9 ms·

Tent cities don't exist solely in places without access to housing "Access to housing" isn't enough. You might have "access" to health care but unable to affor

Tent cities don't exist solely in places without access to housing "Access to housing" isn't enough. You might have "access" to health care but unable to afford it. You need housing as a right - even without payment - alongside enough adequate housing for everyone. And allow folks to do things in their own home. If they cannot do it at their home with other people, the person in question does not have adequate housing. And that last bit - about a death sentence? That is only for a few addicts. A subset of addicts die. If you have to get clean to get housing, housing is inadequate. I'd probably not go for rehab if I were homeless: I'd just have to be sober for the misery. And that's what we give people. That's what we are offering. Various forms of misery.

rscrawfo 3y ago
This is a real question, not a retort. But I have known addicts, they don’t exactly take care of their things. It’s very easy to imagine that much of the state supplied housing would quickly become unsafe and or destroyed. How do you handle that?
- thebigjewbowski 3y ago
  I’m almost scared to post this but — have you been in / around public housing in the US? (Genuine not rhetorical) It’s not uncommon for it to be unsafe and destroyed.
  - rscrawfo 3y ago
    That’s the reasoning for my question. Just last night I was reading about a local homeless man who was scared to go to the local shelter and had things stolen when he had. But I also wanted to ask the OP (who mentioned housing as a right) how that could be avoided.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- K0balt 3y ago
  Concrete. Everything concrete. Anything not concrete is removable.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    Concrete has poor tensile strength and is wash to damage with a hammer. Also as a building material is very expensive...
  - gruez 3y ago
    So the equivalent of putting them in jail cells, minus the bars?
    - K0balt 3y ago
      At the lowest levels, yes, because people at that level destroy everything they touch.. and if they are above that level then they can decorate as they wish, rugs and furniture are a thing.
- mike4ty4 3y ago
  Spend more of your hard earned cash to do the upkeep. YOU suffer a little more for it and I'm all down for that happening to you because we gotta spread the burden around given it's going to be there, period.
- Broken_Hippo 3y ago
  Fix things. You know, by spending money. And do better than we do now with state supplied housing. Plus, not everyone is going to fall into this category and we don't always have to use state housing, depending on the person. I think we should do the same with everyone, not just addicts. And have different sorts of housing. Some folks - not just addicts - could really benefit from a place modeled after a motel or hotel: Cleaning services and so on, private room and private bath. Some folks could do with a kitchen or provided food. Some folks could use these things yet would be better with a seperate bedroom and living room... well, you get the picture. At no time is everyone - addict or not - going to be able to take care of things. We should help those folks.
- fragmede 3y ago
  it becomes assisted living, like for seniors. they can't live like that, so you get a maid service in every week. it works if just pour money into it, just like rasing children by the government. the 70's abolition of mental asylums by Regan. We closed the thing with no alternative and expected anything but a disaster?
thriftwy 3y ago
A billion people across the world may want a house "as right" in San Francisco. It may only fit three order of magnitudes people realistically, though.
- orangepurple 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    Their numbers may be much greater if housing were guaranteed.
    - orangepurple 3y ago
      I am not 100% sure what the NGOs do when they arrive in NYC but it seems that they do get hotel rooms fully paid for by the NGOs. What is more surprising is the huge amount of new stuff they purchase and discard. The whole thing is completely orchestrated by people and organizations with HUGE amounts of money. I don't understand what they are trying to accomplish. I don't fully understand how the migrants can afford to waste so much either, it's insane: https://t.me/retardsoftiktok/15550 https://t.me/retardsoftiktok/15550
  - momirlan 3y ago
    these would not all be drug users, right? most of them would start a successful life in America
    - orangepurple 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - verall 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - 3y ago
K0balt 3y ago
Life is misery by default, as a natural consequence of life itself. The never ending tyranny of the need to eat and avoid being eaten is the normal state of affairs. Honestly, if a person isn’t up for it, we need to stop trying to convince them to stay around and be miserable. Elective suicide should be a basic right, and drugs are one way out. We only create misery by “helping” people that don’t want hep. Criminalize public drug use. Provide basic unregulated housing, not unlike squattable buildings. Set up AI monitored surveillance and prohibit attempts to form any kind of exploitative enterprise. Self registration with biometric access. Provide fentanyl dispensers. Come through once a day and dispose of the dead. Create an exit ramp where those that wish to can easily climb out through rehab into a viable path forward. Just by walking out they can register for rehab and get on a bus to a facility with an on-ramp to society. Let them live in the stark misery that they choose so they can confront it head on and decide if that’s what they want. But keep them outside of the general population during their self destruction process. Provide stepping-stone housing, mental health services, and educational on-ramps for people that need housing and can test clean of the typical death-spiral drugs. It should be made clear that certain kinds of drug use are part of a suicide process. Make it unattractive to flirt with, and limit it to private spaces. Social drugs such as alcohol and thc are not so incompatible with society and don’t really need regulatory interference aside from limiting access to minors.
- momirlan 3y ago
  that is the premise of a good distopian movie. or a book, if you prefer.
  - K0balt 3y ago
    Letting people do what they want does unfortunately lead to some pretty dystopian optics. Still a better love story than twilight.
- robocat 3y ago
  > Social drugs such as alcohol and thc are not so incompatible with society Alcohol is very unsociable - calling it social seems odd to me. Anecdotally alcohol seems pretty destructive to me. I am middle-aged so perhaps I have seen more of the deeper long-term destructive effects than you? New Zealanders generally have quite a problem with alcohol abuse.
pmoriarty 3y ago
"And that last bit - about a death sentence? That is only for a few addicts. A subset of addicts die." Not only that, but most drug users aren't addicts. To the general public, when they hear the words "drug user" they immediately equate that with "addict", and many can't even imagine that people could use drugs and not get addicted. But that's not true, as addicts are a small minority of drug users. Drug policy affects far more than just addicts. Lots of non-addicted users are affected too.
- leesalminen 3y ago
  > addicts are a small minority of drug users. Do you have any reliable data to back up that claim? In my experience users who purport to not be addicts are indeed addicts in massive denial about their poor choices.
  - volkl48 3y ago
    For one argument, consider the disparities between the # of people who've used a type of drug at some point in their life, vs the # that have used them in the past year, vs the # that have used them in the past month. While some % of those are people who got help and quit in the past year, or people on the start of a downward spiral/addiction, plenty of those seem to just be infrequent users. Unless the drug kills you so frequently/quickly that you can't sustain use for long or is rapidly gaining users for a new addiction crisis, the level of greater than monthly users should be higher if most of those infrequent users are going to become addicts. https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/reports/rpt35323/NSDUHDetailedTabs2020v25/NSDUHDetailedTabs2020v25/NSDUHDetTabsSect1pe2020.htm https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/reports/rpt3... You can further see that the spread of yearly vs monthly use is closer for substances typically considered more addictive and wider for those less thought to be. (not a lot of LSD addicts out there, relatively speaking). ------- My experience is that a lot of people are very quiet about their drug use outside the environment where they dabble in it and never mention it at all in company where they're uncertain about how it'll be viewed, so I also suspect that you may not recognize most of those people as people who'd use drugs at all. I'm a big live music person and being around people using drugs somewhat comes with the territory, especially festival-type environments. But most of the people I've met at those things don't do much of those substances otherwise aside from possibly weed. They've got their once or twice a year time of hitting up the party drugs for their weekend of fun + music, but that's it.

rscrawfo 3y ago

This is a real question, not a retort. But I have known addicts, they don’t exactly take care of their things. It’s very easy to imagine that much of the state supplied housing would quickly become unsafe and or destroyed. How do you handle that?

thebigjewbowski 3y ago
I’m almost scared to post this but — have you been in / around public housing in the US? (Genuine not rhetorical) It’s not uncommon for it to be unsafe and destroyed.
- rscrawfo 3y ago
  That’s the reasoning for my question. Just last night I was reading about a local homeless man who was scared to go to the local shelter and had things stolen when he had. But I also wanted to ask the OP (who mentioned housing as a right) how that could be avoided.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
K0balt 3y ago
Concrete. Everything concrete. Anything not concrete is removable.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Concrete has poor tensile strength and is wash to damage with a hammer. Also as a building material is very expensive...
- gruez 3y ago
  So the equivalent of putting them in jail cells, minus the bars?
  - K0balt 3y ago
    At the lowest levels, yes, because people at that level destroy everything they touch.. and if they are above that level then they can decorate as they wish, rugs and furniture are a thing.
mike4ty4 3y ago
Spend more of your hard earned cash to do the upkeep. YOU suffer a little more for it and I'm all down for that happening to you because we gotta spread the burden around given it's going to be there, period.
Broken_Hippo 3y ago
Fix things. You know, by spending money. And do better than we do now with state supplied housing. Plus, not everyone is going to fall into this category and we don't always have to use state housing, depending on the person. I think we should do the same with everyone, not just addicts. And have different sorts of housing. Some folks - not just addicts - could really benefit from a place modeled after a motel or hotel: Cleaning services and so on, private room and private bath. Some folks could do with a kitchen or provided food. Some folks could use these things yet would be better with a seperate bedroom and living room... well, you get the picture. At no time is everyone - addict or not - going to be able to take care of things. We should help those folks.
fragmede 3y ago
it becomes assisted living, like for seniors. they can't live like that, so you get a maid service in every week. it works if just pour money into it, just like rasing children by the government. the 70's abolition of mental asylums by Regan. We closed the thing with no alternative and expected anything but a disaster?

thriftwy 3y ago

A billion people across the world may want a house "as right" in San Francisco. It may only fit three order of magnitudes people realistically, though.

orangepurple 3y ago
[flagged]
- thriftwy 3y ago
  Their numbers may be much greater if housing were guaranteed.
  - orangepurple 3y ago
    I am not 100% sure what the NGOs do when they arrive in NYC but it seems that they do get hotel rooms fully paid for by the NGOs. What is more surprising is the huge amount of new stuff they purchase and discard. The whole thing is completely orchestrated by people and organizations with HUGE amounts of money. I don't understand what they are trying to accomplish. I don't fully understand how the migrants can afford to waste so much either, it's insane: https://t.me/retardsoftiktok/15550 https://t.me/retardsoftiktok/15550
- momirlan 3y ago
  these would not all be drug users, right? most of them would start a successful life in America
  - orangepurple 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - verall 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - 3y ago

K0balt 3y ago

Life is misery by default, as a natural consequence of life itself. The never ending tyranny of the need to eat and avoid being eaten is the normal state of affairs. Honestly, if a person isn’t up for it, we need to stop trying to convince them to stay around and be miserable. Elective suicide should be a basic right, and drugs are one way out. We only create misery by “helping” people that don’t want hep. Criminalize public drug use. Provide basic unregulated housing, not unlike squattable buildings. Set up AI monitored surveillance and prohibit attempts to form any kind of exploitative enterprise. Self registration with biometric access. Provide fentanyl dispensers. Come through once a day and dispose of the dead. Create an exit ramp where those that wish to can easily climb out through rehab into a viable path forward. Just by walking out they can register for rehab and get on a bus to a facility with an on-ramp to society. Let them live in the stark misery that they choose so they can confront it head on and decide if that’s what they want. But keep them outside of the general population during their self destruction process. Provide stepping-stone housing, mental health services, and educational on-ramps for people that need housing and can test clean of the typical death-spiral drugs. It should be made clear that certain kinds of drug use are part of a suicide process. Make it unattractive to flirt with, and limit it to private spaces. Social drugs such as alcohol and thc are not so incompatible with society and don’t really need regulatory interference aside from limiting access to minors.

momirlan 3y ago
that is the premise of a good distopian movie. or a book, if you prefer.
- K0balt 3y ago
  Letting people do what they want does unfortunately lead to some pretty dystopian optics. Still a better love story than twilight.
robocat 3y ago
> Social drugs such as alcohol and thc are not so incompatible with society Alcohol is very unsociable - calling it social seems odd to me. Anecdotally alcohol seems pretty destructive to me. I am middle-aged so perhaps I have seen more of the deeper long-term destructive effects than you? New Zealanders generally have quite a problem with alcohol abuse.

pmoriarty 3y ago

"And that last bit - about a death sentence? That is only for a few addicts. A subset of addicts die." Not only that, but most drug users aren't addicts. To the general public, when they hear the words "drug user" they immediately equate that with "addict", and many can't even imagine that people could use drugs and not get addicted. But that's not true, as addicts are a small minority of drug users. Drug policy affects far more than just addicts. Lots of non-addicted users are affected too.

leesalminen 3y ago
> addicts are a small minority of drug users. Do you have any reliable data to back up that claim? In my experience users who purport to not be addicts are indeed addicts in massive denial about their poor choices.
- volkl48 3y ago
  For one argument, consider the disparities between the # of people who've used a type of drug at some point in their life, vs the # that have used them in the past year, vs the # that have used them in the past month. While some % of those are people who got help and quit in the past year, or people on the start of a downward spiral/addiction, plenty of those seem to just be infrequent users. Unless the drug kills you so frequently/quickly that you can't sustain use for long or is rapidly gaining users for a new addiction crisis, the level of greater than monthly users should be higher if most of those infrequent users are going to become addicts. https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/reports/rpt35323/NSDUHDetailedTabs2020v25/NSDUHDetailedTabs2020v25/NSDUHDetTabsSect1pe2020.htm https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/reports/rpt3... You can further see that the spread of yearly vs monthly use is closer for substances typically considered more addictive and wider for those less thought to be. (not a lot of LSD addicts out there, relatively speaking). ------- My experience is that a lot of people are very quiet about their drug use outside the environment where they dabble in it and never mention it at all in company where they're uncertain about how it'll be viewed, so I also suspect that you may not recognize most of those people as people who'd use drugs at all. I'm a big live music person and being around people using drugs somewhat comes with the territory, especially festival-type environments. But most of the people I've met at those things don't do much of those substances otherwise aside from possibly weed. They've got their once or twice a year time of hitting up the party drugs for their weekend of fun + music, but that's it.