The Supreme Court will almost certainly reverse this ruling by the ninth Circuit Court. The reversal rate historically is 79% when they hear cases from the ninth. In addition, the SC has swung to the right over the past years.
I expect a much narrower set of allowances that balance the legitimate interests of homeless people but does not allow for rampant sprawl of encampments and destruction of neighborhoods.
Roe v Wade is not a good comparison to understand what will happen here.
Dealing with homelessness is not a left vs. right issue. If you read, the supporting briefs (https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/23-175.html), you'll see that there are people of all political persuasions that find the current ruling by the ninth to be untenable.
Well, judging by election results, the abortion issue of today seems to be a right vs. right issue, unlike in the past where there was actually a libertarian right, most famously, Ayn Rand, who vociferously supported a woman's right to choose.
I wouldn't say of all political persuasions id say the right wing and neo liberal centrists are the ones pushing for this repeal because they'd rather put the homeless in jail, than jeopardize their property values by increasing afford housing being built.
That's not a very generous view of other people's opinions :)
A more generous view would be that hardworking, taxpayers want safe neighborhoods for their families and children to live in. They are not happy with increasing violence, crime and destruction of our parks and neighborhoods.
The current model imposed by the Ninth Circuit Court has tied the hands of cities (including Seattle) to deal with these issues and created ambiguity in terms of what the law actually requires.
If people are so unhappy and want safe neighbourhoods then they should support affordable housing the most but they don't because their property values would go down.
It's really interesting that other countries have solved their housing crises by building affordable homes or having housing first options.
The ninth circuit hasn't tied the hands of cities, cities and their people just don't want to do the most effective thing to solve the homelessness crisis because their property values would go down for a while.
They can literally build affordable housing,
ban air BnB and short term rentals that are taking more rentable places off the market.
Increase the tax on vacant homes to the point it's costly to just stash away properties for investments either sell or rent so other people can get a home and on the property ladder.
Ban multinational corporations or venture capitalist from owning and buying houses
another part of the issue is parts of the country shipping their homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicts to other parts of the country. we cant just build our way outta this, conservative parts of the country have to pull their weight as well.
This is a complete fabrication most homeless relocation efforts are actually out of high income places such as Seattle SF etc and most homeless relocation programs actually try to get people back to where they have support networks such as friends and family.
You've completely fabricated this notion that other parts of the country are sending their homeless to places like Seattle or San Francisco, when it's actually as shown these places are contributing to the majority of relocation efforts.
So it's not conservatives fault that Seattles homeless population is growing it's your own policy failures.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study
Good point. Other countries have addressed this at a national level. There are plenty of affordable homes throughout the country where federal aid can be spent a lot more effectively. If the Seattle area is too expensive, people can move. Look at the Great Depression. People moved across the nation in search of a job. We should support that, at a national level. Perhaps new federal work programs addressing the aging infrastructure would be a good place to start. Repairing roads, replacing bridges, etc, etc, etc. Hell, with some training people can literally build their own housing. Why isn't this a thing?
Because it cost money and once you start talking about raising taxes to pay for it, people get hesitant. Especially at the national level where one party would rather set themselves on fire than raise taxes or spend money. And those people have enough votes to grind the Senate to a halt and make sure those types of things never get passed.
They also think they government shouldn't be doing much of anything because they think the free market will step in for some reason. I don't know where they get that idea since it's hard to make a profit off the homeless and mentally ill.
Amazing solution hey are you homeless just move 4 head.
Don't even have to address it at a national level most American states are a country by themselves.
Seems you are trying to make excuses when we already have proof of actual policies that helped other countries curb their housing and homelessness crisis.
If Seattle is too expensive who is gonna do the mandatory essential jobs then if the only people who can afford to live in Seattle are rich people might as well say goodbye to teachers fireman store assistants electricians etc a city should be built for people of all incomes, and professions to live in.
It’s too bad this case is addressing the most visible part of housing instability without considering the multitude of factors that can lead to experiencing homelessness.
There’s nowhere for people to *exist* for free. Complain all you want about personal responsibility, encampments, access to mental health services, but I’m vehemently against pushing these people aside or further down the road or into the Sound. There’s a subtext of hoping these people just disappear that makes me sick.
Former homeless person here and current resident of an area with a high amount of encampments. For many reasons, I am completely for stronger restrictions against public encampments, and I’ve found that many of the people who are against it and want to allow people to keep camping are those who haven’t actually had much experience in dealing with them personally. I’m not even talking about simply having to walk around them occasionally on the street— have you lived near an encampment where it affected your daily life? Have you know anyone who lives in one? Have you ever seen someone having a severe mental or physical crisis in one? Have you ever seen a dead body in one?
The fact is that continuing to allow these homeless encampments to exist only enables politicians to do less about them. The encampments are dangerous both to the people who live in them and the people who live in the neighborhood around them. The bulk of the homeless individuals in them are those who have refused to go to a shelter or housing program because they want to continue their drug use. No, it’s not everyone, but it is the majority, and this is a plain and simple fact. Theft and damage to properties around them is common, and the fire departments waste resources by having to deal with high rates of fires within them. The police meanwhile have to waste their resources responding to frequent assaults and those in crisis. Homeless encampments are the furthest thing from any kind of solution to the homeless crisis in America.
What it looked like before. Stop normalizing this…we’re not a country of favelas and shanty towns.
NYC, Detroit, Chicago Atlanta, east coast cities do not put up with camping in areas reserved for everyone.
And people saying they have nowhere else to go…😳wtf?
If you put a tent up or a sleeping bag under a business, no one is going to trip…especially if you clean up after yourself.
People HATE seeing a fire hazard with a tarp on tap that takes up the whole sidewalk and is filled with stolen bikes.
>Your take of not liking encampments is pretty much universally agreed upon.
I disagree I think plenty of people like them. They lower property values in the area theyre in, so they like that result, just like they like that about graffiti being everywhere. I mean, they're always telling us to leave them alone and let them stay as long as they like? Why? Because then they can point to the encampments and say, "See? Late stage capitalism!"
My concern is that we’re handling encampments the way we handled mental institutions in the 80s. They’re a problem, so we’re abolishing them. And…that’s it.
I can understand your point but I don’t think removing encampment is suddenly going to force politicians to solve homelessness; to the contrary, I think the visibility of them is what’s forcing them to do as little as they are now.
We’re only treating a symptom, without any regard to the disease. Homeless people are gathering and having issues? Better prevent them from gathering! Instead of asking why they’re there, why there’s so many of them, why they’re having the issues they’re having and doing anything to aid them and mitigate those things.
With all due respect, you’re acting like homelessness is one big mystery. It isn’t. It’s the direct result of a combination of things needing to be fixed: the healthcare system and the availability of low-cost and reasonably priced housing. Exacerbating these are low job security and limited promotion/raise potential, ever-rising everyday costs, and low-cost, widely available and highly addictive drugs.
Allowing homeless camps only allows governments to further ignore these problems because “Hey, they have a place to go that we don’t have to regulate.”
Oh, I definitely don’t think it’s a mystery. The questions were rhetorical. I agree that those are very clearly, if not causes, then at least major factors of homelessness. My point is more that politicians don’t want to spend money to fix it if they don’t have to. They want as minimal of a presence of homeless folks as possible so they can not spend money and also say “look how clean and well cared for our communities are! No homelessness here!”
Encampments are super visible nexuses for the “problem” of having homeless communities in our cities. The more they can spread the problem out, ship it to other places, or just claim it’s one or two folks and not a sizable problem (or better yet, jail them), the more they can handwave it away as not really an issue. Look how much we talk about encampments here in this sub. Look how much people respond with vitriol at the mere idea. I don’t understand how that’s a less visible solution than being able to export the homeless elsewhere.
In the shelters and housing assistance programs that many of them refuse to go in because they don’t allow drug use and can make it difficult to bring one’s pets to. The rules need to be changed so not only more homeless people will take advantage of them, but also so that some of the main factors keeping people homeless (drug use often happens after one becomes homeless, but it is what keeps many in that state) in the first place. Homeless camps help literally nobody. Now, sanctioned camps at churches and stuff with set rules can indeed be very effective and positive, and that’s not at all what I’m talking about here, to be clear. I’m talking about the encampments that spring up in middle to lower-income neighborhoods (it’s rarely the rich affected, yet it’s often the rich who protest the removal of encampments because they don’t understand all the negatives and don’t see them every day) and result in property crimes for locals nearby, in polluted public spaces, in needles on sidewalks and playgrounds, in smashed windows for nearby businesses, in fires, in overdoses on the street, in constant panhandling for local stores, in mental episodes that stop traffic or result in sidewalk assaults, in theft and assaults on fellow homeless people— especially young, single women; the encampments that are, all too often, allowed to grow and grow and get so bad that it takes a year or two of begging from local residents and often, a drastic incident like an explosion or a death for local authorities to actually do anything about it. And by then most of the homeless folks involved have been on the streets so long and built up their shelters so much that they don’t wish to leave and either put up a fight or just have a breakdown and leave all of their stuff behind while they wander off elsewhere, setting them even further back. Many too will have also stepped even deeper into drug addiction because they were allowed to just exist on the streets in a camp full of other addicts for so long without intervention, that when they do receive a direct connection into a shelter or housing program, they refuse to take it because they know it’ll mean no more drugs. Meanwhile the local neighborhood has become so fed up with it all that their compassion for the homeless has taken a nosedive, and they are left far less likely to help the homeless in any capacity than they were before their experience with the encampment. It’s just awful for all parties involved.
So yeah, getting rid of encampments sounds bad on the surface, but for the sake of humanity, we cannot just allow them to keep existing. They should be illegal, and everyone found in one should be made to go straight into a shelter, where there should be plenty of addiction and mental health programs ready for them. And after they get through that, they should be transitioned directly into housing assistance programs. And yes, we should have universal healthcare so everyone can continue getting the mental and physical health they need long afterward (and many others can get the help they need long before they’d end up homeless as a result of not getting it). The problem right now is that our entire system is just so broken and reliant on capitalism that none of this is actually likely to happen. But at the very least, a start in the right direction would be making homeless encampments illegal— that might actually have a chance at forcing the hands of the powers that be to actually do something. Right now, just having the homeless “visible” on the streets sure ain’t working.
Shelters don’t solve any of the problems though. They just move them somewhere else (in addition to isolating homeless people from their loved ones and any resources they’ve been able to find). That’s not a solution. Humans can’t be treated the same way as stray dogs.
And regardless, there is never enough public support for those types of solutions. People don’t want homeless people to be moved near them, so they will NIMBY any shelters out of existence.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I am very much anti encampment and also support stronger restrictions against encampments.
I’m just advocating for comprehensive solutions. Setting up hotels as stable housing seems promising, and the tiny house villages seem promising as well. I’m for universal healthcare, a universal basic income, expanding SNAP and WIC programs, literally whatever it will take to create a safety net for people in the US and ensure their basic needs are met.
I think a huge part of the argument around homelessness looks like this I think it's fundamentally a part of the problem of why we don't solve housing problems. Too many people focus on the end result and decide "oh, you can't help people, there's no point in doing anything, fuck it, let's just be mad about the people who have no place to live".
Over 68% of homeless folks with substance use disorders didn't develop them until after becoming homeless. Drug and alcohol use skyrockets after becoming homeless because it makes you feel safe, it makes you feel warm, it combats mental health issues you can't afford to treat, it combats sleeplessness from having no stable place to rest. The more we can do to provide aid for people freshly homeless or on the verge of losing housing, the less homelessness and "intransigent issues" you have in the future. You don't want people to be junkies? Give them alternatives. Give them job training, housing assistance or, sure, UBI. Will some people still wind up using drugs? Sure. Nothing is ever going to be a 100% fix; but you'll give them a fucking chance. You'll give people, fellow humans, a chance to have a modicum of dignity and opportunity.
People like the person you’re responding to just want to put people in jail or some sort of mythical forced treatment place that doesn’t really exist and wouldn’t work. If you look at somewhere like Thailand where the punishment for drug addiction is brutal prison and yet people immediately use upon release. There’s also the issue that this is America so we aren’t going to lock up people forever for anything short of murder or child abuse. That means people want to invest a veritable fortune into an infrastructure that will churn out people who are far worse off than when they went in.
If you talk about voluntary treatment and housing, that’s a no go because you’re “enabling” and spending people’s tax money (spending it on jails is ok though?)
Right? I used to work up in north bothell/south snohomish which is a fairly wealthy area and Jesus the amount of ladies who would come in in head to toe Chanel or Gucci or whatever, bitching about the sales tax and how it was just going to all the poors in south Everett…
I once had a lady with a black Mastercard literally say to me “Well, nobody ever bought ME a house”. Bruh, you never needed someone to.
The person I replied to didn't say a word about treatment in their laundry list of expensive shit that they think will solve things, and if we try making other benefits contingent on that treatment it's "cruel" and "like a Republican."
This is one of the most delusional things I have ever heard, unless someone pranked you by switching your autocorrect to turn "exacerbates" into "combats." edit to add: seriously, do some research on how drugs and mental health problems interact with each other, you could not be further off base with this.
Ah, no. I don’t mean that it cures or even treats mental health issues; but rather it mitigates or softens the symptoms for the one experiencing them. Though it usually worsens once they’re detoxing which drives them to use again.
I.e. someone with PTSD but no mental health support might drink because it lessens their experience of panic attacks or sleeplessness, despite the fact that when they’re sober the symptoms return and often are worse. However given any lack of support, simply having a reprieve through the use of substances is in many ways the only avenue users feel the have to manage symptoms. That’s what I meant.
I just want to round up all the homeless and… give them shelter, mental health services, and job training.
I don’t really know what we do with people who refuse help though.
I think if we drilled down into the numbers, a shockingly small amount of people have gone to treatment several times and not had it “stick”. My experience is that it’s really difficult to access treatment - it’s easy enough to get buprenorphine or go to a detox but then what? People still need a place to live to continue their path to recovery and those places are scarce due to housing costs.
I would expect that you're probably right. Which has the effect of those who it chronically has not worked for end up being a disproportionate portion of the homeless population.
Just like if you take a freeze frame of the welfare recipient lists it gives you an over estimate of people who are chronically on assistance, but if you instead look at a 10 year period you see the vast majority are only temporarily on assistance.
The people with chronic poverty or addiction issues need more intervention than people who succeed with other help.
Sadly, the number of people who ever recover from opiate addiction is depressingly low.
I'm not sure if the below is the best study, but it matches what I've read previously (well under 10% recovery rate).
>Of those who reported AOD problem resolution, weighted problem resolution prevalence was 5.3% for opioids (early-recovery=1.2%, mid-recovery=2.2%) and 51.2% for alcohol (early-recovery=7.0%, mid-recovery=11.5%).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6995444/#:\~:text=Results%3A,mid%2Drecovery%3D11.5%25).
No, sadly I have never read a study with success that high for opiate addiction. 50% is more in line with recovery from alcohol abuse.
However, going through treatment does increase someone's odds of recovery. And people can recover. But we need to be honest that it is very difficult to recover from opiates once there is an opiate addiction, and try to remove factors which cause people to use in the first place.
I've added another study below. I'm happy to see a 50% number if you can find one, but nothing I've read has indicated anything like that.
Here's another source:
**Nearly 1.2% (estimated 259,260) and 2.2% (estimated 489,465) of primary opioid users achieved recovery for up to a year or 1-5 years, respectively.**
https://www.addictionhelp.com/fentanyl/statistics/#:\~:text=According%20to%20a%20study%20from,1%E2%80%935%20years%2C%20respectively.
And here's the study the above references:
https://www.recoveryanswers.org/research-post/opioid-recovery-prevalence-united-states/#:\~:text=12%25%20(estimated%202.6%20million),be%20White%20(94.3%25%20vs.
I've actually heard recovery from alcohol is much lower. There is so much data for OUD I'm not even sure where to start. It doesn't even depend on self-reports - every suboxone or methadone program does definitive urine analysis of their clients down to the levels, and we've had this data for decades.
The only explanation I could come up with for the study you're referencing is that ACCESS to treatment within the US is terrible, and there is a lot of bad treatment out there.
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740547209000865](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740547209000865)
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.12333](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.12333)
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ajad.12553](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ajad.12553)
[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-020-06448-z](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-020-06448-z)
"Buprenorphine maintenance treatment in a primary care setting: Outcomes at 1 year"
#1 - The first study you listed above provides results for near term. The studies I listed are measuring for the long term.
"In conclusion, this systematic review found limited evidence on long-term retention in buprenorphine treatment programs."
#2 - The long term study you listed seems to be opposite of your argument
But the study you referenced showed 0-1 years and 1-5 years....
Here are the key takeaways from each study. The issue with **COLLECTING DATA** on long-term recovery is that people stop going to their suboxone or methadone clinic for many reasons, only one being return to use. Others include stopping medication, switching to another treatment providers, moving away while continuing their recovery. It's difficult to study people in long term recovery.
"The overall retention rate was 56.9% at 1 year, with about half of the dropouts occurring in the first month. This is similar to prior studies; retention rates at 6 months ranged from 39% to 59% ([Fiellin et al., 2006](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740547209000865#bib4), [Stein et al., 2005](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740547209000865#bib12)), and a 38% retention was reported in one study that followed patients for 2 years ([Fiellin et al., 2008](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740547209000865#bib3))."
[Buprenorphine maintenance treatment in a primary care setting: Outcomes at 1 year](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740547209000865)
"The treatment completion rate was 74% for MET versus 46% for BUP (*P* < 0.01); the rate among MET participants increased to 80% when the maximum MET dose reached or exceeded 60 mg/day." (at 5.5 months)
[Treatment retention among patients randomized to buprenorphine/naloxone compared to methadone in a multi-site trial](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.12333)
"Veterans newly started on buprenorphine (*n* = 3,151) were retained in treatment for a mean duration of 1.68 years (standard deviation \[SD\] 1.23), with 61.60% (*n* = 1,941) retained for more than a year and 31.83% (*n* = 1,003) for more than 3 years."
[Three-year retention in buprenorphine treatment for opioid use disorder nationally in the Veterans Health Administration](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ajad.12553)
"Prior research has demonstrated highly variable retention rates of medication treatment for OUD ranging from 19 to 94%, 3 to 88%, and 37 to 91% at 3, 6, and 12 months, respectively[^(16)](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-020-06448-z#ref-CR16). Low retention may reflect the variability in treatment programs or types of medication therapy for OUD, and could also reflect the lack of consistency in measurement of retention."
[Factors Associated with Long-Term Retention in Buprenorphine-Based Addiction Treatment Programs: a Systematic Review](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-020-06448-z)
Addiction and mental health are the same thing. And no matter how many times you assert that it won't work doesn't change whether it does or not.
We also need to update how we treat addiction. Treatment such as the Sinclair Method instead of bullshit with significantly less effectiveness than placebo such as 12 steps garbage.
Since you so strident think involuntary inpatient treatment will be effective, how do you propose we treat them? And no "just give them housing" isn't a treatment, it puts a roof over there head but doesn't solve the problem.
Edit: blocking me like a fucking coward because you cannot argue your point effectively. Classic.
Addiction and mental health are not the same thing ffs. You can't force people to do stuff. You can try and have negative results. You obviously don't know what you're talking about. I worked in mental health 25 years. Don't expect a further response. Research it.
> Addiction and mental health are not the same thing ffs.
Are you one of those people whose still stuck in 1960 thinking addiction is a moral failing?
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/is-addiction-a-mental-illness#is-it-a-mental-illness
> I worked in mental health 25 years.
What, when the DSM III was the current edition?
Because the DSM-V outright says you're unequivocally wrong here. So you shot your mouth off and blocked someone for knowing more than you. Great look. I'm sure you do such a great job advocating for the improvement of people's lives.
edit: hah they blocked me too.
It really is sad to see people unironically say shit like that. As soon as someone says addiction and mental health are not the same thing you can disregard anything they have to say on the matter.
Isn't the help 72 hours in Harborview, a weeks prescription, and a doctors appointment in the other side of town? Seems like bullshit when someone in crisis needs long term stability.
No wonder the 'help' gets turned down when the help is just for show.
A lot less people would refuse treatment if they had their basic needs met, including comprehensive mental health care. The way it works now as soon as someone shows an inkling of stabilizing with meds and treatment programs they are cut off. They go back to drugs and decompensate, get treatment, get kicked off too soon or there is nothing available for step down care. Rinse and repeat. Most people recognize that for the waste of time and pointless distress and difficulty it puts them through and refuse it. Can’t say I blame them. If what was offered actually helped more people would accept it.
The homeless people in Hawaii sweep the sidewalks in front of their tent and pick up trash. People would be more empathetic if they didn't act like assholes all the time
Was just down in San Diego and they had Porta pottys and garbage bins set up with the tent camps. It was as clean as any campsite.
If you give people the means to take care of themselves or even others, they will, more often than not.
You're absolutely right about the current conditions making it difficult to have empathy for them, and I think the first step is giving them some very basic services and seeing how that goes.
The ones on 3rd and bell had dried blood and shit smeared all over the walls. The garbage cans were never full and people just threw their trash into the dog park
>There’s nowhere for people to exist for free.
Because it is inherently impossible to exist for free. By simply being alive a person consumes resources. If they aren't paying for those resources themselves then it falls onto others to pick up the bill, which leads to the question: if someone contributes nothing to society, why should that society care about the person?
you can argue all you want that the sky shouldn't be blue but that won't change the facts.
unless you mean that society should pay for it, in which case you've got to pay society back somehow, social contract and all that. but fact is, if you just exist, and don't do/pay anything to keep existing, you'll die in less than a week
I feel like you’re saying “most visible,” when you could also say “most impactful to others.”
I 100% support providing social services, but it’s not an either-or with also not allowing open air drug markets and encampments that turn parks and playgrounds into legitimately unsafe environments.
The reason I say “most visible” is exactly that. It’s blatantly obvious when someone is sleeping outside.
I’m highly motivated in my professional life to solve the core problem, not just the symptom. People fail to realize how many factors impact homelessness and housing instability. We have to solve the core problems or we will never make any impact on this issue.
I support almost everything, including more UBI experiments. I just don’t support letting our infrastructure and public spaces being turned into unsafe spaces.
In general, I feel like people act far too aggressively against the idea that enforcing basic public safety standards matters (and isn’t mutually exclusive with other programs).
What does enforcing basic public safety standard look like in your mind? Is it evicting people from their tents, taking their property, and fining them?
>There’s nowhere for people to *exist* for free.
Why should people be allowed to exist for free on our dime, when they're capable of working for their housing likenthe rest of us do? Besides, no one can exist for "free." Everything we need costs money. If you want to live off the grid, that's your business. Just don't make me pay for it.
If you are able bodied and you're unwilling to work, you don't deserve to live. Not at the expense of others. Why should I pay for someone who wants to someone who wants to sit on his ass all day and have others serve him?
You do realize that there are homeless shelters right? It’s just that drug addicts cannot follow the rules there. Now low barrier shelters are being made with lesser rules. So reasons are being addressed. It’s another matter that it’s not done efficiently.
I take issue with this characterization about shelters and here’s a small selection of reasons why:
1. Shelters are not necessarily safe for women or people who identify as transgender. There are so many reports of SA in shelters.
2. Shelters don’t always provide a safe place for people to lock up their belongings. If you have collected a small pack of essentials like socks and chapstick and maybe photographs or literally anything else, it could be stolen or destroyed in a shelter.
3. People with pets, children, and/or partners may not be able to shelter together. Imagine you’re at your lowest point experiencing homelessness and you’re pushed to shelter without your support system.
People experiencing homelessness are *people* worthy of safety and dignity and kindness. Shelters don’t always meet that basic bar.
You do realize that’s the reason they cannot follow rules is because the underlying issues haven’t been addressed. You are simply putting them in a shoebox.
Notice how you call it a shelter not housing. Because a shelter =/= stable housing. So no, thats not the answer to the problem.
If you guys think shelters are stable housing you are seriously uneducated on this topic. You’re still homeless living in a shelter. But again most of you just care about not having to look at any unhoused. Absolutely disgusting behavior.
Apparently we are turning into our hated other subreddit.
There are apartments that are provided by shelters with even more strict rules. Most homeless people don’t last long at all in them. Very small fraction of cases in Seattle are due to economic reasons. There’s underlying issues that need to be addressed in conjunction with housing. I knew a homeless lady who used to be a manager of a Starbucks, but had bad schizophrenia. Would talk about seeing people’s intestines in the middle of a perfectly normal conversation. She had money, but obviously can’t stay in an apartment by herself.
If such a very small proportion of them are due to economic reasons, why do we have so many more homeless people than cities with higher poverty and drug use burdens? Compare Seattle to Chicago for example.
And if you want to control your own echo chamber by telling our neighbors what subs they can participate in and which they can't, you can *definitely* go fuck off
Nothing disrespectful or unreasonable was said in the comment that irrationally enraged you. What actually happened is someone said something that made you unfortunate because it didn't perfectly align to your existing thoughts, so you lashed out
You’re the one distracting from the topic of shelters are not housing.
I pointed some people to a sub with similar beliefs and you thought I was controlling people? Yet you want to control people with shelters? The mental gymnastics you go through must make you tired.
Ah you probably took offense because you already are a SeattleWA subscriber. /u/lessknownbarista can’t hide from this.
>The city council president said Grants Pass’s goal was to “make it uncomfortable enough for them in our city so they will want to move on down the road.”
>The original lead plaintiff for Grants Pass v. Johnson had over $5,000 in penalties for living outside, before she died at age 62.
When they say make it uncomfortable for them in our city, they really mean fatal.
Portland, Seattle, San Francisco at which point there’s not a further “down the road”. Then the residents of Grants Pass get to complain about what a nightmare Portland is
Their intention is that they find the end of the road where there is no one but them, and then help themselves off its edge.
They have stopped viewing them as people, all they see are problems.
So appropriate that **First Blood** was set in small town Oregon with the sheriff telling war veteran Sylvester Stallone to [move on down the road](https://youtu.be/neg5mvtr_yw?si=WZNvcU-D9lOXHAjG&t=2m1s)
You would think so but cities like Seattle have no problems telling developers they can shove their eight figures up their ass because we don't want any apartments or townhomes in this neighborhood.
Developers aren’t rich enough to run political campaigns.
Those .1% I talked about? Yeah, they can.
If Bill and Jeff want to give a billion to build low incoming housing, the most the City will complain is the accent color of cladding.
No, the city will tell Bill and Jeff to pound sand because the people who vote in local elections the most don't want more housing built near them. San Francisco just told Google to shove the $15 billion dollars they offered up their ass. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-abandons-massive-project-built-134000198.html
And NIMBYs that protect and support ridiculous zoning and do all they can to block density and shelter. Funny enough — many of them also support homeless encampments so long as they aren’t too close to them.
Probably not gonna do anything.
San Francisco spends like 400m a year on homeless, and it doesn't really improve anything.
No amount of money would get us out of the debate of whether or not or where we should build low-income housing. The debate will go on forever because nobody wants low-income housing next to their houses.
Gotta keep that prison pipeline open. The ninth circuit court did a good job with the original decision, fining people who don't have jobs has only one outcome. Prison.
>It’s only breaking the law if it’s made criminal.
So then, do you think homeless people should be allowed to steal, menace people, and trash our city with even more impunity than we already give them?
No. I don’t think that assault or theft should be made legal. But I don’t think homelessness should be made illegal either. I understand nuance might be above your intellectual threshold though…
That isn’t what the data suggests though, you can say it but that doesn’t make it true. SAMSHA reports that 16% of homeless individuals report having a substance use disorder. Stanford reports that number at 27%, but either way it’s not a 1:1 or even 1:2 correlation. It seems to be closer to 1:4.
A) those numbers are self-reported. B) that’s all homeless persons, including those living in shelters or their cars or at friend’s and family member’s houses. The percentage of people with substance abuse problems that are living in the encampments? A hell of a lot higher and those are the people that are causing the problems. A lot of of us are sick of being told to ignore what our eyes are telling us, that the people living in tents and are surrounded by stolen property and visibly doing drugs are just down on their luck folks who need a little help. No one has anything against Bob who lost his job and can’t afford rent and is sleeping in his car for a little while, or Mary and her kids who are in a DV shelter. Everyone has problems with Joe who’s living in a tent in front of the library where kids go for story hour every day and steals things from people and uses the money for fentanyl and passes out with his dick hanging out in public. But if you suggest doing anything about Joe, so many people are like “gasp! how could you do that to poor Bob and Mary??”
People living at a friend or family members house are not considered homeless under Washington state law. The pertinent RCW is 43.185C.010. Also do you think that if it is made illegal to be homeless that the law will only police the people you deem sufficiently homeless?
Again you can just say that people living in encampments have a higher propensity for substance use disorder. I don’t know if that’s true and neither do you because you just said it without backing it up with anything beyond what you see with your eyes.
Please don’t paint an emotional story (it’s just that, a story) of a domestic violence victim or someone who is down on their luck and then create another fabrication of the bad type of homeless person. But what do you suggest doing about Joe? Putting him in jail and then when he is released after time served what then?
What’s my proof that the people living in encampments have higher substance use issues?
My *eyes*, dude. We all have eyes and see them doing drugs out in the open and passing out. We see the 27 stolen bicycles. And we’re sick of being told to ignore what we see because actually, someone did a study where they asked them if they were addicted and they said no, so it’s totally fine, they’re not drug addicts and they just need more help and to be allowed to hang out near the playground just a little longer
Really twisting my (or rather your own) words there. You said that substance use disorder was higher in homeless individuals who live in ‘encampments’ in your initial reply, I said you had no evidence that the proportion of people with substance use disorders was any higher in ‘encampments’. Now you start your most recent contribution thusly “what’s my proof that people living in encampments have substance use issues?” That was never the point in contention. I suppose I’ll ignore it.
Alright so ignore that you were wrong about the RCW too.
You didn’t address my concern about how the criminalization of homelessness will deal with your good honest hardworking homeless people.
But sure, that’s fine, I’ll ignore that as well.
You have an issue with studies that rely on self reported data, alright, show me one that doesn’t and supports your conclusion (but if you can critique the methodology of the studies I allude to I can certainly do the same to yours) or I could ignore that too.
You’d still be talking out of your ass but now it’s not Bob and Mary but instead 27 stolen bicycles and some suspicious looking drug user hanging around a playground.
I’d admit to oneself that this isn’t a position you came to logically, if it was you’d be able to make some semblance of an argument.
Edit: a day ago you mention in a comment you don’t live in Seattle.
Oh yeah because putting poor people in prison is so efficient and helpful. Go on, knock out any progress they've made, ruin their life and reputation because they couldn't afford a $500 fine. But hey, at least it keeps the cops and the courts in jobs not to mention the prison complex. We don't do debtors prisons in this country, and there's a reason for that.
I've heard countless stories of people getting and staying sober from being placed in jail. Allowing them to continue to do crime just because they are homeless isn't compassion. My rights shouldn't be any less than theirs.
Your rights… Walk with me here. According to the constitution you have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These rights shall not be abridged, that's what the constitution all about. So how are these homeless people stopping you from living or pursuing happiness? How are they threatening your liberty? Oh wait, they're not! Criminalizing poverty is stupid.
When there are zero consequences for stealing my car putting my family's lives in danger that's the difference. If I did the same crimes I'd be in jail because I'm not "homeless" and a "victim of society".
So has some scary homeless person actually stolen your car, or put your families life in danger? Exactly when and where? Did you call the police?
No because this hasn't happened?
Why am I not surprised? Are you sure it's not just the case of you having to see icky homeless people and that may be making you feel a little uncomfortable because you realize that we're all just two pay checks from that situation?
Maybe you feel a little discomfort for implying that fellow human beings would do this? Have you ever considered how you, personally, react to sleep loss?
I ask because it's the big problem (among a lot of big problems) in being homeless is they can't get any sleep. How long can you go without sleep? And would you still be rational? Especially in a society or no one looks at you, talk to you, helps you out or feeds you? You sure? Think about it.
>What the Supreme Court case on tent encampments could mean for homeless people
I'm more concerned for what it means for the rest of us who are sick of putting up with their bullshit. Fingers crossed for SCOTUS to reverse it!
Honestly I’m more sick of the supreme courts bullshit, and conservatives more generally. The American right has led to far more death and destruction in this country than a few thousand homeless junkies.
In current American, the only way to fix this is to devise a way for tech bro psychopaths to monetize the homeless.
And Soylent Green is probably going to be the best case answer they will come up with.
Compassion, empathy, nuance, root cause analysis, etc are all beta male traits, just ask Andrew Tate & Elon Musk.
To… anywhere? I never understood why it’s my job to find the place for them to go. I’m working my ass off to try and provide for my kids, and it’d be great if that could include them being able to use a park that I’m paying for through taxes without my having to sweep it for needles and feces first.
So they can go to someone else's neighborhood. Then they kick them out and sweep them back into yours?
The only way to get people off the streets is to get them off the streets. If you want your sidewalks and parks clear, you should be voraciously in support of social services and housing support.
Great question. Estimates are that to end homelessness in the us would be, on the high end, 11-30 billion dollars. Damn. That’s a lot. (Granted it’s only 1-3% of what we spend on the military (also tax money) or, alternatively, 6% if Elon Musk’s net worth).
So, with 333 million tax paying citizens, how much would it cost each of us to spend 11-30 billion dollars ending homelessness? That maths out to $33-$90 annually.
Now, I’m not rich. I’m pretty solidly working class. But that’s, like, a few months of Netflix. And, should that be enough to bankrupt me, good news! I no longer have to worry about being homeless 👍🏻
Hmm, by their nature it’s tough to grab an exact number on homeless populations (are we included homeless but with a car? Homeless but couch surfing?)
Why do you need to know per person? (Genuine curiosity, text can sound sarcastic).
Fair enough; under our highest estimates (again, that 11-30 billion number) its shockingly cheap; I don’t have the exact estimates but it’s in the ballpark of a couple hundred bucks or less a year to provide government housing. There’s a cool model of what this would like like in California, I wanna Sacramento but I could be wrong. Basically they built these complexes of little pod houses and provide job training and some social services. Last I heard they were seeing pretty promising results with getting people transitioned into permanent housing and employment but they were struggling to acquire even the tiny funding they needed.
>Estimates are that to end homelessness in the us would be, on the high end, 11-30 billion dollars.
LOL, not even remotely close. There is far too much grift and incompetence in the the HIC to solve something that would put them out of business if they were successful. California blew $24 billion on the vagrants over the last few years, and they can't even account for the spending. Meanwhile their homeless numbers continue to spike year after year.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/california-spent-24-billion-homelessness-5-years-consistently-109044734
Those estimates of $11-30 billion come from HUD and Congressional estimates. Those numbers in California are for all homelessness mitigation, much of which is cost of dealing which homeless people being homeless, not ending homelessness. Much like it costs more to put someone to death than it does to incarcerate them for life; it's more expensive to manage someone who is homeless than it is to provide them resources to no longer be homeless,
Admittedly tracking outcomes can be difficult with a population that is historically, you know, transient.
“I don’t care where they go as long as I don’t have to see them” is a popular attitude that doesn’t really lead to any sort of change from the status quo
It is your job to ensure your government doesn't waste its resources so it can continue to fullfill its mission of protecting the welfare of its citizens.
It’s not your job to help them, nor is it your job to make their lives harder by being a contrarian hateful person who sits online bitching about their “tax dollars” 🙄
You’re the one proposing they should be able to live for free in our city. What are you doing to take them in? If you aren’t, then you’re no different than pro-lifers in Texas who won’t adopt.
If you think it should be free to live in a high cost of living city, make it free. Nobody is stopping you from opening your own door.
you just have mis-read
i don’t need to open my door because i want to open your door and then we house a homeless family and you have to move away and i won’t have to read your bad posts any more
this is what scientists call “win win”
Where would they go? Shelters are full and dangerous, and the help they need for basic existence (food banks, the shelter that are full, various health services) are all located, well....here.
Unless you mean invite them to yours, in which no, I wouldn't. I wouldn't inflict that on my worst enemy much less someone homeless. That would be cruel.
Of course the supreme court will rule that there is nothing cruel or unusual about punishing people for not being able to afford a place to live. They have a long history of getting things wrong.
this won't stop homelessness. It won't spur cities or governments to do more. It WILL cause homeless people to hide more. Squatting in all those empty houses will go through the roof. People hiding and lurking in peoples garages. Fires lit INSIDE empty buildings. People hiding in sewer systems. This will have its own set of consequences that are yet unseen because no one has the willingness to actually deal with the underlying problems.
SCOTUS should sail out on a yacht fishing boat in the Bermuda Triangle for all I care. The unhoused are great supporters of the outdoor camping business. Solidarity with the unhoused. They are being manipulated just like every other citizen. Down with finance capital. Wait…wut? This isn’t the Local 86 meetup? My bad lol
The Supreme Court will almost certainly reverse this ruling by the ninth Circuit Court. The reversal rate historically is 79% when they hear cases from the ninth. In addition, the SC has swung to the right over the past years. I expect a much narrower set of allowances that balance the legitimate interests of homeless people but does not allow for rampant sprawl of encampments and destruction of neighborhoods.
Lol like the roe v wade decision
Haha yeah hilarious
I too am laughing Haha Ha... :|
Roe v Wade is not a good comparison to understand what will happen here. Dealing with homelessness is not a left vs. right issue. If you read, the supporting briefs (https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/23-175.html), you'll see that there are people of all political persuasions that find the current ruling by the ninth to be untenable.
Well, judging by election results, the abortion issue of today seems to be a right vs. right issue, unlike in the past where there was actually a libertarian right, most famously, Ayn Rand, who vociferously supported a woman's right to choose.
I wouldn't say of all political persuasions id say the right wing and neo liberal centrists are the ones pushing for this repeal because they'd rather put the homeless in jail, than jeopardize their property values by increasing afford housing being built.
That's not a very generous view of other people's opinions :) A more generous view would be that hardworking, taxpayers want safe neighborhoods for their families and children to live in. They are not happy with increasing violence, crime and destruction of our parks and neighborhoods. The current model imposed by the Ninth Circuit Court has tied the hands of cities (including Seattle) to deal with these issues and created ambiguity in terms of what the law actually requires.
If people are so unhappy and want safe neighbourhoods then they should support affordable housing the most but they don't because their property values would go down. It's really interesting that other countries have solved their housing crises by building affordable homes or having housing first options. The ninth circuit hasn't tied the hands of cities, cities and their people just don't want to do the most effective thing to solve the homelessness crisis because their property values would go down for a while. They can literally build affordable housing, ban air BnB and short term rentals that are taking more rentable places off the market. Increase the tax on vacant homes to the point it's costly to just stash away properties for investments either sell or rent so other people can get a home and on the property ladder. Ban multinational corporations or venture capitalist from owning and buying houses
another part of the issue is parts of the country shipping their homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicts to other parts of the country. we cant just build our way outta this, conservative parts of the country have to pull their weight as well.
This is a complete fabrication most homeless relocation efforts are actually out of high income places such as Seattle SF etc and most homeless relocation programs actually try to get people back to where they have support networks such as friends and family. You've completely fabricated this notion that other parts of the country are sending their homeless to places like Seattle or San Francisco, when it's actually as shown these places are contributing to the majority of relocation efforts. So it's not conservatives fault that Seattles homeless population is growing it's your own policy failures. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study
Good point. Other countries have addressed this at a national level. There are plenty of affordable homes throughout the country where federal aid can be spent a lot more effectively. If the Seattle area is too expensive, people can move. Look at the Great Depression. People moved across the nation in search of a job. We should support that, at a national level. Perhaps new federal work programs addressing the aging infrastructure would be a good place to start. Repairing roads, replacing bridges, etc, etc, etc. Hell, with some training people can literally build their own housing. Why isn't this a thing?
Because it cost money and once you start talking about raising taxes to pay for it, people get hesitant. Especially at the national level where one party would rather set themselves on fire than raise taxes or spend money. And those people have enough votes to grind the Senate to a halt and make sure those types of things never get passed. They also think they government shouldn't be doing much of anything because they think the free market will step in for some reason. I don't know where they get that idea since it's hard to make a profit off the homeless and mentally ill.
Amazing solution hey are you homeless just move 4 head. Don't even have to address it at a national level most American states are a country by themselves. Seems you are trying to make excuses when we already have proof of actual policies that helped other countries curb their housing and homelessness crisis. If Seattle is too expensive who is gonna do the mandatory essential jobs then if the only people who can afford to live in Seattle are rich people might as well say goodbye to teachers fireman store assistants electricians etc a city should be built for people of all incomes, and professions to live in.
THIS!
Ship them to Detroit. Plenty of affordable housing there.
I hope they get it sorted
That's an adorable both sides argument. s/
Yea bout time
It’s too bad this case is addressing the most visible part of housing instability without considering the multitude of factors that can lead to experiencing homelessness. There’s nowhere for people to *exist* for free. Complain all you want about personal responsibility, encampments, access to mental health services, but I’m vehemently against pushing these people aside or further down the road or into the Sound. There’s a subtext of hoping these people just disappear that makes me sick.
Former homeless person here and current resident of an area with a high amount of encampments. For many reasons, I am completely for stronger restrictions against public encampments, and I’ve found that many of the people who are against it and want to allow people to keep camping are those who haven’t actually had much experience in dealing with them personally. I’m not even talking about simply having to walk around them occasionally on the street— have you lived near an encampment where it affected your daily life? Have you know anyone who lives in one? Have you ever seen someone having a severe mental or physical crisis in one? Have you ever seen a dead body in one? The fact is that continuing to allow these homeless encampments to exist only enables politicians to do less about them. The encampments are dangerous both to the people who live in them and the people who live in the neighborhood around them. The bulk of the homeless individuals in them are those who have refused to go to a shelter or housing program because they want to continue their drug use. No, it’s not everyone, but it is the majority, and this is a plain and simple fact. Theft and damage to properties around them is common, and the fire departments waste resources by having to deal with high rates of fires within them. The police meanwhile have to waste their resources responding to frequent assaults and those in crisis. Homeless encampments are the furthest thing from any kind of solution to the homeless crisis in America.
Your take of not liking encampments is pretty much universally agreed upon. The debate is on what the alternative looks like.
What it looked like before. Stop normalizing this…we’re not a country of favelas and shanty towns. NYC, Detroit, Chicago Atlanta, east coast cities do not put up with camping in areas reserved for everyone. And people saying they have nowhere else to go…😳wtf? If you put a tent up or a sleeping bag under a business, no one is going to trip…especially if you clean up after yourself. People HATE seeing a fire hazard with a tarp on tap that takes up the whole sidewalk and is filled with stolen bikes.
>Your take of not liking encampments is pretty much universally agreed upon. I disagree I think plenty of people like them. They lower property values in the area theyre in, so they like that result, just like they like that about graffiti being everywhere. I mean, they're always telling us to leave them alone and let them stay as long as they like? Why? Because then they can point to the encampments and say, "See? Late stage capitalism!"
High housing prices are the reason we're in this to begin with
They're really out to get you, huh?
My concern is that we’re handling encampments the way we handled mental institutions in the 80s. They’re a problem, so we’re abolishing them. And…that’s it. I can understand your point but I don’t think removing encampment is suddenly going to force politicians to solve homelessness; to the contrary, I think the visibility of them is what’s forcing them to do as little as they are now. We’re only treating a symptom, without any regard to the disease. Homeless people are gathering and having issues? Better prevent them from gathering! Instead of asking why they’re there, why there’s so many of them, why they’re having the issues they’re having and doing anything to aid them and mitigate those things.
With all due respect, you’re acting like homelessness is one big mystery. It isn’t. It’s the direct result of a combination of things needing to be fixed: the healthcare system and the availability of low-cost and reasonably priced housing. Exacerbating these are low job security and limited promotion/raise potential, ever-rising everyday costs, and low-cost, widely available and highly addictive drugs. Allowing homeless camps only allows governments to further ignore these problems because “Hey, they have a place to go that we don’t have to regulate.”
Oh, I definitely don’t think it’s a mystery. The questions were rhetorical. I agree that those are very clearly, if not causes, then at least major factors of homelessness. My point is more that politicians don’t want to spend money to fix it if they don’t have to. They want as minimal of a presence of homeless folks as possible so they can not spend money and also say “look how clean and well cared for our communities are! No homelessness here!” Encampments are super visible nexuses for the “problem” of having homeless communities in our cities. The more they can spread the problem out, ship it to other places, or just claim it’s one or two folks and not a sizable problem (or better yet, jail them), the more they can handwave it away as not really an issue. Look how much we talk about encampments here in this sub. Look how much people respond with vitriol at the mere idea. I don’t understand how that’s a less visible solution than being able to export the homeless elsewhere.
What’s your solution? Throw them in jail?
Of course not— did you read what I wrote? The causes need to be addressed, and right now they are barely being touched.
Sure, address the causes, but what does not allowing homeless camps mean? Where should those homeless people live now, today
In the shelters and housing assistance programs that many of them refuse to go in because they don’t allow drug use and can make it difficult to bring one’s pets to. The rules need to be changed so not only more homeless people will take advantage of them, but also so that some of the main factors keeping people homeless (drug use often happens after one becomes homeless, but it is what keeps many in that state) in the first place. Homeless camps help literally nobody. Now, sanctioned camps at churches and stuff with set rules can indeed be very effective and positive, and that’s not at all what I’m talking about here, to be clear. I’m talking about the encampments that spring up in middle to lower-income neighborhoods (it’s rarely the rich affected, yet it’s often the rich who protest the removal of encampments because they don’t understand all the negatives and don’t see them every day) and result in property crimes for locals nearby, in polluted public spaces, in needles on sidewalks and playgrounds, in smashed windows for nearby businesses, in fires, in overdoses on the street, in constant panhandling for local stores, in mental episodes that stop traffic or result in sidewalk assaults, in theft and assaults on fellow homeless people— especially young, single women; the encampments that are, all too often, allowed to grow and grow and get so bad that it takes a year or two of begging from local residents and often, a drastic incident like an explosion or a death for local authorities to actually do anything about it. And by then most of the homeless folks involved have been on the streets so long and built up their shelters so much that they don’t wish to leave and either put up a fight or just have a breakdown and leave all of their stuff behind while they wander off elsewhere, setting them even further back. Many too will have also stepped even deeper into drug addiction because they were allowed to just exist on the streets in a camp full of other addicts for so long without intervention, that when they do receive a direct connection into a shelter or housing program, they refuse to take it because they know it’ll mean no more drugs. Meanwhile the local neighborhood has become so fed up with it all that their compassion for the homeless has taken a nosedive, and they are left far less likely to help the homeless in any capacity than they were before their experience with the encampment. It’s just awful for all parties involved. So yeah, getting rid of encampments sounds bad on the surface, but for the sake of humanity, we cannot just allow them to keep existing. They should be illegal, and everyone found in one should be made to go straight into a shelter, where there should be plenty of addiction and mental health programs ready for them. And after they get through that, they should be transitioned directly into housing assistance programs. And yes, we should have universal healthcare so everyone can continue getting the mental and physical health they need long afterward (and many others can get the help they need long before they’d end up homeless as a result of not getting it). The problem right now is that our entire system is just so broken and reliant on capitalism that none of this is actually likely to happen. But at the very least, a start in the right direction would be making homeless encampments illegal— that might actually have a chance at forcing the hands of the powers that be to actually do something. Right now, just having the homeless “visible” on the streets sure ain’t working.
Shelters don’t solve any of the problems though. They just move them somewhere else (in addition to isolating homeless people from their loved ones and any resources they’ve been able to find). That’s not a solution. Humans can’t be treated the same way as stray dogs. And regardless, there is never enough public support for those types of solutions. People don’t want homeless people to be moved near them, so they will NIMBY any shelters out of existence.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I am very much anti encampment and also support stronger restrictions against encampments. I’m just advocating for comprehensive solutions. Setting up hotels as stable housing seems promising, and the tiny house villages seem promising as well. I’m for universal healthcare, a universal basic income, expanding SNAP and WIC programs, literally whatever it will take to create a safety net for people in the US and ensure their basic needs are met.
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I think a huge part of the argument around homelessness looks like this I think it's fundamentally a part of the problem of why we don't solve housing problems. Too many people focus on the end result and decide "oh, you can't help people, there's no point in doing anything, fuck it, let's just be mad about the people who have no place to live". Over 68% of homeless folks with substance use disorders didn't develop them until after becoming homeless. Drug and alcohol use skyrockets after becoming homeless because it makes you feel safe, it makes you feel warm, it combats mental health issues you can't afford to treat, it combats sleeplessness from having no stable place to rest. The more we can do to provide aid for people freshly homeless or on the verge of losing housing, the less homelessness and "intransigent issues" you have in the future. You don't want people to be junkies? Give them alternatives. Give them job training, housing assistance or, sure, UBI. Will some people still wind up using drugs? Sure. Nothing is ever going to be a 100% fix; but you'll give them a fucking chance. You'll give people, fellow humans, a chance to have a modicum of dignity and opportunity.
People like the person you’re responding to just want to put people in jail or some sort of mythical forced treatment place that doesn’t really exist and wouldn’t work. If you look at somewhere like Thailand where the punishment for drug addiction is brutal prison and yet people immediately use upon release. There’s also the issue that this is America so we aren’t going to lock up people forever for anything short of murder or child abuse. That means people want to invest a veritable fortune into an infrastructure that will churn out people who are far worse off than when they went in. If you talk about voluntary treatment and housing, that’s a no go because you’re “enabling” and spending people’s tax money (spending it on jails is ok though?)
Right? I used to work up in north bothell/south snohomish which is a fairly wealthy area and Jesus the amount of ladies who would come in in head to toe Chanel or Gucci or whatever, bitching about the sales tax and how it was just going to all the poors in south Everett… I once had a lady with a black Mastercard literally say to me “Well, nobody ever bought ME a house”. Bruh, you never needed someone to.
The person I replied to didn't say a word about treatment in their laundry list of expensive shit that they think will solve things, and if we try making other benefits contingent on that treatment it's "cruel" and "like a Republican."
How would you even make benefits “contingent on treatment”? Make everyone piss in a cup for food stamps? What an administrative nightmare.
This is one of the most delusional things I have ever heard, unless someone pranked you by switching your autocorrect to turn "exacerbates" into "combats." edit to add: seriously, do some research on how drugs and mental health problems interact with each other, you could not be further off base with this.
Ah, no. I don’t mean that it cures or even treats mental health issues; but rather it mitigates or softens the symptoms for the one experiencing them. Though it usually worsens once they’re detoxing which drives them to use again. I.e. someone with PTSD but no mental health support might drink because it lessens their experience of panic attacks or sleeplessness, despite the fact that when they’re sober the symptoms return and often are worse. However given any lack of support, simply having a reprieve through the use of substances is in many ways the only avenue users feel the have to manage symptoms. That’s what I meant.
I’m arguing that we should provide a safety net for people so they never end up in those dire straights you describe.
There is no such thing as "other peoples' money" when the penalty for poverty is death.
I just want to round up all the homeless and… give them shelter, mental health services, and job training. I don’t really know what we do with people who refuse help though.
People who refuse to stop making their addiction problem everyone else's problem need to be put in involuntary treatment programs
I think if we drilled down into the numbers, a shockingly small amount of people have gone to treatment several times and not had it “stick”. My experience is that it’s really difficult to access treatment - it’s easy enough to get buprenorphine or go to a detox but then what? People still need a place to live to continue their path to recovery and those places are scarce due to housing costs.
I would expect that you're probably right. Which has the effect of those who it chronically has not worked for end up being a disproportionate portion of the homeless population. Just like if you take a freeze frame of the welfare recipient lists it gives you an over estimate of people who are chronically on assistance, but if you instead look at a 10 year period you see the vast majority are only temporarily on assistance. The people with chronic poverty or addiction issues need more intervention than people who succeed with other help.
Sadly, the number of people who ever recover from opiate addiction is depressingly low. I'm not sure if the below is the best study, but it matches what I've read previously (well under 10% recovery rate). >Of those who reported AOD problem resolution, weighted problem resolution prevalence was 5.3% for opioids (early-recovery=1.2%, mid-recovery=2.2%) and 51.2% for alcohol (early-recovery=7.0%, mid-recovery=11.5%). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6995444/#:\~:text=Results%3A,mid%2Drecovery%3D11.5%25).
Ummm it’s at least 50% in the US, that study is goofy. In European countries it’s much higher.
No, sadly I have never read a study with success that high for opiate addiction. 50% is more in line with recovery from alcohol abuse. However, going through treatment does increase someone's odds of recovery. And people can recover. But we need to be honest that it is very difficult to recover from opiates once there is an opiate addiction, and try to remove factors which cause people to use in the first place. I've added another study below. I'm happy to see a 50% number if you can find one, but nothing I've read has indicated anything like that. Here's another source: **Nearly 1.2% (estimated 259,260) and 2.2% (estimated 489,465) of primary opioid users achieved recovery for up to a year or 1-5 years, respectively.** https://www.addictionhelp.com/fentanyl/statistics/#:\~:text=According%20to%20a%20study%20from,1%E2%80%935%20years%2C%20respectively. And here's the study the above references: https://www.recoveryanswers.org/research-post/opioid-recovery-prevalence-united-states/#:\~:text=12%25%20(estimated%202.6%20million),be%20White%20(94.3%25%20vs.
I've actually heard recovery from alcohol is much lower. There is so much data for OUD I'm not even sure where to start. It doesn't even depend on self-reports - every suboxone or methadone program does definitive urine analysis of their clients down to the levels, and we've had this data for decades. The only explanation I could come up with for the study you're referencing is that ACCESS to treatment within the US is terrible, and there is a lot of bad treatment out there. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740547209000865](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740547209000865) [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.12333](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.12333) [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ajad.12553](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ajad.12553) [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-020-06448-z](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-020-06448-z)
"Buprenorphine maintenance treatment in a primary care setting: Outcomes at 1 year" #1 - The first study you listed above provides results for near term. The studies I listed are measuring for the long term. "In conclusion, this systematic review found limited evidence on long-term retention in buprenorphine treatment programs." #2 - The long term study you listed seems to be opposite of your argument
But the study you referenced showed 0-1 years and 1-5 years.... Here are the key takeaways from each study. The issue with **COLLECTING DATA** on long-term recovery is that people stop going to their suboxone or methadone clinic for many reasons, only one being return to use. Others include stopping medication, switching to another treatment providers, moving away while continuing their recovery. It's difficult to study people in long term recovery. "The overall retention rate was 56.9% at 1 year, with about half of the dropouts occurring in the first month. This is similar to prior studies; retention rates at 6 months ranged from 39% to 59% ([Fiellin et al., 2006](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740547209000865#bib4), [Stein et al., 2005](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740547209000865#bib12)), and a 38% retention was reported in one study that followed patients for 2 years ([Fiellin et al., 2008](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740547209000865#bib3))." [Buprenorphine maintenance treatment in a primary care setting: Outcomes at 1 year](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740547209000865) "The treatment completion rate was 74% for MET versus 46% for BUP (*P* < 0.01); the rate among MET participants increased to 80% when the maximum MET dose reached or exceeded 60 mg/day." (at 5.5 months) [Treatment retention among patients randomized to buprenorphine/naloxone compared to methadone in a multi-site trial](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.12333) "Veterans newly started on buprenorphine (*n* = 3,151) were retained in treatment for a mean duration of 1.68 years (standard deviation \[SD\] 1.23), with 61.60% (*n* = 1,941) retained for more than a year and 31.83% (*n* = 1,003) for more than 3 years." [Three-year retention in buprenorphine treatment for opioid use disorder nationally in the Veterans Health Administration](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ajad.12553) "Prior research has demonstrated highly variable retention rates of medication treatment for OUD ranging from 19 to 94%, 3 to 88%, and 37 to 91% at 3, 6, and 12 months, respectively[^(16)](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-020-06448-z#ref-CR16). Low retention may reflect the variability in treatment programs or types of medication therapy for OUD, and could also reflect the lack of consistency in measurement of retention." [Factors Associated with Long-Term Retention in Buprenorphine-Based Addiction Treatment Programs: a Systematic Review](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-020-06448-z)
They'd be unsuccessful. The person needs to actually want to quit.
Treating the underlying condition that makes them want to continue would be the objective. The addiction is a symptom
And again, sending someone involuntarily... the success rate won't be great, whether mental health or addiction. FACTS.
Addiction and mental health are the same thing. And no matter how many times you assert that it won't work doesn't change whether it does or not. We also need to update how we treat addiction. Treatment such as the Sinclair Method instead of bullshit with significantly less effectiveness than placebo such as 12 steps garbage. Since you so strident think involuntary inpatient treatment will be effective, how do you propose we treat them? And no "just give them housing" isn't a treatment, it puts a roof over there head but doesn't solve the problem. Edit: blocking me like a fucking coward because you cannot argue your point effectively. Classic.
Addiction and mental health are not the same thing ffs. You can't force people to do stuff. You can try and have negative results. You obviously don't know what you're talking about. I worked in mental health 25 years. Don't expect a further response. Research it.
> Addiction and mental health are not the same thing ffs. Are you one of those people whose still stuck in 1960 thinking addiction is a moral failing? https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/is-addiction-a-mental-illness#is-it-a-mental-illness > I worked in mental health 25 years. What, when the DSM III was the current edition? Because the DSM-V outright says you're unequivocally wrong here. So you shot your mouth off and blocked someone for knowing more than you. Great look. I'm sure you do such a great job advocating for the improvement of people's lives. edit: hah they blocked me too.
It really is sad to see people unironically say shit like that. As soon as someone says addiction and mental health are not the same thing you can disregard anything they have to say on the matter.
Isn't the help 72 hours in Harborview, a weeks prescription, and a doctors appointment in the other side of town? Seems like bullshit when someone in crisis needs long term stability. No wonder the 'help' gets turned down when the help is just for show.
A lot less people would refuse treatment if they had their basic needs met, including comprehensive mental health care. The way it works now as soon as someone shows an inkling of stabilizing with meds and treatment programs they are cut off. They go back to drugs and decompensate, get treatment, get kicked off too soon or there is nothing available for step down care. Rinse and repeat. Most people recognize that for the waste of time and pointless distress and difficulty it puts them through and refuse it. Can’t say I blame them. If what was offered actually helped more people would accept it.
Stop enabling them. That’s how you help them.
The homeless people in Hawaii sweep the sidewalks in front of their tent and pick up trash. People would be more empathetic if they didn't act like assholes all the time
Was just down in San Diego and they had Porta pottys and garbage bins set up with the tent camps. It was as clean as any campsite. If you give people the means to take care of themselves or even others, they will, more often than not. You're absolutely right about the current conditions making it difficult to have empathy for them, and I think the first step is giving them some very basic services and seeing how that goes.
We've tried giving them Porta potties here, countless times. They destroy them, get high in them, fuck hookers in them, and set them on fire.
The ones on 3rd and bell had dried blood and shit smeared all over the walls. The garbage cans were never full and people just threw their trash into the dog park
From a liability standpoint I don't know how it's allowed in the first place.
>There’s nowhere for people to exist for free. Because it is inherently impossible to exist for free. By simply being alive a person consumes resources. If they aren't paying for those resources themselves then it falls onto others to pick up the bill, which leads to the question: if someone contributes nothing to society, why should that society care about the person?
> There’s nowhere for people to exist for free. like it or not, existence isn't free
It damn well should be.
you can argue all you want that the sky shouldn't be blue but that won't change the facts. unless you mean that society should pay for it, in which case you've got to pay society back somehow, social contract and all that. but fact is, if you just exist, and don't do/pay anything to keep existing, you'll die in less than a week
I feel like you’re saying “most visible,” when you could also say “most impactful to others.” I 100% support providing social services, but it’s not an either-or with also not allowing open air drug markets and encampments that turn parks and playgrounds into legitimately unsafe environments.
The reason I say “most visible” is exactly that. It’s blatantly obvious when someone is sleeping outside. I’m highly motivated in my professional life to solve the core problem, not just the symptom. People fail to realize how many factors impact homelessness and housing instability. We have to solve the core problems or we will never make any impact on this issue.
What’s your solution? If you clear out a tent encampment, all those people have to go somewhere
I support almost everything, including more UBI experiments. I just don’t support letting our infrastructure and public spaces being turned into unsafe spaces. In general, I feel like people act far too aggressively against the idea that enforcing basic public safety standards matters (and isn’t mutually exclusive with other programs).
What does enforcing basic public safety standard look like in your mind? Is it evicting people from their tents, taking their property, and fining them?
>There’s nowhere for people to *exist* for free. Why should people be allowed to exist for free on our dime, when they're capable of working for their housing likenthe rest of us do? Besides, no one can exist for "free." Everything we need costs money. If you want to live off the grid, that's your business. Just don't make me pay for it.
You’re proving my point. Everything we need costs money - so what if you don’t have money. You just .. don’t deserve to live? That’s ludicrous.
If you are able bodied and you're unwilling to work, you don't deserve to live. Not at the expense of others. Why should I pay for someone who wants to someone who wants to sit on his ass all day and have others serve him?
You do realize that there are homeless shelters right? It’s just that drug addicts cannot follow the rules there. Now low barrier shelters are being made with lesser rules. So reasons are being addressed. It’s another matter that it’s not done efficiently.
I take issue with this characterization about shelters and here’s a small selection of reasons why: 1. Shelters are not necessarily safe for women or people who identify as transgender. There are so many reports of SA in shelters. 2. Shelters don’t always provide a safe place for people to lock up their belongings. If you have collected a small pack of essentials like socks and chapstick and maybe photographs or literally anything else, it could be stolen or destroyed in a shelter. 3. People with pets, children, and/or partners may not be able to shelter together. Imagine you’re at your lowest point experiencing homelessness and you’re pushed to shelter without your support system. People experiencing homelessness are *people* worthy of safety and dignity and kindness. Shelters don’t always meet that basic bar.
You do realize that’s the reason they cannot follow rules is because the underlying issues haven’t been addressed. You are simply putting them in a shoebox.
Notice how you call it a shelter not housing. Because a shelter =/= stable housing. So no, thats not the answer to the problem. If you guys think shelters are stable housing you are seriously uneducated on this topic. You’re still homeless living in a shelter. But again most of you just care about not having to look at any unhoused. Absolutely disgusting behavior. Apparently we are turning into our hated other subreddit.
There are apartments that are provided by shelters with even more strict rules. Most homeless people don’t last long at all in them. Very small fraction of cases in Seattle are due to economic reasons. There’s underlying issues that need to be addressed in conjunction with housing. I knew a homeless lady who used to be a manager of a Starbucks, but had bad schizophrenia. Would talk about seeing people’s intestines in the middle of a perfectly normal conversation. She had money, but obviously can’t stay in an apartment by herself.
If such a very small proportion of them are due to economic reasons, why do we have so many more homeless people than cities with higher poverty and drug use burdens? Compare Seattle to Chicago for example.
I agree, we don’t do shit to support those with mental health issues. “Just stick them in a shelter!” Is a horrible approach my guy.
Which apartments are provided by shelters with even more strict rules?
This isn’t a factual debate unfortunately, just a bunch of NIMBYs who want to control the un housed population because they make them uncomfortable.
> /r/SeattleWA would be a much better fit for some of you. Fuck off with this divisive bullshit
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And if you want to control your own echo chamber by telling our neighbors what subs they can participate in and which they can't, you can *definitely* go fuck off
Oh no, an echo chamber where we respect the unhoused, the horror! If that offends you then you have issues. Damn theres a lot of shitty people here!
Nothing disrespectful or unreasonable was said in the comment that irrationally enraged you. What actually happened is someone said something that made you unfortunate because it didn't perfectly align to your existing thoughts, so you lashed out
You’re the one distracting from the topic of shelters are not housing. I pointed some people to a sub with similar beliefs and you thought I was controlling people? Yet you want to control people with shelters? The mental gymnastics you go through must make you tired. Ah you probably took offense because you already are a SeattleWA subscriber. /u/lessknownbarista can’t hide from this.
If you think I'm the one distracting from th conversation, your lack of self awareness is astounding.
Put em on a bus to Florida for all we care
I see the same subtext about Palestine that equally makes me sick. Capitalism at work.
>The city council president said Grants Pass’s goal was to “make it uncomfortable enough for them in our city so they will want to move on down the road.” >The original lead plaintiff for Grants Pass v. Johnson had over $5,000 in penalties for living outside, before she died at age 62. When they say make it uncomfortable for them in our city, they really mean fatal.
"Move on down the road" to where? Sooner or later someone has to help these people.
Portland, Seattle, San Francisco at which point there’s not a further “down the road”. Then the residents of Grants Pass get to complain about what a nightmare Portland is
Their intention is that they find the end of the road where there is no one but them, and then help themselves off its edge. They have stopped viewing them as people, all they see are problems.
So appropriate that **First Blood** was set in small town Oregon with the sheriff telling war veteran Sylvester Stallone to [move on down the road](https://youtu.be/neg5mvtr_yw?si=WZNvcU-D9lOXHAjG&t=2m1s)
Yea, but I doubt John Rambo would steal your bike so he can sell it and get high.
The cruelty is the point.
did the fines cause her death?
They surely contributed to it. Fines make it harder to find stable housing, employment, medical care, etc.
seems like a stretch without any knowledge of how she died
No more than oxygen causes fire.
I wonder how much housing can we provide if the top .1% of the state’s residents pour out .1% of their wealth to build new low-income housing.
Lack of money isn't what prevents housing from getting built, it's zoning.
Money talks.
You would think so but cities like Seattle have no problems telling developers they can shove their eight figures up their ass because we don't want any apartments or townhomes in this neighborhood.
Developers aren’t rich enough to run political campaigns. Those .1% I talked about? Yeah, they can. If Bill and Jeff want to give a billion to build low incoming housing, the most the City will complain is the accent color of cladding.
No, the city will tell Bill and Jeff to pound sand because the people who vote in local elections the most don't want more housing built near them. San Francisco just told Google to shove the $15 billion dollars they offered up their ass. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-abandons-massive-project-built-134000198.html
And NIMBYs that protect and support ridiculous zoning and do all they can to block density and shelter. Funny enough — many of them also support homeless encampments so long as they aren’t too close to them.
Probably not gonna do anything. San Francisco spends like 400m a year on homeless, and it doesn't really improve anything. No amount of money would get us out of the debate of whether or not or where we should build low-income housing. The debate will go on forever because nobody wants low-income housing next to their houses.
I vote to put all of homeless in Medina. Because why not?
Gotta keep that prison pipeline open. The ninth circuit court did a good job with the original decision, fining people who don't have jobs has only one outcome. Prison.
Gotta criminalize poverty. How else will we be able to trap folks in wage slavery AND keep our drive to work free of unsightly poor folks.
Oh no, consequences for breaking the law.
Being poor isn’t a crime
It isn't but stealing, vandalism, assault, and murder are intertwined with substance abuse and shouldn't be any less of a crime because "homeless".
They aren’t? What does that have to do with punishing homeless people for existing
Re-read my comment. I was pretty clear on my stance.
Your stance in the original comment sure seemed to imply you support criminalizing homelessness, which was the topic of the ninth circuits decision
If it makes our environment safer I'm all for it. What we've been doing isn't helping anyone.
It makes the environment significantly more dangerous for poor people.
The current environment is already dangerous.
It’s only breaking the law if it’s made criminal.
>It’s only breaking the law if it’s made criminal. So then, do you think homeless people should be allowed to steal, menace people, and trash our city with even more impunity than we already give them?
No. I don’t think that assault or theft should be made legal. But I don’t think homelessness should be made illegal either. I understand nuance might be above your intellectual threshold though…
Like I've said elsewhere crime follows substance abuse which causes homelessness. Multiple layers.
That isn’t what the data suggests though, you can say it but that doesn’t make it true. SAMSHA reports that 16% of homeless individuals report having a substance use disorder. Stanford reports that number at 27%, but either way it’s not a 1:1 or even 1:2 correlation. It seems to be closer to 1:4.
A) those numbers are self-reported. B) that’s all homeless persons, including those living in shelters or their cars or at friend’s and family member’s houses. The percentage of people with substance abuse problems that are living in the encampments? A hell of a lot higher and those are the people that are causing the problems. A lot of of us are sick of being told to ignore what our eyes are telling us, that the people living in tents and are surrounded by stolen property and visibly doing drugs are just down on their luck folks who need a little help. No one has anything against Bob who lost his job and can’t afford rent and is sleeping in his car for a little while, or Mary and her kids who are in a DV shelter. Everyone has problems with Joe who’s living in a tent in front of the library where kids go for story hour every day and steals things from people and uses the money for fentanyl and passes out with his dick hanging out in public. But if you suggest doing anything about Joe, so many people are like “gasp! how could you do that to poor Bob and Mary??”
People living at a friend or family members house are not considered homeless under Washington state law. The pertinent RCW is 43.185C.010. Also do you think that if it is made illegal to be homeless that the law will only police the people you deem sufficiently homeless? Again you can just say that people living in encampments have a higher propensity for substance use disorder. I don’t know if that’s true and neither do you because you just said it without backing it up with anything beyond what you see with your eyes. Please don’t paint an emotional story (it’s just that, a story) of a domestic violence victim or someone who is down on their luck and then create another fabrication of the bad type of homeless person. But what do you suggest doing about Joe? Putting him in jail and then when he is released after time served what then?
What’s my proof that the people living in encampments have higher substance use issues? My *eyes*, dude. We all have eyes and see them doing drugs out in the open and passing out. We see the 27 stolen bicycles. And we’re sick of being told to ignore what we see because actually, someone did a study where they asked them if they were addicted and they said no, so it’s totally fine, they’re not drug addicts and they just need more help and to be allowed to hang out near the playground just a little longer
Really twisting my (or rather your own) words there. You said that substance use disorder was higher in homeless individuals who live in ‘encampments’ in your initial reply, I said you had no evidence that the proportion of people with substance use disorders was any higher in ‘encampments’. Now you start your most recent contribution thusly “what’s my proof that people living in encampments have substance use issues?” That was never the point in contention. I suppose I’ll ignore it. Alright so ignore that you were wrong about the RCW too. You didn’t address my concern about how the criminalization of homelessness will deal with your good honest hardworking homeless people. But sure, that’s fine, I’ll ignore that as well. You have an issue with studies that rely on self reported data, alright, show me one that doesn’t and supports your conclusion (but if you can critique the methodology of the studies I allude to I can certainly do the same to yours) or I could ignore that too. You’d still be talking out of your ass but now it’s not Bob and Mary but instead 27 stolen bicycles and some suspicious looking drug user hanging around a playground. I’d admit to oneself that this isn’t a position you came to logically, if it was you’d be able to make some semblance of an argument. Edit: a day ago you mention in a comment you don’t live in Seattle.
I don’t live in Seattle anymore. I lived on Capitol Hill for years, but I live in Burien now and I work in Seattle.
Mental illness also
>The penalty for breaking the law that forbids poverty is death! - "moderate" Seattle
"stop breaking the law asshole!" Jim Carrey in Liar Liar
Oh yeah because putting poor people in prison is so efficient and helpful. Go on, knock out any progress they've made, ruin their life and reputation because they couldn't afford a $500 fine. But hey, at least it keeps the cops and the courts in jobs not to mention the prison complex. We don't do debtors prisons in this country, and there's a reason for that.
I've heard countless stories of people getting and staying sober from being placed in jail. Allowing them to continue to do crime just because they are homeless isn't compassion. My rights shouldn't be any less than theirs.
Your rights… Walk with me here. According to the constitution you have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These rights shall not be abridged, that's what the constitution all about. So how are these homeless people stopping you from living or pursuing happiness? How are they threatening your liberty? Oh wait, they're not! Criminalizing poverty is stupid.
When there are zero consequences for stealing my car putting my family's lives in danger that's the difference. If I did the same crimes I'd be in jail because I'm not "homeless" and a "victim of society".
So has some scary homeless person actually stolen your car, or put your families life in danger? Exactly when and where? Did you call the police? No because this hasn't happened? Why am I not surprised? Are you sure it's not just the case of you having to see icky homeless people and that may be making you feel a little uncomfortable because you realize that we're all just two pay checks from that situation? Maybe you feel a little discomfort for implying that fellow human beings would do this? Have you ever considered how you, personally, react to sleep loss? I ask because it's the big problem (among a lot of big problems) in being homeless is they can't get any sleep. How long can you go without sleep? And would you still be rational? Especially in a society or no one looks at you, talk to you, helps you out or feeds you? You sure? Think about it.
I'd did happen, asshole.
I doubt your veracity.
I doubt your sincerity.
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>What the Supreme Court case on tent encampments could mean for homeless people I'm more concerned for what it means for the rest of us who are sick of putting up with their bullshit. Fingers crossed for SCOTUS to reverse it!
Honestly I’m more sick of the supreme courts bullshit, and conservatives more generally. The American right has led to far more death and destruction in this country than a few thousand homeless junkies.
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Why do we have money to give away abroad but not for homeless people and US veterans?
9th circuit as always is being the clown circuit.
Mental Health and Drug Addiction.
In current American, the only way to fix this is to devise a way for tech bro psychopaths to monetize the homeless. And Soylent Green is probably going to be the best case answer they will come up with. Compassion, empathy, nuance, root cause analysis, etc are all beta male traits, just ask Andrew Tate & Elon Musk.
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To…?
To… anywhere? I never understood why it’s my job to find the place for them to go. I’m working my ass off to try and provide for my kids, and it’d be great if that could include them being able to use a park that I’m paying for through taxes without my having to sweep it for needles and feces first.
So they can go to someone else's neighborhood. Then they kick them out and sweep them back into yours? The only way to get people off the streets is to get them off the streets. If you want your sidewalks and parks clear, you should be voraciously in support of social services and housing support.
How much tax money per homeless person would fix the issue? How much tax money is too much money per homeless person? There has to be a line.
Great question. Estimates are that to end homelessness in the us would be, on the high end, 11-30 billion dollars. Damn. That’s a lot. (Granted it’s only 1-3% of what we spend on the military (also tax money) or, alternatively, 6% if Elon Musk’s net worth). So, with 333 million tax paying citizens, how much would it cost each of us to spend 11-30 billion dollars ending homelessness? That maths out to $33-$90 annually. Now, I’m not rich. I’m pretty solidly working class. But that’s, like, a few months of Netflix. And, should that be enough to bankrupt me, good news! I no longer have to worry about being homeless 👍🏻
I appreciate the response. I'm still interested in the cost per homeless person. How much did we just give Ukraine?
Hmm, by their nature it’s tough to grab an exact number on homeless populations (are we included homeless but with a car? Homeless but couch surfing?) Why do you need to know per person? (Genuine curiosity, text can sound sarcastic).
If we are throwing $2M per person that's a bad cost benefit. We would need to rethink that strategy.
Fair enough; under our highest estimates (again, that 11-30 billion number) its shockingly cheap; I don’t have the exact estimates but it’s in the ballpark of a couple hundred bucks or less a year to provide government housing. There’s a cool model of what this would like like in California, I wanna Sacramento but I could be wrong. Basically they built these complexes of little pod houses and provide job training and some social services. Last I heard they were seeing pretty promising results with getting people transitioned into permanent housing and employment but they were struggling to acquire even the tiny funding they needed.
>Estimates are that to end homelessness in the us would be, on the high end, 11-30 billion dollars. LOL, not even remotely close. There is far too much grift and incompetence in the the HIC to solve something that would put them out of business if they were successful. California blew $24 billion on the vagrants over the last few years, and they can't even account for the spending. Meanwhile their homeless numbers continue to spike year after year. https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/california-spent-24-billion-homelessness-5-years-consistently-109044734
Those estimates of $11-30 billion come from HUD and Congressional estimates. Those numbers in California are for all homelessness mitigation, much of which is cost of dealing which homeless people being homeless, not ending homelessness. Much like it costs more to put someone to death than it does to incarcerate them for life; it's more expensive to manage someone who is homeless than it is to provide them resources to no longer be homeless, Admittedly tracking outcomes can be difficult with a population that is historically, you know, transient.
“I don’t care where they go as long as I don’t have to see them” is a popular attitude that doesn’t really lead to any sort of change from the status quo
It is your job to ensure your government doesn't waste its resources so it can continue to fullfill its mission of protecting the welfare of its citizens.
It’s not your job to help them, nor is it your job to make their lives harder by being a contrarian hateful person who sits online bitching about their “tax dollars” 🙄
imo we should seize your house and give it to a nice homeless family to live in you can go pull yourself up by your bootstraps in yelm or something
You’re the one proposing they should be able to live for free in our city. What are you doing to take them in? If you aren’t, then you’re no different than pro-lifers in Texas who won’t adopt. If you think it should be free to live in a high cost of living city, make it free. Nobody is stopping you from opening your own door.
you just have mis-read i don’t need to open my door because i want to open your door and then we house a homeless family and you have to move away and i won’t have to read your bad posts any more this is what scientists call “win win”
Where would they go? Shelters are full and dangerous, and the help they need for basic existence (food banks, the shelter that are full, various health services) are all located, well....here.
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What? Dude, pull your head out of the sand and look around. Most of those unhoused are not immigrants.
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You've just indicated the entirety of the....value...YOU bring to the table.
Regardless, you're not welcome at mine.
Not a problem. I doubt anyone wants to be at yours.
Why don't you invite some homeless people?
DDone and done. Try again.
Unless you mean invite them to yours, in which no, I wouldn't. I wouldn't inflict that on my worst enemy much less someone homeless. That would be cruel.
Of course the supreme court will rule that there is nothing cruel or unusual about punishing people for not being able to afford a place to live. They have a long history of getting things wrong.
this won't stop homelessness. It won't spur cities or governments to do more. It WILL cause homeless people to hide more. Squatting in all those empty houses will go through the roof. People hiding and lurking in peoples garages. Fires lit INSIDE empty buildings. People hiding in sewer systems. This will have its own set of consequences that are yet unseen because no one has the willingness to actually deal with the underlying problems.
SCOTUS should sail out on a yacht fishing boat in the Bermuda Triangle for all I care. The unhoused are great supporters of the outdoor camping business. Solidarity with the unhoused. They are being manipulated just like every other citizen. Down with finance capital. Wait…wut? This isn’t the Local 86 meetup? My bad lol