5 ms·

The frustration to me is that cities are asking for this power in many cases with no actual plan in place. It's just "we don't care what happens, just move alon

The frustration to me is that cities are asking for this power in many cases with no actual plan in place. It's just "we don't care what happens, just move along". And at the risk of absolute condensation into a soundbite, a large part of homelessness derives in one form or another from those same cities and government's attitude towards mental health, which as someone who sees it every day as a paramedic, is nothing short of a fucking travesty.

xenospn 3y ago
The problem is so severe that a single city or even a large city, like Los Angeles, is basically helpless to stop it. This is a federal issue and needs to be handled on the federal level.
- aksss 3y ago
  I don't even know what that means. It's a like a "move it along" policy to your problems. I hesitate to even ask: what tools do you imagine the feds have to fix homelessness, outside of driving a good economy, and perhaps protectionist measures to build low-skill industries back in the US (and all that entails)?
  - xenospn 3y ago
    From my vantage point, a combined strategy of mental health facilities with accessible healthcare and a social safety net is a good starting point. (Most likely will never happen in the US) I seriously doubt that affordable housing or better employment opportunities are going to do anything, specifically because even people making six figures are struggling to find housing here (LA) so I doubt any amount of subsidized housing is going to solve or even make a dent in the number of homeless people.
  - asdff 3y ago
    It's just a matter of sizing the scale of the problem to the correct budget so it can actually be solved. City of LA has 45,000 homeless people in it. Recent audits put the cost at half a million per unit, all services roped in with that number I believe, for a new shelter bed and staff. That's almost 23 billion dollars provided you have the land for this UCLA sized project cleared already, a whole lot more if you don't. City of LA's entire budget is 13 billion dollars; all it can do is fight the tide with a leaky bucket essentially. Federal government budget, on the other hand, is 6.1 trillion dollars, and they own the world money printer too, along with a huge amount of acreage all over the american west. The homeless crisis could be solved with a pen stroke from DC today.
  - mulmen 3y ago
    Jobs aren’t a complete solution. Especially not low-skill industrial jobs. Some of these people are incapable of employment. They need full time professional care. It is a mental healthcare issue. Since the feds gutted mental healthcare under Reagan they can fix it too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Systems_Act_of_1980 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Systems_Act_of...
- epistasis 3y ago
  All of these problems are downstream of California cities refusing to build enough housing to meet demand. The homeless population is not fixed, it's a continuous stream of people becoming homeless, and some finding housing or leaving the area or dying. The inflow rate of people entering homelessness is a regional problem; once you're homeless it's hard to go very far. So regional areas in charge of determining housing levels (the Regional Housing Needs Allocation process) has been messed up for a long time. It's finally getting fixed by state level policy. Until California decides to build enough housing in order to house a person on minimum wage, then we will continue to have this people. Its not every state that has this problem, only those with housing so much more expensive than wages.
  - xenospn 3y ago
    I know life is hard and shit happens, but I refuse to believe that, except for very few edge cases, people who are staring down homelessness just decide to stay in one of the most expensive places in the world and live on the street rather than move somewhere cheaper And find a cheap apartment. It makes absolutely no sense. I think if you do decide to stay in Los Angeles, when you have no job, no prospects, no family, no money and no place to live, you should be declared as someone who is unable to care for themselves.
    - CapstanRoller 3y ago
      Do you believe uprooting and finding a new job and apartment is easy for the average person? Have you ever talked to someone outside of the FAANG crowd who makes normal wages?
    - epistasis 3y ago
      Say you have a job, friends, a small support network, and are living on the edge, paycheck to paycheck. You don't have $800 in the bank to travel to a cheaper area and try to find a job and an apartment. You are just struggling to get by. Then your car breaks down, and you can't get to work, and you have less pay, or maybe even lose your job. You lose your apartment, and are stuck with no money, and no way to travel. What do you do? Leave everything you know? Is this really so implausible? This is the story of so many people who are homeless. Not everyone, but many. There are a thousand paths into homelessness, but falling into it though unexpected expenses is extremely common
gotoeleven 3y ago
The only humane solution is to bring back mental hospitals, even with involuntary commitment. The severely mentally ill and/or drug addled are incapable of taking care of themselves. Giving out free needles and making it easier to live in an alley like a stray dog is not humane. What do you think about this? The "move it along" policing at least has the effect of making it less easy to be homeless which I think ultimately is a more humane strategy than subsidizing a sub-human life.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  How does this help the homeless person? I have a homeless neighbor I help out a bit, but there's only so much I can do, I don't have many resources of my own. He's 70-something, has cataracts and glaucoma, can barely walk, and has his stuff split between a car and a tent. The county helps him out with some things but it's band-aid levels of assistance when he should be in an assisted living facility. I'm not sure how much more deserving he has to be to get some meaningful help. The idea that making it harder to be homeless will somehow cause people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps assumes that they can afford boots and have sufficient strength to pull on them, so to speak. A lot of homeless people are at rock bottom and need something more comprehensive than a cot and a hot dinner.
asdff 3y ago
Well, part of it is a pragmatic understanding that there are areas with encampments that are for many reasons terrible spots for having an encampment. City of LA passed an ordinance recently barring encampments from within 500 ft of schools, near things like fire hydrants or driveways where sight is blocked or other certain road configurations where it would be very dangerous for pedestrians either living in the encampment or trying to navigate around the encampment thats blocking sidewalk access by walking on the street. I wouldn't be surprised if ADA considerations are being factored in with these site selections, now that the city has endured a number of lawsuits from people getting hit trying to sidestep an encampment now. You can enforce these common sense safety rules today while you wait for money to be agreed upon and earmarked, planning to begin, contracts awarded, construction to take place, etc. Even if the stars aligned and all relevant power brokers agreed on starting a homeless shelter tomorrow, it could be ten years before one person is helped with that act.
FredPret 3y ago
I feel like cities are mostly concerned with street lights and garbage removal and local crime. Fixing a broader societal failure like the lack of housing and poor mental health seems like it should sit at a state / province or federal / national level.

xenospn 3y ago

The problem is so severe that a single city or even a large city, like Los Angeles, is basically helpless to stop it. This is a federal issue and needs to be handled on the federal level.

aksss 3y ago
I don't even know what that means. It's a like a "move it along" policy to your problems. I hesitate to even ask: what tools do you imagine the feds have to fix homelessness, outside of driving a good economy, and perhaps protectionist measures to build low-skill industries back in the US (and all that entails)?
- xenospn 3y ago
  From my vantage point, a combined strategy of mental health facilities with accessible healthcare and a social safety net is a good starting point. (Most likely will never happen in the US) I seriously doubt that affordable housing or better employment opportunities are going to do anything, specifically because even people making six figures are struggling to find housing here (LA) so I doubt any amount of subsidized housing is going to solve or even make a dent in the number of homeless people.
- asdff 3y ago
  It's just a matter of sizing the scale of the problem to the correct budget so it can actually be solved. City of LA has 45,000 homeless people in it. Recent audits put the cost at half a million per unit, all services roped in with that number I believe, for a new shelter bed and staff. That's almost 23 billion dollars provided you have the land for this UCLA sized project cleared already, a whole lot more if you don't. City of LA's entire budget is 13 billion dollars; all it can do is fight the tide with a leaky bucket essentially. Federal government budget, on the other hand, is 6.1 trillion dollars, and they own the world money printer too, along with a huge amount of acreage all over the american west. The homeless crisis could be solved with a pen stroke from DC today.
- mulmen 3y ago
  Jobs aren’t a complete solution. Especially not low-skill industrial jobs. Some of these people are incapable of employment. They need full time professional care. It is a mental healthcare issue. Since the feds gutted mental healthcare under Reagan they can fix it too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Systems_Act_of_1980 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Systems_Act_of...
epistasis 3y ago
All of these problems are downstream of California cities refusing to build enough housing to meet demand. The homeless population is not fixed, it's a continuous stream of people becoming homeless, and some finding housing or leaving the area or dying. The inflow rate of people entering homelessness is a regional problem; once you're homeless it's hard to go very far. So regional areas in charge of determining housing levels (the Regional Housing Needs Allocation process) has been messed up for a long time. It's finally getting fixed by state level policy. Until California decides to build enough housing in order to house a person on minimum wage, then we will continue to have this people. Its not every state that has this problem, only those with housing so much more expensive than wages.
- xenospn 3y ago
  I know life is hard and shit happens, but I refuse to believe that, except for very few edge cases, people who are staring down homelessness just decide to stay in one of the most expensive places in the world and live on the street rather than move somewhere cheaper And find a cheap apartment. It makes absolutely no sense. I think if you do decide to stay in Los Angeles, when you have no job, no prospects, no family, no money and no place to live, you should be declared as someone who is unable to care for themselves.
  - CapstanRoller 3y ago
    Do you believe uprooting and finding a new job and apartment is easy for the average person? Have you ever talked to someone outside of the FAANG crowd who makes normal wages?
  - epistasis 3y ago
    Say you have a job, friends, a small support network, and are living on the edge, paycheck to paycheck. You don't have $800 in the bank to travel to a cheaper area and try to find a job and an apartment. You are just struggling to get by. Then your car breaks down, and you can't get to work, and you have less pay, or maybe even lose your job. You lose your apartment, and are stuck with no money, and no way to travel. What do you do? Leave everything you know? Is this really so implausible? This is the story of so many people who are homeless. Not everyone, but many. There are a thousand paths into homelessness, but falling into it though unexpected expenses is extremely common

gotoeleven 3y ago

The only humane solution is to bring back mental hospitals, even with involuntary commitment. The severely mentally ill and/or drug addled are incapable of taking care of themselves. Giving out free needles and making it easier to live in an alley like a stray dog is not humane. What do you think about this? The "move it along" policing at least has the effect of making it less easy to be homeless which I think ultimately is a more humane strategy than subsidizing a sub-human life.

anigbrowl 3y ago
How does this help the homeless person? I have a homeless neighbor I help out a bit, but there's only so much I can do, I don't have many resources of my own. He's 70-something, has cataracts and glaucoma, can barely walk, and has his stuff split between a car and a tent. The county helps him out with some things but it's band-aid levels of assistance when he should be in an assisted living facility. I'm not sure how much more deserving he has to be to get some meaningful help. The idea that making it harder to be homeless will somehow cause people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps assumes that they can afford boots and have sufficient strength to pull on them, so to speak. A lot of homeless people are at rock bottom and need something more comprehensive than a cot and a hot dinner.

asdff 3y ago

Well, part of it is a pragmatic understanding that there are areas with encampments that are for many reasons terrible spots for having an encampment. City of LA passed an ordinance recently barring encampments from within 500 ft of schools, near things like fire hydrants or driveways where sight is blocked or other certain road configurations where it would be very dangerous for pedestrians either living in the encampment or trying to navigate around the encampment thats blocking sidewalk access by walking on the street. I wouldn't be surprised if ADA considerations are being factored in with these site selections, now that the city has endured a number of lawsuits from people getting hit trying to sidestep an encampment now. You can enforce these common sense safety rules today while you wait for money to be agreed upon and earmarked, planning to begin, contracts awarded, construction to take place, etc. Even if the stars aligned and all relevant power brokers agreed on starting a homeless shelter tomorrow, it could be ten years before one person is helped with that act.

FredPret 3y ago

I feel like cities are mostly concerned with street lights and garbage removal and local crime. Fixing a broader societal failure like the lack of housing and poor mental health seems like it should sit at a state / province or federal / national level.