10 ms·

Bums will not leave public transit just because non-bums start using it more often. Only practical mechanism here to achieve the effect you predict is that no

by xyzzyz 4y ago

Bums will not leave public transit just because non-bums start using it more often. Only practical mechanism here to achieve the effect you predict is that non-bums are angry about terrible conditions in public transit they are dependent on using, and force the government to kick the bums out. If this is viable, why won’t the government, you know, kick out the bums now? That it does not do so, I take as evidence that it won’t do it in future either.

orangepurple 4y ago
I increasingly get the feeling that the only winning move is to not play. I have no idea how we got to this point either.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
NYC kicked the bums out of Manhattan in the 80s and kept them out through the early 00s. It worked really well. Wealthy people used public transit to get to their wall street jobs, and many people walked home alone at night. Fast forward to today, and it's not progressive to go after the bums any more. Now the subway is extremely dangerous and smelly, and nobody but the desperate takes it. The streets are a lot less safe than they used to be. You can take the bums off the street (and put them in shelters) and your city will get a lot better. It's just very unpopular with progressives, who happen to be the voting base in big cities. Eventually, things will get bad enough that the progressives leave, and then the streets can get cleaned up again.
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  I agree with you, but I only have one lifetime, and by the time it plays out in its entirety, I’ll be long retired. Point is, government needs to first clean things up, and then the civil society will move back in, not the other way around.
- codyb 4y ago
  Extremely dangerous might be a bit much. I ride the subway a fair amount. And there's been an uptick in crime (all over the US), but I wouldn't really call the subway dangerous. NYC houses something like 95% of its homeless as well, which is why we have a lot less people on the streets than in places like LA or SF. But shelter conditions are pretty miserable as I understand it so you can sort of understand the hold outs. And we may just not have enough space. But yea, NYC's a big city, there's definitely some homeless, but I'm not sure my lived experience here is as dire as you make it sound. That being said, some areas are certainly worse than others, and there's definitely some aggressive mentally ill people you'll see here and there.
  - WillPostForFood 4y ago
    NYC houses something like 95% of its homeless as well, which is why we have a lot less people on the streets than in places like LA or SF. This is true, and is the most clear example of how immoral the "housing first" policies in California are. It is a pipe dream that creates a horror show of homeless misery on the streets in LA and SF. The vast majority of the city’s approximately 50,000 homeless people live in shelters — about 30,000 in family shelters, and about 18,000 in shelters for single adults. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/30/nyregion/nyc-homeless-eric-adams.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/30/nyregion/nyc-homeless-eri...
- xhevahir 4y ago
  > You can take the bums off the street (and put them in shelters) There's your problem, I think. In the US, at least, the elements of our polity that favor "taking the bums off the street" are mostly unwilling to pay for things like shelters and mental hospitals.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    I'm a moderate liberal and I would love for my tax dollars to go to pay for shelters and mental hospitals.
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    The dearth of mental health institutions is not (directly) because “elements of our polity” don’t want to pay for them. It’s a legacy of actively closing them in the 70’s-80’s due to inhumane conditions and civil libertarian concerns around institutionalizing people against their will. Now - we certainly aren’t having a very productive public conversations about the obvious negative outcomes of that policy shift.
    - xhevahir 4y ago
      "With President Reagan and the Republicans taking over, the Mental Health Systems Act was discarded before the ink had dried and the CMHC funds were simply block granted to the states." https://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_legacy_violence_the_homeless_mental_illness/ https://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_leg... I don't see how anyone can claim that austerity and a deep cynicism toward the very idea of mental treatment didn't play major roles.
      - germinalphrase 4y ago
        No, of course that is a large part of the story, but things like the Willowbrook expose also caused left-wing politicians (in that case Robert Kennedy) to also attack institutions.
      - throwaway894345 4y ago
- deanCommie 4y ago
  You're so obsessed with turning "progressive" into a derisive term that you're not being consistent with it. > You can take the bums off the street (and put them in shelters) and your city will get a lot better. It's just very unpopular with progressives, Progressives are absolutely for building more low income housing, and making it available to street bums. It's conservatives who fight 1/ building low income/subsidized housing, 2/ putting that housing in any neighbourhood where they might be in. I don't know what happened in the 80s, or where the bums went. Maybe they all were shipped off to California, where it's warm, and now HN posters complain about IT'S progressive policies. Maybe they all died and nobody in the 80s cared but now they do. Either way, the economic forces that led to them being created in the first place never were fixed, so there is a steady supply of new bums throughout America. Why? What is Europe able to do to keep those people at bay that America isn't?
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    > It's conservatives who fight 1/ building low income/subsidized housing, 2/ putting that housing in any neighbourhood where they might be in. That’s why, I presume, cities that are thoroughly controlled by Democrats, like San Francisco or Seattle, have no trouble building low income housing and putting it all around the city, right? I mean, conservatives have no government representation in those cities whatsoever, so the Democrat politicians are simply listening to the wishes of their constituents, and as a result, low income housing projects sail through, and housing prices are low, correct?
    - plorkyeran 4y ago
      San Francisco is extremely progressive in some ways, and extremely conservative in others. There seems to be a general assumption that because SF is very visibly progressive on some high-profile social topics that it must be progressive on all topics, but it's not. More generally, the idea that Democrats cannot be conservative is incorrect, and not just in the leftist "Democrats are right wing" sort of sense. In an effective one-party state you see a lot of people who are ideologically much more aligned with the Republican party running as Democrats, and vice-versa in Republican-dominated states.
- lovich 4y ago
  Use the subway every time I’m in Manhattan and I barely even see any crazies. It’s about on par with Boston. It’s got some notable events that make it in the news but I think that’s more a function of the population size rather than a noticeable increase in the crazy percentage
  - twobitshifter 4y ago
    Have you been since the pandemic?
    - kelnos 4y ago
      Not the parent, but I've visited Manhattan and Brooklyn a couple times in the past year, and I didn't find the subway scary at all, even when taking trains fairly late at night. Maybe I was just in the safer areas, though.
    - lovich 4y ago
      Yes, I was there 2 weeks ago. Mind you I didnt go to every single line and section of the city, only in Manhattan, but literally no issues. Also spent about 3 hours outside smoking until 4 am and only had a single person approach me to bum some change and left with no issue when I told him I didn't carry cash. I have no doubt there are rough parts of the city, but its not all lawlessness and mentally unwell in the streets everywhere.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    I used to use it until the pandemic. It's a horror show in comparison now. Some lines used to be horror shows before, too, but it was mostly only bad outside of Manhattan.
nicoburns 4y ago
The most viable (and likely cheapest overall) option, would be to give the bums access to housing, healthcare, etc. Then there would be far fewer bums in the first place. It's a win-win, but alas tends to be politically unpopular. Especially in the US.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Most of them have access to housing (shelters, if they feel like following the shelter's rules) and healthcare for free. That's why there are so many of them.
- kelnos 4y ago
  Where I live (San Francisco), many homeless people refuse to go to shelters, because the shelters have strict rules around belongings, enter/exit times, and alcohol and drug use, among other things. Personally I am of the opinion that we should just say "tough shit", and require homeless people to stay in shelters if there are beds available[0], but apparently that's not "humane" or whatever. It's somehow more important to give someone the right to sleep on a street corner at noon (something I witnessed just today, in an area where there usually aren't many/any homeless people), than it is to help get them on their feet, plus allow the rest of us to feel safe and not have to deal with garbage, human shit, and needles all over. [0] That's the other thing, though: I doubt we have enough shelter beds to cover all the homeless people here. Yet another thing that needs to be fixed. I hear NYC is able to house around 95% of their homeless, and we're a much smaller city.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
    Earnestly, these rules are in fact arbitrary and tough. When you’re a bum, genuinely all you have is your sense of your own personhood. Being assigned strict rules like a government mandated bedtime (aka a closing time for the shelter) is a huge pill to swallow because you’re giving up what little you have when you already have little. Additionally, shelters may not be safe for you! You may get robbed, raped, or otherwise violated by other people there, with no accountability or guarantee of safety. On top of this, if you are addicted to drugs, you might be unable to safely detox. Cutting cold turkey in a shelter sounds like a nightmare and I wouldn’t be surprised if a bum would prefer remaining addicted on the street than vomiting/sweating/sick in a shelter full of strangers where you’re too vulnerable to fight back if anything goes wrong. More realistically, I’ve known folks who refuse to go to shelters because the shelters demand them to give up their pets, aka their family and what’s getting them through the traumatizing experience of homelessness. Or they’re told to give up their possessions for being too bulky or much, even though there’s no guarantee they might not need all that gear back if they’re later kicked out or age out or housing falls through.

by xyzzyz 4y ago

orangepurple 4y ago

I increasingly get the feeling that the only winning move is to not play. I have no idea how we got to this point either.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

NYC kicked the bums out of Manhattan in the 80s and kept them out through the early 00s. It worked really well. Wealthy people used public transit to get to their wall street jobs, and many people walked home alone at night. Fast forward to today, and it's not progressive to go after the bums any more. Now the subway is extremely dangerous and smelly, and nobody but the desperate takes it. The streets are a lot less safe than they used to be. You can take the bums off the street (and put them in shelters) and your city will get a lot better. It's just very unpopular with progressives, who happen to be the voting base in big cities. Eventually, things will get bad enough that the progressives leave, and then the streets can get cleaned up again.

xyzzyz 4y ago
I agree with you, but I only have one lifetime, and by the time it plays out in its entirety, I’ll be long retired. Point is, government needs to first clean things up, and then the civil society will move back in, not the other way around.
codyb 4y ago
Extremely dangerous might be a bit much. I ride the subway a fair amount. And there's been an uptick in crime (all over the US), but I wouldn't really call the subway dangerous. NYC houses something like 95% of its homeless as well, which is why we have a lot less people on the streets than in places like LA or SF. But shelter conditions are pretty miserable as I understand it so you can sort of understand the hold outs. And we may just not have enough space. But yea, NYC's a big city, there's definitely some homeless, but I'm not sure my lived experience here is as dire as you make it sound. That being said, some areas are certainly worse than others, and there's definitely some aggressive mentally ill people you'll see here and there.
- WillPostForFood 4y ago
  NYC houses something like 95% of its homeless as well, which is why we have a lot less people on the streets than in places like LA or SF. This is true, and is the most clear example of how immoral the "housing first" policies in California are. It is a pipe dream that creates a horror show of homeless misery on the streets in LA and SF. The vast majority of the city’s approximately 50,000 homeless people live in shelters — about 30,000 in family shelters, and about 18,000 in shelters for single adults. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/30/nyregion/nyc-homeless-eric-adams.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/30/nyregion/nyc-homeless-eri...
xhevahir 4y ago
> You can take the bums off the street (and put them in shelters) There's your problem, I think. In the US, at least, the elements of our polity that favor "taking the bums off the street" are mostly unwilling to pay for things like shelters and mental hospitals.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  I'm a moderate liberal and I would love for my tax dollars to go to pay for shelters and mental hospitals.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  The dearth of mental health institutions is not (directly) because “elements of our polity” don’t want to pay for them. It’s a legacy of actively closing them in the 70’s-80’s due to inhumane conditions and civil libertarian concerns around institutionalizing people against their will. Now - we certainly aren’t having a very productive public conversations about the obvious negative outcomes of that policy shift.
  - xhevahir 4y ago
    "With President Reagan and the Republicans taking over, the Mental Health Systems Act was discarded before the ink had dried and the CMHC funds were simply block granted to the states." https://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_legacy_violence_the_homeless_mental_illness/ https://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_leg... I don't see how anyone can claim that austerity and a deep cynicism toward the very idea of mental treatment didn't play major roles.
    - germinalphrase 4y ago
      No, of course that is a large part of the story, but things like the Willowbrook expose also caused left-wing politicians (in that case Robert Kennedy) to also attack institutions.
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
deanCommie 4y ago
You're so obsessed with turning "progressive" into a derisive term that you're not being consistent with it. > You can take the bums off the street (and put them in shelters) and your city will get a lot better. It's just very unpopular with progressives, Progressives are absolutely for building more low income housing, and making it available to street bums. It's conservatives who fight 1/ building low income/subsidized housing, 2/ putting that housing in any neighbourhood where they might be in. I don't know what happened in the 80s, or where the bums went. Maybe they all were shipped off to California, where it's warm, and now HN posters complain about IT'S progressive policies. Maybe they all died and nobody in the 80s cared but now they do. Either way, the economic forces that led to them being created in the first place never were fixed, so there is a steady supply of new bums throughout America. Why? What is Europe able to do to keep those people at bay that America isn't?
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  > It's conservatives who fight 1/ building low income/subsidized housing, 2/ putting that housing in any neighbourhood where they might be in. That’s why, I presume, cities that are thoroughly controlled by Democrats, like San Francisco or Seattle, have no trouble building low income housing and putting it all around the city, right? I mean, conservatives have no government representation in those cities whatsoever, so the Democrat politicians are simply listening to the wishes of their constituents, and as a result, low income housing projects sail through, and housing prices are low, correct?
  - plorkyeran 4y ago
    San Francisco is extremely progressive in some ways, and extremely conservative in others. There seems to be a general assumption that because SF is very visibly progressive on some high-profile social topics that it must be progressive on all topics, but it's not. More generally, the idea that Democrats cannot be conservative is incorrect, and not just in the leftist "Democrats are right wing" sort of sense. In an effective one-party state you see a lot of people who are ideologically much more aligned with the Republican party running as Democrats, and vice-versa in Republican-dominated states.
lovich 4y ago
Use the subway every time I’m in Manhattan and I barely even see any crazies. It’s about on par with Boston. It’s got some notable events that make it in the news but I think that’s more a function of the population size rather than a noticeable increase in the crazy percentage
- twobitshifter 4y ago
  Have you been since the pandemic?
  - kelnos 4y ago
    Not the parent, but I've visited Manhattan and Brooklyn a couple times in the past year, and I didn't find the subway scary at all, even when taking trains fairly late at night. Maybe I was just in the safer areas, though.
  - lovich 4y ago
    Yes, I was there 2 weeks ago. Mind you I didnt go to every single line and section of the city, only in Manhattan, but literally no issues. Also spent about 3 hours outside smoking until 4 am and only had a single person approach me to bum some change and left with no issue when I told him I didn't carry cash. I have no doubt there are rough parts of the city, but its not all lawlessness and mentally unwell in the streets everywhere.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  I used to use it until the pandemic. It's a horror show in comparison now. Some lines used to be horror shows before, too, but it was mostly only bad outside of Manhattan.

nicoburns 4y ago

The most viable (and likely cheapest overall) option, would be to give the bums access to housing, healthcare, etc. Then there would be far fewer bums in the first place. It's a win-win, but alas tends to be politically unpopular. Especially in the US.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
Most of them have access to housing (shelters, if they feel like following the shelter's rules) and healthcare for free. That's why there are so many of them.
kelnos 4y ago
Where I live (San Francisco), many homeless people refuse to go to shelters, because the shelters have strict rules around belongings, enter/exit times, and alcohol and drug use, among other things. Personally I am of the opinion that we should just say "tough shit", and require homeless people to stay in shelters if there are beds available[0], but apparently that's not "humane" or whatever. It's somehow more important to give someone the right to sleep on a street corner at noon (something I witnessed just today, in an area where there usually aren't many/any homeless people), than it is to help get them on their feet, plus allow the rest of us to feel safe and not have to deal with garbage, human shit, and needles all over. [0] That's the other thing, though: I doubt we have enough shelter beds to cover all the homeless people here. Yet another thing that needs to be fixed. I hear NYC is able to house around 95% of their homeless, and we're a much smaller city.
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  Earnestly, these rules are in fact arbitrary and tough. When you’re a bum, genuinely all you have is your sense of your own personhood. Being assigned strict rules like a government mandated bedtime (aka a closing time for the shelter) is a huge pill to swallow because you’re giving up what little you have when you already have little. Additionally, shelters may not be safe for you! You may get robbed, raped, or otherwise violated by other people there, with no accountability or guarantee of safety. On top of this, if you are addicted to drugs, you might be unable to safely detox. Cutting cold turkey in a shelter sounds like a nightmare and I wouldn’t be surprised if a bum would prefer remaining addicted on the street than vomiting/sweating/sick in a shelter full of strangers where you’re too vulnerable to fight back if anything goes wrong. More realistically, I’ve known folks who refuse to go to shelters because the shelters demand them to give up their pets, aka their family and what’s getting them through the traumatizing experience of homelessness. Or they’re told to give up their possessions for being too bulky or much, even though there’s no guarantee they might not need all that gear back if they’re later kicked out or age out or housing falls through.