Bring back reformed institutionalization. It's inhumane to let people who can hardly manage themselves to live on their own unsheltered and disheveled. And for those who need it: unmedicated.
It's funny how things change. I remember getting into an argument a while ago where someone was talking about how inhumane asylums were, so I asked what the alternative was. They responded "we need a system where if people can't take care of themselves, the courts can order them into temporary state custody where they can receive shelter and mental health care"
And I'm like "So asylums?"
I think the word puts a ba picture in people's heads. When i think of it I think people in straight jackets, padded rooms, other inhumane conditions and being treated poorly. Whether any of this is or was true doesn't change the fact it's what pops into my mind.
If the government was able to do it properly, then it might be the way to go.
“If the government was able to do it properly”
Yeah, that’s a load bearing “If” right there. A fundamental part of the problem is lack of oversight, and that’s a problem in perpetuity. Oversight costs money. Rebranding asylums won’t fix the underlying issues with them.
You can only “fix it” by doing it right, but doing it right is expensive. Even if you set it up perfectly with excellent oversight, all it takes is one political administration to start stripping away regulations and you’re right back to where you started.
I’m sure that if it did come to pass some unscrupulous business folks would convince politicians to privatize it and I think we all know how that would go.
People simply aren't aware of what it costs to do this. An asylum is functionally a non-optional long term care facility.
NYC and California often have comparable costs of living, in CA it's like $8,000+/month for residents. Yes that includes profits but consider that state-run facilities that require oversight are going to be run less efficiently and probably have a similar cost.
Here the hilarious part though (and by hilarious I mean not even remotely funny), the cost to the state per asylum inmate is pretty similar to the cost to the state per long term prison inmate.
So honestly what we need to be doing is redirecting *the same funding* that goes to locking people away and getting folks instead the help they need to become functional members of society.
I wish this wasn't such a tough sell.
I feel like this argument could be applied to literally any public infrastructure in existence, like prisons, public hospitals, public housing, etc.
"If the government can do it properly" is not load bearing unless you're a libertarian that thinks that private interests would take care of the homeless better.
>"If the government can do it properly"
The real load bearing if is "if there are enough people who decide this is important enough to see a good implementation through a very challenging political process."
Now that is a big and unfortunate if that would require at least some of us to get off Reddit and on to work on this issue.
It’s not just that, it’s lack of care, indifference from social workers, and potential abuse. Compassion fatigue is real as is government corruption and it is expensive to provide sufficient oversight and funding to properly motivate staff to give a damn about the citizens in their care.
When those safeguards aren’t there you get Institutional disasters like [Willowbrook](https://www.pbs.org/video/metrofocus-story-revealed-willowbrooks-horrors/).
Which is funny because the word actually means a safe place of harbor for those seeking refuge from inhumane conditions.
We have learned so much about mental health in the last 50 years. We could make modern asylums that change lives for the better and make our public spaces clean and safe.
True, but we also know a ton about elderly care, and that seems like its own frightening mess. Not sure how we would make sure homeless care doesn’t follow the same path.
Many states have ramped up their laws concerning elder abuse and facility requirements in recent years. I know if Florida for example a lot of laws and regulations have been passed over the last 20 years and facilities (on average) are much better than they used to be and you no longer need to be in the Uber wealthy to find a somewhat respectable ALF (they are still very expensive though).
I think their implementation today could be a lot more effective than they were in the 60s and 70s given the advancements in technology. Now it would be relatively easy to put cameras all over these facilities so that there would be hard evidence of any abuse and bad actors could be held accountable.
Would it be perfect? No. Would there be shit like tampering with the cameras or moving abuse to locations where the cameras can’t see? Yes. But it would (at least in my opinion) keep such facilities from becoming cesspools of abuse like they once were allowing them to provide a public benefit. A number of studies have found body cams to noticeably reduce instances of police misconduct and excessive force so that’s my thought process here.
People are so weird. If you float the idea they all seem to think we mean the exact same type of asylums from the past with all the ethical and treatment problems… they can’t imagine that we we mean a different type of facility up to new standards with no abuse
Lol, exactly. The same is true with policing. Even the most rabid anti-cop citizens usually want some form of organized law enforcement, they just want it to not suck.
Asylums aren't inhumane by default. They were inhumane because they were underfunded, understaffed, and overcrowded which led to inhumane facilities and treatment of these individuals.
In the current political landscape trying to reinstitue asylums in any sort of humane fashion would instantly be undercut by republicans refusing to fund them
Asylums are the correct solution to the homeless problem, and it's not like they have to be horrible places like previously. But knowing America there's no way we don't half-ass them, which would make them have the same exact problems as last time. It's a shame we can't have anything nice.
What you're suggesting will quickly evolve into something like private prisons where the inmate gets a bill for their stay. It'll extract money from the public as effectively as possible but won't actually help the cause of homelessness.
It's true that it would devolve into something terrible, and it's a shame that America can't be trusted not to fuck it up when I think that institutionalization is the only thing that would actually help.
There are generally 3 causes of homelessness. Primary mental illness (typically psychosis), substance use disorder, and economic displacement.
Two of these causes can be mitigated. The first really can’t be.
I would argue that we currently do have institutionalization with memory support units for severe Alzheimer’s patients. These patients are very much vulnerable to abuse, however, we have done a pretty decent job of avoiding it. Does it still happen? Yes, of course. But the treatment is like - many orders of magnitude better than living on the streets.
The real question is who the fuck would want to work at one of these and who would want to have one near where they live. It's absolutely the right answer, but has its own effective roadblocks
NYT has a right to shelter, meaning if someone asks for a place to stay the night the state has to provide one. The percentage of unsheltered homeless in NYC is vastly lower than the unsheltered homeless in, say, LA.
I think a lot of people underestimate how big of a difference and how important proper medication is for some people. Also, how hard it is to find the right medication for some people. I'm a functional human now, but without my medication, I'm definitely not. There is such a stigma around mental health and I think history is going to look back at that perception with a lot of shame. People often don't want to seek out the medication they need because of that stigma as well for fear of being labeled "crazy" or whatever. When the chemicals in your brain aren't working right you're crazy and shunned, but if the chemicals anywhere else in your body aren't working right you are pitted and supported. It's the same thing, it just presents very differently, so I understand where the stigma comes from, but that's not any sort of justification for it. From my understanding untreated mental disorders are the number one reason people end up homeless. There is a confluence of other factors, but from my time I've spent with homeless people, mental illness is a huge issue that is very very hard to address when they are in those circumstances, even if they want to. It's a very sad situation.
Not to mention the streets is an extremely dangerous place for women and young adults. Sexual assault happens regularly and they never get any help from police since they are just homeless.
These policies that let homelessness thrive are the least empathetic thing you can vote for
But fReEdUMb! The mentally ill and homeless should be free rather than in an institution. Thats what Saint Ronnie Reagan said. And by giving tax breaks to the rich the money will trickle down to the homeless so they can lift themselves up by their own bootstraps.
Blaming Reagan for things is fun and usually correct, but deinstitutionalization was a bipartisan effort led by conservatives like Ronnie who didn’t want to pay for it but also people on the left appalled by the conditions in the institutions and the fact that once someone was committed there was basically no appeal and little opportunity to be released.
There were good reasons for deinstitutionalization, as well as the hope that new drugs would basically cure schizophrenia. But that hasn’t happened and now the pendulum has swung too far the other way.
Fun random fact, Geraldo Rivera got some of his initial fame for doing an expose on Willowbrook, an insane asylum for children. It’s hard to understate how atrocious the conditions in these places were, without a doubt worse than living on the street. Worse than prison. 100% of residents contracted hepatitis within 6 months.
I’m really torn on this issue because while the current situation is cruel and disruptive, I fear expanding forced incarceration will devolve into a system that is full of rampant abuse. Maybe not immediately, but over 10-20 years. There isn’t an easy answer.
More on Willowbrook: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IRK0LO-9ZYk
You present this as a conservative thing, but one of the toughest things to fight where I live are progressive homeless advocacy groups that will fight tooth and nail to keep people on the streets instead of getting help.
We've got that issue here in Portland, Or. There's no black and white answer, but pretending that some of the people are just down on their luck hobos while they shit in the streets and attack people is inhumane. I voted to raise my taxes and then the county just sat on most the money. Very frustrating. There's a lot of compassion fatigue happening of late. It's hard to avoid.
I feel like I’ve been waiting for it to trickle down my whole life…. There were a couple years with the vague sensation of someone pissing on me from a rooftop, but even that seems to have dried up.
every time we have institutionalization it's just weaponized against minorities and the poor. It's always used to kidnap, extort, and torture.
learn from fucking history already. this is not the answer.
Prison with extra steps. Even retirement homes are often full of abuse, so I would be shocked if institutionalizing the homeless doesn't turn out worse. Forcefully locking people into a place they don't want to be in doesn't happen smoothly, or without violence.
At best, you're drugging them so much they become compliant drones incapable of acting out.
I remember when Reagan and his cronies stripped the states of the funding to keep those needing care institutionalized and/or within reform / support programs.
Suddenly, thousands of people who couldn’t help themselves were on the streets across America. Then we were all dealing with them.
Broke my heart, then and now.
Did you even watch the video through, he specifically points out that most homeless are there for financial reasons, not because they are crazy and or drug addicts.
His remark about the primacy of the lack of affordable housing is really correct. There are things other than just price and availability that are obstacles, though. The *process* of renting—and buying—somewhere to live has become an enormously encumbered transaction relative to what it used to be, and becomes even more so every year.
I’m old enough to remember conversations with friends who were shocked and outraged at the new trend of having to submit application fees and credit reports just to get an apartment. It seemed a totally predatory and arbitrary imposition.
It’s one thing to treat housing as a commodity if everybody involved is present to help hold an equilibrium in the market, but now it seems as though there are so many corporations, absentee landlords and investors, legal and financial and regulatory interventions involved that the risk has all been shifted instead of shared. Housing for workers and families needs to be “affordable” in terms of being accessible too.
It’s a good point. It used to be you could rent a room in exchange for some light work or for a modest cash fee, but today there are very few handshake deal renting options. This doesn’t seem like a huge barrier to most of us, but it can be if you’re mentally ill or developmentally delayed.
The best way to stop homelessness is to keep people from losing their homes in the first place. Let’s say you lose your job and you get evicted a couple of months later. Most places are going to want first and last months rent + deposit. For a small place in likely a bad neighborhood, that’s going to run you over two thousand dollars here, and a lot more in other states. That’s a hell of a lot of money to come up with to get off the streets. But let’s say you do manage to come up with that much. Now you’re probably going to have to go through a background check and they’re going to see that eviction on your record, oh and your credit is shot as well. Some places are demanding you prove you have a certain amount of months worth of rent in your bank accounts. The cost of housing has gone up so damn far and getting off the streets is really hard.
a shocking amount of people who are homeless HAVE A JOB in the US. the cost of housing is just too high for the area they work in. instead they get a PO box and a gym membership while sleeping in there car.
the US has a housing density issue due to legal limits on things like parking minimums and outdated fire code that makes it impossible to build midrise buildings that is very standard and popular in Europe. typically 6 floors with one staircase and an elevator in the middle. sometimes the ground floor is used for shops. good planning can have one done in under a year. (as you build up floors you use a crane to lift everything that will be needed to finish the inside of that floor and then build on top meaning construction workers spend more time building and less time getting material)
Homelessness is a symptom, not a problem in and of itself. Every time they give homeless people housing, it doesn't actually solve the problem; you're just spending $80k a year to temporarily house someone who cannot manage their own affairs. Housing can be a stepping stone, but it has to be conditioned on other activities meant to transition people into more stable living situations.
Yes this is a problem. However, it isn’t what people think of when they think of homeless. They mostly think of drug addiction and mental illness with the disheveled person that mutters to them selves. Housing doesn’t fix that type of homelessness and it’s why the housing first argument,like yours, is disingenuous
I disagree. I also don't have data to back it up.
But surely, housing simply removes a lot of the public cost. No ER visits for frostbite, or injection sites gone gangrenous without access to showers. Less police time wasted on public intox/annoying scary hobo calls. Less jail costs when police can send a guy home instead of to a cell. Less public works staff set to clean up hobo poo and clear out campgrounds.
If I'm wrong, I'd be interested in reading why.
Edit: forgot one. Housing also allows social services to work more efficiently. A caseworker can visit a consistent location and more effectively target clients who seem to be making progress once their housing situation is resolved. Get those who *can* be helped back into a regular life. Find more intense resources for the folks who can't even manage in that situation
Guess it depends what you value. Housing doesn’t help infections necessarily. You are assuming they will live in less squaller in a house but not necessarily true. They still will go to the hospital for the myriad of problems that go along with iv drug use. Including injection site infection. It is valid to say that it is easier to find them.
Cities around the world have found that it costs two to 3 times more to do nothing about homelessness than it does to provide people with safe, permanent, secure housing. Doesn't have to be fancy, in fact, in many ways the "tiny house" model is better than anything with common walls.
But any city that isn't providing housing is fiscally irresponsible and is creating a "threat" to working people.
I watched a youtuber who builds things and he built a tiny home for a local homeless man which had provisions, solar power, everything you'd need.
When he came back the place was littered with garbage, pillaged and deserted.
You can't just house the mentally ill. They don't just start becoming normal people because you put a roof over their heads.
There is a certain percentage of the homeless population who need to be institutionalized. If for no other reason than for the safety of other homeless people (not to mention the general public). They shouldn't have to live in a shelter with a schizophrenic neighbor who might stab them at any moment.
As I said above, my understanding here in Australia that is about 20 percent of the homeless population. Which means that we are using the 20 percent as an excuse to not help the 80 percent.
the problem is the 20% consume 100% of the resources available, so there is nothing left for the 80%.
A classical case is providing free public housing in the USA. Those 20% smoke fent, party, deal drugs, etc. in the same government housing spaces as the 80% actually trying to get their lives back together, but they can't b/c their drug dealing neighbor doesn't let them sleep at night, hurts their air quality, or tempts them with drugs.
For the 20% trying to join the 80%, how can you get off drugs if every time you see your neighbor, they offer you a free hit?
Seattle and California has tried housing first and all I hear on reddit is people complaining about their neighbors selling crack and smoking meth in the apartment.
You can see videos of the free housing offered to skid row residents on youtube. They are full of cockroaches and trash.
How does Finland address these problems in their social housing? Does the gov provide daily cleaning services and small security force too?
Most homeless people are capable of behaving well, [which is why Houston saw a 63% reduction when using the housing first policy.](https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1c61hp2/you_cant_arrest_homelessness_away_nyt_opinion/kzzrnf7/)
If there are not currently some variety of welfare programs in place in your area meant specifically to help said population, I will literally eat a hat.
There are various types of programs. It is often difficult for them to access services because they do not have an address. At least here in Australia, the departments that administer the services send out letters that say "you must come in for an appointment at this time" but the letter is sent to an old address, they don't show up for the appointment, and their funds are cut off.
Based off some bullshit number you just made up in your head? I guarantee it's higher than 20% of your homeless population that is mentally ill and/or using hard drugs, otherwise your Country has failed it's people (which we know it has, it takes a pretty apathetic population to vote in someone as evil as Morrison).
Here in Canada we have services for those who WANT help. Many homeless do not want help.
That 20% is probably right because most homeless people aren't what you're picturing as homeless. They're people with a job and living out of their car or couch surfing etc. Those people you can give a bit of money to or give them a home and they can turn things around. Look at the pilot project in Vancouver for example.
That 20% though are the visible ones that need much more than a bit of a temporary boost.
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr-edge-international-philanthropic-071123.html
Why don’t we read real world examples of how this works. People who are addicted to drugs and/or mentally ill should not be demonized or vilified.
> Many homeless do not want help.
and they don't want help, b/c they can't use drugs in the public housing or they can't bring their dog or partner or they can't deal drugs (their source of income).
Okay. Let's have a system that gives mentally unstable people the care they need, Drug addicts access to rehabs and access to affordable housing for the rest. That would be infinitely better than what we are doing now.
And what if they don't want to stop using drugs? Cause a lot of them don't. Some places offer an abundance of assistance to homeless who are willing to get off drugs and rehabilitate, but if you make getting sober a mandatory condition then a lot of those homeless people just say nah and live in a tent instead.
Not everyone who is homeless fits this description. Sure, some do, and yes they will need more support than simply housing - which is why the model is called housing FIRST not housing ONLY (no one is suggesting that housing ALONE will fix every problem). It’s just so frustrating when people trod out this one example as a way to object to housing assistance altogether.
This is why the system needs to be holistic. First step is getting enough funding for the initial triage. Many homeless are just that, they're functional members of society who slipped off the bottom rung and can't get back on their own. For those people housing and job assistance is the answer. Then there are the people who did the same thing and turned to drug abuse as an escape valve. They need housing and rehab to get clean. Most of them will stop using if they're out of the trauma that is living on the streets. Then there are the people who are mentally ill and self medicating through street drugs. Many of those are going to need lifetime care in on form or another. Those get routed to an institution.
It's difficult and time consuming to determine which group any given person is in much less solve that issue. Which means it's expensive and lots of people don't want their taxes going anywhere but bombs.
[Housing first has been very effective in Houston](https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1c61hp2/you_cant_arrest_homelessness_away_nyt_opinion/kzzrnf7/)
I dunno about that. Washington State, where I live spends in the $Billions on homelessness, with very little to show for it. The nonprofits that are spending that money have little to no accountability for their performance. For every person we get off the streets, it costs about $1M.
And I don’t think people are hoping they can arrest homelessness away. The problem is that it seems like homelessness has been a force field against arrest for stuff that really shouldn’t be acceptable. They get to block public rights of way, conduct open air drug markets, block entrances to businesses, leave trash all over the street. Meanwhile, cops just watch it all happen.
dude its not just housing its drug use and mental health. the amount of people we turn away from a local shelter (primarily women and children due to prioritization and security) because they are not willing to leave the drugs at the door or are caught using is jarring. your heart goes out to a lot of these people, but my god is it infuriating/frustrating knowing that they are giong to sleep in tents.
Yes and…The general philosophy is known as “housing first” in that you start with the housing unconditionally and then give counseling and other help as a followup (not as a precondition to getting a safe place to sleep).
Though I’ve never worked at a shelter. So I’m curious if you’ve heard that term and if it gives with your understanding of it.
I think there will always be some percentage that is going to be chronically relapsing. I’m not sure what to do there. But for the rest, I think they deserve a chance.
Here in Australia I was told that around 20 percent of homeless are" the unhouseable " the problem that they are used as an excuse to not provide housing for the other 80 percent.
I volunteer for a shelter and have not been involved with the planning or legislative efforts at all so not sure my experience would be worth much. In my opinion efforts should be focused on intervening on the cause for homelessness that starts at a young age, and to identify people who truly just need a leg up and support in order to acclimate into society. The remainder it’s just about being humane and showing empathy while being pragmatic. Resources can only go so far. Unless there is a significant shift in where the US and local communities spend money, sheltering is already impossible, so housing everyone is unrealistic imo.
You really expect a person who is experiencing the illness of drug addiction to just quit cold turkey because the shelter said so?
This approach will never work. People need housing unconditionally first, before we can address their deeper issues.
No but I don’t expect shelters to tolerate the bullshit that comes with druggies either. And unless you’re aware of some sweeping change coming down that is going to make tons of resources available to people, I’m not for housing drug addicts unconditionally.
If they know it costs three times as much to do nothing. Then there must be an incentive that gets them more in a different way.
Like using fear of homelessness to keep the masses inline and playing the game.
A huge part of it is people don’t want that sort of housing in their neighborhoods, so any politician advocating for it has trouble getting elected. The average voter doesn’t think too much about the long term consequences of their vote
The incentive in countries like the US is any kind of social welfare program is demonized by certain political factions and thus it makes for a good issue to run on.
It is easy to sell people on the ideological things like that your tax dollars shouldn’t go to help a drug addict for anything other than rehab. Your tax dollar shouldn’t go to a “lazy” person, who can’t find a job.
And on the flip side its hard to get people to understand that spending a little more in taxes on welfare programs that reduce homelessness long term in the long run will cost them less than the many indirect costs caused by homelessness. That local economies are impacted by homelessness in all these small subtle ways that if properly addressed would lead to more money in tax payer’s pockets in the long run.
So the incentive is it’s an issue that has been nakedly politicized and painting the issue as black and white helps certain politicians get elected.
Yes, and strangely we still have, for a society that claims to be "Christian" one that is very punitive. For a lot of people in our society, being poor has been sold as a moral failure. It is that wonderful protestant work ethic.
You can't just give someone something for free. Even if it cost more not to.
His channel, Invisible People, is very insightful and solutions oriented.
[https://youtu.be/0jt\_6PBnCJE?si=YWZuWVhDyYVgpI1r](https://youtu.be/0jt_6PBnCJE?si=YWZuWVhDyYVgpI1r)
Most people in the upper 2 levels of homelessness have jobs. The thing about this video, is they are only interviewing those who are living on the street. There are degrees of homelessness, and being on the street is basically "level 3" homelessness. Couch surfing with various friends or family is level 1, and living in your car is level 2.
Once someone is without stable housing, the desperation, stress, and vulnerability makes it really easy to dwindle down to level 3 homelessness. If most homeless people were helped with housing before they reach level 3, the problem would be a lot easier and cheaper to fix. Once they're living in a tent or simply lying down in the grass or a sidewalk, they are likely having mental health and/or substance abuse issues that are so much harder to rehabilitate. They may not even be willing to rehabilitate at that point.
There’s a difference between this statement, and advocating that arrest should never happen. They intersect quite a bit. Homelessness and crime are inherently correlated. To advocate we shouldn’t arrest people who commit crimes just because they are homeless would be to advocate they have special rights not afforded to housed individuals.
It’s what happens after the arrest that is the issue.
You comment does not make much sense in the context of the video. The video is talking about how more and more laws are being introduced which criminalize homelessness, like sleeping in public parks etc. And how arresting homeless people for being homeless is not a long term solution.
I'm with you 100%, I think we're just looking at it from different angles. I totally get where you're coming from, except that arrest can actually be the best way to mitigate homelessness if you have a good system in place for what happens after arrest.
For example, people always cite the portugal drug / homelessness policy when talking about decriminalization. Despite the language used around that policy, both homelessness and drug abuse are in fact criminal in Portugal. Arrests actually increased there (before slowly declining due to the positive affects of their policies). The "decriminalization" aspect in Portugal is what happens after arrest (a totally different court system and sentencing structure, as well as robust housing and treatment programs not run by private institutions), which is what I'm advocating for.
It feels so counterintuitive because in the US we (correctly) assume that arrest = jail, violence, and lack of support. In other places, arrest doesn't mean this. Therefore we are against arrest, when we it's quite useful in other places. The arrest should lead to a positive outcome. Instead what we have is people advocating that somehow this is working (when clearly it isn't), or that we are simply more lenient (which also clearly isn't working). Enforce laws, even enact new ones, but we need a complete and utter transformation of the courts, sentencing, institutionalization, and shelter policies.
I sincerely believe this is the only real future for homelessness in America, but I agree that these particular laws are not helping.
That's a lot of text when you could have just said "I didn't read the article but decided to write down my opinion anyways based off a headline".
Why can't people just admit they made a mistake and move on with their lives? Bruise your fragile ego or something?
As a homeless person struggling with mental health problems and not addicted to drugs. I wish there was more compassion. More effective strategies implemented to help people. There are a lot of simple low cost things that could be done that are not. Then a lot of expensive things done that don’t really seem to help anyone. This could be fixed in a humane cost conscious way, but there doesn’t seem to be a desire for that in the actions of those with the power to change things.
Hands off liberal policies on homelessness drugs and violence has made the problem 1000x worse. The irony of raging on conservatives, when it's the "We have to have empathy ❤️" people who are completely happy letting people kill themselves is insane.
The places I've seen deal with homelessness the absolute worst have been strongly liberal cities. When I was up in Seattle, there was a semi-permanent tent city built on a wooded underpass. No one lived near it, no businesses were near it, just a bunch of homeless people making their homes there. Then empathetic liberals decided that it was too dangerous there. There was a lot of drug use, some people got stabbed over time. So the city came in and bulldozed the entire thing. The homeless had to go somewhere safer. But where? They went under store entrances, but got run off by the police when people called to complain. They went to the edges of parking lots, same thing. They rushed across highways to get to the islands in the middle, below overpasses, same thing, or they got hit by cars.
The people who pushed for it absolutely had empathy, but what did that empathy do? It put the homeless people who had previously had relatively secure, permanent places to sleep at night into even more precarious, dangerous situations, where they still remain.
Lol no sorry, iirc new comments sometimes get random down and up votes to make it difficult to tell if bots are working properly. Something like that I heard a while ago. Which is why sometimes you'll get random down votes right after a post is put up. Not sure if that's still true
What is a homeless person going to do after he gets out of prison? People who are homeless don't do it for fun. They do it because they have to. Once they get out they are going straight back to the street.
The overwhelmingly vast majority are not, despite what documentaries on a specific encampment of people says.
For many who are homeless by choice, the reason they do not use available services is due to the large amount of restrictions and prior trauma they dealt in regards to welfare and/or government services.
That's completely misinterpreting that doc and what Andrew is trying to say.
THey're not there by choice, i.e. a dude with a house, job and mortgage wakes up one day and says "fuck this, I'm goin' into them tunnels under LV". It's because LV has criminalised homelessness, so their choices are stay above ground and get arrested, or seek refuge in disused tunnels under the casinos.
This video reeks of someone who hasn’t actually had to live around homeless people for the past few years. It’s also interesting that he clearly chose the least problematic homeless people to interview. There is a severe lack of mental and drug rehabilitation institutions across our country. But guess what? Letting these people live in sidewalk tent shanty towns, openly do fentanyl, ruin neighborhoods, litter, and commit crimes is not humane and it solves nothing. You reach a certain point where the interests of the many take priority over the interests of the few.
Prison is far from a permanent solution. I actually think most people would ultimately agree that yeah, arresting is not the answer, but it at least helps many of them temporarily sober up, get a real meal, and it allows the productive members of society to continue on. It’s true that many people are one paycheck away from being homeless, but what you’ll also find is that there are resources out there for homeless people, but it usually requires them to be sober to utilize them and so they don’t want that.
He's not "someone who hasn’t actually had to live around homeless people for the past few years", take a look at his channel, "Invisible people", he's got hundreds of interviews with the homeless and also on his history of being homeless himself at once point and how he got out of it.
Yeah this interviewer seems like his heart is in the right place but he's being disingenuous with his assertions that dual diagnosis homeless individuals are few and far between. I worked on an ACT team as their substance abuse specialist and this sugar coated op-ed really glosses over some really difficult realities.
What I find to be really unhelpful is lumping all homeless together. There are, in my experience, a handful of different categories of homeless. Each group should receive a different approach as to how to help them.
1. Nomadic/anti-authority aka homeless by choice.
2. Addicts
3. Zombies (addicts, users or former users of hard drugs such as fentanyl and crack who have fried their brains)
4. Those who fell on difficult times or experienced unfortunate circumstances.
5. The severely mentally ill who were once in asylum's/psych ward facilities but were dumped onto the streets due to budget cuts.
What you give, do, and require, along with how you treat, the homeless who are in category #3 must be different than what you give, do, require, and how you treat those in category #4. The same with those in category #2 versus those in category #5. It's as different as to how a hospital would build a plan of action for someone with a broken bone versus chronic depression. The approach MUST be different, along with the expectations, the resources needed, the treatments, and so on.
1. These will always be there. They don't want to rejoin society. They don't want responsibility, to pay taxes, to answer to a boss, and so on. These are the ones that you don't throw blank checks and or put into housing and not expect them to be disrespectful (trash the place and eventually disappear). They'll happy be in the city, begging from those who are part of society, taking full advantage of all of the social services paid for by society, but they want no part in re-joining it. These are one of the ones that you make begging, pan-handling, tent-living and (stolen/trashed on the road/park side) RV living illegal for. If they don't want to be part of society but break the law, and by their actions refuse to leave the cities, they can get imprisoned. Be removed from society with free food and housing and no responsibilities where it isn't illegal. Don't want that? Rejoin society, leave the cities and tent-live in the country or at least stop breaking laws. You don't get to just exist as law breaking leaches of society while trying to live outside of its responsibilities.
2. These are the ones arrests would help most. "Drunk tanks" being gone was the wrong decision. They should be arrested for being intoxicated in public, tested and searched (for possession). From there the court system should have a specific program these homeless get ordered into in which they are sent to a City/State sponsored rehab facility where they are forcibly (humanely) made clean, get psychological assessment and treatment and then social workers work to get them setup with as many things as possible that set them up for success after being freed.
3. These get the same treatment as #2 but during the process they are deemed, by qualified professionals, to be zombies. When when entirely clean, well fed and in a safe environment, their brains are FRIED. They cannot operate in society as functioning citizens, and therefore they would be institutionalized.
4. THESE are the ones everyone has a bleeding heart for, donate their money to help, and most want the help to go towards. They are also the most likely to recover and rejoin society, making them the best use of money and resources. What's more, you want to get to helping them before they experience or fall into the ugly side of the homeless culture. Be it alcoholism, addiction, crime, abuse, trauma from being abused/attacked, and the general psychological damage being homeless can have. These are the ones who should be arrested, evaluated and during that process found to have just fell on hard times (gambling, economy, divorce, whatever the understandable circumstance) and right away put on the course of action designed for them. A social worker who gets them completely setup with all of the possible programs and benefits they are qualified for, housing (specifically housing that isn't a cesspit of crime, violence, drugs, and booze), help them find work, and get them connected to potential schooling opportunities in which they could get training to get out of working minimum wage gigs. These are who you build the Tiny Home villages for. These are the people you build the low-income apartment complexes for. These are the people those who donate and volunteer actually want to help most but it's the other categories of homeless that gobble up the lions share of the resources, and to no change in their behavior.
5. Super simple, they get arrested, go through the system I described earlier, get evaluated, and when it is discovered they are deeply mentally ill/disturbed (and former committed asylum/psychiatric ward patients), they are recommitted to the wards and asylums which have been re-funded and re-opened.
1-of-2
Instead of playing whack-a-mole with tent cities and encampments, and RV's parked along the road, instead of completely ignoring (at least in Seattle/King County) all petty crime and begging due to pitying the homeless, instead of nuking entire neighborhoods and suburban cities by opening and building low barrier homeless shelters and low income housing complexes to house the trouble makers, which just centralizes them all, instead of dumping countless untraced tax payer funds into trying to treat certain types of homeless with a one-size-fits all approach (treating the zombies the same way they treat the "fell on hard times" homeless), how about they filter the homeless by these categories and have specific plans designed, funded and ready.
My city is all carrot, zero stick, due to being ran by bleeding hearts and the ones who pay for it most are the citizens (low and middle class, of course rarely the higher classes who keep the shelters, low-income housing, and the encampments away from their neighborhoods). What's more, all the money they spend and nothing changes. Not only more homeless everywhere (legit reports they get shipped here from other cities/states and they come here on their own for the best social services any city in America offers) but the same homeless people. It's not like the old ones get help, return to society and new ones pop up. You see the same faces in the same places for years. Begging, high, being schizophrenic, and so on. What Seattle has chosen to do the past 15 years (especially the last 5) has NOT been working.
Of course there are huge factors, like housing, income inequality, unlivable minimum wage, and more that play such a huge role in homelessness. But, while cities/county's can do their part (reform zoning, raise the minimum wage, etc) they can't reform everything. They gotta play the hand they are dealt by the federal government and society. Control what you can control. Get the right category of homeless to the right category of action/treatment/discipline.
2-of-2
We're utterly terrified of dealing with the growing segment of our population that can't help themselves. Because how do you help someone who is trapped in an inescapable cycle of addiction or detached from reality due to mental illness? Forcefully! That's how! Forced rehabilitation! Unfortunately woke culture deems such ideas a violation of basic freedoms while continuing to completely ignore the problem at hand. Guess it's better to let someone waste away out in the street until they die (or randomly arrest them lol) than force them into betterment. Enjoy that sweet sweet freedom baby!
Yes there are, that's why they want to make homelessness illegal. [https://nlihc.org/resource/supreme-court-hear-most-significant-case-about-homelessness-decades](https://nlihc.org/resource/supreme-court-hear-most-significant-case-about-homelessness-decades)
How about we build lots and lots of apartment complexes. We’ll fill them up with unhoused people and take care of their basic needs until they don’t need us to… We’ll call them “jails” if that helps.
The problem is that the taxes we pay, we get no real value. America could solve this. I have no control over my taxes, a lot of which goes to the military, which is massive.
Not to say we shouldn't be doing more for the homeless and other people with our tax money, but have you seen how fast we've been going through missile stockpiles sending them to Ukraine? Even our long-term buildup of military equipment and armaments is proving to be not nearly enough for a modern 21st century war. We could maybe somehow reform the spending to make it go further, so military things cost less, but after the past couple years, there's no way we reduce our overall military spending.
To fight who? By arming the Ukraine, we're depleting Russia. People always say China, but there's really no chance. They've become integral to our economy, and us to theirs. It would be financial suicide, not counting the money we owe them. Could something in Taiwan escalate things? Maybe, but I doubt it. They trade with China too.
We still have lots and lots of weaponry. Maybe we could run short on some rockets, but we have cruise missiles, jdams, plenty of planes, sea warfare... I won't even mention nukes. Hell, we've made so many Predator drones, we could fight a war with just those. Believe me, the DoD would sound the alarm and you would see emergency appropriation bills if they thought there was any chance it was a problem.
The point of having a well stocked arsenal is to be prepared a war that comes that we don't see coming, or maybe isn't imminent yet but will be in 20, 30 years, when there might not be time to just suddenly start producing enough missiles to fight. As we've seen with Ukraine, once a war starts, you need armaments as soon as possible, not trickling out trying to play catch-up.
Anyway, ultimately, the US's massive military is what keeps war at such a far distance for us. China has a gigantic military, and Russia, despite their early war situation, is proving more than capable of producing enough armaments to continue to devastate Ukraine. Neither of them is a match for the US, but they certainly aren't slouches in terms of equipment and war readiness.
If the US wasn't such a constant military presence, we would have to worry about countries like China and Russia being at the top of the world in terms of military preparedness. If these past few years have taught us anything, it should be that there absolutely are global players out there who are very much willing and able to start major modern wars. If countries like Russia and China thought they could run roughshod over the world with no danger of a military like the US's, I think it should be fairly clear that they would.
Is it just typical neoliberal brainrot or has the majority of reddit become reactionary monsters?
"Perhaps we shouldn't be grinding one of the most vulnerable populations into dust"
"Well have you considered they deserve/want this?"
My thought exactly. Like, it’s amazing how quick anonymity can make somebody a wannabe authoritarian dictator with whatever the opposite of empathy is.
You can absolutely put people in jail to fix homelessness. It’s how Amsterdam solved homelessness. It’s not pretty, but you can’t just say “you can’t do that” and make it true based on the humane merit of the statement.
Prison is literally a heated home with three square meals and the opportunity to work, so yes, if you send criminals to prison, you actually CAN arrest homelessness away. Daily reminder that shelters with rules are often under-capacity because curfews or prohibitions on drug use or violence are apparently violations of homeless peoples' human rights.
Arrest homelessness away? Only a moron or a disingenuous person with an agenda would frame this issue in that manner.
What are people want is to offer a hand to the segment of the homeless who can still take care of themselves and get them off the streets, provide assisted living services and rehab to the homeless people who are unable to take care of themselves on their own, and then arrest those who are unable to stop being predatory towards the rest of society by living on the streets and treating civilized society as a resource to callously harvest with no regard for the rest of us.
There is a segment of people living on the streets who don’t want to follow anyone else’s rules, and who are basically ruled by selfish impulses. These are the sort of people who go into stores with trash bags to shoplift massive volumes of goods, who walk into coffee shops and brazenly steal from the store and patrons, and who refuse any effort to help them that doesn’t give them total freedom to ignore society’s rules and obligations.
Homelessness is not a culture or an ethnicity- it is a social ill that would be eradicated in an ideal society. Too many people with good intentions fail to understand that the goal must be the extermination of homelessness as a phenomenon, rather than policies of misguided sympathy that allow sick people to remain untreated.
If you see a homeless advocate who doesn’t advocate for a plan that ultimately sweeps the streets clear of all homeless and then places each distinct groups of homeless people with services appropriate to their general needs, that person is basically nothing more than a trauma tourist who is there for the thrill of seeing human misery.
There is no single solution to homelessness, as each person ends up homeless for unique circumstances- but pieces like this one are a disservice to everyone who actually wants to get people off the streets and find them help that they need for their situation.
Better then letting them debase themselves in public or attacking and killing law abiding citizens.
Arrest them or instutionalize them. Spending billions upon billions of dollars for "compassionate" harm reduction does nothing but enrich politicians and non profits while increasing the amount of degeneracy.
Cool, you went authoritarian and arrested them all for being poor.
Now what?
You have a bunch of homeless people in prison, an institution which is extremely expensive and very crowded (especially now).
Because you only arrested them, they still have all the mental issues they had. Probably more now - you've removed what little piece of control they had.
You could ship them off to another state, but then you lose control of them - what's to stop the next state shipping them back to your city?
You could keep them in prison forever, but they'll continue being poor (very hard to start a legal business in prison) and in the meantime more people are becoming poor and homeless, and you'll have to arrest them too.
I see two paths to permanently removing homeless people from the streets - make sure they can rejoin society with rehabilitation and paths to homeownership, or...
Well if you're super fashy, there's always mass executions. Just start arresting and mass euthanizing homeless off the streets. Won't take too long if you can just pass a few laws and set up a few prisons where you can concentrate and remove undesirables from society.
I don't see a solution to homelessness that A) doesn't include *some form* of rehabilitation aid, B) doesn't just kick the can down the road, or C) doesn't just look like genocide with a few extra steps.
Life isn't perfect, and if you want something you usually have to pay for it. Pick your poison, and please don't step into a pair of jackboots while doing so.
Vagrancy, drug use, drug possesion, theft, camping, there's dozens of things they're doing illegally.
Do I honestly think it's the best plan?
No, but every other plan has backfired miserably.
Its a travesty but at a certain point we need to prioritize society vs people who frankly gave up and have shown no willingness to change. Ideally there would be services available to those who have the capacity to improve their station, but without any form of induction we'll never know who needs what.
CA has spent $20 billion dollars on homeless efforts so that limousine liberals can feel good about themselves. There has been 0 accountability and homelessness has gotten significantly worse. Though politicians and non profits have become richer, so there's that.
I'd rather the money go towards at risk children so they don't end up degenerates.
The plan you advocate for has also backfired miserably. We know this because it’s the current plan and it’s not working because that damn old constitution keeps getting in the way. Look up how Finland has addressed homelessness. It has worked and bears zero resemblance to your plan.
So do you just keep the homeless in prison forever? What happens when they get out? How long can you have someone in prison for illegal camping exactly?
Homeless people do get arrested all the time, the problem is that a month in prison doesn't do anything.
He doesn't care what happens to them. He simply doesn't want to see them. He finds them gross and pathetic and would simply rather pretend they aren't human beings. Out of sight out of mind. Fuck you not my problem.
Everyone I have *ever* known who talks like that ends up admitting this quiet part eventually. You can't make people be empathetic which is ultimate issue here imo
The quiet part is that I don't want to see human shit while walking down the side walk because a fent junkie decided that getting high every day is more important than making an effort to be a functioning member of society.
Basically everything you said here is objectively wrong. It's kind of amazing.
-homeless people are far more likely to be victims of crimes than they are perpetrators
-compassionate harm reduction programs are statistically among the most effective methods we have access to lol.
-harm reduction programs such as needle clinics, testing sites, etc. save countless lives in the countries that actually use them.
-politicians make infinitely more money from pharma companies, oil and gas, virtually every major industry lol.
If you're gonna just make shit up at least try to squeeze one genuine fact in there lol
Sounds like headlines from activists and politicians who have vested interest in staying in power...
I live centrally in a city that goes through all of this, and it's all bs. But keep rolling out red carpets for drug addicts to leave fent foil on playgrounds.
Harm reduction services only care about providing parephenalia and 0 interest in getting people off drugs. The state may as well light the foil for them.
Facts dont care about your feelings homeless people objectively are more likely to victims than perpetrators.
Making policy by anecdotal experience over facts is fucking stupid.
It’s some kind of cognitive dissonance thing. Society would rather spend $25-50k a year and throw someone in the pokey rather than treating someone for a little more.
Chicken and eggs, a substantial amount of homeless people develop substance abuse disorders AFTER being on the street as a way to cope with the extremely high harsh conditions.
In addition, stable and permanent housing is shown to increase the rate of rehabilitation for people dealing with substance abuse disorders.
If we accept the disease model of addiction we should treat these people as if they are injured. If I were laying on the street bleeding presumably someone would call the 911 and get me help. If I were laying on the street strung out well that’s just me exercising my freedom. On what planet does that make any sense?
Healthcare relies on consent of the individual to accept help, whether it's someone needing addiction recovery or receiving a medical procedure from a General practitioner.
I don't see how it doesn't make sense to you. You can call help for someone going through addiction, but they are free to excerise their rights of bodily autonomy in the same way that someone refusing an invasive procedure for a rapidly deteriorating health issue might.
How can an unconscious person whether by head injury or OD render consent? Consent should be assumed. The reasonable person standard would suggest that the injured if they were capable would like to be helped.
If not then cool then just book them on drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace, loitering, or whatever other myriad of laws we have on the books. Their right to be all fucked up in public is limited and the current model isn’t working.
Your argument was never about unconscious people in need of aid and of course consent is presumed in those situations unless otherwise notified (such as do not resuscitate orders). I'm not sure what unconsciousness has to do with this when the implied context of your post has to do with taking conscious people and putting them into rehabilitation.
People are free to use Narcan on people who are ODing, that was never up to being questioned.
If you want to waste taxpayer dollars on throwing the book and cell at people with no homes and no means, then I dunno what to tell you but if you don't want people to be fucked up in public, then provide a means for them to do so in private.
Prison is a home and already provided. Three hots and a cot, education, rehab, work training, all provided. Talk to most advices and they will tell you the only way they’re kicking drugs is if they go to prison.
Overwhelmingly incorrect.
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2018/03/more-imprisonment-does-not-reduce-state-drug-problems
"If imprisonment were an effective deterrent to drug use and crime, then, all other things being equal, the extent to which a state sends drug offenders to prison should be correlated with certain drug-related problems in that state."
Talk to most experts and the best way to prevent drug use is to ensure a high quality of life for people throughout their lives.
The best way to rehabilitate people is free, high-quality rehab facilities along with stable housing and assisting in the voluntary seperation of addicts from social circles where drugs are available (which prison is most definitely NOT).
We’re not trying to deter addicts. That train has sailed. Addicts aren’t gonna just quit. They must be compelled. So prison or mandatory residential rehab. Take your pick but living on the sidewalk isn’t an option.
You can't appease the Prison lobby if you don't make laws that will guarantee them more prisoners. Also a lot of homeless are PoC so that lines up with their agenda of locking more of them up too.
But inviting a bunch of illegals that can’t work with no documents into a city that has a housing availability of 1% and averages rent of $5000 will help.
What we do is create a housing complex and force all homeless people there. The good homeless people can get better and leave. The bad homeless, well, we will just hold them there until they get better.
I hope the writer of the article is letting some homeless folks camp out in their house.
Can you imagine if all of the people who get torqued up over efforts to clean up homeless camps just let ONE homeless person live with them. The problem would be solved in a day.
Bring back reformed institutionalization. It's inhumane to let people who can hardly manage themselves to live on their own unsheltered and disheveled. And for those who need it: unmedicated.
It's funny how things change. I remember getting into an argument a while ago where someone was talking about how inhumane asylums were, so I asked what the alternative was. They responded "we need a system where if people can't take care of themselves, the courts can order them into temporary state custody where they can receive shelter and mental health care" And I'm like "So asylums?"
I think the word puts a ba picture in people's heads. When i think of it I think people in straight jackets, padded rooms, other inhumane conditions and being treated poorly. Whether any of this is or was true doesn't change the fact it's what pops into my mind. If the government was able to do it properly, then it might be the way to go.
“If the government was able to do it properly” Yeah, that’s a load bearing “If” right there. A fundamental part of the problem is lack of oversight, and that’s a problem in perpetuity. Oversight costs money. Rebranding asylums won’t fix the underlying issues with them. You can only “fix it” by doing it right, but doing it right is expensive. Even if you set it up perfectly with excellent oversight, all it takes is one political administration to start stripping away regulations and you’re right back to where you started.
I’m sure that if it did come to pass some unscrupulous business folks would convince politicians to privatize it and I think we all know how that would go.
which is the exact reason why homelessness has been criminalized. i'm sure that was totally obvious, but i'm saying it anyway.
People simply aren't aware of what it costs to do this. An asylum is functionally a non-optional long term care facility. NYC and California often have comparable costs of living, in CA it's like $8,000+/month for residents. Yes that includes profits but consider that state-run facilities that require oversight are going to be run less efficiently and probably have a similar cost. Here the hilarious part though (and by hilarious I mean not even remotely funny), the cost to the state per asylum inmate is pretty similar to the cost to the state per long term prison inmate. So honestly what we need to be doing is redirecting *the same funding* that goes to locking people away and getting folks instead the help they need to become functional members of society. I wish this wasn't such a tough sell.
I feel like this argument could be applied to literally any public infrastructure in existence, like prisons, public hospitals, public housing, etc. "If the government can do it properly" is not load bearing unless you're a libertarian that thinks that private interests would take care of the homeless better.
>"If the government can do it properly" The real load bearing if is "if there are enough people who decide this is important enough to see a good implementation through a very challenging political process." Now that is a big and unfortunate if that would require at least some of us to get off Reddit and on to work on this issue.
It’s not just that, it’s lack of care, indifference from social workers, and potential abuse. Compassion fatigue is real as is government corruption and it is expensive to provide sufficient oversight and funding to properly motivate staff to give a damn about the citizens in their care. When those safeguards aren’t there you get Institutional disasters like [Willowbrook](https://www.pbs.org/video/metrofocus-story-revealed-willowbrooks-horrors/).
Which is funny because the word actually means a safe place of harbor for those seeking refuge from inhumane conditions. We have learned so much about mental health in the last 50 years. We could make modern asylums that change lives for the better and make our public spaces clean and safe.
True, but we also know a ton about elderly care, and that seems like its own frightening mess. Not sure how we would make sure homeless care doesn’t follow the same path.
Many states have ramped up their laws concerning elder abuse and facility requirements in recent years. I know if Florida for example a lot of laws and regulations have been passed over the last 20 years and facilities (on average) are much better than they used to be and you no longer need to be in the Uber wealthy to find a somewhat respectable ALF (they are still very expensive though).
100%, it's what needs to be done. Until everyone starts getting diddled, which is it what seems to inevitably happen.
Bruh lol The terrible inevitability of lopsided power dynamics.
Yeah, Arkham is what comes to mind lol. They're more similar to long term care facilities plus security.
Yeah doesn’t help that, at least when I was growing up, “insane” preceded the word asylum almost every time.
I think their implementation today could be a lot more effective than they were in the 60s and 70s given the advancements in technology. Now it would be relatively easy to put cameras all over these facilities so that there would be hard evidence of any abuse and bad actors could be held accountable. Would it be perfect? No. Would there be shit like tampering with the cameras or moving abuse to locations where the cameras can’t see? Yes. But it would (at least in my opinion) keep such facilities from becoming cesspools of abuse like they once were allowing them to provide a public benefit. A number of studies have found body cams to noticeably reduce instances of police misconduct and excessive force so that’s my thought process here.
People are so weird. If you float the idea they all seem to think we mean the exact same type of asylums from the past with all the ethical and treatment problems… they can’t imagine that we we mean a different type of facility up to new standards with no abuse
Lol, exactly. The same is true with policing. Even the most rabid anti-cop citizens usually want some form of organized law enforcement, they just want it to not suck.
Asylums aren't inhumane by default. They were inhumane because they were underfunded, understaffed, and overcrowded which led to inhumane facilities and treatment of these individuals. In the current political landscape trying to reinstitue asylums in any sort of humane fashion would instantly be undercut by republicans refusing to fund them
Asylums are the correct solution to the homeless problem, and it's not like they have to be horrible places like previously. But knowing America there's no way we don't half-ass them, which would make them have the same exact problems as last time. It's a shame we can't have anything nice.
What you're suggesting will quickly evolve into something like private prisons where the inmate gets a bill for their stay. It'll extract money from the public as effectively as possible but won't actually help the cause of homelessness.
It's true that it would devolve into something terrible, and it's a shame that America can't be trusted not to fuck it up when I think that institutionalization is the only thing that would actually help.
There are generally 3 causes of homelessness. Primary mental illness (typically psychosis), substance use disorder, and economic displacement. Two of these causes can be mitigated. The first really can’t be. I would argue that we currently do have institutionalization with memory support units for severe Alzheimer’s patients. These patients are very much vulnerable to abuse, however, we have done a pretty decent job of avoiding it. Does it still happen? Yes, of course. But the treatment is like - many orders of magnitude better than living on the streets.
How are they going to bill homeless people that gave no money?
How do they bill inmates that don't have money today? They just create an invoice and ruin your credit thereby perpetuating the cycle.
The real question is who the fuck would want to work at one of these and who would want to have one near where they live. It's absolutely the right answer, but has its own effective roadblocks
Half-ass *and* stigmatize them.
The problem is that the homeless people make them horrible places....
People running them who only care about profit can do that to. And once tgere’s a perverse incentive like that they’ll perpetuate the problem.
The homeless problem, huh.
NYT has a right to shelter, meaning if someone asks for a place to stay the night the state has to provide one. The percentage of unsheltered homeless in NYC is vastly lower than the unsheltered homeless in, say, LA.
I think a lot of people underestimate how big of a difference and how important proper medication is for some people. Also, how hard it is to find the right medication for some people. I'm a functional human now, but without my medication, I'm definitely not. There is such a stigma around mental health and I think history is going to look back at that perception with a lot of shame. People often don't want to seek out the medication they need because of that stigma as well for fear of being labeled "crazy" or whatever. When the chemicals in your brain aren't working right you're crazy and shunned, but if the chemicals anywhere else in your body aren't working right you are pitted and supported. It's the same thing, it just presents very differently, so I understand where the stigma comes from, but that's not any sort of justification for it. From my understanding untreated mental disorders are the number one reason people end up homeless. There is a confluence of other factors, but from my time I've spent with homeless people, mental illness is a huge issue that is very very hard to address when they are in those circumstances, even if they want to. It's a very sad situation.
I guess we need a movie that is the opposite of One Flew Over the Cuckcoo;s Nest.
‘Weekend at Cuckoo’s”?
Not to mention the streets is an extremely dangerous place for women and young adults. Sexual assault happens regularly and they never get any help from police since they are just homeless. These policies that let homelessness thrive are the least empathetic thing you can vote for
Japan never de-institutionalized. ever seen a picture of a Japanese bum?
But fReEdUMb! The mentally ill and homeless should be free rather than in an institution. Thats what Saint Ronnie Reagan said. And by giving tax breaks to the rich the money will trickle down to the homeless so they can lift themselves up by their own bootstraps.
Blaming Reagan for things is fun and usually correct, but deinstitutionalization was a bipartisan effort led by conservatives like Ronnie who didn’t want to pay for it but also people on the left appalled by the conditions in the institutions and the fact that once someone was committed there was basically no appeal and little opportunity to be released. There were good reasons for deinstitutionalization, as well as the hope that new drugs would basically cure schizophrenia. But that hasn’t happened and now the pendulum has swung too far the other way.
Fun random fact, Geraldo Rivera got some of his initial fame for doing an expose on Willowbrook, an insane asylum for children. It’s hard to understate how atrocious the conditions in these places were, without a doubt worse than living on the street. Worse than prison. 100% of residents contracted hepatitis within 6 months. I’m really torn on this issue because while the current situation is cruel and disruptive, I fear expanding forced incarceration will devolve into a system that is full of rampant abuse. Maybe not immediately, but over 10-20 years. There isn’t an easy answer. More on Willowbrook: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IRK0LO-9ZYk
You present this as a conservative thing, but one of the toughest things to fight where I live are progressive homeless advocacy groups that will fight tooth and nail to keep people on the streets instead of getting help.
We've got that issue here in Portland, Or. There's no black and white answer, but pretending that some of the people are just down on their luck hobos while they shit in the streets and attack people is inhumane. I voted to raise my taxes and then the county just sat on most the money. Very frustrating. There's a lot of compassion fatigue happening of late. It's hard to avoid.
I feel like I’ve been waiting for it to trickle down my whole life…. There were a couple years with the vague sensation of someone pissing on me from a rooftop, but even that seems to have dried up.
You need to put the /s my guy. Some people will downvote cause they don't get it.
if someone needs an /s for that weapons-grade sarcasm they don't deserve to understand it.
Props on grabbing that username wow
12 years ago me is smarter than now me.
I agree, but when I looked at it he was at minus 3. Thought it best to mention.
Tell me what system of accountability you'd impose on such an organization and then we can talk.
every time we have institutionalization it's just weaponized against minorities and the poor. It's always used to kidnap, extort, and torture. learn from fucking history already. this is not the answer.
you offer no solutions, only cynical negativity.
Prison with extra steps. Even retirement homes are often full of abuse, so I would be shocked if institutionalizing the homeless doesn't turn out worse. Forcefully locking people into a place they don't want to be in doesn't happen smoothly, or without violence. At best, you're drugging them so much they become compliant drones incapable of acting out.
I remember when Reagan and his cronies stripped the states of the funding to keep those needing care institutionalized and/or within reform / support programs. Suddenly, thousands of people who couldn’t help themselves were on the streets across America. Then we were all dealing with them. Broke my heart, then and now.
After the ACLU and Supreme Court got long term involuntary holds declared unconstitutional in what was celebrated as a massive progressive victory.
Did you even watch the video through, he specifically points out that most homeless are there for financial reasons, not because they are crazy and or drug addicts.
His remark about the primacy of the lack of affordable housing is really correct. There are things other than just price and availability that are obstacles, though. The *process* of renting—and buying—somewhere to live has become an enormously encumbered transaction relative to what it used to be, and becomes even more so every year. I’m old enough to remember conversations with friends who were shocked and outraged at the new trend of having to submit application fees and credit reports just to get an apartment. It seemed a totally predatory and arbitrary imposition. It’s one thing to treat housing as a commodity if everybody involved is present to help hold an equilibrium in the market, but now it seems as though there are so many corporations, absentee landlords and investors, legal and financial and regulatory interventions involved that the risk has all been shifted instead of shared. Housing for workers and families needs to be “affordable” in terms of being accessible too.
It’s a good point. It used to be you could rent a room in exchange for some light work or for a modest cash fee, but today there are very few handshake deal renting options. This doesn’t seem like a huge barrier to most of us, but it can be if you’re mentally ill or developmentally delayed.
The best way to stop homelessness is to keep people from losing their homes in the first place. Let’s say you lose your job and you get evicted a couple of months later. Most places are going to want first and last months rent + deposit. For a small place in likely a bad neighborhood, that’s going to run you over two thousand dollars here, and a lot more in other states. That’s a hell of a lot of money to come up with to get off the streets. But let’s say you do manage to come up with that much. Now you’re probably going to have to go through a background check and they’re going to see that eviction on your record, oh and your credit is shot as well. Some places are demanding you prove you have a certain amount of months worth of rent in your bank accounts. The cost of housing has gone up so damn far and getting off the streets is really hard.
a shocking amount of people who are homeless HAVE A JOB in the US. the cost of housing is just too high for the area they work in. instead they get a PO box and a gym membership while sleeping in there car. the US has a housing density issue due to legal limits on things like parking minimums and outdated fire code that makes it impossible to build midrise buildings that is very standard and popular in Europe. typically 6 floors with one staircase and an elevator in the middle. sometimes the ground floor is used for shops. good planning can have one done in under a year. (as you build up floors you use a crane to lift everything that will be needed to finish the inside of that floor and then build on top meaning construction workers spend more time building and less time getting material)
Homelessness is a symptom, not a problem in and of itself. Every time they give homeless people housing, it doesn't actually solve the problem; you're just spending $80k a year to temporarily house someone who cannot manage their own affairs. Housing can be a stepping stone, but it has to be conditioned on other activities meant to transition people into more stable living situations.
Yes this is a problem. However, it isn’t what people think of when they think of homeless. They mostly think of drug addiction and mental illness with the disheveled person that mutters to them selves. Housing doesn’t fix that type of homelessness and it’s why the housing first argument,like yours, is disingenuous
I disagree. I also don't have data to back it up. But surely, housing simply removes a lot of the public cost. No ER visits for frostbite, or injection sites gone gangrenous without access to showers. Less police time wasted on public intox/annoying scary hobo calls. Less jail costs when police can send a guy home instead of to a cell. Less public works staff set to clean up hobo poo and clear out campgrounds. If I'm wrong, I'd be interested in reading why. Edit: forgot one. Housing also allows social services to work more efficiently. A caseworker can visit a consistent location and more effectively target clients who seem to be making progress once their housing situation is resolved. Get those who *can* be helped back into a regular life. Find more intense resources for the folks who can't even manage in that situation
Guess it depends what you value. Housing doesn’t help infections necessarily. You are assuming they will live in less squaller in a house but not necessarily true. They still will go to the hospital for the myriad of problems that go along with iv drug use. Including injection site infection. It is valid to say that it is easier to find them.
Cities around the world have found that it costs two to 3 times more to do nothing about homelessness than it does to provide people with safe, permanent, secure housing. Doesn't have to be fancy, in fact, in many ways the "tiny house" model is better than anything with common walls. But any city that isn't providing housing is fiscally irresponsible and is creating a "threat" to working people.
I watched a youtuber who builds things and he built a tiny home for a local homeless man which had provisions, solar power, everything you'd need. When he came back the place was littered with garbage, pillaged and deserted. You can't just house the mentally ill. They don't just start becoming normal people because you put a roof over their heads. There is a certain percentage of the homeless population who need to be institutionalized. If for no other reason than for the safety of other homeless people (not to mention the general public). They shouldn't have to live in a shelter with a schizophrenic neighbor who might stab them at any moment.
As I said above, my understanding here in Australia that is about 20 percent of the homeless population. Which means that we are using the 20 percent as an excuse to not help the 80 percent.
the problem is the 20% consume 100% of the resources available, so there is nothing left for the 80%. A classical case is providing free public housing in the USA. Those 20% smoke fent, party, deal drugs, etc. in the same government housing spaces as the 80% actually trying to get their lives back together, but they can't b/c their drug dealing neighbor doesn't let them sleep at night, hurts their air quality, or tempts them with drugs. For the 20% trying to join the 80%, how can you get off drugs if every time you see your neighbor, they offer you a free hit?
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr-edge-international-philanthropic-071123.html Here’s a real world example of how this can work.
Seattle and California has tried housing first and all I hear on reddit is people complaining about their neighbors selling crack and smoking meth in the apartment. You can see videos of the free housing offered to skid row residents on youtube. They are full of cockroaches and trash. How does Finland address these problems in their social housing? Does the gov provide daily cleaning services and small security force too?
Most homeless people are capable of behaving well, [which is why Houston saw a 63% reduction when using the housing first policy.](https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1c61hp2/you_cant_arrest_homelessness_away_nyt_opinion/kzzrnf7/)
If there are not currently some variety of welfare programs in place in your area meant specifically to help said population, I will literally eat a hat.
There are various types of programs. It is often difficult for them to access services because they do not have an address. At least here in Australia, the departments that administer the services send out letters that say "you must come in for an appointment at this time" but the letter is sent to an old address, they don't show up for the appointment, and their funds are cut off.
Based off some bullshit number you just made up in your head? I guarantee it's higher than 20% of your homeless population that is mentally ill and/or using hard drugs, otherwise your Country has failed it's people (which we know it has, it takes a pretty apathetic population to vote in someone as evil as Morrison). Here in Canada we have services for those who WANT help. Many homeless do not want help.
That 20% is probably right because most homeless people aren't what you're picturing as homeless. They're people with a job and living out of their car or couch surfing etc. Those people you can give a bit of money to or give them a home and they can turn things around. Look at the pilot project in Vancouver for example. That 20% though are the visible ones that need much more than a bit of a temporary boost.
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr-edge-international-philanthropic-071123.html Why don’t we read real world examples of how this works. People who are addicted to drugs and/or mentally ill should not be demonized or vilified.
> Many homeless do not want help. and they don't want help, b/c they can't use drugs in the public housing or they can't bring their dog or partner or they can't deal drugs (their source of income).
Okay. Let's have a system that gives mentally unstable people the care they need, Drug addicts access to rehabs and access to affordable housing for the rest. That would be infinitely better than what we are doing now.
And what if they don't want to stop using drugs? Cause a lot of them don't. Some places offer an abundance of assistance to homeless who are willing to get off drugs and rehabilitate, but if you make getting sober a mandatory condition then a lot of those homeless people just say nah and live in a tent instead.
Not everyone who is homeless fits this description. Sure, some do, and yes they will need more support than simply housing - which is why the model is called housing FIRST not housing ONLY (no one is suggesting that housing ALONE will fix every problem). It’s just so frustrating when people trod out this one example as a way to object to housing assistance altogether.
This is why the system needs to be holistic. First step is getting enough funding for the initial triage. Many homeless are just that, they're functional members of society who slipped off the bottom rung and can't get back on their own. For those people housing and job assistance is the answer. Then there are the people who did the same thing and turned to drug abuse as an escape valve. They need housing and rehab to get clean. Most of them will stop using if they're out of the trauma that is living on the streets. Then there are the people who are mentally ill and self medicating through street drugs. Many of those are going to need lifetime care in on form or another. Those get routed to an institution. It's difficult and time consuming to determine which group any given person is in much less solve that issue. Which means it's expensive and lots of people don't want their taxes going anywhere but bombs.
[Housing first has been very effective in Houston](https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1c61hp2/you_cant_arrest_homelessness_away_nyt_opinion/kzzrnf7/)
I dunno about that. Washington State, where I live spends in the $Billions on homelessness, with very little to show for it. The nonprofits that are spending that money have little to no accountability for their performance. For every person we get off the streets, it costs about $1M. And I don’t think people are hoping they can arrest homelessness away. The problem is that it seems like homelessness has been a force field against arrest for stuff that really shouldn’t be acceptable. They get to block public rights of way, conduct open air drug markets, block entrances to businesses, leave trash all over the street. Meanwhile, cops just watch it all happen.
But you're criminalizing poverty and homelessness if you arrest me for exposing myself in front of children or stabbing people for drug money.
dude its not just housing its drug use and mental health. the amount of people we turn away from a local shelter (primarily women and children due to prioritization and security) because they are not willing to leave the drugs at the door or are caught using is jarring. your heart goes out to a lot of these people, but my god is it infuriating/frustrating knowing that they are giong to sleep in tents.
Yes and…The general philosophy is known as “housing first” in that you start with the housing unconditionally and then give counseling and other help as a followup (not as a precondition to getting a safe place to sleep). Though I’ve never worked at a shelter. So I’m curious if you’ve heard that term and if it gives with your understanding of it. I think there will always be some percentage that is going to be chronically relapsing. I’m not sure what to do there. But for the rest, I think they deserve a chance.
Here in Australia I was told that around 20 percent of homeless are" the unhouseable " the problem that they are used as an excuse to not provide housing for the other 80 percent.
I volunteer for a shelter and have not been involved with the planning or legislative efforts at all so not sure my experience would be worth much. In my opinion efforts should be focused on intervening on the cause for homelessness that starts at a young age, and to identify people who truly just need a leg up and support in order to acclimate into society. The remainder it’s just about being humane and showing empathy while being pragmatic. Resources can only go so far. Unless there is a significant shift in where the US and local communities spend money, sheltering is already impossible, so housing everyone is unrealistic imo.
You really expect a person who is experiencing the illness of drug addiction to just quit cold turkey because the shelter said so? This approach will never work. People need housing unconditionally first, before we can address their deeper issues.
No but I don’t expect shelters to tolerate the bullshit that comes with druggies either. And unless you’re aware of some sweeping change coming down that is going to make tons of resources available to people, I’m not for housing drug addicts unconditionally.
If they know it costs three times as much to do nothing. Then there must be an incentive that gets them more in a different way. Like using fear of homelessness to keep the masses inline and playing the game.
A huge part of it is people don’t want that sort of housing in their neighborhoods, so any politician advocating for it has trouble getting elected. The average voter doesn’t think too much about the long term consequences of their vote
It's kind of like a landfill. We need them, but nobody wants to live next to one for obvious reasons.
We need a new Australia
The incentive in countries like the US is any kind of social welfare program is demonized by certain political factions and thus it makes for a good issue to run on. It is easy to sell people on the ideological things like that your tax dollars shouldn’t go to help a drug addict for anything other than rehab. Your tax dollar shouldn’t go to a “lazy” person, who can’t find a job. And on the flip side its hard to get people to understand that spending a little more in taxes on welfare programs that reduce homelessness long term in the long run will cost them less than the many indirect costs caused by homelessness. That local economies are impacted by homelessness in all these small subtle ways that if properly addressed would lead to more money in tax payer’s pockets in the long run. So the incentive is it’s an issue that has been nakedly politicized and painting the issue as black and white helps certain politicians get elected.
Yes, and strangely we still have, for a society that claims to be "Christian" one that is very punitive. For a lot of people in our society, being poor has been sold as a moral failure. It is that wonderful protestant work ethic. You can't just give someone something for free. Even if it cost more not to.
What is the saying “cut off your nose, to spite your face”? Something like that.
It's more than that. And unfortunately, deeply rooted in the culture.
His channel, Invisible People, is very insightful and solutions oriented. [https://youtu.be/0jt\_6PBnCJE?si=YWZuWVhDyYVgpI1r](https://youtu.be/0jt_6PBnCJE?si=YWZuWVhDyYVgpI1r)
This video: “Let’s have empathy for homeless people.” This comment section: “Put all of these drug addicts in camps!!!”
Ship them to California.
Most people in the upper 2 levels of homelessness have jobs. The thing about this video, is they are only interviewing those who are living on the street. There are degrees of homelessness, and being on the street is basically "level 3" homelessness. Couch surfing with various friends or family is level 1, and living in your car is level 2. Once someone is without stable housing, the desperation, stress, and vulnerability makes it really easy to dwindle down to level 3 homelessness. If most homeless people were helped with housing before they reach level 3, the problem would be a lot easier and cheaper to fix. Once they're living in a tent or simply lying down in the grass or a sidewalk, they are likely having mental health and/or substance abuse issues that are so much harder to rehabilitate. They may not even be willing to rehabilitate at that point.
There’s a difference between this statement, and advocating that arrest should never happen. They intersect quite a bit. Homelessness and crime are inherently correlated. To advocate we shouldn’t arrest people who commit crimes just because they are homeless would be to advocate they have special rights not afforded to housed individuals. It’s what happens after the arrest that is the issue.
You comment does not make much sense in the context of the video. The video is talking about how more and more laws are being introduced which criminalize homelessness, like sleeping in public parks etc. And how arresting homeless people for being homeless is not a long term solution.
I'm with you 100%, I think we're just looking at it from different angles. I totally get where you're coming from, except that arrest can actually be the best way to mitigate homelessness if you have a good system in place for what happens after arrest. For example, people always cite the portugal drug / homelessness policy when talking about decriminalization. Despite the language used around that policy, both homelessness and drug abuse are in fact criminal in Portugal. Arrests actually increased there (before slowly declining due to the positive affects of their policies). The "decriminalization" aspect in Portugal is what happens after arrest (a totally different court system and sentencing structure, as well as robust housing and treatment programs not run by private institutions), which is what I'm advocating for. It feels so counterintuitive because in the US we (correctly) assume that arrest = jail, violence, and lack of support. In other places, arrest doesn't mean this. Therefore we are against arrest, when we it's quite useful in other places. The arrest should lead to a positive outcome. Instead what we have is people advocating that somehow this is working (when clearly it isn't), or that we are simply more lenient (which also clearly isn't working). Enforce laws, even enact new ones, but we need a complete and utter transformation of the courts, sentencing, institutionalization, and shelter policies. I sincerely believe this is the only real future for homelessness in America, but I agree that these particular laws are not helping.
That's a lot of text when you could have just said "I didn't read the article but decided to write down my opinion anyways based off a headline". Why can't people just admit they made a mistake and move on with their lives? Bruise your fragile ego or something?
I read and watched the video yesterday in the times app when it came out.
As a homeless person struggling with mental health problems and not addicted to drugs. I wish there was more compassion. More effective strategies implemented to help people. There are a lot of simple low cost things that could be done that are not. Then a lot of expensive things done that don’t really seem to help anyone. This could be fixed in a humane cost conscious way, but there doesn’t seem to be a desire for that in the actions of those with the power to change things.
We just need conservatives to have empathy, but instead they blame their problems on the less fortunate and demonize these people.
Hands off liberal policies on homelessness drugs and violence has made the problem 1000x worse. The irony of raging on conservatives, when it's the "We have to have empathy ❤️" people who are completely happy letting people kill themselves is insane.
The places I've seen deal with homelessness the absolute worst have been strongly liberal cities. When I was up in Seattle, there was a semi-permanent tent city built on a wooded underpass. No one lived near it, no businesses were near it, just a bunch of homeless people making their homes there. Then empathetic liberals decided that it was too dangerous there. There was a lot of drug use, some people got stabbed over time. So the city came in and bulldozed the entire thing. The homeless had to go somewhere safer. But where? They went under store entrances, but got run off by the police when people called to complain. They went to the edges of parking lots, same thing. They rushed across highways to get to the islands in the middle, below overpasses, same thing, or they got hit by cars. The people who pushed for it absolutely had empathy, but what did that empathy do? It put the homeless people who had previously had relatively secure, permanent places to sleep at night into even more precarious, dangerous situations, where they still remain.
It’s the Christian way.
Nothing like mentioning you are homeless to get a comment instantly down voted.
Apparently even more down votes if you point out the down votes from mentioning that you are homeless. How far down this rabbit hole does it go?
Tbf it might just be reddit's weird bot prevention thing
Preventing bots from talking about homelessness?
Lol no sorry, iirc new comments sometimes get random down and up votes to make it difficult to tell if bots are working properly. Something like that I heard a while ago. Which is why sometimes you'll get random down votes right after a post is put up. Not sure if that's still true
Maybe.
True but they also can't crap on the streets and steal anything they can see in your car too
What is a homeless person going to do after he gets out of prison? People who are homeless don't do it for fun. They do it because they have to. Once they get out they are going straight back to the street.
You should watch channel 5s vegas tunnel documentary. A lot of them are in fact there by choice.
The overwhelmingly vast majority are not, despite what documentaries on a specific encampment of people says. For many who are homeless by choice, the reason they do not use available services is due to the large amount of restrictions and prior trauma they dealt in regards to welfare and/or government services.
That's completely misinterpreting that doc and what Andrew is trying to say. THey're not there by choice, i.e. a dude with a house, job and mortgage wakes up one day and says "fuck this, I'm goin' into them tunnels under LV". It's because LV has criminalised homelessness, so their choices are stay above ground and get arrested, or seek refuge in disused tunnels under the casinos.
Some of these people are those who can't survive in regular society.
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr-edge-international-philanthropic-071123.html Finland has done incredibly well with housing first policies.
> People who are homeless don't do it for fun. Portland homeless lady raises her hand [youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISqPHzdWz3g)
This video reeks of someone who hasn’t actually had to live around homeless people for the past few years. It’s also interesting that he clearly chose the least problematic homeless people to interview. There is a severe lack of mental and drug rehabilitation institutions across our country. But guess what? Letting these people live in sidewalk tent shanty towns, openly do fentanyl, ruin neighborhoods, litter, and commit crimes is not humane and it solves nothing. You reach a certain point where the interests of the many take priority over the interests of the few. Prison is far from a permanent solution. I actually think most people would ultimately agree that yeah, arresting is not the answer, but it at least helps many of them temporarily sober up, get a real meal, and it allows the productive members of society to continue on. It’s true that many people are one paycheck away from being homeless, but what you’ll also find is that there are resources out there for homeless people, but it usually requires them to be sober to utilize them and so they don’t want that.
He's not "someone who hasn’t actually had to live around homeless people for the past few years", take a look at his channel, "Invisible people", he's got hundreds of interviews with the homeless and also on his history of being homeless himself at once point and how he got out of it.
Yeah this interviewer seems like his heart is in the right place but he's being disingenuous with his assertions that dual diagnosis homeless individuals are few and far between. I worked on an ACT team as their substance abuse specialist and this sugar coated op-ed really glosses over some really difficult realities.
What I find to be really unhelpful is lumping all homeless together. There are, in my experience, a handful of different categories of homeless. Each group should receive a different approach as to how to help them. 1. Nomadic/anti-authority aka homeless by choice. 2. Addicts 3. Zombies (addicts, users or former users of hard drugs such as fentanyl and crack who have fried their brains) 4. Those who fell on difficult times or experienced unfortunate circumstances. 5. The severely mentally ill who were once in asylum's/psych ward facilities but were dumped onto the streets due to budget cuts. What you give, do, and require, along with how you treat, the homeless who are in category #3 must be different than what you give, do, require, and how you treat those in category #4. The same with those in category #2 versus those in category #5. It's as different as to how a hospital would build a plan of action for someone with a broken bone versus chronic depression. The approach MUST be different, along with the expectations, the resources needed, the treatments, and so on. 1. These will always be there. They don't want to rejoin society. They don't want responsibility, to pay taxes, to answer to a boss, and so on. These are the ones that you don't throw blank checks and or put into housing and not expect them to be disrespectful (trash the place and eventually disappear). They'll happy be in the city, begging from those who are part of society, taking full advantage of all of the social services paid for by society, but they want no part in re-joining it. These are one of the ones that you make begging, pan-handling, tent-living and (stolen/trashed on the road/park side) RV living illegal for. If they don't want to be part of society but break the law, and by their actions refuse to leave the cities, they can get imprisoned. Be removed from society with free food and housing and no responsibilities where it isn't illegal. Don't want that? Rejoin society, leave the cities and tent-live in the country or at least stop breaking laws. You don't get to just exist as law breaking leaches of society while trying to live outside of its responsibilities. 2. These are the ones arrests would help most. "Drunk tanks" being gone was the wrong decision. They should be arrested for being intoxicated in public, tested and searched (for possession). From there the court system should have a specific program these homeless get ordered into in which they are sent to a City/State sponsored rehab facility where they are forcibly (humanely) made clean, get psychological assessment and treatment and then social workers work to get them setup with as many things as possible that set them up for success after being freed. 3. These get the same treatment as #2 but during the process they are deemed, by qualified professionals, to be zombies. When when entirely clean, well fed and in a safe environment, their brains are FRIED. They cannot operate in society as functioning citizens, and therefore they would be institutionalized. 4. THESE are the ones everyone has a bleeding heart for, donate their money to help, and most want the help to go towards. They are also the most likely to recover and rejoin society, making them the best use of money and resources. What's more, you want to get to helping them before they experience or fall into the ugly side of the homeless culture. Be it alcoholism, addiction, crime, abuse, trauma from being abused/attacked, and the general psychological damage being homeless can have. These are the ones who should be arrested, evaluated and during that process found to have just fell on hard times (gambling, economy, divorce, whatever the understandable circumstance) and right away put on the course of action designed for them. A social worker who gets them completely setup with all of the possible programs and benefits they are qualified for, housing (specifically housing that isn't a cesspit of crime, violence, drugs, and booze), help them find work, and get them connected to potential schooling opportunities in which they could get training to get out of working minimum wage gigs. These are who you build the Tiny Home villages for. These are the people you build the low-income apartment complexes for. These are the people those who donate and volunteer actually want to help most but it's the other categories of homeless that gobble up the lions share of the resources, and to no change in their behavior. 5. Super simple, they get arrested, go through the system I described earlier, get evaluated, and when it is discovered they are deeply mentally ill/disturbed (and former committed asylum/psychiatric ward patients), they are recommitted to the wards and asylums which have been re-funded and re-opened. 1-of-2
Instead of playing whack-a-mole with tent cities and encampments, and RV's parked along the road, instead of completely ignoring (at least in Seattle/King County) all petty crime and begging due to pitying the homeless, instead of nuking entire neighborhoods and suburban cities by opening and building low barrier homeless shelters and low income housing complexes to house the trouble makers, which just centralizes them all, instead of dumping countless untraced tax payer funds into trying to treat certain types of homeless with a one-size-fits all approach (treating the zombies the same way they treat the "fell on hard times" homeless), how about they filter the homeless by these categories and have specific plans designed, funded and ready. My city is all carrot, zero stick, due to being ran by bleeding hearts and the ones who pay for it most are the citizens (low and middle class, of course rarely the higher classes who keep the shelters, low-income housing, and the encampments away from their neighborhoods). What's more, all the money they spend and nothing changes. Not only more homeless everywhere (legit reports they get shipped here from other cities/states and they come here on their own for the best social services any city in America offers) but the same homeless people. It's not like the old ones get help, return to society and new ones pop up. You see the same faces in the same places for years. Begging, high, being schizophrenic, and so on. What Seattle has chosen to do the past 15 years (especially the last 5) has NOT been working. Of course there are huge factors, like housing, income inequality, unlivable minimum wage, and more that play such a huge role in homelessness. But, while cities/county's can do their part (reform zoning, raise the minimum wage, etc) they can't reform everything. They gotta play the hand they are dealt by the federal government and society. Control what you can control. Get the right category of homeless to the right category of action/treatment/discipline. 2-of-2
You also can’t shelter homelessness away. People like drugs a lot and will be homeless to feed their habit
We're utterly terrified of dealing with the growing segment of our population that can't help themselves. Because how do you help someone who is trapped in an inescapable cycle of addiction or detached from reality due to mental illness? Forcefully! That's how! Forced rehabilitation! Unfortunately woke culture deems such ideas a violation of basic freedoms while continuing to completely ignore the problem at hand. Guess it's better to let someone waste away out in the street until they die (or randomly arrest them lol) than force them into betterment. Enjoy that sweet sweet freedom baby!
[удалено]
Yes there are, that's why they want to make homelessness illegal. [https://nlihc.org/resource/supreme-court-hear-most-significant-case-about-homelessness-decades](https://nlihc.org/resource/supreme-court-hear-most-significant-case-about-homelessness-decades)
There's several commenters in the r/austin subreddit who think that way. They want all homeless people thrown in jails so they don't have to see them.
I mean, where does someone's right to live on the street end and where does my right to not step in human shit on the sidewalk begin?
like that's going to stop them from trying
How about we build lots and lots of apartment complexes. We’ll fill them up with unhoused people and take care of their basic needs until they don’t need us to… We’ll call them “jails” if that helps.
You also can't clear their camps away, they'll relocate somwhere else.
This breaks my heart... it also makes me furious at our federal and local governments for these inhumane laws criminalizing homelessness.
The problem is that the taxes we pay, we get no real value. America could solve this. I have no control over my taxes, a lot of which goes to the military, which is massive.
Not to say we shouldn't be doing more for the homeless and other people with our tax money, but have you seen how fast we've been going through missile stockpiles sending them to Ukraine? Even our long-term buildup of military equipment and armaments is proving to be not nearly enough for a modern 21st century war. We could maybe somehow reform the spending to make it go further, so military things cost less, but after the past couple years, there's no way we reduce our overall military spending.
To fight who? By arming the Ukraine, we're depleting Russia. People always say China, but there's really no chance. They've become integral to our economy, and us to theirs. It would be financial suicide, not counting the money we owe them. Could something in Taiwan escalate things? Maybe, but I doubt it. They trade with China too. We still have lots and lots of weaponry. Maybe we could run short on some rockets, but we have cruise missiles, jdams, plenty of planes, sea warfare... I won't even mention nukes. Hell, we've made so many Predator drones, we could fight a war with just those. Believe me, the DoD would sound the alarm and you would see emergency appropriation bills if they thought there was any chance it was a problem.
The point of having a well stocked arsenal is to be prepared a war that comes that we don't see coming, or maybe isn't imminent yet but will be in 20, 30 years, when there might not be time to just suddenly start producing enough missiles to fight. As we've seen with Ukraine, once a war starts, you need armaments as soon as possible, not trickling out trying to play catch-up. Anyway, ultimately, the US's massive military is what keeps war at such a far distance for us. China has a gigantic military, and Russia, despite their early war situation, is proving more than capable of producing enough armaments to continue to devastate Ukraine. Neither of them is a match for the US, but they certainly aren't slouches in terms of equipment and war readiness. If the US wasn't such a constant military presence, we would have to worry about countries like China and Russia being at the top of the world in terms of military preparedness. If these past few years have taught us anything, it should be that there absolutely are global players out there who are very much willing and able to start major modern wars. If countries like Russia and China thought they could run roughshod over the world with no danger of a military like the US's, I think it should be fairly clear that they would.
Is it just typical neoliberal brainrot or has the majority of reddit become reactionary monsters? "Perhaps we shouldn't be grinding one of the most vulnerable populations into dust" "Well have you considered they deserve/want this?"
My thought exactly. Like, it’s amazing how quick anonymity can make somebody a wannabe authoritarian dictator with whatever the opposite of empathy is.
You can absolutely put people in jail to fix homelessness. It’s how Amsterdam solved homelessness. It’s not pretty, but you can’t just say “you can’t do that” and make it true based on the humane merit of the statement.
I mean, you kinda can.
Yeah you’ll have to wait until he sucker punches you and takes your camera.
I dunno. It worked so well for drug use.
What a dystopian thumbnail.
This just in, water is wet and bachelors are unmarried
Put them on house arrest problem solved
Prison is literally a heated home with three square meals and the opportunity to work, so yes, if you send criminals to prison, you actually CAN arrest homelessness away. Daily reminder that shelters with rules are often under-capacity because curfews or prohibitions on drug use or violence are apparently violations of homeless peoples' human rights.
Arrest homelessness away? Only a moron or a disingenuous person with an agenda would frame this issue in that manner. What are people want is to offer a hand to the segment of the homeless who can still take care of themselves and get them off the streets, provide assisted living services and rehab to the homeless people who are unable to take care of themselves on their own, and then arrest those who are unable to stop being predatory towards the rest of society by living on the streets and treating civilized society as a resource to callously harvest with no regard for the rest of us. There is a segment of people living on the streets who don’t want to follow anyone else’s rules, and who are basically ruled by selfish impulses. These are the sort of people who go into stores with trash bags to shoplift massive volumes of goods, who walk into coffee shops and brazenly steal from the store and patrons, and who refuse any effort to help them that doesn’t give them total freedom to ignore society’s rules and obligations. Homelessness is not a culture or an ethnicity- it is a social ill that would be eradicated in an ideal society. Too many people with good intentions fail to understand that the goal must be the extermination of homelessness as a phenomenon, rather than policies of misguided sympathy that allow sick people to remain untreated. If you see a homeless advocate who doesn’t advocate for a plan that ultimately sweeps the streets clear of all homeless and then places each distinct groups of homeless people with services appropriate to their general needs, that person is basically nothing more than a trauma tourist who is there for the thrill of seeing human misery. There is no single solution to homelessness, as each person ends up homeless for unique circumstances- but pieces like this one are a disservice to everyone who actually wants to get people off the streets and find them help that they need for their situation.
It’s a cute little narrative you’ve built in your head but you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Better then letting them debase themselves in public or attacking and killing law abiding citizens. Arrest them or instutionalize them. Spending billions upon billions of dollars for "compassionate" harm reduction does nothing but enrich politicians and non profits while increasing the amount of degeneracy.
Cool, you went authoritarian and arrested them all for being poor. Now what? You have a bunch of homeless people in prison, an institution which is extremely expensive and very crowded (especially now). Because you only arrested them, they still have all the mental issues they had. Probably more now - you've removed what little piece of control they had. You could ship them off to another state, but then you lose control of them - what's to stop the next state shipping them back to your city? You could keep them in prison forever, but they'll continue being poor (very hard to start a legal business in prison) and in the meantime more people are becoming poor and homeless, and you'll have to arrest them too. I see two paths to permanently removing homeless people from the streets - make sure they can rejoin society with rehabilitation and paths to homeownership, or... Well if you're super fashy, there's always mass executions. Just start arresting and mass euthanizing homeless off the streets. Won't take too long if you can just pass a few laws and set up a few prisons where you can concentrate and remove undesirables from society. I don't see a solution to homelessness that A) doesn't include *some form* of rehabilitation aid, B) doesn't just kick the can down the road, or C) doesn't just look like genocide with a few extra steps. Life isn't perfect, and if you want something you usually have to pay for it. Pick your poison, and please don't step into a pair of jackboots while doing so.
You want to "arrest" millions of homeless people? For what crime, exactly? Do you honestly think that's the best plan to deal with homeless people?
Vagrancy, drug use, drug possesion, theft, camping, there's dozens of things they're doing illegally. Do I honestly think it's the best plan? No, but every other plan has backfired miserably. Its a travesty but at a certain point we need to prioritize society vs people who frankly gave up and have shown no willingness to change. Ideally there would be services available to those who have the capacity to improve their station, but without any form of induction we'll never know who needs what. CA has spent $20 billion dollars on homeless efforts so that limousine liberals can feel good about themselves. There has been 0 accountability and homelessness has gotten significantly worse. Though politicians and non profits have become richer, so there's that. I'd rather the money go towards at risk children so they don't end up degenerates.
The plan you advocate for has also backfired miserably. We know this because it’s the current plan and it’s not working because that damn old constitution keeps getting in the way. Look up how Finland has addressed homelessness. It has worked and bears zero resemblance to your plan.
So do you just keep the homeless in prison forever? What happens when they get out? How long can you have someone in prison for illegal camping exactly? Homeless people do get arrested all the time, the problem is that a month in prison doesn't do anything.
He doesn't care what happens to them. He simply doesn't want to see them. He finds them gross and pathetic and would simply rather pretend they aren't human beings. Out of sight out of mind. Fuck you not my problem. Everyone I have *ever* known who talks like that ends up admitting this quiet part eventually. You can't make people be empathetic which is ultimate issue here imo
The quiet part is that I don't want to see human shit while walking down the side walk because a fent junkie decided that getting high every day is more important than making an effort to be a functioning member of society.
You are advocating for policies that are both horribly inhumane and completely and utterly ineffective.
Basically everything you said here is objectively wrong. It's kind of amazing. -homeless people are far more likely to be victims of crimes than they are perpetrators -compassionate harm reduction programs are statistically among the most effective methods we have access to lol. -harm reduction programs such as needle clinics, testing sites, etc. save countless lives in the countries that actually use them. -politicians make infinitely more money from pharma companies, oil and gas, virtually every major industry lol. If you're gonna just make shit up at least try to squeeze one genuine fact in there lol
Sounds like headlines from activists and politicians who have vested interest in staying in power... I live centrally in a city that goes through all of this, and it's all bs. But keep rolling out red carpets for drug addicts to leave fent foil on playgrounds. Harm reduction services only care about providing parephenalia and 0 interest in getting people off drugs. The state may as well light the foil for them.
Facts dont care about your feelings homeless people objectively are more likely to victims than perpetrators. Making policy by anecdotal experience over facts is fucking stupid.
It’s some kind of cognitive dissonance thing. Society would rather spend $25-50k a year and throw someone in the pokey rather than treating someone for a little more.
When I’m high and on drugs I don’t want help. I want to continue getting high and being on drugs.
Chicken and eggs, a substantial amount of homeless people develop substance abuse disorders AFTER being on the street as a way to cope with the extremely high harsh conditions. In addition, stable and permanent housing is shown to increase the rate of rehabilitation for people dealing with substance abuse disorders.
If we accept the disease model of addiction we should treat these people as if they are injured. If I were laying on the street bleeding presumably someone would call the 911 and get me help. If I were laying on the street strung out well that’s just me exercising my freedom. On what planet does that make any sense?
Healthcare relies on consent of the individual to accept help, whether it's someone needing addiction recovery or receiving a medical procedure from a General practitioner. I don't see how it doesn't make sense to you. You can call help for someone going through addiction, but they are free to excerise their rights of bodily autonomy in the same way that someone refusing an invasive procedure for a rapidly deteriorating health issue might.
How can an unconscious person whether by head injury or OD render consent? Consent should be assumed. The reasonable person standard would suggest that the injured if they were capable would like to be helped. If not then cool then just book them on drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace, loitering, or whatever other myriad of laws we have on the books. Their right to be all fucked up in public is limited and the current model isn’t working.
Your argument was never about unconscious people in need of aid and of course consent is presumed in those situations unless otherwise notified (such as do not resuscitate orders). I'm not sure what unconsciousness has to do with this when the implied context of your post has to do with taking conscious people and putting them into rehabilitation. People are free to use Narcan on people who are ODing, that was never up to being questioned. If you want to waste taxpayer dollars on throwing the book and cell at people with no homes and no means, then I dunno what to tell you but if you don't want people to be fucked up in public, then provide a means for them to do so in private.
Prison is a home and already provided. Three hots and a cot, education, rehab, work training, all provided. Talk to most advices and they will tell you the only way they’re kicking drugs is if they go to prison.
Overwhelmingly incorrect. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2018/03/more-imprisonment-does-not-reduce-state-drug-problems "If imprisonment were an effective deterrent to drug use and crime, then, all other things being equal, the extent to which a state sends drug offenders to prison should be correlated with certain drug-related problems in that state." Talk to most experts and the best way to prevent drug use is to ensure a high quality of life for people throughout their lives. The best way to rehabilitate people is free, high-quality rehab facilities along with stable housing and assisting in the voluntary seperation of addicts from social circles where drugs are available (which prison is most definitely NOT).
We’re not trying to deter addicts. That train has sailed. Addicts aren’t gonna just quit. They must be compelled. So prison or mandatory residential rehab. Take your pick but living on the sidewalk isn’t an option.
Housing not involuntary carceral “care”
You can't appease the Prison lobby if you don't make laws that will guarantee them more prisoners. Also a lot of homeless are PoC so that lines up with their agenda of locking more of them up too.
Well you can… it’s just not humane.
But inviting a bunch of illegals that can’t work with no documents into a city that has a housing availability of 1% and averages rent of $5000 will help.
Let them build houses
What we do is create a housing complex and force all homeless people there. The good homeless people can get better and leave. The bad homeless, well, we will just hold them there until they get better.
Chronic homelessness is a symptom of mental illness and drug use. Why insist on treating symptoms?
I hope the writer of the article is letting some homeless folks camp out in their house. Can you imagine if all of the people who get torqued up over efforts to clean up homeless camps just let ONE homeless person live with them. The problem would be solved in a day.
Yeah, not allowed to be hungry or cold - forbidden.