7 ms·

Screw that, clean the homeless up. Can’t believe we have let the problem get so bad.

by bergenty 4y ago

ska 4y ago
> clean the homeless up I'm curious - what do you imagine that looks like?
- bergenty 4y ago
  Moving them to the shelters and telling them to stay off the street. If there’s no room in the shelter, providing them housing outside the city. If you have a shelter/provided housing it’s a crime to sleep on the streets. Alternatively start up workhouses and sanitariums again. Government work in exchange for a safe, clean place to sleep and food for the day. Mental sanitariums for those people that are too far gone. That should provide enough of a disincentive over time to camp on the streets.
  - ska 4y ago
    So, a form of incarceration? An observation: most of the "simple answer" approaches to this seem to have failed badly in practice when/where they are attempted. There has to be some complexity, no?
    - km3r 4y ago
      And the current approach of leaving them to the streets is failing much much worse in practice. Of the politically and economically viable options, kicking them off the street and sending them to shelter (which they can refuse, but they can't stay on the street) is the best option I have seen. Long term we absolutely need to address the issues that cause homelessness, and I think we are overall heading that direction, but the problems of today need to be addressed with solutions for today.
      - ska 4y ago
        Isn't that exactly what is being tried and currently failing in other places? I'm pretty sure I saw an article to that effect about Vancouver this year-ish (the one in Canada, not the one in Washington). What is it about the shelters (other than lack of spaces) that is making people opt not to use them?
  - rtkwe 4y ago
    The whole area is one massive housing crisis there's barely space to put people with money for livable rates much less trying to house the entire homeless population.
  - Bud 4y ago
  - gwbas1c 4y ago
    Some of the replies point out that it's always more complicated than that. One part of the problem is that the sheer cost of housing in San Francisco (and the surrounding) area is out of control. Some homeless people are simply priced out of the market. That generally is caused by a general lack of new construction in San Francisco and the Bay Area. But, I doubt that magically increasing the housing stock overnight will "solve" homelessness. (Because there are many reasons for homelessness.) When I lived in the S.F. Bay area for almost a decade, I was shocked that the homeless problem was so bad. Where I'm from, the weather does put a sense of urgency on homelessness, because it's much more difficult to camp unsheltered in the winter. The Bay Area doesn't have the late October-November urgency to get people into shelters; nor do the homeless have the urgency to follow someone else's rules for a bit or risk freezing to death. What I would suggest is to try to avoid seeing homeless as "others." Many people are homeless for different reasons; and it's important to empathize with the person who doesn't want the tent on their front door as much as it's important to empathize with the person in the tent.
- throwawayb150us 4y ago
  https://nypost.com/2022/09/13/latino-sfpd-cop-branded-racist-for-arresting-hispanic-drug-dealers/amp/ https://nypost.com/2022/09/13/latino-sfpd-cop-branded-racist... : This smells like Cartel involvement at high levels of government.
- m0llusk 4y ago
  One potential foundation is the tradition of reading the Riot Act. Normally citizens are allowed to move freely and gather. This is suspended during a riot for public safety. Homeless in general and encampments specifically can be seen as also a menace to public health and safety. Observe and record incidents of disruptive behavior, public drug use and pooping, and calls to responders and at certain level issue a warning then take action. These problem cases can cost communities hundreds of thousands. At some point something has to be done.
  - nerb 4y ago
    > These problem cases can cost communities hundreds of thousands so let's continue to spend more on incarcerating them as a bandage rather than fixing the issues :) > incidents of... pooping... i'm sure they just do this outside for preference rather than utter lack of access to public facilities. why couldn't they be like me during my trip to SF where i could just patronize a business to use their bathroom when i needed to go? > menace to public health and safety love to see the intentional split between "public" and whatever group you'd put houseless people in (those "menaces"!)
blacksmith_tb 4y ago
Well, the problem there is that simply being homeless isn't a crime (which I will say seems to me to be reasonable - the alternative is things like the Victorian Poorhouses). Throwing trash all over the place (since there are no public trash services to speak of in most cities, and homeless people don't have service from trash haulers) is a crime, but if they were issued citations, they couldn't pay, and still don't have any way to get rid of their trash... I would think that using public money to haul away trash would have a pretty good return on investment for everyone concerned.
- maerF0x0 4y ago
  > but if they were issued citations, they couldn't pay, and still don't have any way to get rid of their trash... I would think that using public money to haul away trash would have a pretty good return on investment for everyone concerned. One of the points of the justice system is to ensure that people are sufficiently disincentivized from doing things that society has decided shouldnt be done. We shouldnt consider it a good investment to enable bad behavior.
  - nerb 4y ago
    that "[point] of the justice system" only works if you consider everyone in a vacuum and have the false notion everyone has equal access to resources. parent already outlined why people living on the street don't have the means to throw away trash in the right place, but you're focused on it "enabl[ing] bad behavior" and (i assume) in support of giving people that have no money fines (which also unfairly impact poorer people, but i'm sure that's lost on you as well). we have immense resources to provide public utilities like roads, why can't there be more public garbage cans (which benefit everyone; last time i visited SF it was a pain carrying trash everywhere)
    - maerF0x0 4y ago
      > eryone has equal access to resources No false notions required -- all living people have a risk of loss of freedoms, which is why prison works. > why can't there be more public garbage cans I suppose this mostly makes sense until we start to have local businesses using them for free trash disposal. Why would I be more in favor of public trash cans you ask? (so you dont have to continue presuming...) Because it's enabling and encouraging an ideal behavior -- people dispose of their trash in an orderly manner.
dirtmerchant 4y ago
Please enlighten us. What do you mean by "clean up"? Keep in mind, we're all engineers here, so details matter. I'll wait.
- cultofmetatron 4y ago
  undefined behavior. implementation details left to discretion of implementer
- bergenty 4y ago
  Get them off the street. Move them to workhouses or sanitariums.
mjevans 4y ago
Further clarification requires far more nuance and assessment than is likely to be read. There's probably not even one single cause but a multitude of social ills. Some people in this situation might experience one, but are probably each a unique snowflake of mixed problems. Unaffordable housing, mental illness (across a huge spectrum of many different illnesses, probably several different experts just for this), even the occasional grifter who just happens to prefer panhandling or urban scavenging to scrape by. My belief is that homelessness / 'unsheltered' is a catchall result of all the gaps in society's integration of individuals; and it's also a national level problem since the individuals can also be shipped around like those migrants that made the news recently. At least in America, but I've also heard that one of the emotionally motivating factors of Brexit were migrants from outside of the EU, we refuse to even provide a path and set of requirements for those who do want to participate in the system that's setup (instead in the US it's "build the wall" or "war at the border" extremes). Closing gaps in social safety nets and providing pathways for those who are troubled to integrate into society in mutually useful ways, or perhaps even caring for those who are incapable of such self care when provided help getting out of that hole, logically seems like a far harder challenge than any single city can face in a vacuum when we can't even handle easier issues on a national level.

Screw that, clean the homeless up. Can’t believe we have let the problem get so bad.

ska 4y ago

> clean the homeless up I'm curious - what do you imagine that looks like?

bergenty 4y ago
Moving them to the shelters and telling them to stay off the street. If there’s no room in the shelter, providing them housing outside the city. If you have a shelter/provided housing it’s a crime to sleep on the streets. Alternatively start up workhouses and sanitariums again. Government work in exchange for a safe, clean place to sleep and food for the day. Mental sanitariums for those people that are too far gone. That should provide enough of a disincentive over time to camp on the streets.
- ska 4y ago
  So, a form of incarceration? An observation: most of the "simple answer" approaches to this seem to have failed badly in practice when/where they are attempted. There has to be some complexity, no?
  - km3r 4y ago
    And the current approach of leaving them to the streets is failing much much worse in practice. Of the politically and economically viable options, kicking them off the street and sending them to shelter (which they can refuse, but they can't stay on the street) is the best option I have seen. Long term we absolutely need to address the issues that cause homelessness, and I think we are overall heading that direction, but the problems of today need to be addressed with solutions for today.
    - ska 4y ago
      Isn't that exactly what is being tried and currently failing in other places? I'm pretty sure I saw an article to that effect about Vancouver this year-ish (the one in Canada, not the one in Washington). What is it about the shelters (other than lack of spaces) that is making people opt not to use them?
- rtkwe 4y ago
  The whole area is one massive housing crisis there's barely space to put people with money for livable rates much less trying to house the entire homeless population.
- Bud 4y ago
- gwbas1c 4y ago
  Some of the replies point out that it's always more complicated than that. One part of the problem is that the sheer cost of housing in San Francisco (and the surrounding) area is out of control. Some homeless people are simply priced out of the market. That generally is caused by a general lack of new construction in San Francisco and the Bay Area. But, I doubt that magically increasing the housing stock overnight will "solve" homelessness. (Because there are many reasons for homelessness.) When I lived in the S.F. Bay area for almost a decade, I was shocked that the homeless problem was so bad. Where I'm from, the weather does put a sense of urgency on homelessness, because it's much more difficult to camp unsheltered in the winter. The Bay Area doesn't have the late October-November urgency to get people into shelters; nor do the homeless have the urgency to follow someone else's rules for a bit or risk freezing to death. What I would suggest is to try to avoid seeing homeless as "others." Many people are homeless for different reasons; and it's important to empathize with the person who doesn't want the tent on their front door as much as it's important to empathize with the person in the tent.
throwawayb150us 4y ago
https://nypost.com/2022/09/13/latino-sfpd-cop-branded-racist-for-arresting-hispanic-drug-dealers/amp/ https://nypost.com/2022/09/13/latino-sfpd-cop-branded-racist... : This smells like Cartel involvement at high levels of government.
m0llusk 4y ago
One potential foundation is the tradition of reading the Riot Act. Normally citizens are allowed to move freely and gather. This is suspended during a riot for public safety. Homeless in general and encampments specifically can be seen as also a menace to public health and safety. Observe and record incidents of disruptive behavior, public drug use and pooping, and calls to responders and at certain level issue a warning then take action. These problem cases can cost communities hundreds of thousands. At some point something has to be done.
- nerb 4y ago
  > These problem cases can cost communities hundreds of thousands so let's continue to spend more on incarcerating them as a bandage rather than fixing the issues :) > incidents of... pooping... i'm sure they just do this outside for preference rather than utter lack of access to public facilities. why couldn't they be like me during my trip to SF where i could just patronize a business to use their bathroom when i needed to go? > menace to public health and safety love to see the intentional split between "public" and whatever group you'd put houseless people in (those "menaces"!)

blacksmith_tb 4y ago

Well, the problem there is that simply being homeless isn't a crime (which I will say seems to me to be reasonable - the alternative is things like the Victorian Poorhouses). Throwing trash all over the place (since there are no public trash services to speak of in most cities, and homeless people don't have service from trash haulers) is a crime, but if they were issued citations, they couldn't pay, and still don't have any way to get rid of their trash... I would think that using public money to haul away trash would have a pretty good return on investment for everyone concerned.

maerF0x0 4y ago
> but if they were issued citations, they couldn't pay, and still don't have any way to get rid of their trash... I would think that using public money to haul away trash would have a pretty good return on investment for everyone concerned. One of the points of the justice system is to ensure that people are sufficiently disincentivized from doing things that society has decided shouldnt be done. We shouldnt consider it a good investment to enable bad behavior.
- nerb 4y ago
  that "[point] of the justice system" only works if you consider everyone in a vacuum and have the false notion everyone has equal access to resources. parent already outlined why people living on the street don't have the means to throw away trash in the right place, but you're focused on it "enabl[ing] bad behavior" and (i assume) in support of giving people that have no money fines (which also unfairly impact poorer people, but i'm sure that's lost on you as well). we have immense resources to provide public utilities like roads, why can't there be more public garbage cans (which benefit everyone; last time i visited SF it was a pain carrying trash everywhere)
  - maerF0x0 4y ago
    > eryone has equal access to resources No false notions required -- all living people have a risk of loss of freedoms, which is why prison works. > why can't there be more public garbage cans I suppose this mostly makes sense until we start to have local businesses using them for free trash disposal. Why would I be more in favor of public trash cans you ask? (so you dont have to continue presuming...) Because it's enabling and encouraging an ideal behavior -- people dispose of their trash in an orderly manner.

dirtmerchant 4y ago

Please enlighten us. What do you mean by "clean up"? Keep in mind, we're all engineers here, so details matter. I'll wait.

cultofmetatron 4y ago
undefined behavior. implementation details left to discretion of implementer
bergenty 4y ago
Get them off the street. Move them to workhouses or sanitariums.

mjevans 4y ago

Further clarification requires far more nuance and assessment than is likely to be read. There's probably not even one single cause but a multitude of social ills. Some people in this situation might experience one, but are probably each a unique snowflake of mixed problems. Unaffordable housing, mental illness (across a huge spectrum of many different illnesses, probably several different experts just for this), even the occasional grifter who just happens to prefer panhandling or urban scavenging to scrape by. My belief is that homelessness / 'unsheltered' is a catchall result of all the gaps in society's integration of individuals; and it's also a national level problem since the individuals can also be shipped around like those migrants that made the news recently. At least in America, but I've also heard that one of the emotionally motivating factors of Brexit were migrants from outside of the EU, we refuse to even provide a path and set of requirements for those who do want to participate in the system that's setup (instead in the US it's "build the wall" or "war at the border" extremes). Closing gaps in social safety nets and providing pathways for those who are troubled to integrate into society in mutually useful ways, or perhaps even caring for those who are incapable of such self care when provided help getting out of that hole, logically seems like a far harder challenge than any single city can face in a vacuum when we can't even handle easier issues on a national level.