3 ms·

It may not make life for the addicts better, but it won't make life for them much worse either Seems like a hard claim to back up. What would “moving” the home

by bbor 3y ago

It may not make life for the addicts better, but it won't make life for them much worse either Seems like a hard claim to back up. What would “moving” the homeless from, say, Portland look like? Setting up a giant slum on Mount Tabor? Building a network of trailer parks? I can’t imagine any answer to “let’s concentrate all these undesirables somewhere where we don’t have to look at them and they can’t interrupt us” that ends up being a nice trip for said undesirables Think about why homeless people go to downtown centers of big cities: community, institutional support nearby, income, tradition, and (relative) safety from police. How would you turn that back? What do you do if someone walks from your camp back to downtown? I totally understand your frustration, but our failure so far should lead us to examine the obvious structural issues at fault here, and not abandon our fellow man and give in to the more basic instincts to push them away

gexla 3y ago
> What would “moving” the homeless from, say, Portland look like? My guess is you don't. Maybe it's easier for the people with money to go elsewhere than it is for the homeless. So, you get WFH, area small businesses shutting down, less of the casual visitors.
- culopatin 3y ago
  And Portland becomes unable to fund the programs that help these people because there is no tax income and becomes Detroit
  - gexla 3y ago
    Right. I think the bottom line is that nobody has solved this problem. Someone with no mental or drug issues can navigate the system such that they don't have to be on the streets. That problem has been taken care of pretty well. The other issues not so much. Previously maybe the problem was brushed away by putting people in jail, but that's not a fix either. I don't oboe what is.
    - bbor 3y ago
      Fixing the structural issues :). In a country where the minimum wage is 2x higher, where mental and physical health care is free, and where the real estate market is mostly controlled by private citizens rather than corporations, I seriously doubt homelessness would be an issue. Tbh Portland didn’t really try to solve homelessness/poverty. Because it knows it can’t, at the city/county level. I mean, what would that even look like? The city taxes alone paying for a huge swath of free housing, at a time when middle class workers can barely afford to live here? We need to come together as a country and civilization to solve this problem.
      - sugarplant 3y ago
        >I seriously doubt homelessness would be an issue. based on absolutely nothing other than platitudes
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  > Maybe it's easier for the people with money to go elsewhere It's absolutely easy. There is no faster way to kill a city. Drive away the people with money and businesses die, tax revenue plummets and it turns into an irrelevant backwater. All this stuff costs money. It's always like this, "somebody" gotta go out there and solve these difficult problems. Nobody actually wants to be that somebody though. No one wants to step up and pay for it. If you try to make them pay, they leave.
- CydeWeys 3y ago
  The question also presumes a fixed number of homeless, which is obviously not true looking at the explosion of them we've had over the past decade. You can meaningfully reduce the number of homeless by (a) building a lot more housing, including especially the lowest rung on the housing ladder (weekly/daily-pay SROs), and (b) simply not tolerating them. When you tolerate something, you get more of it.
  - bbor 3y ago
    Hmmm we should solve poverty by not tolerating it? I have many solutions to poverty, but to be honest, that’s never shown up on the list for me.
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      The US largely has solved poverty by not tolerating it. The poverty rate has never been lower.
      - bbor 3y ago
        I appreciate the optimism, always, but I think this is missing the forest for the trees. Kinda like the people obsessed with FBI crime statistics (tho obviously you’re arguing in good faith, so not nearly as objectionable). The poor in the US might be less likely to starve now than they were in 1933, but I really think the narrative that the US has been “solving” anything about poverty to be incredibly inaccurate. Some indicators (obviously an impossible point to prove either way): Poverty is the 4th greatest cause of U.S. deaths - https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2023/04/17/poverty-4th-greatest-cause-us-deaths https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2023/04/17/poverty-4th-greates... Deaths of Despair are up - https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2019/9/long-term-trends-in-deaths-of-despair https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2019... For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-... 58% of Americans have no savings - https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/11/58percent-of-americans-are-living-paycheck-to-paycheck-cnbc-survey-reveals.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/11/58percent-of-americans-are-l... And last but not least: this article ;) Edit: WAY more importantly I thought about this claim more and maybe I’m giving it too much credit. Are you saying that the people in the Great Depression just didn’t have a good enough work ethic, but now we’ve scared people into having a good work ethic? Cause I don’t think that lines up with my experience in our society or knowledge of our history at all. IMO
robertlagrant 3y ago
> I totally understand your frustration, but our failure so far should lead us to examine the obvious structural issues at fault here, and not abandon our fellow man and give in to the more basic instincts to push them away The issue isn't fundamentally structural. It's personal. There's no structure that I'm aware of that gets people to take more and more debilitating drugs, other than a lack of structure on stopping the drugs entering the country.
- bbor 3y ago
  The structures I’m talking about are along the lines of “if you have schizophrenia and don’t have rich parents then you probably will never be able to afford meaningful treatment”. Just to pick one. I know it’s tempting to assume everyone else is just morally bankrupt and hedonistic because they’re flawed, but I implore you to be more empathetic to their situation. I PROMISE you, homelessness is not fun, it does not feel good in any way, and no one in their right mind would ever “choose” to “take more and more drugs” knowing that was the endpoint.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > The structures I’m talking about are along the lines of “if you have schizophrenia and don’t have rich parents then you probably will never be able to afford meaningful treatment”. This is not a structure. It's a situation. > I know it’s tempting to assume everyone else is just morally bankrupt and hedonistic because they’re flawed No - the only assumption is yours you're making here. No one is saying that. > no one in their right mind would ever “choose” to “take more and more drugs” knowing that was the endpoint No one said they would.
    - bbor 3y ago
      This is not a structure. It's a situation. Sorry, I was unclear: I was trying to highlight the fact that this situation is far, far less common in other countries, namely those with single-payer healthcare. That seems like pretty solid evidence that it’s a structural issue, not just… idk, circumstance? Chance? Otherwise sorry I misinterpreted you —- guess I’ll spend more time reading next time!

by bbor 3y ago

gexla 3y ago

> What would “moving” the homeless from, say, Portland look like? My guess is you don't. Maybe it's easier for the people with money to go elsewhere than it is for the homeless. So, you get WFH, area small businesses shutting down, less of the casual visitors.

culopatin 3y ago
And Portland becomes unable to fund the programs that help these people because there is no tax income and becomes Detroit
- gexla 3y ago
  Right. I think the bottom line is that nobody has solved this problem. Someone with no mental or drug issues can navigate the system such that they don't have to be on the streets. That problem has been taken care of pretty well. The other issues not so much. Previously maybe the problem was brushed away by putting people in jail, but that's not a fix either. I don't oboe what is.
  - bbor 3y ago
    Fixing the structural issues :). In a country where the minimum wage is 2x higher, where mental and physical health care is free, and where the real estate market is mostly controlled by private citizens rather than corporations, I seriously doubt homelessness would be an issue. Tbh Portland didn’t really try to solve homelessness/poverty. Because it knows it can’t, at the city/county level. I mean, what would that even look like? The city taxes alone paying for a huge swath of free housing, at a time when middle class workers can barely afford to live here? We need to come together as a country and civilization to solve this problem.
    - sugarplant 3y ago
      >I seriously doubt homelessness would be an issue. based on absolutely nothing other than platitudes
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> Maybe it's easier for the people with money to go elsewhere It's absolutely easy. There is no faster way to kill a city. Drive away the people with money and businesses die, tax revenue plummets and it turns into an irrelevant backwater. All this stuff costs money. It's always like this, "somebody" gotta go out there and solve these difficult problems. Nobody actually wants to be that somebody though. No one wants to step up and pay for it. If you try to make them pay, they leave.
CydeWeys 3y ago
The question also presumes a fixed number of homeless, which is obviously not true looking at the explosion of them we've had over the past decade. You can meaningfully reduce the number of homeless by (a) building a lot more housing, including especially the lowest rung on the housing ladder (weekly/daily-pay SROs), and (b) simply not tolerating them. When you tolerate something, you get more of it.
- bbor 3y ago
  Hmmm we should solve poverty by not tolerating it? I have many solutions to poverty, but to be honest, that’s never shown up on the list for me.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    The US largely has solved poverty by not tolerating it. The poverty rate has never been lower.
    - bbor 3y ago
      I appreciate the optimism, always, but I think this is missing the forest for the trees. Kinda like the people obsessed with FBI crime statistics (tho obviously you’re arguing in good faith, so not nearly as objectionable). The poor in the US might be less likely to starve now than they were in 1933, but I really think the narrative that the US has been “solving” anything about poverty to be incredibly inaccurate. Some indicators (obviously an impossible point to prove either way): Poverty is the 4th greatest cause of U.S. deaths - https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2023/04/17/poverty-4th-greatest-cause-us-deaths https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2023/04/17/poverty-4th-greates... Deaths of Despair are up - https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2019/9/long-term-trends-in-deaths-of-despair https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2019... For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-... 58% of Americans have no savings - https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/11/58percent-of-americans-are-living-paycheck-to-paycheck-cnbc-survey-reveals.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/11/58percent-of-americans-are-l... And last but not least: this article ;) Edit: WAY more importantly I thought about this claim more and maybe I’m giving it too much credit. Are you saying that the people in the Great Depression just didn’t have a good enough work ethic, but now we’ve scared people into having a good work ethic? Cause I don’t think that lines up with my experience in our society or knowledge of our history at all. IMO

robertlagrant 3y ago

> I totally understand your frustration, but our failure so far should lead us to examine the obvious structural issues at fault here, and not abandon our fellow man and give in to the more basic instincts to push them away The issue isn't fundamentally structural. It's personal. There's no structure that I'm aware of that gets people to take more and more debilitating drugs, other than a lack of structure on stopping the drugs entering the country.

bbor 3y ago
The structures I’m talking about are along the lines of “if you have schizophrenia and don’t have rich parents then you probably will never be able to afford meaningful treatment”. Just to pick one. I know it’s tempting to assume everyone else is just morally bankrupt and hedonistic because they’re flawed, but I implore you to be more empathetic to their situation. I PROMISE you, homelessness is not fun, it does not feel good in any way, and no one in their right mind would ever “choose” to “take more and more drugs” knowing that was the endpoint.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > The structures I’m talking about are along the lines of “if you have schizophrenia and don’t have rich parents then you probably will never be able to afford meaningful treatment”. This is not a structure. It's a situation. > I know it’s tempting to assume everyone else is just morally bankrupt and hedonistic because they’re flawed No - the only assumption is yours you're making here. No one is saying that. > no one in their right mind would ever “choose” to “take more and more drugs” knowing that was the endpoint No one said they would.
  - bbor 3y ago
    This is not a structure. It's a situation. Sorry, I was unclear: I was trying to highlight the fact that this situation is far, far less common in other countries, namely those with single-payer healthcare. That seems like pretty solid evidence that it’s a structural issue, not just… idk, circumstance? Chance? Otherwise sorry I misinterpreted you —- guess I’ll spend more time reading next time!