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This is actually an interesting problem if people gave it a minute. Here's the initial conditions: We don't lock up mentally ill people anymore in California be
by labrador 3y ago
This is actually an interesting problem if people gave it a minute. Here's the initial conditions: We don't lock up mentally ill people anymore in California because "patient rights" including the right to non-neurotypical. This results in mentally ill people wandering the streets. They are too sick to respectfully use commerical establishment bathrooms, so they rely on public bathrooms. Since there is a shortage of those, they end up using the street. So SF wants to build an indesctructible public toilet for them so they don't use the street, which turns out to be hard because the mentally ill are often clever and find ways to make it a nightmare for everyone, so it ends up costing 1.7 million dollars and take a long time. What would you do?
- notRobot 3y agoTackle the social conditions that lead to mentally unwell people being helpless and homeless and foodless on the streets. There are enough resources in this world to take care of everyone. We should not tolerate the fact that so many people struggle all their lives at no fault of their own, simply because of the conditions they're born into. You can help mentally unwell people without locking them up, what are you on about?
- labrador 3y agoI don't know where you're from but it wasn't just Governors Brown and Reagan who created the problem, it was the Psychiatric survivors movement which was against forced treatment and forced medication. I voluntarily take my medication and look upon those poor schizophrenics on the street screaming at birds with pity and sadness because well meaning do gooders don't believe they should be forced to take meds or accept treatment of any kind (because freedom) so they are left to suffer like wounded animals on the street. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatric_survivors_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatric_survivors_movement
- pydry 3y agoHomelessness isnt a side effect of a mental illness epidemic. Mental illness is a side effect of a homelessness epidemic. The reason for the focus on mental illness as a cause is that it stops people from drawing a direct line between a cult of landlord greed and drug addicts defecating outside of your local drugstore.
- labrador 3y agoThe non-mentally ill homeless aren't shitting on the sidewalk requiring 1.7 million dollar toilets. You should give functional homeless, which I've been, more credit than that.
- pydry 3y agoThey tend to be the ones who have been homeless the longest. Homeless -> drugs -> crippling mental illness -> shitting on the street. It can take years. It's not coincidence that there are armies of them where the rents are highest. We're told is is though.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago> It's not coincidence that there are armies of them where the rents are highest. I believe you are neither wrong nor right. I lived adjacent to a massive homeless community, in a (then) low-cost rural county. It's been there for decades. It's still there but is larger since housing costs are >2x what they were in 2020.
- EdwardDiego 3y agoIt's kinda both. In NZ in the 90s, residential care for people with severe mental illness was replaced with "community care" where all those patients be helped to go flatting the community, and have their condition treated so well that there was no need for residential care facilities. It's far better! It's more respectful! It's also incidentally going to let us trim millions from the Health budget so we can pay for the tax cuts for high earners! The care provided in the community was wisely delegated to the Almighty Invisible Hand of the Free Market, so a bunch of fly-by-night sub-par contractors sprung up to get the government cash and then provide very little care at all, and so large numbers of former patients ended up homeless due to their poorly controlled illness, and well gosh, hard to care for them in the community when you don't know where they live right? It's an absolute debacle, and a great demonstration that neoliberalism is nothing more a belief set for business people who don't like paying tax. But I fully agree that homelessness is a great medium for developing mental illness and drug dependencies.
- throwway120385 3y agoDeinstitutionalization was supposed to be coupled with community mental health centers, which would have been places for these people to go when they fell through the cracks to get help without being segregated from society. The problem is that deinstitutionalization happened. Federal funding was removed from institutions but then never materialized for CMHCs. These would have been places with maybe a psychiatrist and some therapists and social workers on staff who would work with the chronically mentally ill to help them navigate society so they didn't fall through the cracks. It was the same idea behind the "Least Restrictive Environment" requirement for No Child Left Behind--people who have problems in society should still be allowed to navigate society with support.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago> it wasn't just Brown & Reagan, it was the Psychiatric survivors movement which was against forced treatment and meds. There are options to hellholes that aren't abandonment. But they have to compete with fat justice system budgets.
- proc0 3y agoHmm, it's almost like treating the symptom instead of the cause.
- cpursley 3y agoIt’s the American way.
- aeturnum 3y agoSensible people treat both!
- iwontberude 3y agoIt's almost like treating symptoms is better than doing nothing about the cause, which is all you can do, because we don't have control over what causes human brains to malfunction like this.
- Whoppertime 3y agoI think we do have control over what causes human brains to malfunction like this and that's why there is a heterogeneous rather then homogenous distribution of mental illness or social pathogens. The rate of homelessness, drug addiction, petty crime like fare evasion or more serious violent crime are not equal across all places and all groups. Instead it seems like humans respond to incentives and those incentives are what is different across places and groups.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- iwontberude 3y agoSounds great, why do you think your opinion isn't shared by more people? On the surface everything you are saying makes sense, but its almost like there is some deeper reality that keeps it from being true.
- xeromal 3y agoDoesn't this thought assume all ailments are treatable? Sometimes the best treatment is forced care in a facility.
- iamleppert 3y ago[flagged]
- fshbbdssbbgdd 3y agoIf we have a $1.7M budget, we could hire people to handle each of those twelve points for $100k a pop. I got dibs on “crisis information”. This toilet is going to have the most informative signage you’ve ever seen.
- mvdtnz 3y agoDon't do this here.
- iamleppert 3y ago[flagged]
- pvg 3y agoThat's all fine but generated comments are not allowed on HN.
- iamleppert 3y agoNothing in the guidelines state that AI isn’t allowed.
- pvg 3y agoThere are many moderator comments about it. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22generated%20comments%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- iamleppert 3y ago[flagged]
- matteoraso 3y ago[flagged]
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago> We don't lock up mentally ill people anymore in California because "patient rights" Sure we do. That's what prisons are for. Because that's the only reliable offering for folks with chronic mental health needs. Going past that: If patient rights weren't a factor, nothing would change. Long-term, inpatient mental healthcare is an impossibility for most folks who need it. source: 25 years of marriage to spouse who needed long-term, inpatient treatment but is now homeless instead.
- hotpotamus 3y ago> Long-term, inpatient mental healthcare is an impossibility for most folks who need it. It's like free housing and free healthcare combined; neither of which are possible in the US.
- ImJamal 3y agoCalifornia could implement both of them without the federal government if they wanted.
- abeppu 3y agoIt's Noe Valley. The article doesn't mention anything about the homeless population, but does mention it's known as "stroller valley". It's _not_ a hard problem to provide a small number of toilets for the homeless population. SF does have a "pit stop" program of public toilets, which in some cases are just chemical toilets, set up on the sidewalk, with a person that cleans them and logs their use. I walk by one on 14th regularly. It doesn't need to be "indestructible". It doesn't need to be a hard problem. http://sfpublicworks.org/pitstop http://sfpublicworks.org/pitstop