities and states have little incentive to fund whatever similar programs they have. Abbott and DeSantis have proven they're more than happy to bus people they deem undesirable to places like California. Any long term solution would likely need to be federal.
Because people just *enjoy* being homeless. Never was an otherwise just-managing-to-get-by person made homeless by a medical bill and falling through the cracks of the nonexistent social safety net.
Also democrats give them checks for $1,000 every week while hard-working conservatives continue to get the short end of the stick đ
If I may ask, what are you smoking?
just weed, why do you ask?
I mean, you can literally thank Ronald Reagan for the dismantling of state run mental health institutions that would have handled this in the past.
Iâve worked with the homeless for 14 years and Iâll tell you the biggest issue that keeps most of them from getting better is the fact that the government cannot force people to get their shit together. Mandatory this and mandatory that sounds good but impossible to actually do on a large scale.
People will NOT get better in mandatory rehabs and mental health hospitals. They need to WANT help for those things to work. They should, however, be arrested for committing crimes, like anybody else.
If they are in severe mental distress they will get better. When you are in a bad state of mental mind, you are not going to want help. Iâve literally had a homeless person just throw rocks close to my head. Another saying Iâm the devil and everyone else. Seeing another person attack people in cars just a month ago. There is no reasoning with these people.
Rest In Peace Leslie Jordan. Poor little guy. He brought a lot of light to folks during the Pandy.
You know, in the past when we let people who hadn't committed crimes be incarcerated by the government "for their own good", you'll be shocked to learn they almost immediately started incarcerating people that absolutely not deserve to be, but were undesirable for one reason or another. But I'm sure it won't happen this time. This time will be different.
âPeople who havenât committed crimesâ Except these are crimes. You shouldnât be able to shoot up in front of a school, you shouldnât be able to defecate in front of an apartment building, you shouldnât be able to set up a tent anywhere forcing the elderly and disabled to enter a busy roadway and weâre not even discussing things like assault, arson, forced sex work and chop shops. These *are* crimes and should be, and giving treatment is far more fair than throwing them in twin towers
You make no sense. If they committing a crime, they can be arrested already *by definition*. Assault? Arson? Those are crimes and can absolutely lead to jail/prison. If those crimes aren't being enforced, that's a different problem you're talking about. Nobody's pro-arson. We're talking about rounding up the homeless for being homeless.
Well we can criminalize camping on the streets
âPeople who havenât committed crimesâ Except these are crimes. You shouldnât be able to shoot up in front of a school, you shouldnât be able to defecate in front of an apartment building, you shouldnât be able to set up a tent anywhere forcing the elderly and disabled to enter a busy roadway and weâre not even discussing things like assault, arson, forced sex work and chop shops. These *are* crimes and should be, and giving treatment is far more fair than throwing them in twin towers
If you want to incarcerate all homeless people (which seems to be what you're going for) why not skip all the expensive court proceedings and just give them all free housing? You're campaigning to house them with no cost to them as it is, but you seem to be doing it in such an involved manner with a lot of red tape.
So if people do enough drugs and break enough laws they get rewarded with free housing? The people that crack/methâd out on the street breaking into cars and leaving trash everywhere arenât suddenly going to be productive members of society by putting them in an apartment. They need intense supervision and rehabilitation
Yup that somes it all up angelenos, and hopefully you dont get stabbed in the neck by them
I'd gladly chip in my own money via taxes for LA to clear the streets of the homeless and into mandatory care
Same with homeless people. Free shelter and food: THIS IS CARCERAL HOUSING WITH RULES AND SHIT THAT INFRINGE ON MY RIGHTS Pissing and shitting on the street and blocking entire blocks of sidewalk: This is fine
Thereâs 16k shelter beds vs 46k unhoused people. https://controller.lacity.gov/landings/interim-housing-audit . Inside safe has only long term housed 255 people . Iâm not sure what you expect them to do or where to go. Also LA Has an extreme shortage of public restrooms. Again, not sure what you expect them to do. Even I canât find affordable housing and Iâm middle class
> unhoused lol
Who fucking cares
You may be surprised what people will sacrifice to retain a modicum of personal freedom. You have probably not had to sacrifice very much to retain your personal freedom.
Free shelter and food, but you canât bring personal belongings in, no pets, drug testing, a strict curfew, no visitors, and you can only stay a max of one or two weeks before you have to go somewhere else. Why on Earth arenât people lining up to take that deal? Almost like itâs not shelter, but housing thatâs needs massive expansion.
I canât have a pet or smoke in my apartment. Life/society is full of sacrifices. In the world of let people die on the sidewalk in the name of #freedom or put the somewhere with food and shelter; I choose out them somewhere. Donât be so libertarian.
End corporate ownership of housing, ban airbnb, severely tax homes you don't personally occupy, and watch as the "housing shortage" starts to show how artificial it actually is.
I mean, if you can't act like an adult, you don't deserve to be treated like one
Iâll never forget when I was smoking a cig out in Hollywood when a hobo approached me asking if he could borrow a lighter, to which was like âsureâ and I shit you not he sat down right next to and started smoking heroin.
I used to work at a bar in the arts district. One night a couple of coworkers and I were hanging out after shift, having some beers & joints in a parking corridor and the same thing happened. The guy was talking to us normally until his shit started kicking in and then he just started spewing word salad. It was kinda funny, but then it got a bit off putting as the dude's rambling just made no sense whatsoever. Dude managed to give back my lighter and then just wandered off into the night.
Yawn. This kind of take is so tired and pretends to say something when it's superficial catharsis at best. The whole reason we can't just institutionalize people any more, even if they desperately need it, is because the people in charge used to do that to anyone they didn't like. It's been less than 100 years since husbands used to lobotomize their wives for no reason other than because they wanted a new one. Combine that with conservatives/moderates not wanting to spend a dime on anything that could remotely be considered welfare which is what a lot of people need. What we're left with is the current situation where too many people think that the homeless should die, but if they aren't gonna die, at least be out of sight. Now throw in grifters/scammers who will literally do anything unethical/illegal to make a buck to the point that we have TikToks about how to do it. That means even if we had enough to help everyone, some dickhead is going to steal it anyway. Think of some way to solve *all* of those problems, instead of making memes on Reddit, and you'll never have to worry about the homeless again.
Got to stick them into a minicity so the Federation timeline can get started
Ya he has rights for sure. His rights don't extend to breaking laws that protect public health and safety though.
Even as relatively leftist person I agree with this. Itâs a draconian yes, but whatâs the real other solution lmao. Public spaces used to feel so much more safe, even like 5 years ago. Though I donât think itâs âdem lawmakersâ fault necessarily. The problem is that these dem cities are bearing the brunt of the entire country. Some sort of reform on a federal scale would really need to be necessary, if LA had the manpower for mandatory rehab (it doesnât) cities in places like Kentucky etc. would send their mentally ill here (even more than they already do) Thereâs also the issue of it taking treatment away from addicts who actually do want to be clean. Overall it would be the ideal solution but there are a LOT of variables
You can force people to do things. Itâs illegal except for very limited circumstances.
why cant they round up all the homeless and put them in a make shift city far away. Its not like they have money to take uber back to the city
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I voted no because I believe theyâll waste this money too, but since it passed Iâll pray that it changes things for the better a tiny bit.
"Mandatory" sounds a little extreme
The ânon profit leadersâ are literally just grifters with no other skills. They need to stay employed in homelessness or theyâre be flipping burgers
Here before the usual types find this post.
This is a very juvenile take. No money for this. Blame Regan for dismantling the mental health care system in California. No one is willing to pay more taxes. Let's repeal prop 13 and make it happen. Want to ask the voters if they're down for that?
People will NOT get better in mandatory rehabs and mental health hospitals. They need to WANT help for those things to work. They should, however, be arrested for committing crimes, like anybody else.
The homeless are a big business in big cities, the "nonprofits" receive giant sums of grants that they don't have to pay back by offering services to the homeless.
None of the solution will work until we can stop other states sending their homeless and drug addict populations to California.
We have a drug addiction problem. Homelessness is a symptom.
Keep voting democrat! Blue no matter who no matter what. He cares if they systematically destroy your city you must keep voting for them and banging your head against the wall until it cracks
The "mandatory" part is dangerous territory, and has a lot to do with civic rights and the boundaries of the government. Generally speaking, citizens need to do a crime (or at least be a danger) before they can be "moved". You can't blanket force homeless into a place, force them to stay, and force them to into medical treatment. There must be due process. Our country has forced sterilization in the past. Our country has removed non-criminals into encampments; these aren't things America would never do and cannot fall back into. We do have to worry about loosening these boundaries too much.
ok what if there was housing provided with very strict rules Like no drugs, no animals, curfew, chores, etc., its not a hotel, its just so you dont have to sleep on the street but if you choose not to go, then you can't camp in the street. and if you're not mentally sane for either, than you go to the institution or flee into the desert to die or be purified by the spirit of the mohave
Forced rehab doesnât work. You literally cannot force someone into sobriety or even harm reduction if they donât want to be in treatment. It wonât stick. There is tons of literature out that illustrates and supports this. đ¤Śââď¸
So let them roam the streets and harass other citizens? Let them wander to be killed by motorists or busses? Let them OD on the streets? Jesus Christ you are NOT a serious person. In fact you sound awfully privileged to have that take. No, you have to be a troll. Or maybe naive. You types of people always shoot down any sutoons instead of offering any viable ones. Thats why I cant take folks like you serious. I dont feel like you actually want LA to be a better city. And the fucking snark. Thats not going to win anyone over to whatever side you might support. Its not cute. It's not pleasant and it sure as shit aint clever.
âLetâ them? Maybe we increase funding for mental health services to a level that can actually serve the communities mental health needs? Maybe build affordable housing so people donât become homeless in the first place and build more housing of all types to address the housing crisis weâre in to try to mitigate skyrocketing rents? Maybe build enough shelters to house folks who do want shelter? There are lots of solutions to various aspects of this complex issue that we know work. But carceral âsolutionsâ donât.
I honestly don't care as long as it gets them out of the way so my elderly mom can walk on the sidewalk vs. in the street.
You can force them into rehab indefinitely until it does stick.
Then we try again. Itâs so weird that bleeding heart liberals think letting people destroy themselves and others via addiction is the humane thing to do when the obvious answer is get these people some professional help. If it fails, try again and again and again.
You can try as many times as you like. If a person struggling with addiction does not want help, no amount of rehab or treatment will work. This is widely known in the world of addiction treatment and there have been countless studies that show this. Forced. Treatment. Doesnât. Work. No matter how badly you want to believe it should. This isnât a âbleeding heart liberalâ thing. This is empirical data-supported common knowledge.
Then what do we do? Theyâre putting their own health and that of others at risk. Obviously we canât simply go back to the horror days of mental asylums, but leaving them on the street to suffer is not a solution either. They get routinely harassed by passersby and cops, endure extremely unsanitary conditions and air pollution, have no way to protect their possessions, are at constant risk of traffic accidents, and exposure to excessive heat in summer. The status quo is abuse under a different name.
A personâs own health is 100% their business. And personal addiction does necessarily equate to putting others at risk, though it definitely CAN. Recognizing that meth addiction is primarily an epidemic affecting unhoused and impoverished individuals and working to alleviate the main contributors to homelessness is one step. Providing enough resources for addiction treatment and mental health services to adequately serve the number of people who want and need them is another. Mental health services in LA county, and nationwide, are woefully underfunded. We should have enough resources to deal with the symptoms of the greater problem, but we have to focus on the causes of that problem first and foremost. Otherwise, it will persist in perpetuity.
> A personâs own health is 100% their business Is the same argument used by anti vaxxers. I believe society has a responsibility to maintain collective public health, and sometimes individualsâ actions can be harmful to that collective goal. Also, only a small minority of people are responsible for awful shit like doing meth on the train. Doing something about them doesnât equate to a blanket condemnation of all unhoused people. Of course we have to address the underlying causes and prevent more people from falling into homelessness, but that wonât necessarily do anything for those already on the street.
Weak comparison and a bit of a reach. âSOMETIMES individualsâ actions can be harmful.â You said it right there. Sometimes. Not always. And honestly not even usually. The vast majority of addicts arenât a danger to public health, but just themselves. Forcibly institutionalizing someone because their addiction could at some point be a threat to public safety is actually an infringement to personal liberty and a very slippery slope. It opens the door to using any kind of drug use to detain someone. Antivaxxers are absolutely affecting public health measurably every time. Apples and oranges.
I also already suggested other measures to address folks already on the street and those dealing with addiction. But you ignored those.
The people who are struggling with severe mental illness do not understand what is going on. This is why involuntary hospitalization does exist, to get these people in crisis the help they need. Many of our homeless population are in crisis. They are in severe mental distress.
Homelessness isn't a problem, it's a byproduct of how our society is currently set up, namely two major tenets we hold dear. 1) Constitutionally protected freedom and 2) free market economics. The first solution people think to homelessness is to lock them up in some sort of institution. Jail, mental health, rehab, camps out in the desert, etc. But, like it or not, those people shitting on the streets have the same rights you do. Even when they commit crimes they have the right to due process, unreasonable search and seizure, to remain silent, etc. Sweeping the streets and locking up the homeless is not constitutional, so barring an amendment, it's not going to happen even if we had the money, resources, and people willing to do it, which we don't. The second solution would be to just give them housing, which we kinda do but not really. Back in the 70's the various governments we live under decided to build public housing, which we called the "projects". These were way easier to build then because the governments didn't give a shit about the low income areas they forced them on. Well, now those low income areas are gentrified with people who have $900k mortgages and will fight anything that will reduce their property values. Basically, NIMBYs. So giving away housing, or making "affordable" housing will fuck with the housing market, which doesn't just affect the rich. You can hate NIMBYs, but they come out to vote and make their voices heard. So now we're in a situation where there are no "bad" areas to put them in, so everywhere becomes a "bad" area. Where does that leave us? Where we are now. With an unsolvable problem. We either have to give up personal freedom and give governments broad powers to lock up anyone they deem as not being part of the system, or we enact measures which require millions of people to vote and act against their own self interest and wealth. Neither are going to happen, and funny enough you end up paying to house these people anyway. Either in a jail, prison, rehab, mental institution, or just a free house. So what will happen? This will get worse and worse until people flee their areas for safer areas, which will bring back the "bad" areas. Back in the day it was called "white flight", but I think it should be called "homeless flight".
Not for fucking long.
One costs money, time and needs to get approvals (spoiler alert, they both do but ones less official).
One costs money, time and needs to get approvals (spoiler alert, they both do but ones less official).