4 ms·

In what way(s) is/are loitering, vagrancy, and/or drug use harmful to you such that you would call the police about them? "Haight."

hellllllllooo 8y ago
Right. Just because you something makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean someone should be arrested for it. Criminalizing homelessness and poverty is not a humane solution and we already have laws for actual crimes.
- wahern 8y ago
  Neither is a permissive attitude that leaves the homeless, primarily the mentally ill and hard core drug addicts in the SF case, to literally rot on the streets. Fairness and justice do not require relinquishing all expectations of socially normative behavior. There are plenty of freedom utopias around the world where libertarians can live tax free and nonconformists can escape the bondage of community morals, but few of them are places people _choose_ to live.
  - hellllllllooo 8y ago
    > Neither is a permissive attitude that leaves the homeless, primarily the mentally ill and hard core drug addicts in the SF case, to literally rot on the streets. No, I'd invest in helping them with the wealth in SF rather than criminalizing people for trying to survive. 60% of the city agreed by voting for Prop C.
    - mc32 8y ago
      Homelessness is an important and complicated issue. I wish we had a national program to manage it. Distribute funds to where the homeless have spent the most time over the last 20% of their time (to avoid “shopping”. That said help is different from ensuring they’re not disturbing the lives of the productive people (who they might rejoin one day).
    - wahern 8y ago
      60% of the city voted to throw more money at the problem hoping it'll go away, money that was easier to part with than certain zoning ordinances, prosecutorial rules, social programs, and other policy choices. Do you work with the homeless? I have a family memory who does, busing to and from 6th & Howard every day. Do you know what's actually going on out there? A neighbor's daughters lives on the streets, willingly. Every affordance is continually made available to her, but she's incapable of pulling herself away and there are no longer any forms of legal coercion available. Shooting up on the streets everyday and literally, physically wasting away is not only acceptable to the community but justified. Real, immediate human suffering is excused in the name of abstract, perverted principles and self-serving indignation. The city spends more than $40,000/yr per homeless person, a sum that has been rapidly increasing for a decade. No city spends more money on the homeless than SF. The reality is that if you're actually homeless and living on the streets you can and will get permanent housing in a matter of months if not weeks, provided you're willing to make an effort at rehab. The intransigence of street homelessness is at this point a deeply structural issue--medically, legally, politically. It has almost nothing to do with money. The affordability crisis is largely borne by those struggling to get by, sharing accommodations or living in vehicles--nominally functional citizens who aren't shooting up and defecating in the streets. Because providing services to the street homeless and housed addicts is priority #1, #2, and #3 at City Hall, everybody else is effectively locked out of housing assistance. And while more money could help these people (and hopefully will), you'd have to actively direct it away from existing street homeless programs. Without reforms that permit and demand the community to coerce treatment for mental illness and drug addiction, no amount of additional funds for street homelessness is going to substantially change things.
      - hellllllllooo 8y ago
        > The city spends more than $40,000/yr per homeless person, That's an absurd myth. The city spends about ~$3,800 per person per year. Or $10.41 a day. Your story is based on incorrect data. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Businesses-must-contribute-more-to-city-s-13178743.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Bu...
        8y ago
mc32 8y ago
When people abuse implicit freedom in the system (aka “why we can’t have nice things”). When it’s chronic. When they pursue and harass locals, shout at passers by, aggressively panhandle, etc. A very progressive city supervisor had had enough of it. That should tell you how bad it had become.
wahern 8y ago
Because a lot of bad people circulate among these groups. It's why being homeless or living in poor communities is so dangerous. Being homeless or poor doesn't make you a criminal, but it does attract criminals and criminal behavior--which is largely opportunistic. If a block is full of drug users and people loitering, the thief smashing windows won't stand out, or if he does he can quickly blend back into the streetscape. Proximity also makes it more likely that those predisposed to thievery will band together, creating a cycle of escalating criminal behavior--a virtuous cycle, so to speak, not unlike how Silicon Valley works because of the density of engineering talent. IMO, one reason why the drug epidemic has exploded in SF is because of the creation and centralization of so much homeless housing around the Civic Center and SOMA. Nothing is more certain to exacerbate addiction and drug use than to put drug users in close proximity. And anti-social behavior invites more anti-social behavior, particularly crime. The Tenderloin always had it's share of problems, but the problem was primarily poverty, not extreme social dysfunction. Violence and property crime were relatively rare as compared to today. Drug use had been tolerated for decades, though the unwritten rule was that people had to make some effort to hide it, like shooting up in the alley. The erasure of this one very simple quid pro quo, the removal of any serious threat of consequences (i.e. the prospect of being forced into rehab if you invited arrest), and the dramatic increase and centralization of the addict population thanks to Mayor Newsom's and Mayor Lee's creation of over 10,000 units of permanent housing for the homeless, has created chaos.

hellllllllooo 8y ago

Right. Just because you something makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean someone should be arrested for it. Criminalizing homelessness and poverty is not a humane solution and we already have laws for actual crimes.

wahern 8y ago
Neither is a permissive attitude that leaves the homeless, primarily the mentally ill and hard core drug addicts in the SF case, to literally rot on the streets. Fairness and justice do not require relinquishing all expectations of socially normative behavior. There are plenty of freedom utopias around the world where libertarians can live tax free and nonconformists can escape the bondage of community morals, but few of them are places people _choose_ to live.
- hellllllllooo 8y ago
  > Neither is a permissive attitude that leaves the homeless, primarily the mentally ill and hard core drug addicts in the SF case, to literally rot on the streets. No, I'd invest in helping them with the wealth in SF rather than criminalizing people for trying to survive. 60% of the city agreed by voting for Prop C.
  - mc32 8y ago
    Homelessness is an important and complicated issue. I wish we had a national program to manage it. Distribute funds to where the homeless have spent the most time over the last 20% of their time (to avoid “shopping”. That said help is different from ensuring they’re not disturbing the lives of the productive people (who they might rejoin one day).
  - wahern 8y ago
    60% of the city voted to throw more money at the problem hoping it'll go away, money that was easier to part with than certain zoning ordinances, prosecutorial rules, social programs, and other policy choices. Do you work with the homeless? I have a family memory who does, busing to and from 6th & Howard every day. Do you know what's actually going on out there? A neighbor's daughters lives on the streets, willingly. Every affordance is continually made available to her, but she's incapable of pulling herself away and there are no longer any forms of legal coercion available. Shooting up on the streets everyday and literally, physically wasting away is not only acceptable to the community but justified. Real, immediate human suffering is excused in the name of abstract, perverted principles and self-serving indignation. The city spends more than $40,000/yr per homeless person, a sum that has been rapidly increasing for a decade. No city spends more money on the homeless than SF. The reality is that if you're actually homeless and living on the streets you can and will get permanent housing in a matter of months if not weeks, provided you're willing to make an effort at rehab. The intransigence of street homelessness is at this point a deeply structural issue--medically, legally, politically. It has almost nothing to do with money. The affordability crisis is largely borne by those struggling to get by, sharing accommodations or living in vehicles--nominally functional citizens who aren't shooting up and defecating in the streets. Because providing services to the street homeless and housed addicts is priority #1, #2, and #3 at City Hall, everybody else is effectively locked out of housing assistance. And while more money could help these people (and hopefully will), you'd have to actively direct it away from existing street homeless programs. Without reforms that permit and demand the community to coerce treatment for mental illness and drug addiction, no amount of additional funds for street homelessness is going to substantially change things.
    - hellllllllooo 8y ago
      > The city spends more than $40,000/yr per homeless person, That's an absurd myth. The city spends about ~$3,800 per person per year. Or $10.41 a day. Your story is based on incorrect data. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Businesses-must-contribute-more-to-city-s-13178743.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Bu...
      - 8y ago

mc32 8y ago

When people abuse implicit freedom in the system (aka “why we can’t have nice things”). When it’s chronic. When they pursue and harass locals, shout at passers by, aggressively panhandle, etc. A very progressive city supervisor had had enough of it. That should tell you how bad it had become.

wahern 8y ago

Because a lot of bad people circulate among these groups. It's why being homeless or living in poor communities is so dangerous. Being homeless or poor doesn't make you a criminal, but it does attract criminals and criminal behavior--which is largely opportunistic. If a block is full of drug users and people loitering, the thief smashing windows won't stand out, or if he does he can quickly blend back into the streetscape. Proximity also makes it more likely that those predisposed to thievery will band together, creating a cycle of escalating criminal behavior--a virtuous cycle, so to speak, not unlike how Silicon Valley works because of the density of engineering talent. IMO, one reason why the drug epidemic has exploded in SF is because of the creation and centralization of so much homeless housing around the Civic Center and SOMA. Nothing is more certain to exacerbate addiction and drug use than to put drug users in close proximity. And anti-social behavior invites more anti-social behavior, particularly crime. The Tenderloin always had it's share of problems, but the problem was primarily poverty, not extreme social dysfunction. Violence and property crime were relatively rare as compared to today. Drug use had been tolerated for decades, though the unwritten rule was that people had to make some effort to hide it, like shooting up in the alley. The erasure of this one very simple quid pro quo, the removal of any serious threat of consequences (i.e. the prospect of being forced into rehab if you invited arrest), and the dramatic increase and centralization of the addict population thanks to Mayor Newsom's and Mayor Lee's creation of over 10,000 units of permanent housing for the homeless, has created chaos.