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> The homeless will continue to do whatever they can get away with, and those of us with higher incomes will grumble a bit and pay the taxes. The only solution

> The homeless will continue to do whatever they can get away with, and those of us with higher incomes will grumble a bit and pay the taxes. The only solution I've seen that has a chance to change this is to come down hard on poor public transit behavior, perhaps by putting actual people on the buses with the specific job of cracking down on the drunk/high/piss soaked/etc types, in an effort to improve the quality of the service to the point that the middle-upper income groups uses it again. Talk about missing the forest for the trees. Or should I say, the city for the abandoned human beings. If you aren't taking public transit because you don't like the homeless people on the buses, how about you help them become less homeless or have a place to stay, rather than just shooing them away?

btingle 8y ago
What do I look like, mother Theresa? It's not my job to solve the city's homelessness problem. Do you mean to say that politicians/public officials/etc should be dealing with the problem?
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  No, I'm saying citizens should solve the problem. And I know it's not your job. It's nobody's job. That's why nothing has been done. I mean, the stupidest thing about this is this isn't that hard a problem to solve. Homeless people are just regular people with a problem and no resources to fix it. You provide them resources and help and they are no longer homeless and no longer a nuisance. Instead, people see them like pests, as if rats invaded the buses and need to be exterminated. Typically the government would be the best way to provide funding and access to the resources and help, but they suck at execution, and they always get screwed in funding. If citizens would see that funding for helping homeless people would improve their commute & community, they might invest more, which would both solve their immediate problem, as well as the homeless' problems. A citizen led organization could do this with a combination of private funding and grants (as many today are), but first they have to convince selfish privileged assholes to reach out and help. Good luck there, as it seems privileged people just don't want to help, even though it would actually be helping themselves.
  - sopooneo 8y ago
    Like me, many people I know started out believing what you wrote. But now that I'm a bit older, most that I know who have actually worked to alleviate homelessness would agree that a large portion of the visible homeless have severe mental health or addiction issues. That is not to say the they are undeserving of compassion, rather they are deserving and in need. But to say that simply providing resources will fix the problem is naive. It's hard, and heartbreaking. I believe there are solutions that we can and will work toward, but they're not simple.
    - ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
      Have spent 5+ years working professionally on homelessness, this is something I can agree with. We all want to "fix" the problem of homeless people misusing public transportation, but at least 10-20% of the homeless people I have worked with wouldn't even agree that a problem exists. I want to add resources to "fix" the problem, but first you have to get all parties to agree that their is a problem to fix. There is a ton of grey area, and we don't talk about Hobo's anymore like we did in the 60's. But many people choose homelessness.
      - Semirhage 8y ago
        Surely the solution then isn’t more housing for them, but more mental health services for them? Treating drug addiction as a health issue rather than a criminal one might not hurt either. From my time in America I was amazed to see how little option there is for people who are mentally ill, and not rich. The “solution” embraced seems to be the streets, or jails. Of course that leads to massive social decay.
        grasshopperpurp 8y ago
        >Surely the solution then isn’t more housing for them, but more mental health services for them? Agree with your other points, but both is the correct answer. It'd be wasteful to treat someone's mental health and leave them in a situation that deteriorates their mental health.
AcerbicZero 8y ago
This seems disingenuous at best. Why are you commenting on HN when you could be out helping these homeless anyway? Is your time, happiness, etc, really worth more than their lives? https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
- Karrot_Kream 8y ago
  That's not what GP is saying. GP says that public transit is transit with your neighbors. If your neighbors are smelly junkies, then something is wrong with your community. Shoving people into cars to avoid the homeless is orthogonal to solving crowding issues. This issue only comes up in SF because of the large wealth disparity between the upper-middle class and everyone below them. Here, the upper-middle pays for the option to remove themselves from public services.
  - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
    Oh please the issue comes up in a bunch of other places other than SF. LA, Chicago, DC, Portland, all have the same issues. I am not rich nor am I poor but I avoid public transit for the reason mentioned above. I don’t know that it will ever get better seeing as how the country is falling apart with an ever widening income gap.
    - empath75 8y ago
      I take the dc metro all the time and it doesn’t have any of those problems. The single tracking and random fires have been the issues here.
homonculus1 8y ago
Most of them are addicts who don't want help. You could give them a job and a free house and they'd end up right back where they are now.
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  This attitude is the reason this problem isn't getting solved.
  - mrep 8y ago
    What do you recommend then? The homeless population in Seattle (where I live currently) vastly decrease my quality of life despite the vast sums of money our government spends on them. I would happily contribute a lot more to taxes if it actually solved the problem but I have yet to see anyone give a good solution.
  - wahern 8y ago
    Fatalism is a big part of the problem. But what he says is also largely true, particularly when it comes to long-term homeless. So another big part of the problem is people denying that truth. We do need to provide "free homes" but we also need to coerce acceptance of assistance.
- egypturnash 8y ago
  America continues to collect the wonderful, wonderful dividends of Ronald Reagan's decision to cut the funding for mental health to the bone.
  - mrep 8y ago
    That and the war on drugs...
    - mac01021 8y ago
      I'm no fonder of the war on drugs than anyone else. It promotes violent crime and places an enormous burden on the state. But how does it cause there to be more homeless addicts?
yellowapple 8y ago
On another note, cracking down on drunks using public transit will encourage them to get behind the wheel, which is almost certainly a worse outcome for everyone.

btingle 8y ago

What do I look like, mother Theresa? It's not my job to solve the city's homelessness problem. Do you mean to say that politicians/public officials/etc should be dealing with the problem?

peterwwillis 8y ago
No, I'm saying citizens should solve the problem. And I know it's not your job. It's nobody's job. That's why nothing has been done. I mean, the stupidest thing about this is this isn't that hard a problem to solve. Homeless people are just regular people with a problem and no resources to fix it. You provide them resources and help and they are no longer homeless and no longer a nuisance. Instead, people see them like pests, as if rats invaded the buses and need to be exterminated. Typically the government would be the best way to provide funding and access to the resources and help, but they suck at execution, and they always get screwed in funding. If citizens would see that funding for helping homeless people would improve their commute & community, they might invest more, which would both solve their immediate problem, as well as the homeless' problems. A citizen led organization could do this with a combination of private funding and grants (as many today are), but first they have to convince selfish privileged assholes to reach out and help. Good luck there, as it seems privileged people just don't want to help, even though it would actually be helping themselves.
- sopooneo 8y ago
  Like me, many people I know started out believing what you wrote. But now that I'm a bit older, most that I know who have actually worked to alleviate homelessness would agree that a large portion of the visible homeless have severe mental health or addiction issues. That is not to say the they are undeserving of compassion, rather they are deserving and in need. But to say that simply providing resources will fix the problem is naive. It's hard, and heartbreaking. I believe there are solutions that we can and will work toward, but they're not simple.
  - ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
    Have spent 5+ years working professionally on homelessness, this is something I can agree with. We all want to "fix" the problem of homeless people misusing public transportation, but at least 10-20% of the homeless people I have worked with wouldn't even agree that a problem exists. I want to add resources to "fix" the problem, but first you have to get all parties to agree that their is a problem to fix. There is a ton of grey area, and we don't talk about Hobo's anymore like we did in the 60's. But many people choose homelessness.
    - Semirhage 8y ago
      Surely the solution then isn’t more housing for them, but more mental health services for them? Treating drug addiction as a health issue rather than a criminal one might not hurt either. From my time in America I was amazed to see how little option there is for people who are mentally ill, and not rich. The “solution” embraced seems to be the streets, or jails. Of course that leads to massive social decay.
      - grasshopperpurp 8y ago
        >Surely the solution then isn’t more housing for them, but more mental health services for them? Agree with your other points, but both is the correct answer. It'd be wasteful to treat someone's mental health and leave them in a situation that deteriorates their mental health.

AcerbicZero 8y ago

This seems disingenuous at best. Why are you commenting on HN when you could be out helping these homeless anyway? Is your time, happiness, etc, really worth more than their lives? https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

Karrot_Kream 8y ago
That's not what GP is saying. GP says that public transit is transit with your neighbors. If your neighbors are smelly junkies, then something is wrong with your community. Shoving people into cars to avoid the homeless is orthogonal to solving crowding issues. This issue only comes up in SF because of the large wealth disparity between the upper-middle class and everyone below them. Here, the upper-middle pays for the option to remove themselves from public services.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  Oh please the issue comes up in a bunch of other places other than SF. LA, Chicago, DC, Portland, all have the same issues. I am not rich nor am I poor but I avoid public transit for the reason mentioned above. I don’t know that it will ever get better seeing as how the country is falling apart with an ever widening income gap.
  - empath75 8y ago
    I take the dc metro all the time and it doesn’t have any of those problems. The single tracking and random fires have been the issues here.

homonculus1 8y ago

Most of them are addicts who don't want help. You could give them a job and a free house and they'd end up right back where they are now.

peterwwillis 8y ago
This attitude is the reason this problem isn't getting solved.
- mrep 8y ago
  What do you recommend then? The homeless population in Seattle (where I live currently) vastly decrease my quality of life despite the vast sums of money our government spends on them. I would happily contribute a lot more to taxes if it actually solved the problem but I have yet to see anyone give a good solution.
- wahern 8y ago
  Fatalism is a big part of the problem. But what he says is also largely true, particularly when it comes to long-term homeless. So another big part of the problem is people denying that truth. We do need to provide "free homes" but we also need to coerce acceptance of assistance.
egypturnash 8y ago
America continues to collect the wonderful, wonderful dividends of Ronald Reagan's decision to cut the funding for mental health to the bone.
- mrep 8y ago
  That and the war on drugs...
  - mac01021 8y ago
    I'm no fonder of the war on drugs than anyone else. It promotes violent crime and places an enormous burden on the state. But how does it cause there to be more homeless addicts?

yellowapple 8y ago

On another note, cracking down on drunks using public transit will encourage them to get behind the wheel, which is almost certainly a worse outcome for everyone.