6 ms·

Anyone who thinks funding rehab centers and getting homeless drug addicts into free apartment units are people who have never been around homeless drug addicts.

Anyone who thinks funding rehab centers and getting homeless drug addicts into free apartment units are people who have never been around homeless drug addicts. There may be some wonderful examples of this working but 99.8% of the people you will encounter on your commute are not about to participate in rehab, and if you ask them they will give you a history of apartments and homes they've been asked to leave due to destroying them. Even if you used the same enforcement to take other peoples money in taxes for funding in order to force them into homes and rehab centers you will find that the overlap (at least in the US) with severe mental illnesses is huge AND you cannot legally force these people into places to address it. The reality of drugs and homelessness in America is so bad that listening to people talk about government ran programs and some funding figures are naive or disingenuous - all of the state programs are closer to end of life hospice work than a solution.

Retric 3y ago
The homeless drug addicts covers a huge range of people. Many actually claw their way back into normal society. No solution is going to fix everyone but you can minimize the externalities from homelessness. It’s simply an optimization problem. Prison is horrendously expensive, and people on the street have real externalities for everyone in the area.
- blowski 3y ago
  I was with you until “simply”. Nothing about this problem is simple.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Being an optimization problem doesn’t mean it’s simple, just that there are tradeoffs. If anything the complexity is why it’s an optimization problem.
    - dudeinjapan 3y ago
      It’s simply complex.
  - bbotond 3y ago
    What does commenting 3 asterisks mean? I’ve been noticing this more and more recently
    - dudeinjapan 3y ago
      It’s an alt-right dog whistle.
      - bitsinthesky 3y ago
        What does it refer to? Couldn't find anything on Google.
        dudeinjapan 3y ago
        [flagged]
    - blowski 3y ago
      I didn't see the original three asterisks, so I'm not sure. In general writing, three asterisks is used as a visual break between two sections in a document. I assume the other commenter is referring to using "(((@name)))" on Twitter, and similar patterns, which is some social media thing I don't understand. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses.
  - mike4ty4 3y ago
    What if we make it not simple, but "simply" exclude just one solution - lifetime punishment (prison + 40,000 collateral consequences, life imprisonment, or a death penalty) - directed against the persons with the problem, from the mix, and leave everything else as wide open as ever for consideration?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
eastbound 3y ago
Honest question: Why are mental issues so prevalent in USA? Temptative hypothesis 1: People have less roots than in Europe, so they don’t belong somewhere, and have weak ties with close family and no ties with extended family, so they move, and when they fall off their life, there is no social safety net? Temptative hypothesis 2: Americans classify any bad mood as a mental issue? Temptative 3: Medical aid is too expensive when you’re, by definition, fallen off at the feet of the social ladder? Temptative 4: Capitalism separates people? Financial success separates people? Temptative 5: CIA needed off-network money to fund ISIS, so they traded drugs in Columbia, sold to poor schmocks in Texas, and got the money to pay ISIS? (everyone is a victim here)
- whynotminot 3y ago
  Lmao one of these things is not like the others.
- hughesjj 3y ago
  I think part of it is how isolated the us is. We don't really have walkable neighborhoods in most of the country, which means less spur of the moment decisions to gather at a social place and more isolation since so many people are commuting in single occupancy vehicles and doing drive throughs. Combine that with wealth stratification, Hussle culture, and the complete lack of any real social safety net and if anything I'm surprised we're doing as well as we are. I don't think it's a single issue by far, but if I had to peg one aspect as the worst offender, it's isolationism. There's strong correlation between drug use, depression, suicide, and lower life expectancy in places with power population density (Alaska, Noth Dakota, pretty much any small rustbelt or mountain or southern town) When there's nothing to fill the emptiness, people turn to drugs and overeating just to feel something. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2022472118 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2022472118 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#By_state https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States...
  - jcpst 3y ago
    Isolation is a big one. The classic study people bring up is the “cocaine rat”. The rat in isolation was drawn to the bottle with cocaine water. When the rat was in a cage with activites and other rats, lost the preference for the cocaine water.
beached_whale 3y ago
The other day I read that in a Finish housing first programs they had a success rate of 4/5 and it was much less expensive than in the past. Not sure of the kpi’s, so grain of salt, but sounds promising
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  Adding, dealing with homelessness reduces healthcare costs [1], so by all means, a net positive to society. [1] https://nlihc.org/resource/study-finds-affordable-housing-reduces-health-care-costs https://nlihc.org/resource/study-finds-affordable-housing-re...
- the-dude 3y ago
  What about not freezing to death? That sounds like a Key Performance Indicator to me.
d1l 3y ago
Yeah I've seen the destruction that comes from removing legal/social consequences for drug abuse. Neglected and abandoned children is by far the most tragic. The community of non-addicts bears the responsibility for cleaning up the destruction, the addicts themselves cannot. That's the nature of addiction. To be clear I'm talking about the hard drugs; opiates, cocaine, meth. I believe addiction is a disease, but treatment is elusive. Some have no desire to stop. There are also frequently other mental or emotional problems. Just feeding addiction's most obvious symptom (by continual drug use) does nothing - see this article. I doubt whether there will ever be a neat and tidy "solution". Eventually the healthy part of society will have enough and some action will be taken, like prohibition or war on drugs, etc. Then it will wax the other way again.
- pmoriarty 3y ago
  Imagine you are suffering day in and day out in crushing poverty, that you see nothing but crime and hopelessness all around you, that your friends and family have been killed or are rotting away in jail, that you are looked down upon, spat upon, and despised, that you see no hope of bettering or escaping your situation. Then imagine you've taken something that infinitely transforms your world and makes you feel amazing to such a degree that's absolutely unimaginable to someone who hasn't tried some of these substances ("better than sex" is an extreme understatement). All your pain is gone, all your misery forgotten, amazing vistas open before you, all is good. After that brief stay in paradise, you come crashing down and back in to your miserable life. Everything is as before, your passion is back, only you now know it's possible for you to get back to that exalted state, to escape that prison of a life you've been living in, even if for a moment. Is it evidence of a disease for someone who's gone through this to desperately want to experience that escape again? To be free and feel great? Is the cause of such a desire -- the misery, the poverty, the hopelessness, the fantastic way these substances make you feel and the escape they offer -- can all that be justly summed up in the word "disease", or is there something else going on?
  - d1l 3y ago
    This is a fantasy, a romance. It very little resembles the reality I've seen. Many addicts I've known and seen come from stable environments and it isbecause of their incessant drug use that they end up poor, homeless and degraded. Of course some addicts definitely start in "crushing poverty" but many do not. It affects people from every background, every social strata. If your hypothesis were correct than the housing and support programs would work. They don't.
Salgat 3y ago
I hate to say it but the type of folks who are homeless and suffer from mental illness usually have a fundamental incompatibility with society and should be forced into mental illness institutions. If they can be rehabilitated, great, if not, at least they are in a place that can help them and protect society from them.

Retric 3y ago

The homeless drug addicts covers a huge range of people. Many actually claw their way back into normal society. No solution is going to fix everyone but you can minimize the externalities from homelessness. It’s simply an optimization problem. Prison is horrendously expensive, and people on the street have real externalities for everyone in the area.

blowski 3y ago
I was with you until “simply”. Nothing about this problem is simple.
- Retric 3y ago
  Being an optimization problem doesn’t mean it’s simple, just that there are tradeoffs. If anything the complexity is why it’s an optimization problem.
  - dudeinjapan 3y ago
    It’s simply complex.
- bbotond 3y ago
  What does commenting 3 asterisks mean? I’ve been noticing this more and more recently
  - dudeinjapan 3y ago
    It’s an alt-right dog whistle.
    - bitsinthesky 3y ago
      What does it refer to? Couldn't find anything on Google.
      - dudeinjapan 3y ago
        [flagged]
  - blowski 3y ago
    I didn't see the original three asterisks, so I'm not sure. In general writing, three asterisks is used as a visual break between two sections in a document. I assume the other commenter is referring to using "(((@name)))" on Twitter, and similar patterns, which is some social media thing I don't understand. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses.
- mike4ty4 3y ago
  What if we make it not simple, but "simply" exclude just one solution - lifetime punishment (prison + 40,000 collateral consequences, life imprisonment, or a death penalty) - directed against the persons with the problem, from the mix, and leave everything else as wide open as ever for consideration?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

eastbound 3y ago

Honest question: Why are mental issues so prevalent in USA? Temptative hypothesis 1: People have less roots than in Europe, so they don’t belong somewhere, and have weak ties with close family and no ties with extended family, so they move, and when they fall off their life, there is no social safety net? Temptative hypothesis 2: Americans classify any bad mood as a mental issue? Temptative 3: Medical aid is too expensive when you’re, by definition, fallen off at the feet of the social ladder? Temptative 4: Capitalism separates people? Financial success separates people? Temptative 5: CIA needed off-network money to fund ISIS, so they traded drugs in Columbia, sold to poor schmocks in Texas, and got the money to pay ISIS? (everyone is a victim here)

whynotminot 3y ago
Lmao one of these things is not like the others.
hughesjj 3y ago
I think part of it is how isolated the us is. We don't really have walkable neighborhoods in most of the country, which means less spur of the moment decisions to gather at a social place and more isolation since so many people are commuting in single occupancy vehicles and doing drive throughs. Combine that with wealth stratification, Hussle culture, and the complete lack of any real social safety net and if anything I'm surprised we're doing as well as we are. I don't think it's a single issue by far, but if I had to peg one aspect as the worst offender, it's isolationism. There's strong correlation between drug use, depression, suicide, and lower life expectancy in places with power population density (Alaska, Noth Dakota, pretty much any small rustbelt or mountain or southern town) When there's nothing to fill the emptiness, people turn to drugs and overeating just to feel something. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2022472118 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2022472118 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#By_state https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States...
- jcpst 3y ago
  Isolation is a big one. The classic study people bring up is the “cocaine rat”. The rat in isolation was drawn to the bottle with cocaine water. When the rat was in a cage with activites and other rats, lost the preference for the cocaine water.

beached_whale 3y ago

The other day I read that in a Finish housing first programs they had a success rate of 4/5 and it was much less expensive than in the past. Not sure of the kpi’s, so grain of salt, but sounds promising

PartiallyTyped 3y ago
Adding, dealing with homelessness reduces healthcare costs [1], so by all means, a net positive to society. [1] https://nlihc.org/resource/study-finds-affordable-housing-reduces-health-care-costs https://nlihc.org/resource/study-finds-affordable-housing-re...
the-dude 3y ago
What about not freezing to death? That sounds like a Key Performance Indicator to me.

d1l 3y ago

Yeah I've seen the destruction that comes from removing legal/social consequences for drug abuse. Neglected and abandoned children is by far the most tragic. The community of non-addicts bears the responsibility for cleaning up the destruction, the addicts themselves cannot. That's the nature of addiction. To be clear I'm talking about the hard drugs; opiates, cocaine, meth. I believe addiction is a disease, but treatment is elusive. Some have no desire to stop. There are also frequently other mental or emotional problems. Just feeding addiction's most obvious symptom (by continual drug use) does nothing - see this article. I doubt whether there will ever be a neat and tidy "solution". Eventually the healthy part of society will have enough and some action will be taken, like prohibition or war on drugs, etc. Then it will wax the other way again.

pmoriarty 3y ago
Imagine you are suffering day in and day out in crushing poverty, that you see nothing but crime and hopelessness all around you, that your friends and family have been killed or are rotting away in jail, that you are looked down upon, spat upon, and despised, that you see no hope of bettering or escaping your situation. Then imagine you've taken something that infinitely transforms your world and makes you feel amazing to such a degree that's absolutely unimaginable to someone who hasn't tried some of these substances ("better than sex" is an extreme understatement). All your pain is gone, all your misery forgotten, amazing vistas open before you, all is good. After that brief stay in paradise, you come crashing down and back in to your miserable life. Everything is as before, your passion is back, only you now know it's possible for you to get back to that exalted state, to escape that prison of a life you've been living in, even if for a moment. Is it evidence of a disease for someone who's gone through this to desperately want to experience that escape again? To be free and feel great? Is the cause of such a desire -- the misery, the poverty, the hopelessness, the fantastic way these substances make you feel and the escape they offer -- can all that be justly summed up in the word "disease", or is there something else going on?
- d1l 3y ago
  This is a fantasy, a romance. It very little resembles the reality I've seen. Many addicts I've known and seen come from stable environments and it isbecause of their incessant drug use that they end up poor, homeless and degraded. Of course some addicts definitely start in "crushing poverty" but many do not. It affects people from every background, every social strata. If your hypothesis were correct than the housing and support programs would work. They don't.

Salgat 3y ago

I hate to say it but the type of folks who are homeless and suffer from mental illness usually have a fundamental incompatibility with society and should be forced into mental illness institutions. If they can be rehabilitated, great, if not, at least they are in a place that can help them and protect society from them.