12 ms·

If I were to make a system for taking homeless off the street, my idea would be: 1) Outlaw vagrancy, and arrest people for vagrancy, the crime specifically bei

If I were to make a system for taking homeless off the street, my idea would be: 1) Outlaw vagrancy, and arrest people for vagrancy, the crime specifically being living on the street instead of paying for their own upkeep, but the important part is... 2) They can get their freedom quickly by working some minimum wage job, provided by the city, like cleaning the highways or picking up trash, for a week. Then when they're released, they can still work that job, or they can get out of dodge. This is a clumsy proposal and not fully thought through -- but there can be some mechanism that lets people who aren't totally deranged get themselves quickly released while directing the others to treatment. An obvious criticism of this is, it's not hard to come up with counterfactuals. What if somebody is homeless with their family, and they get arrested for vagrancy. Now their kids are separated from them. Then what? What if they have a dog?

mixmastamyk 3y ago
I think that's starting at the wrong end. Need to get sick people help, addicts support, halfway housing available. Only much later would you start thinking about arresting folks who refuse.
- SamReidHughes 3y ago
  I agree, maybe not the same way because instead of "helping" people, you could target much of addiction by arresting and hanging drug dealers. But aside from that, getting these people help apparently requires forcing them into custody. I don't want the more functional people, or people parking their RVs in the wrong place, to get swept up in that.
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    Focus on vengeance is a mental illness in itself; I’ll make sure you get on the list. ;-)
vore 3y ago
This doesn't really solve any kind of housing supply problem. If you're forced to live on the street because you can't afford any kind of housing, you're just going to get arrested and forced into a minimum wage job where you still can't afford housing. Then you're still not affording housing, aren't you now basically enslaved if you're just going to get arrested again and forced to work a minimum wage job?
- SamReidHughes 3y ago
  It's not about housing. They can leave the west coast and live someplace cheaper.
  - vore 3y ago
    But... why? Why can't we also build more affordable housing as well instead of just making rich people enclaves? If you're forcing all the low income people to live in one place, that is clearly not good for class mobility at all.
    - SamReidHughes 3y ago
      You're talking about people who work -- the homeless, well, the chronically homeless, are people who don't work.
      - defrost 3y ago
        Nationally (for the USofA), About 53 percent of the sheltered homeless had formal labor market earnings in the year they were observed as homeless, and the authors’ find that 40.4 percent of the unsheltered population had at least some formal employment in the year they were observed as homeless. ( any year twixt 2011 – 2018 ) This finding contrasts with stereotypes of people experiencing homelessness as too lazy to work or incapable of doing so. https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/learning-about-homelessness-using-linked-survey-and-administrative-data/ https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/learning-a...

mixmastamyk 3y ago

I think that's starting at the wrong end. Need to get sick people help, addicts support, halfway housing available. Only much later would you start thinking about arresting folks who refuse.

SamReidHughes 3y ago
I agree, maybe not the same way because instead of "helping" people, you could target much of addiction by arresting and hanging drug dealers. But aside from that, getting these people help apparently requires forcing them into custody. I don't want the more functional people, or people parking their RVs in the wrong place, to get swept up in that.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  Focus on vengeance is a mental illness in itself; I’ll make sure you get on the list. ;-)

vore 3y ago

This doesn't really solve any kind of housing supply problem. If you're forced to live on the street because you can't afford any kind of housing, you're just going to get arrested and forced into a minimum wage job where you still can't afford housing. Then you're still not affording housing, aren't you now basically enslaved if you're just going to get arrested again and forced to work a minimum wage job?

SamReidHughes 3y ago
It's not about housing. They can leave the west coast and live someplace cheaper.
- vore 3y ago
  But... why? Why can't we also build more affordable housing as well instead of just making rich people enclaves? If you're forcing all the low income people to live in one place, that is clearly not good for class mobility at all.
  - SamReidHughes 3y ago
    You're talking about people who work -- the homeless, well, the chronically homeless, are people who don't work.
    - defrost 3y ago
      Nationally (for the USofA), About 53 percent of the sheltered homeless had formal labor market earnings in the year they were observed as homeless, and the authors’ find that 40.4 percent of the unsheltered population had at least some formal employment in the year they were observed as homeless. ( any year twixt 2011 – 2018 ) This finding contrasts with stereotypes of people experiencing homelessness as too lazy to work or incapable of doing so. https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/learning-about-homelessness-using-linked-survey-and-administrative-data/ https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/learning-a...