8 ms·

>It is absolutely insane how we’ve stopped treating homeless people as humans with potential and aspirations and assume that all they can be is a vacuum for dru

>It is absolutely insane how we’ve stopped treating homeless people as humans with potential and aspirations and assume that all they can be is a vacuum for drugs and cash. Vancouver has the same approach- warmest place in Canada. When I suggested active intervention (eg. force detox), the activists would accuse me of treating homeless people as sub-humans, that I am being cruel and inhumane and a monster, and that we should give them (the users and the NGOs) money and safe-supply drug and leave them alone on the street.

tptacek 3y ago
There's a pervasive belief that homeless people in various comfortable climes are migrants from harsher locales, but when you do the research you apparently tend to find that they're overwhelmingly people who had stable living situations in those comfortable locations, and became homeless there: they aren't "imported". So the "warmest place in Canada" thing is unlikely to be meaningful, unless there's some reason a comfortable climate makes housing less stable.
- bawolff 3y ago
  I definitely see less homeless people in places that go to -40 in the winter. Now I don't know why, maybe they still exist but are less visible. Perhaps the threat of homelessness is a lot scarier when it is cold outside. Maybe homeless people in those climates move. I don't know, but anecdotally it does seem like there are much fewer homeless people in cold places.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    They certainly exist. https://www.hmismn.org/point-in-time-count-information https://www.hmismn.org/point-in-time-count-information But you have to have some form of shelter to survive -40, which means that nature itself forces something (or you just die). (Note the homeless veterans, that's just an absolute embarrassment to the country as a whole; something major should be done like just re-activating them and providing housing).
- guardiangod 3y ago
  https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-homeless-national-crisis-epicentre https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-homeless-national-... >In the City of Vancouver’s 2019 homeless count, based on those who responded, 16% (156 people) of the homeless reported they were from an area elsewhere in Metro Vancouver, while 31% (299 people) were from another area of BC, and 44% (435 people) from another area of Canada. Where is the data backing up your claim?
  - magicalist 3y ago
    If you go to the actual report[1] instead of whatever this site is, you'll see that question (3.9) was asking where they lived before they moved to Vancouver, not before they became homeless or whatever that site is attempting to imply. If you scroll down slightly (3.11) you'll see 81% of respondents had a home in Vancouver before they became homeless, which is the data to match the claim ("overwhelmingly people who had stable living situations in those comfortable locations, and became homeless there"). [1] https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/vancouver-homeless-count-2019-final-report.pdf https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/vancouver-homeless-count-2019...
    - guardiangod 3y ago
      So they moved to Vancouver, had a home for a year, then become homeless. The news article did not claim that the homeless respondents were homeless before they moved; simply that they are not local to Vancouver. If you become homeless after 6 months of moving, you weren't financially stable to begin with. EDIT: It's a moot point anymore. The fact is, they are in Vancouver and are homeless. We should help them regardless of where they came from.
      - fzeroracer 3y ago
        > If you become homeless after 6 months of moving, you weren't financially stable to begin with. This might shock you, but the majority of people right now are not financially stable.
      - nonethewiser 3y ago
- soperj 3y ago
  Vancouver isn't just the warmest place, it's also the most expensive. There definitely have been cases of other parts of the country paying for a bus ticket out to the coast, just like they did to homeless people in Vancouver, sending them to Victoria during the Winter Olympics.
  - guardiangod 3y ago
    Victoria, Nanaimo etc. also have significant homeless issues, and I fully support out of province homeless people moving to Vancouver for whatever reason they might have. Freedom of movement is important to democracy. But just as Oakland/LA/SF and California are passing the bucks, the federal and provincial government are pretending they are deaf and expect the local BC municipals to handle the national homeless crisis. This is simply not possible.
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      I used to live in Nanaimo as a kid (Go McGirr!). The city's economy was royally fucked in the 2000s. There were no jobs other than Provincial services like VIHA or the one paper mill that I think ended up shutting down. Hells Angels were also always a thing back there, and there was a reservation nearby which had some persistent social issues. I still have family there who ended up making a killing in construction thanks to Chinese money and idk if Nanimo will ever get better.
      - soperj 3y ago
        Harmac ended up being bought by the people who actually operated the mill from an American company that went bankrupt, and has been running well since 2008.
        alephnerd 3y ago
        Oh! That's cool to hear! I went back to Nanaimo a couple years ago and it does seem much less grimy/blue collar than it was when I was a kid, but it does still seem to have that sense of PNW rust belt malaise to a certain extent.
- rahimnathwani 3y ago
  but when you do the research Can you point me to any of that research? If I'm wrong I'd like to update my belief. Admittedly, my belief has only weak evidence: - San Francisco pays homeless people more than most other places, and has relatively weak enforcement of laws related to camping, drugs and petty crime - Anecdotes about people on the street being interviewed, and admitting that they lied about being from SF, in order to qualify for benefits - Hearing some accents that don't sound (to me) like they're from around here
  - EatingWithForks 3y ago
    "Seventy-one percent of those surveyed reported living in San Francisco, 24% in other California counties and 4% outside California. Of those with a prior residence in the city, 17% said they had lived in San Francisco for less than one year, while 35% said they had been in the city for 10 or more years. The remaining 52% of those respondents said they lived in the city between one and 10 years before becoming homeless." At least in san francisco it seems its people who lived in SF before becoming homeless that are in the majority. https://sfstandard.com/public-health/san-francisco-homeless-people-from-the-city/ https://sfstandard.com/public-health/san-francisco-homeless-...
    - rahimnathwani 3y ago
      Thank you for the link. But I'm skeptical of those data, because: 1. The data are from folks with an agenda: - The folks at the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, which commissioned the survey, depend on those numbers being high in order to justify their budgets and salaries. - The people actually collecting the information mostly work for city-funded non-profits, who also depend on those numbers being high for their income. (see page 56 of the report, under "Enumeration Team Recruitment and Training".) 2. The numbers are self-reported, and we know there are $ incentives to never admit you're not from here.
      - magicalist 3y ago
        Maybe start with stating what data it would take to outweigh the accents you may have overheard one time?
- derefr 3y ago
  The majority of small towns in northern BC have been gradually depopulating for decades, due to economic pressures similar to those in the Rust Belt of the US. (And plus, it's just damn cold up there, so it's hard to be homeless if you do end up homeless.) Their populations have to be going somewhere. Yes, homeless people don't actually sit on the streets of e.g. Quebec City, begging until they can fund a trip to Vancouver, with the aim of living on the streets here instead. But people are often in some kind of unstable living situation wherever they are, and find out about some job offer, or housing offer, in Vancouver, that lures them to come here for a chance at a more stable living situation. But after coming here (and spending what little capital they have to do so), their job offer falls through, or it was just a seasonal job, or a job with very tenuous stability (e.g. in construction); or the housing they found was a sublet in a rent-stabilized building, but the building owner then figured out how to work around this by "rennovicting" all the tenants so they could jack up the rents; etc. I live in the East Hastings area. I speak to the people wandering the streets pretty often. I get the impression that many of these folks had a "stable living situation" for a year or two after coming to Vancouver. But this stability was an illusion. They didn't have the earning power to support themselves long-term in Vancouver's high-cost-of-living environment. These folks are used to smaller low-cost-of-living towns, and just want to escape a failing small town with no economic opportunity; but they don't tend to have job skills that are highly-valued in dense urban areas (e.g. doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc.) These people can still move — but not to high-cost-of-living Vancouver. (Even the highly-employable "service class" of Vancouver, can't afford to live in Vancouver; they have to commute in from quite far away.) Rather, these folks would be much better off moving to another small-ish, lower-cost-of-living, but non-failing town in BC. Prince George, Vernon, Mission, etc.
  - guardiangod 3y ago
    >these folks would be much better off moving to another small-ish, lower-cost-of-living, but non-failing town in BC. Prince George, Vernon, Mission, etc. That's an interesting idea, but the smaller BC towns also have their own homeless issues. I don't think their municipal gov would be open to the province providing relocation resources to these people. Also East Hastings draws vulnerable in, and has an iron clad grasp on them. These people might not want to move due to friends/nearby support non-profit/substances. Finally, some of them have drug addictions after they move to Vancouver. There should be resources to help them exit first.
- matthew9219 3y ago
  It's a bit more complex than that. At the surface, it's true - only 15% of homeless people in Seattle lived out of county before becoming homeless. But a deeper look shows as many as 30% more never really could afford housing - they had marginal housing situations, living with a friend, relative, or romantic partner without paying a proportionate share for their prior living situation. This is part of the discrepancy - one side shoves the 15% number at everybody while the other side shoves at 45% number at everybody - we can't agree on what we're measuring. See e.g. http://allhomekc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Updated-7.11-King-County-Report.pdf http://allhomekc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Updated-7.11... Edit: not to mention that these studies are all surveys and this political issue is pretty well known, so there is a strong incentive to lie.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  Homelessness is more attractive in warmer locations. Obviously. But that doesnt fit the narrative that all homeless are helpless victims of society.
soperj 3y ago
Detox doesn't really work if they don't want it. The active intervention w/r to homelessness would be to actually house these people. Lots of these people are using drugs to cope with other problems, without dealing with the other issues what are the chances of detox actually being worthwhile?
- guardiangod 3y ago
  If you give housing to mentally unstable people, they are just going to trash the place. Vancouver has been building and rebuilding support housing because the units get trashed and literally ripped apart after a week. Vancouver is doing a lot more for homeless people than SF/LA and it is still not working.
  - goatlover 3y ago
    Then incarceration in mental institutions and long term drug rehab facilities seems like the only answer.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Maybe we need to do Australia again, but instead of for debtors it's for drug rehab. Just make sure the entire island we pick is drug-free. (Yes, there are obvious issues with this and it's likely incompatible with our current view of what a "free society" is).
    - bluGill 3y ago
      That has been tried before. We stopped doing it because of how horrible it was. The homeless are better off than in the institutions of old. I don't know if modern institutions could be better. However we know they failed in the past. If you want to propose them again, you need to provide some proof that they new ones will be better than the old.
      - vdqtp3 3y ago
        > The homeless are better off than in the institutions of old. Well, I'm glad someone is because everyone else seems to be worse off as a result
bonestamp2 3y ago
Both of these approaches would work for some people, but neither works for everyone -- it's a very complicated and dynamic problem that has many causes, and many symptoms that are often mistaken for causes.
jrumbut 3y ago
Active interventions is one thing, forced detox is another. This involves restricting someone's freedom of movement, subjecting them to a very unpleasant experience, and then dropping them back off in the same community with a massive drug craving and a lower tolerance. You'd want to see evidence of incredible effectiveness to be willing to engage in something like that, but the evidence just isn't there: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395915003588?casa_token=929dHt6rV9MAAAAA:zFGx71k2uvrahUN9dN2nDrRfv_7hszGbe_UERvWw_CY1ztAQEJK5p0biXzzJ6hE7idJOq3xiwg https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095539591... > Evidence does not, on the whole, suggest improved outcomes related to compulsory treatment approaches, with some studies suggesting potential harms. Given the potential for human rights abuses within compulsory treatment settings, non-compulsory treatment modalities should be prioritized by policymakers seeking to reduce drug-related harms. Note that this systematic review looked at compulsory treatment methods besides just detox, but none of the results were that impressive.
wil421 3y ago
There’s people on this forum who are homeless and quite popular. This person got quite angry when I asked about force detox. They said they didn’t want to have stipulations put on sober housing and would rather be homeless. My comment was greeted with hostility from many people.
GeoAtreides 3y ago
> force detox Forcing people to detox is a grave violation of their right to body autonomy. In general people tend to react very badly when their body autonomy is violated: the results are trauma, CPTSD, suicide. I suggest we try other solutions first, starting from a place of compassion, empathy and scientifically tested medical advice.
- nomel 3y ago
  > and scientifically tested medical advice. Like detox centers, which exist to minimize trauma, suicide, and CPTSD. > Forcing people to detox is a grave violation of their right to body autonomy. Giving an addict a steady supply of money often just kills them (like my sister). I consider that some sort of violation. As is, letting addicts do drugs might sort itself out [1]. I imagine 2022-2023 numbers will be very very depressing. [1] https://www.nist.gov/image/drug-overdose-deaths-chart-0 https://www.nist.gov/image/drug-overdose-deaths-chart-0
nonethewiser 3y ago
Insisting on the conditions that see them living in squaller on the streets is treating them as sub human.
jonhohle 3y ago
I’m Phoenix, the NAACP is fighting for people’s “right” to live on the street. It’s mind boggling.
habinero 3y ago
It's not just inhumane, it's some wild ignorance of how addiction actually works. It's easy to get someone to stop taking drugs. It's much harder to stop them from picking the addiction back up once you let them go. Addiction is usually the result of other mental problems. It's a coping mechanism.

tptacek 3y ago

There's a pervasive belief that homeless people in various comfortable climes are migrants from harsher locales, but when you do the research you apparently tend to find that they're overwhelmingly people who had stable living situations in those comfortable locations, and became homeless there: they aren't "imported". So the "warmest place in Canada" thing is unlikely to be meaningful, unless there's some reason a comfortable climate makes housing less stable.

bawolff 3y ago
I definitely see less homeless people in places that go to -40 in the winter. Now I don't know why, maybe they still exist but are less visible. Perhaps the threat of homelessness is a lot scarier when it is cold outside. Maybe homeless people in those climates move. I don't know, but anecdotally it does seem like there are much fewer homeless people in cold places.
- bombcar 3y ago
  They certainly exist. https://www.hmismn.org/point-in-time-count-information https://www.hmismn.org/point-in-time-count-information But you have to have some form of shelter to survive -40, which means that nature itself forces something (or you just die). (Note the homeless veterans, that's just an absolute embarrassment to the country as a whole; something major should be done like just re-activating them and providing housing).
guardiangod 3y ago
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-homeless-national-crisis-epicentre https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-homeless-national-... >In the City of Vancouver’s 2019 homeless count, based on those who responded, 16% (156 people) of the homeless reported they were from an area elsewhere in Metro Vancouver, while 31% (299 people) were from another area of BC, and 44% (435 people) from another area of Canada. Where is the data backing up your claim?
- magicalist 3y ago
  If you go to the actual report[1] instead of whatever this site is, you'll see that question (3.9) was asking where they lived before they moved to Vancouver, not before they became homeless or whatever that site is attempting to imply. If you scroll down slightly (3.11) you'll see 81% of respondents had a home in Vancouver before they became homeless, which is the data to match the claim ("overwhelmingly people who had stable living situations in those comfortable locations, and became homeless there"). [1] https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/vancouver-homeless-count-2019-final-report.pdf https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/vancouver-homeless-count-2019...
  - guardiangod 3y ago
    So they moved to Vancouver, had a home for a year, then become homeless. The news article did not claim that the homeless respondents were homeless before they moved; simply that they are not local to Vancouver. If you become homeless after 6 months of moving, you weren't financially stable to begin with. EDIT: It's a moot point anymore. The fact is, they are in Vancouver and are homeless. We should help them regardless of where they came from.
    - fzeroracer 3y ago
      > If you become homeless after 6 months of moving, you weren't financially stable to begin with. This might shock you, but the majority of people right now are not financially stable.
    - nonethewiser 3y ago
soperj 3y ago
Vancouver isn't just the warmest place, it's also the most expensive. There definitely have been cases of other parts of the country paying for a bus ticket out to the coast, just like they did to homeless people in Vancouver, sending them to Victoria during the Winter Olympics.
- guardiangod 3y ago
  Victoria, Nanaimo etc. also have significant homeless issues, and I fully support out of province homeless people moving to Vancouver for whatever reason they might have. Freedom of movement is important to democracy. But just as Oakland/LA/SF and California are passing the bucks, the federal and provincial government are pretending they are deaf and expect the local BC municipals to handle the national homeless crisis. This is simply not possible.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    I used to live in Nanaimo as a kid (Go McGirr!). The city's economy was royally fucked in the 2000s. There were no jobs other than Provincial services like VIHA or the one paper mill that I think ended up shutting down. Hells Angels were also always a thing back there, and there was a reservation nearby which had some persistent social issues. I still have family there who ended up making a killing in construction thanks to Chinese money and idk if Nanimo will ever get better.
    - soperj 3y ago
      Harmac ended up being bought by the people who actually operated the mill from an American company that went bankrupt, and has been running well since 2008.
      - alephnerd 3y ago
        Oh! That's cool to hear! I went back to Nanaimo a couple years ago and it does seem much less grimy/blue collar than it was when I was a kid, but it does still seem to have that sense of PNW rust belt malaise to a certain extent.
rahimnathwani 3y ago
but when you do the research Can you point me to any of that research? If I'm wrong I'd like to update my belief. Admittedly, my belief has only weak evidence: - San Francisco pays homeless people more than most other places, and has relatively weak enforcement of laws related to camping, drugs and petty crime - Anecdotes about people on the street being interviewed, and admitting that they lied about being from SF, in order to qualify for benefits - Hearing some accents that don't sound (to me) like they're from around here
- EatingWithForks 3y ago
  "Seventy-one percent of those surveyed reported living in San Francisco, 24% in other California counties and 4% outside California. Of those with a prior residence in the city, 17% said they had lived in San Francisco for less than one year, while 35% said they had been in the city for 10 or more years. The remaining 52% of those respondents said they lived in the city between one and 10 years before becoming homeless." At least in san francisco it seems its people who lived in SF before becoming homeless that are in the majority. https://sfstandard.com/public-health/san-francisco-homeless-people-from-the-city/ https://sfstandard.com/public-health/san-francisco-homeless-...
  - rahimnathwani 3y ago
    Thank you for the link. But I'm skeptical of those data, because: 1. The data are from folks with an agenda: - The folks at the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, which commissioned the survey, depend on those numbers being high in order to justify their budgets and salaries. - The people actually collecting the information mostly work for city-funded non-profits, who also depend on those numbers being high for their income. (see page 56 of the report, under "Enumeration Team Recruitment and Training".) 2. The numbers are self-reported, and we know there are $ incentives to never admit you're not from here.
    - magicalist 3y ago
      Maybe start with stating what data it would take to outweigh the accents you may have overheard one time?
derefr 3y ago
The majority of small towns in northern BC have been gradually depopulating for decades, due to economic pressures similar to those in the Rust Belt of the US. (And plus, it's just damn cold up there, so it's hard to be homeless if you do end up homeless.) Their populations have to be going somewhere. Yes, homeless people don't actually sit on the streets of e.g. Quebec City, begging until they can fund a trip to Vancouver, with the aim of living on the streets here instead. But people are often in some kind of unstable living situation wherever they are, and find out about some job offer, or housing offer, in Vancouver, that lures them to come here for a chance at a more stable living situation. But after coming here (and spending what little capital they have to do so), their job offer falls through, or it was just a seasonal job, or a job with very tenuous stability (e.g. in construction); or the housing they found was a sublet in a rent-stabilized building, but the building owner then figured out how to work around this by "rennovicting" all the tenants so they could jack up the rents; etc. I live in the East Hastings area. I speak to the people wandering the streets pretty often. I get the impression that many of these folks had a "stable living situation" for a year or two after coming to Vancouver. But this stability was an illusion. They didn't have the earning power to support themselves long-term in Vancouver's high-cost-of-living environment. These folks are used to smaller low-cost-of-living towns, and just want to escape a failing small town with no economic opportunity; but they don't tend to have job skills that are highly-valued in dense urban areas (e.g. doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc.) These people can still move — but not to high-cost-of-living Vancouver. (Even the highly-employable "service class" of Vancouver, can't afford to live in Vancouver; they have to commute in from quite far away.) Rather, these folks would be much better off moving to another small-ish, lower-cost-of-living, but non-failing town in BC. Prince George, Vernon, Mission, etc.
- guardiangod 3y ago
  >these folks would be much better off moving to another small-ish, lower-cost-of-living, but non-failing town in BC. Prince George, Vernon, Mission, etc. That's an interesting idea, but the smaller BC towns also have their own homeless issues. I don't think their municipal gov would be open to the province providing relocation resources to these people. Also East Hastings draws vulnerable in, and has an iron clad grasp on them. These people might not want to move due to friends/nearby support non-profit/substances. Finally, some of them have drug addictions after they move to Vancouver. There should be resources to help them exit first.
matthew9219 3y ago
It's a bit more complex than that. At the surface, it's true - only 15% of homeless people in Seattle lived out of county before becoming homeless. But a deeper look shows as many as 30% more never really could afford housing - they had marginal housing situations, living with a friend, relative, or romantic partner without paying a proportionate share for their prior living situation. This is part of the discrepancy - one side shoves the 15% number at everybody while the other side shoves at 45% number at everybody - we can't agree on what we're measuring. See e.g. http://allhomekc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Updated-7.11-King-County-Report.pdf http://allhomekc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Updated-7.11... Edit: not to mention that these studies are all surveys and this political issue is pretty well known, so there is a strong incentive to lie.
nonethewiser 3y ago
Homelessness is more attractive in warmer locations. Obviously. But that doesnt fit the narrative that all homeless are helpless victims of society.

soperj 3y ago

Detox doesn't really work if they don't want it. The active intervention w/r to homelessness would be to actually house these people. Lots of these people are using drugs to cope with other problems, without dealing with the other issues what are the chances of detox actually being worthwhile?

guardiangod 3y ago
If you give housing to mentally unstable people, they are just going to trash the place. Vancouver has been building and rebuilding support housing because the units get trashed and literally ripped apart after a week. Vancouver is doing a lot more for homeless people than SF/LA and it is still not working.
- goatlover 3y ago
  Then incarceration in mental institutions and long term drug rehab facilities seems like the only answer.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Maybe we need to do Australia again, but instead of for debtors it's for drug rehab. Just make sure the entire island we pick is drug-free. (Yes, there are obvious issues with this and it's likely incompatible with our current view of what a "free society" is).
  - bluGill 3y ago
    That has been tried before. We stopped doing it because of how horrible it was. The homeless are better off than in the institutions of old. I don't know if modern institutions could be better. However we know they failed in the past. If you want to propose them again, you need to provide some proof that they new ones will be better than the old.
    - vdqtp3 3y ago
      > The homeless are better off than in the institutions of old. Well, I'm glad someone is because everyone else seems to be worse off as a result

bonestamp2 3y ago

Both of these approaches would work for some people, but neither works for everyone -- it's a very complicated and dynamic problem that has many causes, and many symptoms that are often mistaken for causes.

jrumbut 3y ago

Active interventions is one thing, forced detox is another. This involves restricting someone's freedom of movement, subjecting them to a very unpleasant experience, and then dropping them back off in the same community with a massive drug craving and a lower tolerance. You'd want to see evidence of incredible effectiveness to be willing to engage in something like that, but the evidence just isn't there: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395915003588?casa_token=929dHt6rV9MAAAAA:zFGx71k2uvrahUN9dN2nDrRfv_7hszGbe_UERvWw_CY1ztAQEJK5p0biXzzJ6hE7idJOq3xiwg https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095539591... > Evidence does not, on the whole, suggest improved outcomes related to compulsory treatment approaches, with some studies suggesting potential harms. Given the potential for human rights abuses within compulsory treatment settings, non-compulsory treatment modalities should be prioritized by policymakers seeking to reduce drug-related harms. Note that this systematic review looked at compulsory treatment methods besides just detox, but none of the results were that impressive.

wil421 3y ago

There’s people on this forum who are homeless and quite popular. This person got quite angry when I asked about force detox. They said they didn’t want to have stipulations put on sober housing and would rather be homeless. My comment was greeted with hostility from many people.

GeoAtreides 3y ago

> force detox Forcing people to detox is a grave violation of their right to body autonomy. In general people tend to react very badly when their body autonomy is violated: the results are trauma, CPTSD, suicide. I suggest we try other solutions first, starting from a place of compassion, empathy and scientifically tested medical advice.

nomel 3y ago
> and scientifically tested medical advice. Like detox centers, which exist to minimize trauma, suicide, and CPTSD. > Forcing people to detox is a grave violation of their right to body autonomy. Giving an addict a steady supply of money often just kills them (like my sister). I consider that some sort of violation. As is, letting addicts do drugs might sort itself out [1]. I imagine 2022-2023 numbers will be very very depressing. [1] https://www.nist.gov/image/drug-overdose-deaths-chart-0 https://www.nist.gov/image/drug-overdose-deaths-chart-0

nonethewiser 3y ago

Insisting on the conditions that see them living in squaller on the streets is treating them as sub human.

jonhohle 3y ago

I’m Phoenix, the NAACP is fighting for people’s “right” to live on the street. It’s mind boggling.

habinero 3y ago

It's not just inhumane, it's some wild ignorance of how addiction actually works. It's easy to get someone to stop taking drugs. It's much harder to stop them from picking the addiction back up once you let them go. Addiction is usually the result of other mental problems. It's a coping mechanism.