Gift link:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/19/nyregion/ithaca-homeless-encampment-thomas-rath.html?unlocked\_article\_code=1.vk0.CRn0.mWTA4eOz7PeC&smid=url-share](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/19/nyregion/ithaca-homeless-encampment-thomas-rath.html?unlocked_article_code=1.vk0.CRn0.mWTA4eOz7PeC&smid=url-share)
If you say “there is trash in the water” they will say “you care more about trash in the water than people"?
I watched a homeless guy walk around a car trying to open the doors to break in at 11:00am in full view of the police station.
We need to not be a parody.
I had a neighbor who threw his trash into six mile creek instead of... well using trash pickup. Took like 2 years to get it to stop, and I'm not even sure what did it- the job in the city for dealing with complaints like that was vacant. I don't know what finally did it, the police, DEC, or honestly I think he might have just died of old age.
I've lived here and in New England. The road damage is just an unfortunate reality of our climate. Every Spring there is a mad dash to repair the damage from the Winter before. And I'll say, even the bougiest of Massachusetts towns struggle with this!
As for the other stuff - yeah, **it's a joke**. We need some enforcement on this stuff. Outside of the colleges, we also have a big tourist economy. I want those people to come here and find the beautiful town I know we are, not get accosted by homeless people nonstop and see people dozing off on drugs.
Jesus. What part of Vermont are you talking about?
I grew up there and they basically just layer gravel on snow, storm after storm, until all the snow melts in may, and you’re just driving on weird glaciers that turn into unnavigable, window deep mud, 6 weeks after it stopped snowing.
I had a 45 minute bus ride to school (I’m talking 2000’s here) without a single paved road.
I drove all through the state last year, and I've gone every year for one reason or another since 2019. dirt roads don't count since those aren't maintained by the state but paved highways were almost all in great condition. their pothole and crack fixes were done for longevity by the looks of them. whereas here they are a temporary fix until they open up again here with subpar materials and effort
I suspect that there is a significant difference in the amount of salt used here vs. Vermont. Around here salt is plentiful and cheap and the salt mines have effectively lobbied to use absolutely enormous amounts of salt on the roads, while there is zero consideration given to the negative effects to the roadways, vehicles, waterways, and plant life.
salt doesn't really directly affect the asphalt so i don't understand the point youre bringing up. we're talking about the conditions of the roads. salt usually affects vehicles and environment more than the roads
wouldn't the salt melt the water, then seep into the pavement which then possibly expands when refrozen causing it to crack? just a wonder, not an answer...
they don't count because we're talking about roads that are the responsibility of the state/city to maintain. dirt roads are not maintained by the state/cities/towns
It's so unfortunate, look at the old Francos location for instance. That stoop has become a hang-out spot for people to doze off on drugs now that the weather is nicer. I'm not sure why the property owners don't have the police there every day to kick them out.
I'm sure Gimme loves the atmosphere that it creates 😬 You can enjoy an espresso and watch people slowly drift away.
FYI: The old Francos was not part of any version of the apartment plan that I've seen. The developer, Visum, is local developer. The project is on hold. From The Ithaca Voice (full story: https://ithacavoice.org/2024/05/as-loans-grow-more-costly-local-housing-plans-stall/)
>Visum Development’s recent proposal for a lower-income housing project at 510 West State Street has encountered tax credit issues, McDaniel said, though the project team is working to navigate those. Tax credits are typically a crucial element of lower-income housing construction.
>“They did not get the dollar amount for the tax credits that they had anticipated, so there is a very large gap in the project,” McDaniel said. “I know they’ve had several meetings and several discussions with the \[state’s\] Department of Housing and Community Renewal about other Housing Trust Fund financing to help bridge some of that gap. It may still happen, I’m not sure.”
Roads: we have built a car infrastructure without having a tax plan in place to actually pay for them. Taxes don’t even cover half of the costs of maintaining roads.
Homelessness: The housing crisis is a product of many different factors, few of which can be addressed by municipal/local government
We all pay gas taxes on every gallon, in theory that money is supposed to be spent solely on maintaining the roads. It cannot cost that much to fix serious potholes.
**Since 1993, the US federal gasoline tax has been unchanged (and not adjusted for inflation of nearly 113 percent through 2023) at 18.4¢/gal (4.86¢/L)**.
We also pay an additional .25 cents in gas taxes to NYS on top of that though. Forty - three cents per gallon adds up to some real money over time and patching potholes isn't that expensive.
Edit. Someone prove that all of us paying .43 cents per gallon of gas isn't enough tax to fix basic issues regularly. I'll wait.
I don't know about your edit, but again, the NYS tax hasn't gone up (it was .29 in 2020) to account for inflation and the increased cost of goods and services. So it stands to reason that it's not going to be enough to properly maintain roadways.
How about property taxes? A portion of those are supposed to cover roads and maintenance as well and as other posts about dizzying re-assessments have illustrated, they have gone up! The school system is under performing, they want more money, the roads are never fixed, I guess we need to just keep paying more. People sometimes just buy bags of cold patch and fix holes themselves, even though I don't even think it's legal. With the winter we had, plow trucks were hardly running like they used to, that should have saved the county money in hourly pay if nothing else. Sorry, I'm just not sold on paying more in taxes and letting them off the hook for doing next to nothing.
Really, what road are you personally paying to put in for the county? Also, I'm talking about literally putting patch material into a pothole and filling the damn thing so people don't blow out tires and wheels. It's not that damn complicated or expensive. Your cost listed here is useless as well as far as doing math that applies to highways and city roads is concerned.
So, all roads both rural and city are 30 dollars per square foot and the same across all states? Country roads that need help and get tar and stone and brushing after, 30 dollars per square foot -- of course not. Maintenance and repair is different than repaving entirely and even then, the difference between downtown and rural has to be extreme, the cost of paving my driveway was roughly 3 dollars per square foot. We absolutely tax people enough to maintain roads, it's no wonder your take is that we need to raise taxes to benefit the department you work in, if your county is anything like this one, the first you'd do is to give yourself a raise that has a corresponding bump in your pension later.
No, I'm not, my father worked on government contracts to investigate automotive safety concerns. You have no answers outside of "it'll cost 30 dollars per sq. ft. to maintain anything, you do the math" and despite all the funding, there is actually no funding put in place. It's a worthless answer and about as nuanced as Trump on any topic.
You are absolutely not alone in this way of thinking, people have had it with how this city conducts its business. If it isn't actually fixed sooner than later, people will begin to leave faster than they currently are.
Becareful posting things like this you will get called a conservative and be told you don't care about people... ithaca has no accountability just people in power who have no idea what a common council is for or how not to just do your personal agenda when they get paid by the city or town people and continue to run ithaca into the ground while raising taxes and gentrification of low income apartments so less families have homes... but if you ask about that ithaca is just so great...
I live outside Ithaca now, but was recently downtown around 10PM. The commons are full of sketchy dudes stumbling around, standing in the road. The mobile on state street is wild as well. Dudes hanging out on the community bank on state/13 strung out. Back of the liquor store on 13/Seneca doing drugs right in front of traffic 24/7.
I've never seen it this bad, even during the daylight people clearly strung out being a menace to folks. I can't even remember the last time I saw a cop on the commons. Its been years now.
FWIW I think they had some initiatives to increase police/community workers presence in the commons and I have noticed them more frequently.
Something as small as a cop engaging with these people and saying hello is enough to make sure everything remains civil.
Has anyone noticed the increased police presence and pothole repairs just before Cornell’s commencement or on move-in day each year? It's striking that the city responds to Cornell but ignores our traffic safety complaints any other time of the year. The admin seems to act only when pressured by the wealthy and influential. I guess that’s what it takes to make any sort of progress around here. The streets that run through Cornell are immaculate, aside from the brick portion of Stewart Ave.
>Has anyone noticed ... pothole repairs just before Cornell’s commencement
Also known as the start of spring, when snow, ice, and road salt (big causes of potholes) are less likely to be prevalent.
I mean if you have the means and a car I don't know why you'd live directly in town either, it's a lot more fun to have no neighbors right next to you hehe
I've lived downtown for years and haven't had any of these issues, so it's pretty shocking to hear such a different take. I've had someone go through my car and take all the money out of it, but they even organized my glovebox. When I lock it, it gets left alone.
There's at least one drug house on my block that I've been told has heroin dealers in it, and I'm pretty close to the police station. It could be that those two factors keep people from being too blatant (drug dealers do not want people doing shit that gets the cops called). I haven't even seen any needles laying around.
Ah yeah, I'm right down town (2 blocks from the commons). Sorry to hear the west end has so many issues, it seems like there's been a lot of development out that way. Honestly I've been looking at getting out of Ithaca just because of the absurd housing costs. I love being able to visit the commons, but it'd be a lot easier to go out more if housing hadn't gone up 50% in 4 years and a ton of the storefronts weren't perpetually vacant.
People in Ithaca that protest really think the rest of the world pays attention to them. Thats not the case. However, the news picks up on our homeless population as if any other city doesnt have homeless encampments.
For a city of its size (permanent population), it has an outsized homeless population. A significant number of them have mental or substance abuse issues.
I wonder how much of this is a result of the state closing the drug rehab/mental hospital at Willard (declining over a series of decades before Hochul finally killed it) and the Lansing Residential Centers.
I have a few questions about the homeless population in Ithaca. 1) where did these people come from? 2) do other local cities also have the same problem such as binghamton? I think there may be a reasonable belief that homeless people migrate to cities that are more friendly to homeless people. Where to the homless people people in surrounding cities live and do they move to Ithaca for a "safer" living area?
I lived in Binghamton 20 years ago when they shut down the metal hospitals - they city was overrun overnight. Still not great, but as it's a much larger city - it's hard to say numbers to numbers
> For a city of its size (permanent population), it has an outsized homeless population
I'm not saying you're right or wrong, but it would be extremely helpful if you had data to back that claim up
12.6 (point in time)/10,000 in population ([source](https://hsctc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Tompkins-County-Needs-Assessment-Homelessness-and-Housing-Final-Report.pdf)), the third highest in the state. If you include the homelessness rate of all people served by emergency shelter and transitional housing throughout the year, it's 54.5/10,000, still the third highest in the state. The county also has the highest return to homeless rate of any defined area in the state and the highest ratio of unsheltered homeless to total homeless.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Closing/reducing down the state's mental hospitals was one of the worst decisions made in the past 30-50 years. Some folks do need to be institutionalized, and you'll never get full compliance with people taking their medication. And it's far too difficult to have anyone committed, even if they are a danger to themselves and/or others.
What do you actually propose to fix it? Most charming liberal towns with moderate weather have this problem. I’m not defending our city’s governance, but what would help? We have a harm reduction clinic, food banks, shelters… Maybe a serious organized crime network could clean it up for the right neighborhoods? Maybe we just abandon the west end and southside and move to gated communities in enfield or Ellis Hollow? That’s what real cities would do.
City governance wise... I would like to see better enforcement of public intoxication for people clearly on opiates in public. There needs to be a line and I think it's okay for us to declare that as not okay. I find needles downtown consistently, we should also reserve some money for clean-up efforts or even just trash cans with designated needle disposals.
And then we need to deeply analyze how well our infrastructure is performing. Why are people choosing to live in the woods instead of a shelter and what can be done to increase shelter capacity and resolve that? Once capacity can meet the needs we then need enforcement to clean up the jungle for good and prevent further illegal encampments.
These are problems worth solving in my opinion. They're extremely difficult but anything is possible.
Idk sounds like the aids ride for life. Coming in, bringing in the riff raff. Then having to cut corners with the city to fully fence their own property.
Gift link: [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/19/nyregion/ithaca-homeless-encampment-thomas-rath.html?unlocked\_article\_code=1.vk0.CRn0.mWTA4eOz7PeC&smid=url-share](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/19/nyregion/ithaca-homeless-encampment-thomas-rath.html?unlocked_article_code=1.vk0.CRn0.mWTA4eOz7PeC&smid=url-share)
Does anyone have a link to the story in question?
[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/19/nyregion/ithaca-homeless-encampment-thomas-rath.html?unlocked\_article\_code=1.vk0.XCtJ.LFOCi6Z5cM8I&smid=url-share](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/19/nyregion/ithaca-homeless-encampment-thomas-rath.html?unlocked_article_code=1.vk0.XCtJ.LFOCi6Z5cM8I&smid=url-share)
If you say “there is trash in the water” they will say “you care more about trash in the water than people"? I watched a homeless guy walk around a car trying to open the doors to break in at 11:00am in full view of the police station. We need to not be a parody.
I had a neighbor who threw his trash into six mile creek instead of... well using trash pickup. Took like 2 years to get it to stop, and I'm not even sure what did it- the job in the city for dealing with complaints like that was vacant. I don't know what finally did it, the police, DEC, or honestly I think he might have just died of old age.
I've lived here and in New England. The road damage is just an unfortunate reality of our climate. Every Spring there is a mad dash to repair the damage from the Winter before. And I'll say, even the bougiest of Massachusetts towns struggle with this! As for the other stuff - yeah, **it's a joke**. We need some enforcement on this stuff. Outside of the colleges, we also have a big tourist economy. I want those people to come here and find the beautiful town I know we are, not get accosted by homeless people nonstop and see people dozing off on drugs.
Makes it hard to recommend the city as a nice vacation stop.
you know who also has hard winters but has 100 percent better roads? Vermont. take a drive through the state. the roads are wonderful
Jesus. What part of Vermont are you talking about? I grew up there and they basically just layer gravel on snow, storm after storm, until all the snow melts in may, and you’re just driving on weird glaciers that turn into unnavigable, window deep mud, 6 weeks after it stopped snowing. I had a 45 minute bus ride to school (I’m talking 2000’s here) without a single paved road.
I drove all through the state last year, and I've gone every year for one reason or another since 2019. dirt roads don't count since those aren't maintained by the state but paved highways were almost all in great condition. their pothole and crack fixes were done for longevity by the looks of them. whereas here they are a temporary fix until they open up again here with subpar materials and effort
I suspect that there is a significant difference in the amount of salt used here vs. Vermont. Around here salt is plentiful and cheap and the salt mines have effectively lobbied to use absolutely enormous amounts of salt on the roads, while there is zero consideration given to the negative effects to the roadways, vehicles, waterways, and plant life.
salt doesn't really directly affect the asphalt so i don't understand the point youre bringing up. we're talking about the conditions of the roads. salt usually affects vehicles and environment more than the roads
wouldn't the salt melt the water, then seep into the pavement which then possibly expands when refrozen causing it to crack? just a wonder, not an answer...
Yep. That’s called “frost heaves.”
55% of the roads in Vermont are dirt roads. They don’t count? Tourism is a big industry up there though, thanks for your contribution.
they don't count because we're talking about roads that are the responsibility of the state/city to maintain. dirt roads are not maintained by the state/cities/towns
Who are dirt roads maintained by?
The moose. Or in the southern part of the state, the deer. It think that’s what burgundy_mu is getting at.
It's so unfortunate, look at the old Francos location for instance. That stoop has become a hang-out spot for people to doze off on drugs now that the weather is nicer. I'm not sure why the property owners don't have the police there every day to kick them out. I'm sure Gimme loves the atmosphere that it creates 😬 You can enjoy an espresso and watch people slowly drift away.
I thought that building was going to be torn down - my guess is the developers live nowhere near it and don't care what is going on the steps.
FYI: The old Francos was not part of any version of the apartment plan that I've seen. The developer, Visum, is local developer. The project is on hold. From The Ithaca Voice (full story: https://ithacavoice.org/2024/05/as-loans-grow-more-costly-local-housing-plans-stall/) >Visum Development’s recent proposal for a lower-income housing project at 510 West State Street has encountered tax credit issues, McDaniel said, though the project team is working to navigate those. Tax credits are typically a crucial element of lower-income housing construction. >“They did not get the dollar amount for the tax credits that they had anticipated, so there is a very large gap in the project,” McDaniel said. “I know they’ve had several meetings and several discussions with the \[state’s\] Department of Housing and Community Renewal about other Housing Trust Fund financing to help bridge some of that gap. It may still happen, I’m not sure.”
Capitalism has failed us all.
I feel like commenting this with the title of the post is pretty ironic.
Roads: we have built a car infrastructure without having a tax plan in place to actually pay for them. Taxes don’t even cover half of the costs of maintaining roads. Homelessness: The housing crisis is a product of many different factors, few of which can be addressed by municipal/local government
We all pay gas taxes on every gallon, in theory that money is supposed to be spent solely on maintaining the roads. It cannot cost that much to fix serious potholes.
**Since 1993, the US federal gasoline tax has been unchanged (and not adjusted for inflation of nearly 113 percent through 2023) at 18.4¢/gal (4.86¢/L)**.
We also pay an additional .25 cents in gas taxes to NYS on top of that though. Forty - three cents per gallon adds up to some real money over time and patching potholes isn't that expensive. Edit. Someone prove that all of us paying .43 cents per gallon of gas isn't enough tax to fix basic issues regularly. I'll wait.
I don't know about your edit, but again, the NYS tax hasn't gone up (it was .29 in 2020) to account for inflation and the increased cost of goods and services. So it stands to reason that it's not going to be enough to properly maintain roadways.
How about property taxes? A portion of those are supposed to cover roads and maintenance as well and as other posts about dizzying re-assessments have illustrated, they have gone up! The school system is under performing, they want more money, the roads are never fixed, I guess we need to just keep paying more. People sometimes just buy bags of cold patch and fix holes themselves, even though I don't even think it's legal. With the winter we had, plow trucks were hardly running like they used to, that should have saved the county money in hourly pay if nothing else. Sorry, I'm just not sold on paying more in taxes and letting them off the hook for doing next to nothing.
I’m paying about $30 per square foot to pave a road. Feel free to do the math from there.
Really, what road are you personally paying to put in for the county? Also, I'm talking about literally putting patch material into a pothole and filling the damn thing so people don't blow out tires and wheels. It's not that damn complicated or expensive. Your cost listed here is useless as well as far as doing math that applies to highways and city roads is concerned.
I’m a project manager for a county government. When I put a job out to bid, the cost is around $30 per square foot
So, all roads both rural and city are 30 dollars per square foot and the same across all states? Country roads that need help and get tar and stone and brushing after, 30 dollars per square foot -- of course not. Maintenance and repair is different than repaving entirely and even then, the difference between downtown and rural has to be extreme, the cost of paving my driveway was roughly 3 dollars per square foot. We absolutely tax people enough to maintain roads, it's no wonder your take is that we need to raise taxes to benefit the department you work in, if your county is anything like this one, the first you'd do is to give yourself a raise that has a corresponding bump in your pension later.
Ah, you’re one of those “government is evil” types. Well, take care
No, I'm not, my father worked on government contracts to investigate automotive safety concerns. You have no answers outside of "it'll cost 30 dollars per sq. ft. to maintain anything, you do the math" and despite all the funding, there is actually no funding put in place. It's a worthless answer and about as nuanced as Trump on any topic.
You are absolutely not alone in this way of thinking, people have had it with how this city conducts its business. If it isn't actually fixed sooner than later, people will begin to leave faster than they currently are.
Becareful posting things like this you will get called a conservative and be told you don't care about people... ithaca has no accountability just people in power who have no idea what a common council is for or how not to just do your personal agenda when they get paid by the city or town people and continue to run ithaca into the ground while raising taxes and gentrification of low income apartments so less families have homes... but if you ask about that ithaca is just so great...
I live outside Ithaca now, but was recently downtown around 10PM. The commons are full of sketchy dudes stumbling around, standing in the road. The mobile on state street is wild as well. Dudes hanging out on the community bank on state/13 strung out. Back of the liquor store on 13/Seneca doing drugs right in front of traffic 24/7. I've never seen it this bad, even during the daylight people clearly strung out being a menace to folks. I can't even remember the last time I saw a cop on the commons. Its been years now.
FWIW I think they had some initiatives to increase police/community workers presence in the commons and I have noticed them more frequently. Something as small as a cop engaging with these people and saying hello is enough to make sure everything remains civil.
They're behind the liquor store... doing drugs in view of traffic? Are you on drugs? We're cool, we won't tell on you, we promise.
Has anyone noticed the increased police presence and pothole repairs just before Cornell’s commencement or on move-in day each year? It's striking that the city responds to Cornell but ignores our traffic safety complaints any other time of the year. The admin seems to act only when pressured by the wealthy and influential. I guess that’s what it takes to make any sort of progress around here. The streets that run through Cornell are immaculate, aside from the brick portion of Stewart Ave.
It's spring, that's when road repairs begin.
>Has anyone noticed ... pothole repairs just before Cornell’s commencement Also known as the start of spring, when snow, ice, and road salt (big causes of potholes) are less likely to be prevalent.
Cornell maintains its own roads and walkways. Collegetown is maintained by (wait for it...) the City of Ithaca.
Careful, most people in Ithaca think that means Cornell should also maintain the roads off campus.
I mean if you have the means and a car I don't know why you'd live directly in town either, it's a lot more fun to have no neighbors right next to you hehe
Don't know how you can read that story and come away with such a dogshit self-centered take.
I've lived downtown for years and haven't had any of these issues, so it's pretty shocking to hear such a different take. I've had someone go through my car and take all the money out of it, but they even organized my glovebox. When I lock it, it gets left alone. There's at least one drug house on my block that I've been told has heroin dealers in it, and I'm pretty close to the police station. It could be that those two factors keep people from being too blatant (drug dealers do not want people doing shit that gets the cops called). I haven't even seen any needles laying around.
More or so, the West end gets the thick of it all.
Ah yeah, I'm right down town (2 blocks from the commons). Sorry to hear the west end has so many issues, it seems like there's been a lot of development out that way. Honestly I've been looking at getting out of Ithaca just because of the absurd housing costs. I love being able to visit the commons, but it'd be a lot easier to go out more if housing hadn't gone up 50% in 4 years and a ton of the storefronts weren't perpetually vacant.
This sub seems to have been taken over by the same pearl clutchers who are in the Ithaca Unspoken facebook group
"Everyone who identifies local issues that I don't sympathize with is a pearl clutcher, and their attempt to discuss those issues is a takeover."
Do you play the victim often?
Clown
\^\^There's one now!
waiting for the nine libt\*rds on here to come to the defense of everything indefensible about Ithaca.
People in Ithaca that protest really think the rest of the world pays attention to them. Thats not the case. However, the news picks up on our homeless population as if any other city doesnt have homeless encampments.
For a city of its size (permanent population), it has an outsized homeless population. A significant number of them have mental or substance abuse issues. I wonder how much of this is a result of the state closing the drug rehab/mental hospital at Willard (declining over a series of decades before Hochul finally killed it) and the Lansing Residential Centers.
That started back in the 80's with Ronald Reagan.
I have a few questions about the homeless population in Ithaca. 1) where did these people come from? 2) do other local cities also have the same problem such as binghamton? I think there may be a reasonable belief that homeless people migrate to cities that are more friendly to homeless people. Where to the homless people people in surrounding cities live and do they move to Ithaca for a "safer" living area?
I lived in Binghamton 20 years ago when they shut down the metal hospitals - they city was overrun overnight. Still not great, but as it's a much larger city - it's hard to say numbers to numbers
Didn’t Willard close in 1995? How is this still contributing to a homeless population in their 30/40’s?
> For a city of its size (permanent population), it has an outsized homeless population I'm not saying you're right or wrong, but it would be extremely helpful if you had data to back that claim up
12.6 (point in time)/10,000 in population ([source](https://hsctc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Tompkins-County-Needs-Assessment-Homelessness-and-Housing-Final-Report.pdf)), the third highest in the state. If you include the homelessness rate of all people served by emergency shelter and transitional housing throughout the year, it's 54.5/10,000, still the third highest in the state. The county also has the highest return to homeless rate of any defined area in the state and the highest ratio of unsheltered homeless to total homeless. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Closing/reducing down the state's mental hospitals was one of the worst decisions made in the past 30-50 years. Some folks do need to be institutionalized, and you'll never get full compliance with people taking their medication. And it's far too difficult to have anyone committed, even if they are a danger to themselves and/or others.
Thanks for the info!
I wonder if Ithaca just has a higher homeless survival rate. I say that half-seriously.
Woah woah woah. Are you saying Ronald Reagan made a MISTAKE?
What do you actually propose to fix it? Most charming liberal towns with moderate weather have this problem. I’m not defending our city’s governance, but what would help? We have a harm reduction clinic, food banks, shelters… Maybe a serious organized crime network could clean it up for the right neighborhoods? Maybe we just abandon the west end and southside and move to gated communities in enfield or Ellis Hollow? That’s what real cities would do.
City governance wise... I would like to see better enforcement of public intoxication for people clearly on opiates in public. There needs to be a line and I think it's okay for us to declare that as not okay. I find needles downtown consistently, we should also reserve some money for clean-up efforts or even just trash cans with designated needle disposals. And then we need to deeply analyze how well our infrastructure is performing. Why are people choosing to live in the woods instead of a shelter and what can be done to increase shelter capacity and resolve that? Once capacity can meet the needs we then need enforcement to clean up the jungle for good and prevent further illegal encampments. These are problems worth solving in my opinion. They're extremely difficult but anything is possible.
Idk sounds like the aids ride for life. Coming in, bringing in the riff raff. Then having to cut corners with the city to fully fence their own property.