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> opponents argue is cruel I have lived in SF for several years and done a complete 180. The status quo is not “compassionate”, there are people who turn down

> opponents argue is cruel I have lived in SF for several years and done a complete 180. The status quo is not “compassionate”, there are people who turn down help. These same individuals quite literally destroy the city. For instance, we have people sleeping and overdosing (dying) in our buildings entryway. The other week, one person defecated and smeared it on our door, lit our awning on fire, and uprooted all the landscaping and burned it. At the same time, people are selling drugs nearby and individuals are literally lined up with backpacks. There is constantly broken glass, feces, and trash spewed everywhere. Something has to change, and again lots of these people are turning down help. Right now the police state they send out the HOT (homeless outreach team) which is basically older individuals who volunteer to distribute pamphlets. If there is a crime, usually no arrest is made if the police are even able to respond. The penalties are often a misdemeanor and a fine, and not showing up to court often only results in more (effectively unenforceable) fines It’s a fine line between “compassion” and “enabling”.

NoraCodes 4y ago
I think the key question here is: what kind of help is available? Is the "help" financial literacy classes, religious drug rehab, and overcrowded shelters with draconian policies? How many of these people would still be out on the street if housing was abundant and affordable? Some, maybe, but surely not most.
- prottog 4y ago
  > How many of these people would still be out on the street if housing was abundant and affordable? What if the housing was abundant and affordable but came with strings attached, like not being able to do drugs or engage in other antisocial behavior in them? Would that be a draconian policy? Literature from people who have spoken with many of the homeless of SF suggest that "some, maybe, but surely not most" ratio is actually the other way around. People who are temporarily homeless due solely to financial factors are often able to find a home, and comprise a minority of the people you actually see on the street; and many of the latter actually turn down help if it means they cannot do as they please.
  - gamblor956 4y ago
    This exactly. There is more than enough housing in LA and SF to house the temporarily homeless. There is also enough housing to house the mentally ill homeless. But there is essentially no housing to house the drug-addicted homeless. Thousands of shelter beds go unused in LA every night because most homeless shelters are sober facilities, meaning no drugs or alcohol, and the drug addicts would rather keep their booze and their high then have a bed and a bath. And those are the majority of the homeless you encounter in LA and SF. (Note: mind altering substances can trigger mental illness; marijuana is known to trigger latent schizoid-series mental illnesses and this is one of the reasons it remained a controlled drug at the federal level for so long. Most illegal psychotropic drugs damage the brain, ultimately leading to the development of mental illness after sustained or heavy use; I don't classify such individuals as mentally ill because their drug addiction dominates.) Source: I was a public defender representing the criminally mentally ill at the start of my career and essentially acting in the same role as proposed by the mental health court plan (albeit without the criminal law element).
    - NoraCodes 4y ago
      > the drug addicts would rather keep their booze and their high then have a bed and a bath. Or, rather, their addiction - which is an illness - prevents them from making that decision. Right?
      - michaelbrave 4y ago
        There is that, but also when one's life is that shitty the comfort of "something to numb that pain" would be welcome to most, especially those with little to no hope of things getting better
      - gamblor956 4y ago
        No, that's wrong. Addiction makes it painful or unpleasant not to continue drug use, but it doesn't compel continued use of drugs; the choice is made to continue using instead of temporarily dealing with the pain of withdrawal. In that sense, it's no different than giving up sweets, or pushing through physical discomfort during hard exercise. While drugs can cause mental illness due to brain damage, the amount of drug use required to get to that point is always a deliberate choice by the addict. And the "tough life" "self medicating" BS is just that. Billions of people have harder lives and don't do drugs to self medicate.
- proffeatur8 4y ago
dominotw 4y ago
> I have lived in SF for several years and done a complete 180. Doesn't really matter because CA is uniparty system. Few people doing 180 isn't going stop us from providing compassionate care instead of vindictive suggestions like imprisonment.
- hollywood_court 4y ago
  Where is the compassion for contributing members of society who have to deal with this on a daily basis? I consider myself a progressive individual, but I won’t allow someone to damage my home or other property simply because they are mentally unwell. I won’t allow my child or wife to be harassed or watch them tip toe around feces and broken class because people can’t get their act together.
  - dominotw 4y ago
    > Where is the compassion for contributing members of society Pretty sure compassion for top 1% of society isn't really top priority for the society. you can move easily if you want with all the resources you have at your disposal.
    - hollywood_court 4y ago
      People want to live their lives without being harassed and without having their property damaged or their loved ones harmed.
      - kelseyfrog 4y ago
        If you had to choose between property or people, which would it be?
        hollywood_court 4y ago
        I would choose my family’s safety and well being over the life of a stranger every time.
jseliger 4y ago
Mental health courts may be a small step in the right direction, but California will try absolutely anything to solve homelessness apart from building more housing: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-end-homelessness-except-build-more-homes https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-en... We see the results: https://seliger.com/2022/06/29/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem-when-cities-build-housing-homelessness-goes-down/ https://seliger.com/2022/06/29/homelessness-is-a-housing-pro...
- powerslacker 4y ago
  Anyone who spends a few afternoons in the shady parts of San Francisco can tell you that the issue is not a lack of housing. There are some people who cannot live unsupervised in any kind of housing because they are a danger to themselves, others, and property. Newsom is one of my least favorite politicians, but credit where credit is due this is one of the best things that has been accomplished under his administration.
  - riddlemethat 4y ago
    California has been losing a ground war to hordes of homeless drug addicts for a long time. If Newsom can win a battle it'll be turning the tide even slightly...
- bsder 4y ago
  About 1 in 5 homeless in San Francisco have a traumatic brain injury. To deal with that, you need medical facilities. Mere housing is insufficient.
  - watwut 4y ago
    Somehow, they just all happened to start having brain injuries as housing got expensive. rather then, expensive housing made it impossible to keep house for more and more people with issues.
- rllearneratwork 4y ago
atoav 4y ago
Maybe these people don't feel the need uphold their part of the unwritten contract with society, because society hasn't uphold their side during their life. Generally such problems are much rarer in societies where the divide between rich and poor is smaller, where you have free access to healthcare and psychological treatment and where you have some form of social security that keeps you off the street. What you phrase here are the consequences of the form of society you are living in. The question now is, do you want to solve the root causes of these issues or do you want to paint over them following the motto "out of sight, out of mind". I mean maybe it is my European arrogance, but to me it is pretty damn obvious that a lot of the things that make parts of the US this dystopic place are a direct result of the lack of social cohesion. Helping total strangers out with my tax money is not something I just do because it is the right thing to do, I also do it because living in a nicer society feels better than living in one where one quarter is desperately fighting for survival while another quarter has basically already given up.
- prottog 4y ago
  > maybe it is my European arrogance It could be. Social cohesion is a lot easier in monoethnic countries, for better or for worse; and in countries where the monoethnicity is changing like Sweden (where a full quarter of the population is not ethnically Swedish), voters are putting political parties in power that promise to restore it by some combination of reducing immigration or enforcing integration. In the meantime, the dystopia of the United States is such that the state of Mississippi, often panned both within the US and without as a "literal third-world country", has a higher per capita disposable income than Germany. The image that you have of half the population either struggling to stay alive or basically dead is not true to reality.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I feel you're just repeating randomly cherry-picked stats. The data is fairly consistent that the USA as a whole has slowly lost it's advantages over Europe that it had after WWII and the New Deal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living_in_the_Unit... > In the United Nations Human Development Index, which measures health, education, and per capita income levels, the United States is relatively high, currently ranking 8th. However, the Human Development Index is not considered a measure of living standards, but a measure of potential living standards were there no inequality: rather, the inequality-adjusted Human Development Index is considered the actual level of human development, taking inequality into account. On the inequality-adjusted HDI, the United States ranked 27th in 2014, tied with Poland Wikipedia has newer stats too, but the USA is still basically tied with Poland in the mid 20s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequalit... So, if the USA as a whole is Poland then presumably Mississipi, despite all the money they get from other states, is likely not doing that great compared with Germany. Also intersesting, and new to me, they do one that takes into account how wasteful the country is with resources to achieve that standard of living, on that the USA slips way down, below Ukraine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_planetary_pressures%E2%80%93adjusted_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_planetary...

NoraCodes 4y ago

I think the key question here is: what kind of help is available? Is the "help" financial literacy classes, religious drug rehab, and overcrowded shelters with draconian policies? How many of these people would still be out on the street if housing was abundant and affordable? Some, maybe, but surely not most.

prottog 4y ago
> How many of these people would still be out on the street if housing was abundant and affordable? What if the housing was abundant and affordable but came with strings attached, like not being able to do drugs or engage in other antisocial behavior in them? Would that be a draconian policy? Literature from people who have spoken with many of the homeless of SF suggest that "some, maybe, but surely not most" ratio is actually the other way around. People who are temporarily homeless due solely to financial factors are often able to find a home, and comprise a minority of the people you actually see on the street; and many of the latter actually turn down help if it means they cannot do as they please.
- gamblor956 4y ago
  This exactly. There is more than enough housing in LA and SF to house the temporarily homeless. There is also enough housing to house the mentally ill homeless. But there is essentially no housing to house the drug-addicted homeless. Thousands of shelter beds go unused in LA every night because most homeless shelters are sober facilities, meaning no drugs or alcohol, and the drug addicts would rather keep their booze and their high then have a bed and a bath. And those are the majority of the homeless you encounter in LA and SF. (Note: mind altering substances can trigger mental illness; marijuana is known to trigger latent schizoid-series mental illnesses and this is one of the reasons it remained a controlled drug at the federal level for so long. Most illegal psychotropic drugs damage the brain, ultimately leading to the development of mental illness after sustained or heavy use; I don't classify such individuals as mentally ill because their drug addiction dominates.) Source: I was a public defender representing the criminally mentally ill at the start of my career and essentially acting in the same role as proposed by the mental health court plan (albeit without the criminal law element).
  - NoraCodes 4y ago
    > the drug addicts would rather keep their booze and their high then have a bed and a bath. Or, rather, their addiction - which is an illness - prevents them from making that decision. Right?
    - michaelbrave 4y ago
      There is that, but also when one's life is that shitty the comfort of "something to numb that pain" would be welcome to most, especially those with little to no hope of things getting better
    - gamblor956 4y ago
      No, that's wrong. Addiction makes it painful or unpleasant not to continue drug use, but it doesn't compel continued use of drugs; the choice is made to continue using instead of temporarily dealing with the pain of withdrawal. In that sense, it's no different than giving up sweets, or pushing through physical discomfort during hard exercise. While drugs can cause mental illness due to brain damage, the amount of drug use required to get to that point is always a deliberate choice by the addict. And the "tough life" "self medicating" BS is just that. Billions of people have harder lives and don't do drugs to self medicate.
proffeatur8 4y ago

dominotw 4y ago

> I have lived in SF for several years and done a complete 180. Doesn't really matter because CA is uniparty system. Few people doing 180 isn't going stop us from providing compassionate care instead of vindictive suggestions like imprisonment.

hollywood_court 4y ago
Where is the compassion for contributing members of society who have to deal with this on a daily basis? I consider myself a progressive individual, but I won’t allow someone to damage my home or other property simply because they are mentally unwell. I won’t allow my child or wife to be harassed or watch them tip toe around feces and broken class because people can’t get their act together.
- dominotw 4y ago
  > Where is the compassion for contributing members of society Pretty sure compassion for top 1% of society isn't really top priority for the society. you can move easily if you want with all the resources you have at your disposal.
  - hollywood_court 4y ago
    People want to live their lives without being harassed and without having their property damaged or their loved ones harmed.
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      If you had to choose between property or people, which would it be?
      - hollywood_court 4y ago
        I would choose my family’s safety and well being over the life of a stranger every time.

jseliger 4y ago

Mental health courts may be a small step in the right direction, but California will try absolutely anything to solve homelessness apart from building more housing: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-end-homelessness-except-build-more-homes https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-en... We see the results: https://seliger.com/2022/06/29/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem-when-cities-build-housing-homelessness-goes-down/ https://seliger.com/2022/06/29/homelessness-is-a-housing-pro...

powerslacker 4y ago
Anyone who spends a few afternoons in the shady parts of San Francisco can tell you that the issue is not a lack of housing. There are some people who cannot live unsupervised in any kind of housing because they are a danger to themselves, others, and property. Newsom is one of my least favorite politicians, but credit where credit is due this is one of the best things that has been accomplished under his administration.
- riddlemethat 4y ago
  California has been losing a ground war to hordes of homeless drug addicts for a long time. If Newsom can win a battle it'll be turning the tide even slightly...
bsder 4y ago
About 1 in 5 homeless in San Francisco have a traumatic brain injury. To deal with that, you need medical facilities. Mere housing is insufficient.
- watwut 4y ago
  Somehow, they just all happened to start having brain injuries as housing got expensive. rather then, expensive housing made it impossible to keep house for more and more people with issues.
rllearneratwork 4y ago

atoav 4y ago

Maybe these people don't feel the need uphold their part of the unwritten contract with society, because society hasn't uphold their side during their life. Generally such problems are much rarer in societies where the divide between rich and poor is smaller, where you have free access to healthcare and psychological treatment and where you have some form of social security that keeps you off the street. What you phrase here are the consequences of the form of society you are living in. The question now is, do you want to solve the root causes of these issues or do you want to paint over them following the motto "out of sight, out of mind". I mean maybe it is my European arrogance, but to me it is pretty damn obvious that a lot of the things that make parts of the US this dystopic place are a direct result of the lack of social cohesion. Helping total strangers out with my tax money is not something I just do because it is the right thing to do, I also do it because living in a nicer society feels better than living in one where one quarter is desperately fighting for survival while another quarter has basically already given up.

prottog 4y ago
> maybe it is my European arrogance It could be. Social cohesion is a lot easier in monoethnic countries, for better or for worse; and in countries where the monoethnicity is changing like Sweden (where a full quarter of the population is not ethnically Swedish), voters are putting political parties in power that promise to restore it by some combination of reducing immigration or enforcing integration. In the meantime, the dystopia of the United States is such that the state of Mississippi, often panned both within the US and without as a "literal third-world country", has a higher per capita disposable income than Germany. The image that you have of half the population either struggling to stay alive or basically dead is not true to reality.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  I feel you're just repeating randomly cherry-picked stats. The data is fairly consistent that the USA as a whole has slowly lost it's advantages over Europe that it had after WWII and the New Deal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living_in_the_Unit... > In the United Nations Human Development Index, which measures health, education, and per capita income levels, the United States is relatively high, currently ranking 8th. However, the Human Development Index is not considered a measure of living standards, but a measure of potential living standards were there no inequality: rather, the inequality-adjusted Human Development Index is considered the actual level of human development, taking inequality into account. On the inequality-adjusted HDI, the United States ranked 27th in 2014, tied with Poland Wikipedia has newer stats too, but the USA is still basically tied with Poland in the mid 20s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequalit... So, if the USA as a whole is Poland then presumably Mississipi, despite all the money they get from other states, is likely not doing that great compared with Germany. Also intersesting, and new to me, they do one that takes into account how wasteful the country is with resources to achieve that standard of living, on that the USA slips way down, below Ukraine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_planetary_pressures%E2%80%93adjusted_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_planetary...