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This is one of the core problems and I don't think people want to admit it "can't be solved." When I was naive, out on my own after 18 I found a low-income/inc

• autobodie 2y ago
  >I don't think people want to admit it "can't be solved". The fact that many countries have solved it seems to indicate that you are wrong.
  • wavemode 2y ago
    Which countries have solved it, and how? I'm genuinely curious.
  • kjkjadksj 2y ago
    It is hard to imagine a nation without this sort of thing to some degree without a total police state. These are issues with poor living in apartments in Europe too you know; a tragedy of the commons situation as the community shoulders the burden of those of it that have vice or mental illness that the government authority doesn’t effectively treat because this class is invisible in local mass media.
    • Agentus 2y ago
      yeah, ive heard not having a home was illegal of sorts in the Soviet Union, meaning eviction was illegal or something equivolent. I know what you mean by police state, but i wonder why america doesn’t consider themselves a police state, with such a large prison population and all the innocuous behaviors that can land you in legal trouble. i guess americans get indoctrinated in a certain way of thinking, where their subset of freedoms which they can mostly practice, makes them think they are free but ignore all the numerous other penalized behaviors. for example: i cant possess cocaine regardless if it wont be consumed as a drug, cant drink in public, cant lay down in public, cant sleep in public(ny), etc etc. a lot of intermediary stuff gets penalized because its the only way to control some tangentially related detrimental behavior, or its penalized for making people feel odd (nudity). but more on point: america polices property taxes. Any property owned gets taxed automatically. this creates a forced work state to accumulate money to pay Uncle Sam. Failure to comply with this system and you get policed or pushed around as a homeless. David Graeber talks about Madagascar colonies set up with a similar system (underline) intentionally(/u) to produce a productive populace. similarly he mentions ways monarchies created rules and systems to force markets and force productivity elsewhere. I think homelessness circumstances is by design, and this free nonpolice state we call america is actually an artificial created police state. we can choose different governing setups that have different features emergent and by design. Its what Mao attempted to do, its what the French and British monarch did. But i see the coercive force in all the government setups even the ones that claim to be free.
      • _DeadFred_ 2y ago
        America is a Police state. Qualifiers: 1. Surveillance state. The amount of surveillance information our police now purchase from private companies would make the old Soviets drule. 2. Separate rules for the Police with qualified immunity protections. Singapore doesn't give it's Police qualified immunity protections unless serving warrants. There are two different rules of law in the US, those that apply to the normies, and those that apply to law enforcement. 3. Mass incarceration. 4. Making so much illegal that 'selective enforcement' can be used as a tool of coercion. Just coming up on the Police radar (even if you are someone that reported something) leads to a significantly higher chance of incarceration in the US.
  • BurningFrog 2y ago
    If we believe the stories of old, even this country used to have this solved.
    • FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
      It all started to change with O'Connor v. Donaldson. Prior to that, a person could be committed for basically life for just about anything... Reference: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
      • vondur 2y ago
        I think outrage from that movie and the conditions of the Asylums around that time period was why many of the public asylums were shuttered.
        • WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
          During the late 19th to early 20th century, asylums were launched all over the US. They were commonly public-private partnerships but tended to be spearheaded by altruistic individuals. They were genuinely positive places and were constantly lauded by the public/press/pols. The focus on humane care was universal. The methods sometimes suffered from incomplete understanding but that improved over time. From 1930s to 1960s, the responsible individuals died off and no one replaced them. The p/p/p quit caring. Locations transitioned to gov-only. The public/press weren't interested so neither were pols. The quality of care steeply fell off as budgets (read 'efficiency') were prioritized over everything. By the 1970s, asylums were associated with hellholes for mostly good reasons. By the 1980s most were shuttered. The public justification was the inhumane conditions (typically true). The motivating reason was to recapture the remaining funds that were spent on them. There was little/no interest in funding replacements. FF to today. Florida has 5 state criminal mental health institutions. Their long history is that patients and staff die there with some regularity. After that came out in a news series, reporters lost access and that's where that's at. source: 10y genealogy research & 25y caring for mi spouse. Also: 10y supporting developmentally disabled care facilities (public/private) that are still spearheaded by caring, invested individuals. They are models of what is possible.
  • robswc 2y ago
    The problem isn't "solved." The problem is you have to deal with it in a way that most/everyone would be OK with and vote for. I don't think we can do that in the US. We could "solve" the problem like Singapore or China (some of these 'many countries'), and simply throw everyone in jail for petty crimes. In fact, IIRC Singapore is one of the safest places on earth. I'm sure SF (and California, and the country at large) would probably take issue with a sudden step up in policing.
    • sightbroke 2y ago
      As far as I can tell, the bottom line is king in the US. So the way I figure, you spend money on imprisoning (though private prisons make more money and can sell non-violent labor). Or spend money on housing and social workers and maybe a good chunk of this individuals rejoin the workforce and pay taxes. Or you spend money on cleaning up after, paying for medical emergencies, and increased private security costs. The option selected is either the one that the invisible hand found to be the most efficient or a better option was not sold well enough.
      • throwawaymaths 2y ago
        if you think prison privatization is the problem... you should see state run prisons. while studies show that private prisons are "statistically" worse (lots of problems with the statistics, e.g. commingling criminal incarceration contracts with migrant incarceration contracts), the difference is marginal, at best.
        • johnnyanmac 2y ago
          The incentive structure is the bigger issue here, not necessarily prisoner treatment (though yes, we can address that too). A state wants to minimize prisons. A profit run prison wants to keep getting prisoners.
          • throwawaymaths 2y ago
            state run prisons and prison guard unions also have this problem. and these orgs are known to have successfully put legislative pressure on laws that will increase incarceration rates
  • hector126 2y ago
    My understanding is that countries who have "solved" homelessness either - • Societally and culturally produce so few individuals who would behave the way America's most problematic homeless do that direct 1on1 intervention is feasible. There are school districts in the US where the truancy rate exceeds 70%. There are other countries where this is not the case. Switzerland and Norway come to mind. • Involuntarily commit or arrest individuals who are mentally unfit to function in normal society. Institutionalization, basically. China and Russia come to mind. If there was a silver bullet which was politically acceptable to "solve" America's homeless problem I ensure you, folks in California would have tried it.
    • PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
      California, like most of the USA, contains a very broad spectrum of political opinion. There are plenty of conservative right wing folk there, it just so happens that the current state of things there leads to them not holding huge amounts of power at the level of the state legislature or governor's office. This is marked contrast to, for example, most European countries (particularly the two you've mentioned) where the number of people who simply do not see a role for non-carceral government action (i.e. the first solution you've described) is quite small. Combine that with a referendum process, and you've got a situation in which there are lots of things that could theoretically be tried but will not be, even in California.
    • johnnyanmac 2y ago
      1. Yes, it's cultural and we keep encouraging people to be selfish. Our influencers, the media, this push of "make it in your own" despite no one in history truly being self made. And if we're being frank, prejudice is still alive and well which underfunded certain kinds of areas. We don't want to help those people. And we have 50 mini countries to balance this between. 2. Almost. They don't use for profit prisons who are incentivized to punish. Other countries actually focus on minimizing recidivism. But America keeps falling for "Hard on Crime". Again, that selfishness: "I would never do that, that person deserves to suffer". >If there was a silver bullet which was politically acceptable to "solve" America's homeless problem I ensure you, folks in California would have tried it. I agree. But politically people treat reformation as "free handouts". With that attitude nothing will change.
  • yibg 2y ago
    The US seems to be a text book case of treating the symptom rather than the cause (and not just in terms of homelessness either). Culturally we: - Seem to tolerate high income inequality or even see it as a good thing. - Value "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" and devalue social safety nets and other avenues of providing opportunity to the masses - Have given up on higher crime rates, lower education, poorer health care and health outcomes compared to other wealthy nations Instead of trying to prevent homelessness in the first place, we try to tackle it once it's already there, then throw up our hands and say it's not possible to deal with.
    • willywanker 2y ago
      >Seem to tolerate high income inequality or even see it as a good thing. A free society will by definition be unequal; people have different priorities and abilities, and wealth acquisition isn't a zero sum game. If anything, instead of vilifying billionaires, take a look at the unelected but taxpayer funded and vastly bloated bureaucracies in every country around the world. The shocking revelations of USAID spending billions upon billions to interfere in other countries is example enough. Prisons are the most equal places in the world in terms of living standards and options available to prisoners; nobody sees them as ideal. Now lack of upward class mobility - that's a separate problem area to focus on.
• novok 2y ago
  There are two kinds of 'low income.' There is a working-class neighborhood where people are not rich; life is hard, and stuff is a bit run down, but people are normal. Employed-ish, don't start fights and are respectful. The sense of community and friendliness might even be better than a 'normal' place because you need community to survive. Living in these places is fine. Then there is the kind of 'low income' you describe, which is a very different kind of place and people. When people talk about this topic, people get into big debates about it because they are thinking of 2 very different kinds of low-income places.
  • tripletao 2y ago
    The comment you replied to said "income-restricted", so they probably mean a building covered by government programs that give preferential tax, planning, or other treatment to developers who commit to below-market rent, with tenancy restricted to households meeting income limits. These are common in large American cities. The problem tenants are a minority, but the landlord lacks the usual incentive to address them since the building will always be full, since it's below-market. The landlord may also be a social benefit organization that's politically disinclined to evict. Non-market housing tends to go badly in the USA, including programs closely resembling those that have succeeded in other countries. The reasons for that are complex, though I strongly suspect that the weak mental health system (many of the worst problem tenants would be institutionalized elsewhere) contributes.
• johnnyanmac 2y ago
  >This is one of the core problems and I don't think people want to admit it "can't be solved." It certainly can be solved. The real think is people in power don't want to solve it, and the voters don't want to invest in solving it. Admitting your own folly and vainness is much more difficult than dismissing it as an "impossible problem". >Some people are simply selfish and will not be able to live close to/with others without causing problems. _Most_ people do not want to live next to them. And those people do not get the help they need. Again, and investment no one cares to put in. Better to sweep it under the rug and try to rely on the security of higher income areas to deal with it than taking preventative measures.