7 ms·

If homelessness is a problem, why should the alternative be to put them in jail or prison? For something as simple as car camping, it seems like an unjustifiabl

If homelessness is a problem, why should the alternative be to put them in jail or prison? For something as simple as car camping, it seems like an unjustifiable punishment for a simple offense. Without getting into much of a semantics argument, this post itself puts off a sense of “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” attitude when it comes to homelessness. In a city that has a GDP of $231 billion in 2010[1], it seems ineffective to punish the homeless instead of trying to rid the city of the problem in a more productive manner than hauling offenders away. While public consumption of drugs should still be a citational offense, the simple possession of a drug should not be a jail sentence. There are many users that have deeper issues that need to be worked out to rid them of their addiction and putting them into confinement is not always the most effective way. Seattle needs to invest in safe injection sites, public health programs, and they need to build more shelters for their homeless. In today’s society, homeless are looked at as the bottom of the feeder chain, but when we do that, we begin to strip people of their humanity and instead we look at them as simply statistics or an nuance. 1: http://www.greyhilladvisors.com/gross-metropolitan-product/ http://www.greyhilladvisors.com/gross-metropolitan-product/

briffle 7y ago
I agree with you in principal, but at the same time: > we begin to strip people of their humanity and instead we look at them as simply statistics or an nuance. Where I live, the groups of car campers (or often times falling apart RV's) seem to attract crime, drug use, theft, vandalism, etc. I stopped going to one park in the middle of a city with a large group of car campers, when I found a used syringe in the fenced in dog play area, and saw two different heroin deals go down while playing with my dog. (one of them involved prostitution right in the back seat of the car in the middle of a city park)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
drak0n1c 7y ago
Intervention and interning street addicts in rehab centers is a very effective program for Rhode Island. They prosecute drug crimes and misdemeanors, and offer a choice between prison or rehab. Many people who go through the program say it saved their life. West coast states have similar alternative drug courts and rehab available, but they are underutilized, because there is no prosecution in the regular court system and therefore no incentive.
- koala_man 7y ago
  >Many people who go through the program say it saved their life. That's great! Theoretically though, if someone were to state publicly that it was completely ineffective, will they still get the option to stay out of jail next time?
natalyarostova 7y ago
A tremendous amount of these homeless don't want to quit heroin. They don't want to live in shelters. They want to live in a tent and shoot heroin. There is a heroin addict that lives on one street I use to walk to work. He can't have more than a few years to live, he's as broken as humans get. The street he lives on is littered with literally hundreds of his used needles across bus stops, gardens, yards, paths. He defecates on the street and in bags that he leaves around. Letting people do this legally, which Seattle now de facto does, is not appropriate.
- vkou 7y ago
  > A tremendous amount of these homeless don't want to quit heroin. Their addictions would be better managed if they lived anywhere but the street. > They don't want to live in shelters. They don't want to live in dry shelters. > They want to live in a tent and shoot heroin. No, they want to shoot heroin, and when given the option between tent and heroin, versus a dry shelter, they'll take the former. That doesn't mean that they wouldn't prefer having a managed addiction, and not living on the streets. [1] There are people with therapists, homes, loving families, and good jobs, that are also opiate addicts. They have a hard enough time breaking their addictions. In light of that, condemning someone living in a tent by the on-ramp for failing to just drop their addiction, so they can live in a shelter is lunacy. [1] Yes, there is a small percentage of the homeless population that can't reasonably be housed, period, regardless of whether their addictions are managed. I'm not talking about them - I'm talking about everyone else.
  - natalyarostova 7y ago
    Ultimately I don't care about blame or condemnation, it's irrelevant. What I care about is the state doing it's job and not letting anyone, for any reason, egregiously pollute and destroy our shared living environments. As far as fundamental solutions, they can and should try many things, as a first order condition, this must be forcibly prohibited.
    - empath75 7y ago
      What do you want to do, execute them?
munificent 7y ago
> something as simple as car camping It's not that simple. (Problems are never that simple.) I live in Ballard which has a lot of people living out of RVs and tents. Many of those people don't cause problems for anyone, however, I have personally experienced: * People shitting in our alley. * People pissing on our garage. * Someone shitting in a medical commode on the side of the road in broad daylight. (I admit a certain admiration for this person's self-confidence.) * In the middle of the night, someone standing at our fence gazing into our kitchen for several minutes while gesticulating wildly. * Furniture stolen from our front porch. * Someone rifling through our trash. (Presumably for identity theft. In Seattle, food goes into separate compost bins.) * Finding used needles on the lawn. (I have small children, so I had to teach them that the shiny bright orange plastic things are not toys.) * Frequent fights and people screaming at each other at all hours of the night. * Multiple car break-ins from car prowlers. My wife caught and yelled at one car prowler before they were able to get into one. * When they people relocate, they typically leave a pile of trash and human waste behind. Often, RVs will dump their blackwater tank directly on the street or sidewalk. This is, obviously, a health issue. This is just what has happened directly to my wife and I. Other nearby events: * My neighbor owns an RV in his backyard. Someone broke into it and stole several things, including an urn containing his father's ashes. He chased after the guy, who responded by pulling a knife on him. [1] * A couple of blocks away, someone was stabbed in the chest when they confronted someone slashing tires (in what I heard was some sort of turf disagreement).[2] * Another neighbor found a discarded gun in their bushes. They have small children too. * Our neighbors are constantly finding trash that's been dumped in their bushes. * Many neighbors have been screamed at, harassed, or assaulted by people that are either mentally ill, in the throes of meth psychosis, or both. * Public parks that used to be places to play with the kids but now are effectively off-limits. [4] All of this is just in a couple block radius, just in the past few years. And this is in a nice part of town. Residents in the city have had a lot of compassion and a lot of patience for many years, but the city has failed to actually come up with any effective solutions. In the past year or two, people have simply run out of. It's hard to get people to empathize with someone who is actively causing them harm. Fundamentally, humans cannot safely live at urban density without access to the full range of residential services. You can't just "car camp". Humans produce waste. Without clean water, garbage pick up, and sewage services, each of those humans is a walking disease vector [3]. Safe injection sites are not a solution. If you don't address the crimes that addicts commit to afford drugs, then your injection site just becomes a crime magnet. Mental health and addiction treatment centers are good. Shelters are somewhat good but many homeless people choose not to use them because most shelters prohibit drug use. It's not about jailing homeless people or drug addicts. It's about jailing people who repeatedly commit property or violent crime. The root cause is usually drugs, and should be treated as part of a solution. But, at the same time, other people in the city (including many other homeless people who are one of the most common victims of crime) need to be protected and feel safe. Being a drug addict should not be a blank check to steal from, vandalize, and assault people. [1]: https://q13fox.com/2019/05/06/a-seattle-dad-frustrated-over-property-crime-chases-after-knife-wielding-thieves/ https://q13fox.com/2019/05/06/a-seattle-dad-frustrated-over-... [2]: https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/ballard-business-owner-hailed-a-hero-recovering-after-being-stabbed-by-vandals-slashing-tires/867246569 https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/ballard-business-owner-hail... [3]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/infectious-disease-oubreaks-in-seattle-homeless-people-concern-health-officials/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/infectiou... [4]: https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/camping-in-the-end-zone-how-seattles-homeless-crisis-is-spilling-onto-playing-fields/452047508 https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/camping-in-the-end-zone-how...
fortylove 7y ago
>For something as simple as car camping I have personally witnessed a car camper leave their vehicle and barefoot chase an ambulance in the road, screaming profanities at the ambulance (right across from houses with small children). Through their own profanity-laced words, the person was trying to start a fight with the ambulance. Any reasonable person would assume that this car camper was some combination of a) beyond high on some drug, or b) suffering from severe mental health issues (if so, please revoke their license and get him proper help?). My neighbors and I both witnessed the situation, and called the police. Five police cars show up, get a statement from the ambulance driver, and sit the camper down. After talking to the camper for about 5 minutes, the police left with no action. This _exact_ same car camper 3 weeks later threw a stolen bike at a moving car, out of the blue. 1 week later, I again saw this car camper kicking cars that were stopped at a traffic light, all the while swearing profanities at them. This person is still on the street, likely ready to harass the next underserving victims. Here's another experience, which you might just write off as another anecdote. I was with my pregnant wife for a normal pregnancy checkup. A person who again was either high or suffering severe mental problems was being restrained by hospital security for breaking the hospital entrance door. The reason? The person was screaming that "the door was not supposed to be guarded by an evil spirit". Again, this person was clear high or mentally ill, or some combination of the two. However, NO ONE, including THIS PERSON, benefits from being left on the streets. Oh, another anecdote you might write off. I take the bus to work. One morning, there was a school field trip that shared this bus. There was another person on the bus who one might assume was homeless, but agreed, looks can be deceiving. This person was drinking from a handle of cheap vodka, and then spitting back into the bottle. In between swigs, the person was swearing. What a great environment for children. We need to feel compassion for these troubled people, and provide help, but that DOES NOT mean that we should normalize these harmful behaviors. Anyways, just some first person anecdotes to balance this thread out. It's easy to preach when you're not the one raising children around these folks. *edit for newline

briffle 7y ago

I agree with you in principal, but at the same time: > we begin to strip people of their humanity and instead we look at them as simply statistics or an nuance. Where I live, the groups of car campers (or often times falling apart RV's) seem to attract crime, drug use, theft, vandalism, etc. I stopped going to one park in the middle of a city with a large group of car campers, when I found a used syringe in the fenced in dog play area, and saw two different heroin deals go down while playing with my dog. (one of them involved prostitution right in the back seat of the car in the middle of a city park)

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

drak0n1c 7y ago

Intervention and interning street addicts in rehab centers is a very effective program for Rhode Island. They prosecute drug crimes and misdemeanors, and offer a choice between prison or rehab. Many people who go through the program say it saved their life. West coast states have similar alternative drug courts and rehab available, but they are underutilized, because there is no prosecution in the regular court system and therefore no incentive.

koala_man 7y ago
>Many people who go through the program say it saved their life. That's great! Theoretically though, if someone were to state publicly that it was completely ineffective, will they still get the option to stay out of jail next time?

natalyarostova 7y ago

A tremendous amount of these homeless don't want to quit heroin. They don't want to live in shelters. They want to live in a tent and shoot heroin. There is a heroin addict that lives on one street I use to walk to work. He can't have more than a few years to live, he's as broken as humans get. The street he lives on is littered with literally hundreds of his used needles across bus stops, gardens, yards, paths. He defecates on the street and in bags that he leaves around. Letting people do this legally, which Seattle now de facto does, is not appropriate.

vkou 7y ago
> A tremendous amount of these homeless don't want to quit heroin. Their addictions would be better managed if they lived anywhere but the street. > They don't want to live in shelters. They don't want to live in dry shelters. > They want to live in a tent and shoot heroin. No, they want to shoot heroin, and when given the option between tent and heroin, versus a dry shelter, they'll take the former. That doesn't mean that they wouldn't prefer having a managed addiction, and not living on the streets. [1] There are people with therapists, homes, loving families, and good jobs, that are also opiate addicts. They have a hard enough time breaking their addictions. In light of that, condemning someone living in a tent by the on-ramp for failing to just drop their addiction, so they can live in a shelter is lunacy. [1] Yes, there is a small percentage of the homeless population that can't reasonably be housed, period, regardless of whether their addictions are managed. I'm not talking about them - I'm talking about everyone else.
- natalyarostova 7y ago
  Ultimately I don't care about blame or condemnation, it's irrelevant. What I care about is the state doing it's job and not letting anyone, for any reason, egregiously pollute and destroy our shared living environments. As far as fundamental solutions, they can and should try many things, as a first order condition, this must be forcibly prohibited.
  - empath75 7y ago
    What do you want to do, execute them?

munificent 7y ago

> something as simple as car camping It's not that simple. (Problems are never that simple.) I live in Ballard which has a lot of people living out of RVs and tents. Many of those people don't cause problems for anyone, however, I have personally experienced: * People shitting in our alley. * People pissing on our garage. * Someone shitting in a medical commode on the side of the road in broad daylight. (I admit a certain admiration for this person's self-confidence.) * In the middle of the night, someone standing at our fence gazing into our kitchen for several minutes while gesticulating wildly. * Furniture stolen from our front porch. * Someone rifling through our trash. (Presumably for identity theft. In Seattle, food goes into separate compost bins.) * Finding used needles on the lawn. (I have small children, so I had to teach them that the shiny bright orange plastic things are not toys.) * Frequent fights and people screaming at each other at all hours of the night. * Multiple car break-ins from car prowlers. My wife caught and yelled at one car prowler before they were able to get into one. * When they people relocate, they typically leave a pile of trash and human waste behind. Often, RVs will dump their blackwater tank directly on the street or sidewalk. This is, obviously, a health issue. This is just what has happened directly to my wife and I. Other nearby events: * My neighbor owns an RV in his backyard. Someone broke into it and stole several things, including an urn containing his father's ashes. He chased after the guy, who responded by pulling a knife on him. [1] * A couple of blocks away, someone was stabbed in the chest when they confronted someone slashing tires (in what I heard was some sort of turf disagreement).[2] * Another neighbor found a discarded gun in their bushes. They have small children too. * Our neighbors are constantly finding trash that's been dumped in their bushes. * Many neighbors have been screamed at, harassed, or assaulted by people that are either mentally ill, in the throes of meth psychosis, or both. * Public parks that used to be places to play with the kids but now are effectively off-limits. [4] All of this is just in a couple block radius, just in the past few years. And this is in a nice part of town. Residents in the city have had a lot of compassion and a lot of patience for many years, but the city has failed to actually come up with any effective solutions. In the past year or two, people have simply run out of. It's hard to get people to empathize with someone who is actively causing them harm. Fundamentally, humans cannot safely live at urban density without access to the full range of residential services. You can't just "car camp". Humans produce waste. Without clean water, garbage pick up, and sewage services, each of those humans is a walking disease vector [3]. Safe injection sites are not a solution. If you don't address the crimes that addicts commit to afford drugs, then your injection site just becomes a crime magnet. Mental health and addiction treatment centers are good. Shelters are somewhat good but many homeless people choose not to use them because most shelters prohibit drug use. It's not about jailing homeless people or drug addicts. It's about jailing people who repeatedly commit property or violent crime. The root cause is usually drugs, and should be treated as part of a solution. But, at the same time, other people in the city (including many other homeless people who are one of the most common victims of crime) need to be protected and feel safe. Being a drug addict should not be a blank check to steal from, vandalize, and assault people. [1]: https://q13fox.com/2019/05/06/a-seattle-dad-frustrated-over-property-crime-chases-after-knife-wielding-thieves/ https://q13fox.com/2019/05/06/a-seattle-dad-frustrated-over-... [2]: https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/ballard-business-owner-hailed-a-hero-recovering-after-being-stabbed-by-vandals-slashing-tires/867246569 https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/ballard-business-owner-hail... [3]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/infectious-disease-oubreaks-in-seattle-homeless-people-concern-health-officials/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/infectiou... [4]: https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/camping-in-the-end-zone-how-seattles-homeless-crisis-is-spilling-onto-playing-fields/452047508 https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/camping-in-the-end-zone-how...

fortylove 7y ago

>For something as simple as car camping I have personally witnessed a car camper leave their vehicle and barefoot chase an ambulance in the road, screaming profanities at the ambulance (right across from houses with small children). Through their own profanity-laced words, the person was trying to start a fight with the ambulance. Any reasonable person would assume that this car camper was some combination of a) beyond high on some drug, or b) suffering from severe mental health issues (if so, please revoke their license and get him proper help?). My neighbors and I both witnessed the situation, and called the police. Five police cars show up, get a statement from the ambulance driver, and sit the camper down. After talking to the camper for about 5 minutes, the police left with no action. This _exact_ same car camper 3 weeks later threw a stolen bike at a moving car, out of the blue. 1 week later, I again saw this car camper kicking cars that were stopped at a traffic light, all the while swearing profanities at them. This person is still on the street, likely ready to harass the next underserving victims. Here's another experience, which you might just write off as another anecdote. I was with my pregnant wife for a normal pregnancy checkup. A person who again was either high or suffering severe mental problems was being restrained by hospital security for breaking the hospital entrance door. The reason? The person was screaming that "the door was not supposed to be guarded by an evil spirit". Again, this person was clear high or mentally ill, or some combination of the two. However, NO ONE, including THIS PERSON, benefits from being left on the streets. Oh, another anecdote you might write off. I take the bus to work. One morning, there was a school field trip that shared this bus. There was another person on the bus who one might assume was homeless, but agreed, looks can be deceiving. This person was drinking from a handle of cheap vodka, and then spitting back into the bottle. In between swigs, the person was swearing. What a great environment for children. We need to feel compassion for these troubled people, and provide help, but that DOES NOT mean that we should normalize these harmful behaviors. Anyways, just some first person anecdotes to balance this thread out. It's easy to preach when you're not the one raising children around these folks. *edit for newline