5 ms·

You can’t separate the two. CA has made drugs and misdemeanor crimes effectively un-policeable. Billions of dollars in taxpayer funds have been given to nonprof

You can’t separate the two. CA has made drugs and misdemeanor crimes effectively un-policeable. Billions of dollars in taxpayer funds have been given to nonprofits to improve homeless conditions but they’ve only gotten worse while the nonprofit operators grow rich. People exploit loopholes in the safety nets to get money for drugs. These are all unintended consequences of poorly conceived policy making.

wittenbunk 4y ago
Your comment is suggesting that increased policing reduces homelessness and that welfare dollars are being spent on drugs. Neither insinuation is supported by evidence.
- atlgator 4y ago
  No. My comments are about drugs, misdemeanor crimes (e.g., theft), and homelessness. All run rampant in SF. I only attributed the first two to policing. Homelessness by itself is not a crime. I guess you feel otherwise for you to interpret it that way. As for the welfare system, people are using EBT to buy bottled water, dumping the bottles out in the parking lot, then turning the empty bottles back in for cash through the recycling program. They use the money for drugs or alcohol. That’s one example.
  - wittenbunk 4y ago
    People are not doing that. Real life is not the fox news segment you are describing. Either cite evidence for outlandish claims or they will be dismissed.
    - DontchaKnowit 4y ago
      Theres literally videos of people dping this in droves. You cant just stuff your fingers in your ears and scream and claim you arent hearing anything.
    - colpabar 4y ago
      Dismissed by you. I know you can't prove a negative or whatever but why are you so confident in your claim that no one is doing that, and why should we believe you? I dated someone who worked at a drug rehab facility and after hearing the stories she told me about the ways people there took advantage of the system, I have 0 problem believing the water bottle thing. I take these stories with a grain of salt, but to outright deny that anything like that happens is really just demonstrating your ignorance of the subject. Talk to anyone who has ever worked with homeless people or drug addicts and they will tell you some wild stories.
- 0xB31B1B 4y ago
  in san francisco "wellfare" dollars are being spent enabling drug use and likey spent on drugs. The wellfare im talking about is not TANF money/fedgov wellfare but the project homekey hotels and the CAAP benefits program. Project homekey hotels are a great idea IMO, except that they didn't screen homeless tenants for drug use, and lots of tenants turned their rooms into drug dens, completely destroyed the rooms or entire hotels, and now the city is on the hook for a low 10s of millions of dollar amount to various private hotel owners for property destruction. Homekey is a statewide program in CA, not SF specific, and these issues happen all over the state. CAAP (https://www.sfhsa.org/services/financial-assistance/county-adult-assistance-programs-caap/caap-benefits https://www.sfhsa.org/services/financial-assistance/county-a...) is a program where the city and county of san francisco give 687 dollars a month in cash to low income housed and/or homeless people. Lots of the money goes to elderly chinese folks in chinatown and helps them make rent and pay for food, lots of money from this program also goes to drug addicted homeless or SRO residents in the tenderloin and gets spent on meth and fent the day the cash is sent. The open air drug markets are significantly busier on days that the cash is disbursed and you can see empty evelopes for distribution all over the neighborhood.
deanCommie 4y ago
> CA has made drugs and misdemeanor crimes effectively un-policeable. This is only a problem if "policing" these crimes actually removes them. All evidence shows that unless you just intend to permanently lock up all homeless people (therefore giving them....housing), policing drugs and poverty doesn't fix the problems for anyone > Billions of dollars in taxpayer funds have been given to nonprofits to improve homeless conditions True. The west coast has a massive homeless problem. And a progressive government. So they invest in trying to fix it. > but they’ve only gotten worse Housing inequality has also gotten massively worse over the last several decades. And in general many other social programs have gotten defunding (Such as mental health support) And in general North America-wide drug usage is only going up and indicators of despair are going up. Western society has problems and we are not dealing with the root causes. Middle-class millennials have resigned themselves to never owning a house, and never being able to retire. While they have a social safety net from their boomer parents, it's not yet a crisis. When the boomer parents spend all their accumulated wealth to survive the last decade of their lives, it will become a societal crisis. But the early signs are already being shown by the lower class. My point is that we don't know HOW MUCH WORSE the problem would be if those organizations weren't in place. For all we know, they are dramatically reducing the rate of regression. > while the nonprofit operators grow rich. [citation needed]. This is an absolutely ubiquitous conservative talking point but the only evidence I see of it is that people working for these non profits make living wages (good, shouldn't they be able to?), and the CEOs of these companies make comparable money to CEOs of profitable organizations. Which...is good, isn't it? Don't you WANT to be able to hire the best people for these roles, and don't you need competitive comp to be able to attract it. > People exploit loopholes in the safety nets to get money for drugs. Drug addicts will do almost anything to do drugs. The root causes of drug addiction may be character weakness (they're not, but we don't need to have that debate today) but once someone is addicted, it doesn't matter what happened - they have a medical disease, and treating it as anything but does not help anyone. But if we want to help people not become drug addicts we need to deal with the underlying societal causes of despair. > These are all unintended consequences of poorly conceived policy making. You're right. For instance, one terribly conceived policy is policing this problem and spending millions of dollars to lock up people in jails and prisons for this instead of just spending money on socialized subsidized housing. A social safety net from housing to universal basic income will dramatically reduce the problems in questions. But even in the most progressive cities of North America, this is just not on the table. And instead when people speak about "bad policy" what they're really saying is "I want to see MORE police".

wittenbunk 4y ago

Your comment is suggesting that increased policing reduces homelessness and that welfare dollars are being spent on drugs. Neither insinuation is supported by evidence.

atlgator 4y ago
No. My comments are about drugs, misdemeanor crimes (e.g., theft), and homelessness. All run rampant in SF. I only attributed the first two to policing. Homelessness by itself is not a crime. I guess you feel otherwise for you to interpret it that way. As for the welfare system, people are using EBT to buy bottled water, dumping the bottles out in the parking lot, then turning the empty bottles back in for cash through the recycling program. They use the money for drugs or alcohol. That’s one example.
- wittenbunk 4y ago
  People are not doing that. Real life is not the fox news segment you are describing. Either cite evidence for outlandish claims or they will be dismissed.
  - DontchaKnowit 4y ago
    Theres literally videos of people dping this in droves. You cant just stuff your fingers in your ears and scream and claim you arent hearing anything.
  - colpabar 4y ago
    Dismissed by you. I know you can't prove a negative or whatever but why are you so confident in your claim that no one is doing that, and why should we believe you? I dated someone who worked at a drug rehab facility and after hearing the stories she told me about the ways people there took advantage of the system, I have 0 problem believing the water bottle thing. I take these stories with a grain of salt, but to outright deny that anything like that happens is really just demonstrating your ignorance of the subject. Talk to anyone who has ever worked with homeless people or drug addicts and they will tell you some wild stories.
0xB31B1B 4y ago
in san francisco "wellfare" dollars are being spent enabling drug use and likey spent on drugs. The wellfare im talking about is not TANF money/fedgov wellfare but the project homekey hotels and the CAAP benefits program. Project homekey hotels are a great idea IMO, except that they didn't screen homeless tenants for drug use, and lots of tenants turned their rooms into drug dens, completely destroyed the rooms or entire hotels, and now the city is on the hook for a low 10s of millions of dollar amount to various private hotel owners for property destruction. Homekey is a statewide program in CA, not SF specific, and these issues happen all over the state. CAAP (https://www.sfhsa.org/services/financial-assistance/county-adult-assistance-programs-caap/caap-benefits https://www.sfhsa.org/services/financial-assistance/county-a...) is a program where the city and county of san francisco give 687 dollars a month in cash to low income housed and/or homeless people. Lots of the money goes to elderly chinese folks in chinatown and helps them make rent and pay for food, lots of money from this program also goes to drug addicted homeless or SRO residents in the tenderloin and gets spent on meth and fent the day the cash is sent. The open air drug markets are significantly busier on days that the cash is disbursed and you can see empty evelopes for distribution all over the neighborhood.

deanCommie 4y ago

> CA has made drugs and misdemeanor crimes effectively un-policeable. This is only a problem if "policing" these crimes actually removes them. All evidence shows that unless you just intend to permanently lock up all homeless people (therefore giving them....housing), policing drugs and poverty doesn't fix the problems for anyone > Billions of dollars in taxpayer funds have been given to nonprofits to improve homeless conditions True. The west coast has a massive homeless problem. And a progressive government. So they invest in trying to fix it. > but they’ve only gotten worse Housing inequality has also gotten massively worse over the last several decades. And in general many other social programs have gotten defunding (Such as mental health support) And in general North America-wide drug usage is only going up and indicators of despair are going up. Western society has problems and we are not dealing with the root causes. Middle-class millennials have resigned themselves to never owning a house, and never being able to retire. While they have a social safety net from their boomer parents, it's not yet a crisis. When the boomer parents spend all their accumulated wealth to survive the last decade of their lives, it will become a societal crisis. But the early signs are already being shown by the lower class. My point is that we don't know HOW MUCH WORSE the problem would be if those organizations weren't in place. For all we know, they are dramatically reducing the rate of regression. > while the nonprofit operators grow rich. [citation needed]. This is an absolutely ubiquitous conservative talking point but the only evidence I see of it is that people working for these non profits make living wages (good, shouldn't they be able to?), and the CEOs of these companies make comparable money to CEOs of profitable organizations. Which...is good, isn't it? Don't you WANT to be able to hire the best people for these roles, and don't you need competitive comp to be able to attract it. > People exploit loopholes in the safety nets to get money for drugs. Drug addicts will do almost anything to do drugs. The root causes of drug addiction may be character weakness (they're not, but we don't need to have that debate today) but once someone is addicted, it doesn't matter what happened - they have a medical disease, and treating it as anything but does not help anyone. But if we want to help people not become drug addicts we need to deal with the underlying societal causes of despair. > These are all unintended consequences of poorly conceived policy making. You're right. For instance, one terribly conceived policy is policing this problem and spending millions of dollars to lock up people in jails and prisons for this instead of just spending money on socialized subsidized housing. A social safety net from housing to universal basic income will dramatically reduce the problems in questions. But even in the most progressive cities of North America, this is just not on the table. And instead when people speak about "bad policy" what they're really saying is "I want to see MORE police".