5 ms·

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

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.
      - kjeetgill 4y ago
        This weird characterization of addiction is just wishful thinking on your part. Even your examples are absolutely blind to casual scrutiny. Plenty of people find it incredible difficult to alter all sorts patterns of behavior. I'm very sympathetic to the whole: "If you can't fix you I can't fix you" resignation of the situation. And I totally get people being over "solving the disease not the problem" rhetoric. That's all normal. But you're just flat out pulling justification out of your butt to feel better. Your compassion is limited and it's acceptable that it is. That's all.
        gamblor956 4y ago
        No, my justification comes from actually working as the appointed legal guardian for a number of drug addicts and knowing how it actually works instead of having a purely academic understanding of addiction like so many homeless "advocates" do. Compassion for drug addicts does not mean letting them stay addicted. That is the cruelest thing you can do to them. Compassion for a homeless drug addict means forcing them into treatment so they can be human again.
- NoraCodes 4y ago
  > 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? Yes - in two ways. First, "antisocial behavior" is a very loose phrase. Do you mean "crimes," or do you mean something broader? If the latter, then you're applying a higher standard to the most vulnerable than to everyone else in society, and that's definitely draconain. Second, expecting people to quit addictive drugs cold turkey in order to obtain housing is absolutely doomed to fail. Why not have harm reduction clinics and secular drug rehabs as an option? That would almost certainly lead to better outcomes.
  - prottog 4y ago
    Technically drug use (at least of the kind commonly done by this demographic) is a crime ;-) but of course I agree that criminal laws aren't always logical or moral. I'm given to understand that harm reduction clinics and secular drug rehabs already exist in San Francisco? That might be wrong. But either way, since the taxpayers of SF are already funding a variety of homelessness-related programs run by the city to the tune of $60k per year per homeless person, those programs absolutely need to come with strings attached, if nothing else to be able to prove to the taxpayers that the programs are successful. But the policy in the city (and I'm not saying that you are in support of this) has evolved to the point that the very desired outcome of harm-reduction or drug rehab -- that is, reducing drug abuse and dependency -- is infringing on the right of the homeless to behave as they wish, often with the justification that nobody complains about wealthy people doing drugs. At that point, taxpayers are just paying homeless people to do drugs with the side benefit of paying city workers who administer the programs.
    - NoraCodes 4y ago
      Yeah, I largely agree. This is one reason I'm inclined to support direct-cash-transfer programs like the New Leaf Project in Vancouver, Canada; it dramatically reduces overhead and, according to the study related to that project, actually does a much better job in getting people off the street than managed programs with complex policy and behavior requirements. If the objective is to get people into houses, that's the way to go.
- watwut 4y ago
  Why is it good policy to push drug addicted people and those with issues into homelessness?
proffeatur8 4y ago

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.
    - kjeetgill 4y ago
      This weird characterization of addiction is just wishful thinking on your part. Even your examples are absolutely blind to casual scrutiny. Plenty of people find it incredible difficult to alter all sorts patterns of behavior. I'm very sympathetic to the whole: "If you can't fix you I can't fix you" resignation of the situation. And I totally get people being over "solving the disease not the problem" rhetoric. That's all normal. But you're just flat out pulling justification out of your butt to feel better. Your compassion is limited and it's acceptable that it is. That's all.
      - gamblor956 4y ago
        No, my justification comes from actually working as the appointed legal guardian for a number of drug addicts and knowing how it actually works instead of having a purely academic understanding of addiction like so many homeless "advocates" do. Compassion for drug addicts does not mean letting them stay addicted. That is the cruelest thing you can do to them. Compassion for a homeless drug addict means forcing them into treatment so they can be human again.
NoraCodes 4y ago
> 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? Yes - in two ways. First, "antisocial behavior" is a very loose phrase. Do you mean "crimes," or do you mean something broader? If the latter, then you're applying a higher standard to the most vulnerable than to everyone else in society, and that's definitely draconain. Second, expecting people to quit addictive drugs cold turkey in order to obtain housing is absolutely doomed to fail. Why not have harm reduction clinics and secular drug rehabs as an option? That would almost certainly lead to better outcomes.
- prottog 4y ago
  Technically drug use (at least of the kind commonly done by this demographic) is a crime ;-) but of course I agree that criminal laws aren't always logical or moral. I'm given to understand that harm reduction clinics and secular drug rehabs already exist in San Francisco? That might be wrong. But either way, since the taxpayers of SF are already funding a variety of homelessness-related programs run by the city to the tune of $60k per year per homeless person, those programs absolutely need to come with strings attached, if nothing else to be able to prove to the taxpayers that the programs are successful. But the policy in the city (and I'm not saying that you are in support of this) has evolved to the point that the very desired outcome of harm-reduction or drug rehab -- that is, reducing drug abuse and dependency -- is infringing on the right of the homeless to behave as they wish, often with the justification that nobody complains about wealthy people doing drugs. At that point, taxpayers are just paying homeless people to do drugs with the side benefit of paying city workers who administer the programs.
  - NoraCodes 4y ago
    Yeah, I largely agree. This is one reason I'm inclined to support direct-cash-transfer programs like the New Leaf Project in Vancouver, Canada; it dramatically reduces overhead and, according to the study related to that project, actually does a much better job in getting people off the street than managed programs with complex policy and behavior requirements. If the objective is to get people into houses, that's the way to go.
watwut 4y ago
Why is it good policy to push drug addicted people and those with issues into homelessness?

proffeatur8 4y ago