4 ms·

In my opinion, your entire comment is suffering from the "out of sight, out of mind" bias that drives so much policy around housing and mental illness, mostly f

In my opinion, your entire comment is suffering from the "out of sight, out of mind" bias that drives so much policy around housing and mental illness, mostly for the worse. The drug and mental illness you describe are widespread right now, but because they happen in periodically-swept homeless encampments, you can ignore them and pretend they're not real. And where's this assumption that SROs would have no facilities maintenance or law enforcement? There's no reason why publicly-funded SROs wouldn't have these things, probably at much lower cost than we currently end up paying for the revolving door of law enforcement, jail, mental hospital, regular hospital we have with the homeless right now. Again, I think this is "out of sight, out of mind" bias - you don't think the current spending is "real" because you can't see it, but this hypothetical new spending would be, even though the total cost to the taxpayer would be less.

ToucanLoucan 11mo ago
As always, I'm firmly of the mind that none of this has to do with balance sheets or what things cost. There's a type of person who just has this image in mind that everyone struggling is a drugged up loser who refuses to get a job and lives on benefits, thanks to decades of propaganda saying as such. The fact that UBI would save us astronomical amounts of money versus the current piecemeal, ineffective and constantly under seige social system we have doesn't matter, because the point isn't to keep people fed, it's to keep poor people in line. The fact that housing assistance and other such things would clean up the streets of the same people while giving them the help they need, and at a lower cost than rolling the cops on them to beat them with batons and shove them into coach busses to other cities doesn't matter, because the violence is what they want. There's a substantial slice of this country that legitimately hates poor people, whether they want to admit it or not, and they will die on the hill of spending a thousand taxpayer dollars making their life a living hell, before they will willingly accede to giving them a hundred bucks to buy food. This is not a reasonable position and as such, you cannot reason with it. As they say, "The cruelty is the point."
- Aurornis 11mo ago
  > There's a type of person who just has this image in mind that everyone struggling is a drugged up loser who refuses to get a job and lives on benefits, I wasn’t talking about people struggling. I was talking about the actual, visible drug users on the streets. The struggling people looking for temporary housing would be intermingled with these people and suffer the most.
  - bryanlarsen 11mo ago
    The Y and religious shelters have a zero-tolerance policy. You get kicked out immediately for drugs or alcohol. So no, they're generally not intermingled.
  - roguecoder 11mo ago
    Living on the street sucks. It is painful. It is a lot harder to stop using pain killers when one is in actual pain.
  - ToucanLoucan 11mo ago
    Those people are also struggling. The fact that you refuse to empathize with them doesn't change that.
- rpcope1 11mo ago
  > The fact that UBI would save us astronomical amounts of money versus the current piecemeal, ineffective and constantly under seige social system we have doesn't matter, because the point isn't to keep people fed, it's to keep poor people in line. Big citation needed there. If UBI in the United States were $10k a year per head (roughly what SSDI pays out, which I find it hard to believe even an individual can get by on), and we have 300 million people, that works out to 3T in UBI payments alone give or take, and there's nothing stopping people from blowing their UBI money on drugs or alcohol or whatever and still going hungry or needing healthcare. UBI is more of a "well we'll just give them a little money and then we can just ignore all the other problems" copium; you'll never be able to do away with SNAP or Medicaid without people going hungry or going to the ER for everything. Definitely not going to be saving any money at all doing UBI.
Aurornis 11mo ago
> The drug and mental illness you describe are widespread right now, but because they happen in periodically-swept homeless encampments, you can ignore them and pretend they're not real. What are you talking about? I brought them up because it’s a front and center problem that anyone who walks through a big city will have to encounter on a daily basis. It’s not out of sight out of mind at all. > And where's this assumption that SROs would have no facilities maintenance or law enforcement? At $231 inflation adjusted dollars per month, just how much do you expect to be left over for daily cleaning staff? If you expect nearly hotel level frequency of cleaning common spaces, you’re going to have to expect nearly hotel level monthly rents. Law enforcement isn’t going to arrest someone for refusing to clean their plates. It’s the responsibility of the SRO operator to evict people. Do you know how hard it is to evict anyone these days? Even literal squatters or people who stop paying rent can take months to evict.

ToucanLoucan 11mo ago

As always, I'm firmly of the mind that none of this has to do with balance sheets or what things cost. There's a type of person who just has this image in mind that everyone struggling is a drugged up loser who refuses to get a job and lives on benefits, thanks to decades of propaganda saying as such. The fact that UBI would save us astronomical amounts of money versus the current piecemeal, ineffective and constantly under seige social system we have doesn't matter, because the point isn't to keep people fed, it's to keep poor people in line. The fact that housing assistance and other such things would clean up the streets of the same people while giving them the help they need, and at a lower cost than rolling the cops on them to beat them with batons and shove them into coach busses to other cities doesn't matter, because the violence is what they want. There's a substantial slice of this country that legitimately hates poor people, whether they want to admit it or not, and they will die on the hill of spending a thousand taxpayer dollars making their life a living hell, before they will willingly accede to giving them a hundred bucks to buy food. This is not a reasonable position and as such, you cannot reason with it. As they say, "The cruelty is the point."

Aurornis 11mo ago
> There's a type of person who just has this image in mind that everyone struggling is a drugged up loser who refuses to get a job and lives on benefits, I wasn’t talking about people struggling. I was talking about the actual, visible drug users on the streets. The struggling people looking for temporary housing would be intermingled with these people and suffer the most.
- bryanlarsen 11mo ago
  The Y and religious shelters have a zero-tolerance policy. You get kicked out immediately for drugs or alcohol. So no, they're generally not intermingled.
- roguecoder 11mo ago
  Living on the street sucks. It is painful. It is a lot harder to stop using pain killers when one is in actual pain.
- ToucanLoucan 11mo ago
  Those people are also struggling. The fact that you refuse to empathize with them doesn't change that.
rpcope1 11mo ago
> The fact that UBI would save us astronomical amounts of money versus the current piecemeal, ineffective and constantly under seige social system we have doesn't matter, because the point isn't to keep people fed, it's to keep poor people in line. Big citation needed there. If UBI in the United States were $10k a year per head (roughly what SSDI pays out, which I find it hard to believe even an individual can get by on), and we have 300 million people, that works out to 3T in UBI payments alone give or take, and there's nothing stopping people from blowing their UBI money on drugs or alcohol or whatever and still going hungry or needing healthcare. UBI is more of a "well we'll just give them a little money and then we can just ignore all the other problems" copium; you'll never be able to do away with SNAP or Medicaid without people going hungry or going to the ER for everything. Definitely not going to be saving any money at all doing UBI.

Aurornis 11mo ago

> The drug and mental illness you describe are widespread right now, but because they happen in periodically-swept homeless encampments, you can ignore them and pretend they're not real. What are you talking about? I brought them up because it’s a front and center problem that anyone who walks through a big city will have to encounter on a daily basis. It’s not out of sight out of mind at all. > And where's this assumption that SROs would have no facilities maintenance or law enforcement? At $231 inflation adjusted dollars per month, just how much do you expect to be left over for daily cleaning staff? If you expect nearly hotel level frequency of cleaning common spaces, you’re going to have to expect nearly hotel level monthly rents. Law enforcement isn’t going to arrest someone for refusing to clean their plates. It’s the responsibility of the SRO operator to evict people. Do you know how hard it is to evict anyone these days? Even literal squatters or people who stop paying rent can take months to evict.