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You're not wrong that such things make a city less walkable, but there's also a strong argument that just punishing people, instead of, you know, addressing the

You're not wrong that such things make a city less walkable, but there's also a strong argument that just punishing people, instead of, you know, addressing the underlying problem doesn't solve the problem either. It just sets up a situation where people bounce from jail (due to the realities of living on the streets) to the homeless encampment (due to unpaid fines preventing them from earning any money). Like, the whole reason the West Oakland homeless encampment has such an enormous garbage pile problem is because nobody living there can sign up for trash service, since they lack an actual address (and likely can't afford trash service anyway). So as soon as the single 30-gallon courtesy trash can gets filled up (within hours of delivery, if experience is any guide), they're on their own until that that can gets emptied. And they provide that single can for all the trash needs of the 30 or so people living adjacent to it. One of the core drivers of homelessness is the absence of affordable housing within efficient reach of public transit to get to where people work. So by setting up communities that are designed specifically for walking and public transit and are affordable for most directly addresses the main driver of homelessness, which in turn starves the friends-couch-to-homeless-encampment pipeline. Nobody goes directly from evicted to homeless encampment. Its a long fall from grace. Preventing the first step, by ensuring there's adequate housing near where the jobs are, helps prevent the final step.

aerostable_slug 1y ago
> the whole reason the West Oakland homeless encampment has such an enormous garbage pile problem I lived in West Oakland for several years during the first .com bubble. People with houses there often didn't sign up for garbage service (or if they had, they didn't pay). I had to put a damned padlock on my garbage can just so I didn't have my own garbage dumped out and replaced by the freeloaders living next to me. They eventually notched my garbage cans with a saw so I couldn't lock them anymore. By the time I moved it was dueling piles of garbage, and it wasn't like I was the only one with the problem. I find online commenters consistently underestimate the level of antisocial behavior that accompanies much of the squalor we see, and the fact that many people simply have no interest in playing by the rules of society regardless of how many handouts you give them.
- morkalork 1y ago
  That kind of looks like a capitalism and privatization problem from here where trash is a municipal service and paid for by taxes?
  - aerostable_slug 1y ago
    The problem at hand is antisocial behavior, not how garbage service is handled in Oakland. Giving my neighbors effectively free garbage service wouldn't meaningfully address it. You can't just keep giving them free things and hope they'll magically turn into productive citizens, especially when 'free' really means "paid for with someone else's money." They just laugh at you and take the handouts, just like they laughed at me for being such a sucker that I paid my bills every month. This is the reality of dealing with antisocial behavior, and it would behoove more commentators (and policymakers) to familiarize themselves with it.
constantcrying 1y ago
>You're not wrong that such things make a city less walkable, but there's also a strong argument that just punishing people, instead of, you know, addressing the underlying problem doesn't solve the problem either. It just sets up a situation where people bounce from jail (due to the realities of living on the streets) to the homeless encampment (due to unpaid fines preventing them from earning any money). To be honest I do not care. If you want to have great urbanism the single most important thing you can do is create places, where people want to be. Those places have to be nice to look at, enjoyable to be in and need to feel very safe, especially at night. If you have that everything else will follow, people will want to be there and they will demand zoning and transit to make it easier to access. >One of the core drivers of homelessness is the absence of affordable housing within efficient reach of public transit to get to where people work. No. It is drugs and untreated mental illness. Have you ever been around homeless people? The idea of homeless people, as people who are priced out of housing is ridiculous.
- petsfed 1y ago
  >Have you ever been around homeless people? Yes. At many stages of the descent from "I'm just crashing on your couch until I save up enough for another deposit" to "I'm sleeping in my car until I can find a job" to "I'm living in a shanty and rummaging through the trash to turn in aluminum cans for change". Both whilst living in the Bay Area, but also in Oregon and Washington. You're complaining (rightly) about the end stage. I'm saying that nobody starts at the end stage. Hell, I'm actively watching my brother-in-law and his baby mama descend through the mental illness and addiction process, and even though they've been evicted and are now dragging their daughter through the couch-surfing phase, they still aren't at the living-in-tents-shitting-on-the-street phase of that descent. And a major factor, for them was that neither of them could get the kind of jobs that would allow them to both have a stable living situation and do anything but work (because of criminal history resulting from addiction). Its a cascading series of problems that when he lost his license (due to his addiction), he could only work where he could walk, or where he could realistically ride a bus. And in most of the country, if you can't find work within those two ranges, you're shit out of luck. And to be clear, I'm not proposing we just throw up our hands and say "I guess they're just addicted and this is our life now". I'm saying that "just lock up the homeless people" is as much a solution as "well, we've got seatbelts" is for a hydroplaning car. We have within easy reach the ability to 1) stop more people from becoming homeless, and 2) help people who are homeless get their lives back in order.

aerostable_slug 1y ago

> the whole reason the West Oakland homeless encampment has such an enormous garbage pile problem I lived in West Oakland for several years during the first .com bubble. People with houses there often didn't sign up for garbage service (or if they had, they didn't pay). I had to put a damned padlock on my garbage can just so I didn't have my own garbage dumped out and replaced by the freeloaders living next to me. They eventually notched my garbage cans with a saw so I couldn't lock them anymore. By the time I moved it was dueling piles of garbage, and it wasn't like I was the only one with the problem. I find online commenters consistently underestimate the level of antisocial behavior that accompanies much of the squalor we see, and the fact that many people simply have no interest in playing by the rules of society regardless of how many handouts you give them.

morkalork 1y ago
That kind of looks like a capitalism and privatization problem from here where trash is a municipal service and paid for by taxes?
- aerostable_slug 1y ago
  The problem at hand is antisocial behavior, not how garbage service is handled in Oakland. Giving my neighbors effectively free garbage service wouldn't meaningfully address it. You can't just keep giving them free things and hope they'll magically turn into productive citizens, especially when 'free' really means "paid for with someone else's money." They just laugh at you and take the handouts, just like they laughed at me for being such a sucker that I paid my bills every month. This is the reality of dealing with antisocial behavior, and it would behoove more commentators (and policymakers) to familiarize themselves with it.

constantcrying 1y ago

>You're not wrong that such things make a city less walkable, but there's also a strong argument that just punishing people, instead of, you know, addressing the underlying problem doesn't solve the problem either. It just sets up a situation where people bounce from jail (due to the realities of living on the streets) to the homeless encampment (due to unpaid fines preventing them from earning any money). To be honest I do not care. If you want to have great urbanism the single most important thing you can do is create places, where people want to be. Those places have to be nice to look at, enjoyable to be in and need to feel very safe, especially at night. If you have that everything else will follow, people will want to be there and they will demand zoning and transit to make it easier to access. >One of the core drivers of homelessness is the absence of affordable housing within efficient reach of public transit to get to where people work. No. It is drugs and untreated mental illness. Have you ever been around homeless people? The idea of homeless people, as people who are priced out of housing is ridiculous.

petsfed 1y ago
>Have you ever been around homeless people? Yes. At many stages of the descent from "I'm just crashing on your couch until I save up enough for another deposit" to "I'm sleeping in my car until I can find a job" to "I'm living in a shanty and rummaging through the trash to turn in aluminum cans for change". Both whilst living in the Bay Area, but also in Oregon and Washington. You're complaining (rightly) about the end stage. I'm saying that nobody starts at the end stage. Hell, I'm actively watching my brother-in-law and his baby mama descend through the mental illness and addiction process, and even though they've been evicted and are now dragging their daughter through the couch-surfing phase, they still aren't at the living-in-tents-shitting-on-the-street phase of that descent. And a major factor, for them was that neither of them could get the kind of jobs that would allow them to both have a stable living situation and do anything but work (because of criminal history resulting from addiction). Its a cascading series of problems that when he lost his license (due to his addiction), he could only work where he could walk, or where he could realistically ride a bus. And in most of the country, if you can't find work within those two ranges, you're shit out of luck. And to be clear, I'm not proposing we just throw up our hands and say "I guess they're just addicted and this is our life now". I'm saying that "just lock up the homeless people" is as much a solution as "well, we've got seatbelts" is for a hydroplaning car. We have within easy reach the ability to 1) stop more people from becoming homeless, and 2) help people who are homeless get their lives back in order.