5 ms·

I think it’s rightly and plainly frustrating for the sole reason that the e.g. parks, sidewalks, bridges, etc that the homeless live on (and, are now directly c

by 015a 2y ago

I think it’s rightly and plainly frustrating for the sole reason that the e.g. parks, sidewalks, bridges, etc that the homeless live on (and, are now directly christened by the government to do so in Halifax) are quite literally funded by taxpayers for public (read: taxpayer) use. Rightly or wrongly (but let’s be real: often rightly) parents (read: taxpayers) don’t feel safe bringing their children into these areas; young women (read: taxpayers) don’t feel safe walking in these areas. Crime is higher, drug use is higher, broken window theory, etc. Here’s my unpopular opinion: I fully support making homelessness a jailable offense. A bed, meals, and heat in the winter; we’re not talking about the end of the world here, and I’m comfortable with my tax dollars funding that because I _do_ have some empathy for the homeless. But, not infinite empathy. We need better social programs, we need to work with the charities and churches as you say, I’m also very supportive of some kind of jail-adjacent jobs program that houses and feeds the homeless in exchange for employment.

HDThoreaun 2y ago
Jail is too expensive. What we need is actually very close to what halifax is doing. We need to legalize encampments, we just have to do it in very limited areas. The city buys a large empty field on the outskirts of town and makes the homeless to go there. Clear any other encampments routinely. This also makes it much easier for charities to help the homeless since theyre all in one place. 24/7 police presence at the new encampment. Will be tough for the people who live close to the field but its the best way to minimize the impact.
- 015a 2y ago
  Functionally; like skid row? Certainly, that hasn't worked out well for LA; because it literally just doesn't work. Even many homeless don't want to live in places like this, because they inevitably become extremely unsafe, because the idea that a 24/7 police presence has a significant positive impact or is even possible is a fantasy. Police become jaded overnight, like trying to mop up the ocean. No one in the public (read: voters, taxpayers) would support a place like this in their backyard, for good reason. A person pitches a tent ten blocks away; what does the city do? Forcibly move them? They're back ten blocks away the next day. Repeat. Prison being too expensive is, to be fair, true, but a problem local to only some states, and a different problem that we should be motived to solve independent of whether its a tool in the solution of this problem. But, beyond that, maybe my point is more generally (and contentiously) stated as: I believe homelessness should be a crime whose punishment involves the forfeiture of the person's freedom of movement and work. That's a general way of saying "prison" and that's fine, but I'm comfortable stating that governments need to think about building a (undesirable, forced) path toward finding a home for these people, and making them work to earn it. If a homeless person walks this path, gets to their freedom, and reverts back to being homeless again; well, its a revolving door, but at least its one which rotates over a span of years instead of days, and its one that makes a good faith attempt toward rehabilitation.
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    Skid row doesn’t work in LA because there is no organization and it’s set up right in the heart of town. I’m talking something like skid row but set it up out in the desert by Palm Springs or Palmdale. Anyone encamping anywhere else gets bussed out there. Repeat offenders would have to be jailed yea. Obviously they’re not going to like it but I don’t really care tbh
dowager_dan99 2y ago
the emotional part of my brain is aligned with you, but the pragmatic part knows this is an extremely expensive way to solve the need. Aside from the massive operating costs, what happens come spring - release them back into the wild?
- 015a 2y ago
  My general take is: Finding an empathic solution to the problem is surfacing increasingly end-to-end solutions; government subsidized/paid housing, subsidizing food banks, etc. Homelessness is a bigger problem in urban areas with high density, where all of these components to a solution (e.g. the land upon which a shelter can be built) are very expensive and difficult. The first step toward finding a better life for many of these people is actually to get them into areas where the cost of living is lower. This angles into, any solution to this problem has to happen at the state level. It can't happen at the city level because cities are usually homogenous; they don't have the right levers to pull. It also can't happen at the federal level because homeless problems are definitely regional and local. This is, I think, actually the root of many of America's homeless problems: Cities are usually blue but states are usually red, so any suggestion that the rural areas need to help with city problems, despite the fact that cities are massive economic subsidies on rural areas, is rejected. One angle around this is, I suggest, to leverage the prison system. Most large prisons are built in more rural areas; or at the very least, most cities have a rural prison nearby. All of the real costs should be lower than even partial-end-to-end costs of caring for the homeless inside the bounds of a city; housing is more dense and lower quality, meals are cheaper, land is cheaper, prison labor recoups some costs, etc. Rural populations will be more accepting of a migration of homeless through the prison system versus just bussing them out of the city and leaving them (an extremely untenable solution). But, obviously beyond this, there needs to be support beyond just dropping them in a prison in a cornfield somewhere. This gets into: States should seriously think about a New Deal-ish jobs program utilizing outgoing prison labor. Many of these rural areas are short on hands for hard labor. Housing is cheap to build in these areas. We should have a paved path to tell people migrated like this: "We aren't going to stop you from going back to the city. But, if you stay here and commit to two years, here's an apartment, its free as long as you work this job, and you'll also make minimum wage." For the red-leaning rural areas, this is a great opportunity for private-public partnership. Lots of private farms would love a source of labor like this (in fact, the idea mirrors a very real source of labor for many farms in the west historically; farms provide a bunk house and food, and recruiting happens when people walk out of prison, this is a very Americana solution). I don't think a solution like this works for the major-major hyper-blue cities like NYC/SF/LA; their homeless problem is just too big. But, Halifax is a city of ~400,000 people. I've spent many years in American cities in the ~500k pop range; obviously something might be structurally different in Halifax that I'm not aware of, but the homeless problem in these cities is far more tractable. Most of these cities are in states which lean red; the biggest problem up to this point is usually just getting state government on-board; telling the red state government that they can jail the homeless? They love that. Then its just a matter of the second half, which becomes the new hard part.

by 015a 2y ago

HDThoreaun 2y ago

Jail is too expensive. What we need is actually very close to what halifax is doing. We need to legalize encampments, we just have to do it in very limited areas. The city buys a large empty field on the outskirts of town and makes the homeless to go there. Clear any other encampments routinely. This also makes it much easier for charities to help the homeless since theyre all in one place. 24/7 police presence at the new encampment. Will be tough for the people who live close to the field but its the best way to minimize the impact.

015a 2y ago
Functionally; like skid row? Certainly, that hasn't worked out well for LA; because it literally just doesn't work. Even many homeless don't want to live in places like this, because they inevitably become extremely unsafe, because the idea that a 24/7 police presence has a significant positive impact or is even possible is a fantasy. Police become jaded overnight, like trying to mop up the ocean. No one in the public (read: voters, taxpayers) would support a place like this in their backyard, for good reason. A person pitches a tent ten blocks away; what does the city do? Forcibly move them? They're back ten blocks away the next day. Repeat. Prison being too expensive is, to be fair, true, but a problem local to only some states, and a different problem that we should be motived to solve independent of whether its a tool in the solution of this problem. But, beyond that, maybe my point is more generally (and contentiously) stated as: I believe homelessness should be a crime whose punishment involves the forfeiture of the person's freedom of movement and work. That's a general way of saying "prison" and that's fine, but I'm comfortable stating that governments need to think about building a (undesirable, forced) path toward finding a home for these people, and making them work to earn it. If a homeless person walks this path, gets to their freedom, and reverts back to being homeless again; well, its a revolving door, but at least its one which rotates over a span of years instead of days, and its one that makes a good faith attempt toward rehabilitation.
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  Skid row doesn’t work in LA because there is no organization and it’s set up right in the heart of town. I’m talking something like skid row but set it up out in the desert by Palm Springs or Palmdale. Anyone encamping anywhere else gets bussed out there. Repeat offenders would have to be jailed yea. Obviously they’re not going to like it but I don’t really care tbh

dowager_dan99 2y ago

the emotional part of my brain is aligned with you, but the pragmatic part knows this is an extremely expensive way to solve the need. Aside from the massive operating costs, what happens come spring - release them back into the wild?

015a 2y ago
My general take is: Finding an empathic solution to the problem is surfacing increasingly end-to-end solutions; government subsidized/paid housing, subsidizing food banks, etc. Homelessness is a bigger problem in urban areas with high density, where all of these components to a solution (e.g. the land upon which a shelter can be built) are very expensive and difficult. The first step toward finding a better life for many of these people is actually to get them into areas where the cost of living is lower. This angles into, any solution to this problem has to happen at the state level. It can't happen at the city level because cities are usually homogenous; they don't have the right levers to pull. It also can't happen at the federal level because homeless problems are definitely regional and local. This is, I think, actually the root of many of America's homeless problems: Cities are usually blue but states are usually red, so any suggestion that the rural areas need to help with city problems, despite the fact that cities are massive economic subsidies on rural areas, is rejected. One angle around this is, I suggest, to leverage the prison system. Most large prisons are built in more rural areas; or at the very least, most cities have a rural prison nearby. All of the real costs should be lower than even partial-end-to-end costs of caring for the homeless inside the bounds of a city; housing is more dense and lower quality, meals are cheaper, land is cheaper, prison labor recoups some costs, etc. Rural populations will be more accepting of a migration of homeless through the prison system versus just bussing them out of the city and leaving them (an extremely untenable solution). But, obviously beyond this, there needs to be support beyond just dropping them in a prison in a cornfield somewhere. This gets into: States should seriously think about a New Deal-ish jobs program utilizing outgoing prison labor. Many of these rural areas are short on hands for hard labor. Housing is cheap to build in these areas. We should have a paved path to tell people migrated like this: "We aren't going to stop you from going back to the city. But, if you stay here and commit to two years, here's an apartment, its free as long as you work this job, and you'll also make minimum wage." For the red-leaning rural areas, this is a great opportunity for private-public partnership. Lots of private farms would love a source of labor like this (in fact, the idea mirrors a very real source of labor for many farms in the west historically; farms provide a bunk house and food, and recruiting happens when people walk out of prison, this is a very Americana solution). I don't think a solution like this works for the major-major hyper-blue cities like NYC/SF/LA; their homeless problem is just too big. But, Halifax is a city of ~400,000 people. I've spent many years in American cities in the ~500k pop range; obviously something might be structurally different in Halifax that I'm not aware of, but the homeless problem in these cities is far more tractable. Most of these cities are in states which lean red; the biggest problem up to this point is usually just getting state government on-board; telling the red state government that they can jail the homeless? They love that. Then its just a matter of the second half, which becomes the new hard part.