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I also like clean safe unobstructed sidewalks and parks but along with benches, we've made a decision. We've decided that putting the mentally ill in a facility

I also like clean safe unobstructed sidewalks and parks but along with benches, we've made a decision. We've decided that putting the mentally ill in a facility and arresting people for public drug use is not something we're comfortable with at the expense of those other things. I don't personally ageee with this decision but it is apparently the consensus.

strictnein 5mo ago
> it is apparently the consensus And what a strange consensus it is. The prevailing belief seems to be that preventing people from slowly/quickly killing themselves on the street (or, more accurately, dying from addiction) is somehow not "progressive" and the moral thing to do is to pretend like these people have made the choice of their own volition and that we cannot judge them for this choice. In reality, the people who are just rotting away on our streets would be better served if they were brought somewhere against their will and kept there until they were better. Society would also be better served if we did this. The government choosing to involuntarily constrain people isn't something that should be done lightly, but sometimes it is the lesser evil. We've completely abandoned these people and somehow done so in the name of compassion. It's really depressing.
- JoshTriplett 5mo ago
  What a strange false dichotomy. Either we do absolutely nothing to help people, or we involuntarily incarcerate them? The actually progressive option is to provide meaningful public support programs, and also make housing affordable (by building enough housing). The US mostly doesn't do either of those, but it should.
  - Taek 5mo ago
    I'm not sure if you've had a drug addict in your life at any point, and if not that is a blessing. Drug addiction is a dark place and it's very common that the availability of free support programs is entirely rejected by the user, and the only hope at a normal life requires forceful intervention by family and friends. The only way to solve drugs on the street is to look at the cities that have solved them and copy what works. And, at least with what I'm familiar with, arresting people tends to work and alternatives tend to not.
    - JoshTriplett 5mo ago
      You seem to be equating "homeless" with "drug addict". The article talks about taking away public benches because of homelessness. There are different programs needed for drug addiction than for homelessness. Not everyone who's homeless has a drug problem, and not everyone with a drug problem is homeless.
      - Auracle 5mo ago
        That Venn diagram is pretty close to a circle, at least when talking about homeless people that don’t have a friend/relative they can stay with.
        JoshTriplett 5mo ago
        > That Venn diagram is pretty close to a circle False, and harmful. US HUD says it's ~16% of homeless people, other sources give different numbers, but it's certainly not a majority, let alone anywhere near 100%. The biggest problem, unsurprisingly, is housing cost. The US GAO states that a $100 increase in median rent correlates to a 9% rise in homelessness. Rents have gone up a lot more than that.
        cyberax 5mo ago
        > False, and harmful. Sorry. But you're either misinformed or actively malicious here. > US HUD says it's ~16% of homeless people It absolutely is close to 100% of _unsheltered_ people. Some social workers helping the unsheltered homeless are now saying that they have not seen anybody who's _not_ on drugs or who is not mentally ill. If you want authoritative source, here's UCLA study from the blessed pre-COVID era: https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Conditions-Among-Unsheltered-Adults-in-the-US.pdf https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Co... > The biggest problem, unsurprisingly, is housing cost. No, it's really really not. > The US GAO states that a $100 increase in median rent correlates to a 9% rise in homelessness. And the correlation disappears when you look at the states with cold climate.
  - zdragnar 5mo ago
    These programs exist, but they are underutilized to a significant degree. From a partner who used to work in one, people: - didn't trust the program and wouldn't sign up - didn't actually want to quit using so they avoided it - wanted to get the benefits from the program without changing anything (i.e. showed up to get free food etc) - tried but didn't like it and went back to using Very few people actually went all the way through compared to the population in the city that could have used it. The real question is: how do you help people who do not want your help. Do you let them waste away and die on the sidewalk, or do you institutionalize them?
    - Loughla 5mo ago
      The answer to that question in a society that allows (mostly) autonomy of choice is that we let them die on the street. I'm not convinced that involuntary incarceration will actually fix the problem. I believe it will just take it off of the streets and out of the public consciousness.
      - 0xBA5ED 5mo ago
        Not a great solution, honestly. Long term drug abuse is almost never a victimless habit. I'm tempted to say never.
        mx7zysuj4xew 5mo ago
        This isn't the 1980s anymore. Using drugs is perfectly fine. A ton of people here on HN take drugs regularly, but few think it's worth to rock the boat against this kind of nonsense you're spreading
        Loughla 5mo ago
        Have you ever interacted with a heroine or meth user? Sometimes using drugs is fine, depending on the drug, the reason, and the person. For example, I did cocaine once and immediately knew I needed to cut ties with those friends because if I had access to it regularly, I would ruin my life. Others can do coke recreationally and not have an issue. Others can't form the insight I had until their lives are in shambles, and maybe not even then.
  - stult 5mo ago
    Yes, exactly, there's a reason the term is "continuum of care." There is no one-size-fits-all approach to solving addiction because, to quote Ted Lasso, all people are different people. Maybe some people do need to be involuntarily incarcerated, but many, many others would be able to recover with far less intrusive interventions. Also we are chasing a lagging indicator by focusing exclusively on the homeless population. The vast majority of people who end up homeless because of addiction would have benefited from some far earlier, far milder form of intervention, or from the absence of something that actively drove them into addiction, e.g. some quack pushing oxycontin on them because Purdue Pharma promoted it as non-addictive. Or job loss because of offshoring pushing them into economic despair that then drives addiction, which they are unable to recover from because of the lack of affordable or accessible retraining or educational opportunities. In many cases over the last 20-30 years, it was the combination of both job loss and careless opioid prescription that pushed people into an unrecoverable spiral, especially in the rust belt, where the opioid crisis hit the hardest. We may not have fixed the job loss side of the problem, but at least doctors aren't pushing pills the same way they were 10-20 years ago after Purdue's corporate downfall, so the number of people driven into addiction-mediated homelessness by that disaster should at least start tapering off soon. But if we don't help people before their lives fall apart with a continuum of support options that are accessible before they are in deep crisis, and are accessible to people who are beginning to spiral but don't yet appear to be in deep crisis, it will cost far more and be far more challenging to help them recover once they are on the street.
  - xp84 5mo ago
    Nothing?? What are you talking about? Go look up how much tax money the SF government spends trying to help the unhoused in their current budget. But no amount will fix the problem because if you ask a drug addict if they want help (and it’s not help getting drugs) they usually say “no thanks.” Many addicts are never ready to accept that kind of help. Sadly.
    - JoshTriplett 5mo ago
      No amount of help will solve a housing problem in a city where people can't afford to live. Build more housing.
      - xp84 5mo ago
        Super strongly agree with you on that. But unfortunately building tons of housing is quite politically unpopular as well, unless it’s wildly stupid housing, like the “affordable housing” that costs more (paid by the city) to build than market rate costs for some reason.
  - strictnein 5mo ago
    I didn't create this "false dichotomy", nor did I say that those were the only two options. I'm just observing the fact that the current system that the major cities in the US seem to be employing is to treat homeless as a valid choice, even if much/most of it is a result of addiction and mental illness. The end result of that treating it that way is the death and suffering of people who actually need lots of help and who would be better served by more aggressive tactics.
    - JoshTriplett 5mo ago
      I don't believe it's a deliberate decision by (most) policymakers. I think it's a structural failure across several axes, including failure to make enough housing for it to be affordable, and attacks on every front by people who treat all social programs and public assistance as evil. Most places have one or the other problem, if not both.
      - SoftTalker 5mo ago
        A drug-addicted/mentally ill chronically unsheltered person is not going to be able to afford a home at any price. If they could hold down any kind of regular job and sustain an income they would find someplace to live. Also most "affordable" housing initiatives attack it by mandating "affordable" for new construction instead of just letting developers build what they can make the most money building. No developer wants to build "affordable" homes if they can build and sell high-end homes. So by imposing "affordability" mandates, they just encourage developers to go elsewhere. New high-end homes make the older homes more affordable. New "affordable" homes simply don't get built, at least not in anywhere near the numbers that are needed.
        JoshTriplett 5mo ago
        To your first point: people don't typically start out that way, things spiral down. And it's much harder to get out of that spiral if homes are completely unaffordable. It also doesn't help that the most temperate places (where you won't die of exposure if unsheltered) are also the least affordable places (because they're prosperous and haven't built nearly enough housing). > Also most "affordable" housing initiatives attack it by mandating "affordable" for new construction instead of just letting developers build what they can make the most money building. No developer wants to build "affordable" homes if they can build and sell high-end homes. So by imposing "affordability" mandates, they just encourage developers to go elsewhere. > New high-end homes make the older homes more affordable. New "affordable" homes simply don't get built, at least not in anywhere near the numbers that are needed. Complete agreement that the current approach is not working, yes. The right approach is to build, and keep building, until everything is affordable. And the political challenge is the existing cohort of people who think a house should be an asset that appreciates rather than a necessity of life that everyone should be able to afford. People who are put in a particularly bad position by that (e.g. difficulty moving or retiring because housing prices went down) may need help.
  - Anvoker 5mo ago
    Unfortunately, framing the problem as this kind of dichotomy is something people are inclined to do because then the problem can be reduced to the unwillingness of the opposing side to face reality. Sometimes the dichotomy is correct, but the bias exists.
  - mlsu 5mo ago
    At least in California, there are a lot of public support programs. I mean, a looooot of public support programs. A LOT. Like, to the point where the state is spending tens of thousands of dollars for each homeless person, and probably north of $100k per person per year for a subset. Talk to a firefighter or paramedic in a CA city sometime. They will tell you, there's "regulars" that they have to deal with every single week. The cops and firefighters know all of them by name. We're paying hours a day in overtime to basically have the cops, firefighters, and EMTs deal with the same small population of mentally ill people on the same street corner every week, for years. These people cannot get better because they choose not to stay in the mental hospital or substance abuse programs offered to them. Someone is 5150'd, placed on a 3-day hold, and 72 hours later they walk out of the hospital and back to the same street corner, where they have a mental breakdown again the following week. You can offer support -- they will basically tell you the same thing, I'm not sick at all, there's nothing wrong with me, I am not a danger to myself or others, and you are shit out of luck. At the same time, there are way more homeless people who are silently and cleanly living in their cars and showing up to work every day at a low wage job. Most people won't ever see them unless they look closely. Visit /r/urbancarliving sometime to get an idea of what that population looks like. Those people might get a 15 minute "knock" from the cops once a month. The actually progressive option is to involuntarily incarcerate people who need it, while not criminalizing car/RV living, offering work placement services, housing assistance etc. The most realistic thing would probably be to build subsidized mobile homes and clean, low-rent central places to park an RV. You correctly identified the biggest thing here though which is making housing affordable. Unfortunately, that will never happen.
    - showerst 5mo ago
      I mostly agree with your points, but I think the involuntary incarceration is a major rock and a hard place situation. There are definitely people for whom it would be a compassionate (and often societally optimal) thing to do. Giving the government the power to decide to take people away indefinitely is just a spectacularly bad precedent. Especially right now.
      - mlsu 5mo ago
  - User23 5mo ago
    You should read a little book called Games People Play. Focus particular attention on the section on the game "Indigent." This isn't a resource allocation problem, or rather, it isn't a resource allocation problem the way you seem to think it is.
  - JuniperMesos 5mo ago
    Any meaningful public support program that actually keeps severely-mentally-ill visibly-homeless people from acting crazy in public will necessarily involve involuntarily incarcerating at least some of them, some of the time. A lot of very dysfunctional people genuinely do not want to cooperate with meaningful public support programs or are simply too out of it to meaningfully consent or not consent to participation in such.
    - ohnei 5mo ago
      That is going right back to false dichotomy. Something can be meaningful and not clean up the streets of all things uncomfortable.
      - JuniperMesos 5mo ago
        Sure, but if it doesn't specifically solve the problem of cleaning up the streets of visibly-homeless people, then it doesn't solve the problem of public transit authorities wanting to remove benches from public transit waiting areas.
  - jumpman_miya 5mo ago
    [dead]
- queenkjuul 5mo ago
  They would be better if they were given support. Locking people away is not a solution to anything. You've been sold a lie about the mentally ill, and the homeless, which isn't true.
- mmooss 5mo ago
  'I think you would be better served by not posting to social media and studying personal liberty and ethics.' Should I be able to enforce it? I think people who make comments like those above are much more dangerous than people on the street - the people on the street can't really do harm. Thankfully, we do have liberty, and they can do what they want - and I can do what I want - and it's none of your business whether it's healthy or not. People also smoke, are sedentary (lots of people here), eat very poorly, use psilocybin (relatively popular here), drink too much, etc. The only way to begin to approach it is, rather than making judgments on overused stereotypes (another reason to be banned from online comments), talk to each person and ask what they are doing and what they need. I know, I know - it's outrageous to ask the opinions of people you deem substandard, even about their own lives.
  - HEmanZ 5mo ago
    Yes the guy who screamed “I’m going to f*ing kill you!” Out of nowhere at my daughter and then chased us, or set fire to random trees in my neighborhood for fun, or cut the copper wiring off the side of my house, or took sledge hammers to local park statues, these people are definitely not a problem. No the problem is really the people who think it should stop. Those horrible, insensitive people. They’r being so selfish. Drug addicted should have every right to pull you down screaming by your hair because they’re tweaked out of their mind. And after seeing that, you should be welcoming every one you see to your home. You’re really the problem for feeling uncomfortable walking by the man jerking off to passerby’s, so intolerant of you. (Every one of these is a true example I have witnessed, along with too much other insanity to write down, from just the last year in Seattle. so don’t tell me im exaggerating)
    - InsideOutSanta 5mo ago
      You are describing actual crimes, not homelessness. Nobody is saying that people who are violent should just be left to their own devices.
      - HEmanZ 5mo ago
        And no one is saying eat the homeless. My city is deadlocked on doing anything about the literal crimes I’ve described because acting against violent offenders is seen as oppressing the downtrodden. Building new shelter capacity is insanely difficult because no one wants concentrations of this near them, and concentrated homeless services turn the area into a waste land (like pioneer square) due to the amount of criminal and antisocial behavior. Raising enough money in taxes seems out of the question because everyone thinks someone else should pay. So you get common crime and antisocial behavior in much of the city and no one can do anything about it.
- citizenpaul 5mo ago
  The main reasons those places lost support is they became convenient prisons without due process. Why do you think there are so many horror movies based on the setting of a sane person involuntarily put there? While not ideal you gotta admit now that those people that need help are in your face rather than conveniently disappeared you are thinking about their plight some. Maybe try to think of something better than forever prisons and stop becoming a ghoul.
- nextaccountic 5mo ago
  [flagged]
- AussieWog93 5mo ago
  I think a big part of this queasiness comes from the fact that a lot of the institutions we would put addicts and mentally ill people in really were nightmarish. And ignoring the whole issue of the sanitariums being full of abuse, I don't think you can argue that sticking a drug addict in a regular prison full of criminals is good for them either.
- jaapz 5mo ago
  When a drug addict does not have an internal drive to be rid of their addiction, forced treatment will not help. Just putting them somewhere until the withdrawal symptoms fade will not change whatever drove them to use the drugs in the first place.
artyom 5mo ago
Them staying in the sidewalk is free. Or the cost is so indirect that nobody is responsible for it. Facilities like asylums and jails are super costly though. And extra expensive to operate if you don't want to treat the inmates as cattle.
- Taek 5mo ago
  The cost is not measured in dollars, but rather in the pollution of the pubic space. People feel less safe and more bothered. Stores nearby get less business, and suffer more theft. Passerbys get accosted.
- AnotherGoodName 5mo ago
  I'll add that treating the inmates like cattle is actually the most expensive option of all in the long term. The USA has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world largely due to high recidivism due to the system not providing proper rehabilitation. So it's costing the USA 65k/yr per inmate on average right now with the 5th highest incarceration rate in the world. The 4 countries above it are not nice places to live contrary to the thought that locking even more people up would make the USA just like the other western nations of the world. No other country is as stupid as the USA when it comes to homeless. They don't spend a lifetime $65k/yr repeatedly locking up such people. Instead they spend a fraction (when amortised over a lifetime of jail costs) on rehabilitation and public health programs.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5mo ago
  > Them staying in the sidewalk is free. Disagree. When the tax-paying public doesn't feel safe around the people living on the sidewalk, they move and take their tax money with them. That means less money for services, roads, education... everything taxes pay for. That's the cost.
  - amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
    That sounds correct in theory, but is it true? Are tax revenue down? Are vacancy rates up?
wiskinator 5mo ago
Yes, I don't think that arresting people for the crime of not having money is a good idea. We also cannot seem to fund any actual drug programs, because US citizens hate the idea of anyone getting something for free.
- zdragnar 5mo ago
  [flagged]
- socalgal2 5mo ago
  SF spends ~$100k per homeless person.
  - lotu 5mo ago
    Yes but critically none of this money is actually given to the homeless person. So we aren't giving them anything for free we are just dealing with the consequences of them not having a proper support system. Spending money to do that is okay, because it doesn't really directly benefit the homeless person.
    - AnotherGoodName 5mo ago
      Also the essence of ‘San Francisco has a lot of homeless’ isn’t really a logical argument against those policies since homeless will often migrate to where the functional support services are. San Francisco may well be doing amazing things with getting people back on their feet at a relatively lower cost than prison. You need to go many levels deeper on statistics to understand if it’s working or not.
      - giraffe_lady 5mo ago
        > since homeless will often migrate to where the functional support services are. I've heard this a lot but I don't have any reason to believe it's true. Never seen a reputable study that asserts it. I've known a lot of homeless people but none that relocated for this reason. Most who moved were looking for work or trying to get closer to family. Most didn't move at all and were just where they had always been, or in the city they were living in when they became homeless.
pocksuppet 5mo ago
What's wrong with both? Why can't we have public benches, and also not arrest drug users if they are sitting on the benches and smoking?
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5mo ago
  Because sitting on benches quickly turns into living on benches. Then the drug dealers move in, because there's a ready customer base of drug users. Then the productive members of society move out.
  - pocksuppet 5mo ago
    So basically the problem is that productive members of society and drug dealers are incapable of existing near to each other? Why is that? I pass by some drug dealers sometimes on the way to work. I don't see the problem. Occasionally I get asked if I want to buy some drugs. I don't want to buy drugs so nothing else happens.
    - triceratops 5mo ago
      > [why are] productive members of society and drug dealers incapable of existing near to each other? Drug dealers are criminals. Criminals commit other crimes and attract other criminals and crime. For example, rival drug dealers who want to take their spot and use violence.
      - InsideOutSanta 5mo ago
        Seems like something decriminalizing drugs would solve then.
        amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
        This only solves one problem (you don't get thrown in jail for using drugs), but there are other problems. Drug dealers and gangs still exist. The drug user doesn't know what he is actually buying. Overdoses are easy to do since you don't actually know what you bought. The way to solve these issues is legalization and regulation.
userbinator 5mo ago
but it is apparently the consensus. Not everywhere, fortunately.
thinkingtoilet 5mo ago
This sounds like it's from someone who say a video on the two square blocks in SF or Philly and has let the propaganda make them believe this is common everywhere in every American city.
pessimizer 5mo ago
> We've decided that putting the mentally ill in a facility and arresting people for public drug use is not something we're comfortable with at the expense of those other things. We've decided this about every kind of health care. Instead of providing treatment for people who can't afford its bizarre, artificial prices, we prefer to leave them on the street or warehouse them in prisons. After leaving them in prison for an arbitrary amount of time, we then release them into the streets again, with nothing, more screwed up than when they went in, to murder you. I have no idea what the "tough love" advocates are advocating for. Locking them up in prison is like hiding rotting meat in a freezer; it only works if you're willing to do it forever. The only answer that seems compatible with the spoiled upper-middle class worldview is to shoot the homeless (which often happened* in a lot of South American countries through semi-official paramilitaries), or to drive them into the wilderness outside of town to hopefully die on their own. As the layoffs of programmers continue, I predict there will be a lot of changes of heart that won't matter at all, because they will be coming from homeless people. Middle-class culture is all about only being interested in issues that harm you directly, even if that issue is somebody dying too loudly nearby. ----- [*] Happens? My info is out of date.
User23 5mo ago
This postulates that policy is set by consensus. Now I haven't done any scientific polling, but my informal anecdotal experience is so overwhelmingly to the contrary that I'm comfortable believing that consensus isn't determining policy here.
NotGMan 5mo ago
This. Even an extremely small population of homeless/junkies is enough to "taint" benches. The same with parks.
breakyerself 5mo ago
There are other options that are more effective than either of the things you mentioned, but people's feelings get in the way.

strictnein 5mo ago

> it is apparently the consensus And what a strange consensus it is. The prevailing belief seems to be that preventing people from slowly/quickly killing themselves on the street (or, more accurately, dying from addiction) is somehow not "progressive" and the moral thing to do is to pretend like these people have made the choice of their own volition and that we cannot judge them for this choice. In reality, the people who are just rotting away on our streets would be better served if they were brought somewhere against their will and kept there until they were better. Society would also be better served if we did this. The government choosing to involuntarily constrain people isn't something that should be done lightly, but sometimes it is the lesser evil. We've completely abandoned these people and somehow done so in the name of compassion. It's really depressing.

JoshTriplett 5mo ago
What a strange false dichotomy. Either we do absolutely nothing to help people, or we involuntarily incarcerate them? The actually progressive option is to provide meaningful public support programs, and also make housing affordable (by building enough housing). The US mostly doesn't do either of those, but it should.
- Taek 5mo ago
  I'm not sure if you've had a drug addict in your life at any point, and if not that is a blessing. Drug addiction is a dark place and it's very common that the availability of free support programs is entirely rejected by the user, and the only hope at a normal life requires forceful intervention by family and friends. The only way to solve drugs on the street is to look at the cities that have solved them and copy what works. And, at least with what I'm familiar with, arresting people tends to work and alternatives tend to not.
  - JoshTriplett 5mo ago
    You seem to be equating "homeless" with "drug addict". The article talks about taking away public benches because of homelessness. There are different programs needed for drug addiction than for homelessness. Not everyone who's homeless has a drug problem, and not everyone with a drug problem is homeless.
    - Auracle 5mo ago
      That Venn diagram is pretty close to a circle, at least when talking about homeless people that don’t have a friend/relative they can stay with.
      - JoshTriplett 5mo ago
        > That Venn diagram is pretty close to a circle False, and harmful. US HUD says it's ~16% of homeless people, other sources give different numbers, but it's certainly not a majority, let alone anywhere near 100%. The biggest problem, unsurprisingly, is housing cost. The US GAO states that a $100 increase in median rent correlates to a 9% rise in homelessness. Rents have gone up a lot more than that.
        cyberax 5mo ago
        > False, and harmful. Sorry. But you're either misinformed or actively malicious here. > US HUD says it's ~16% of homeless people It absolutely is close to 100% of _unsheltered_ people. Some social workers helping the unsheltered homeless are now saying that they have not seen anybody who's _not_ on drugs or who is not mentally ill. If you want authoritative source, here's UCLA study from the blessed pre-COVID era: https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Conditions-Among-Unsheltered-Adults-in-the-US.pdf https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Co... > The biggest problem, unsurprisingly, is housing cost. No, it's really really not. > The US GAO states that a $100 increase in median rent correlates to a 9% rise in homelessness. And the correlation disappears when you look at the states with cold climate.
- zdragnar 5mo ago
  These programs exist, but they are underutilized to a significant degree. From a partner who used to work in one, people: - didn't trust the program and wouldn't sign up - didn't actually want to quit using so they avoided it - wanted to get the benefits from the program without changing anything (i.e. showed up to get free food etc) - tried but didn't like it and went back to using Very few people actually went all the way through compared to the population in the city that could have used it. The real question is: how do you help people who do not want your help. Do you let them waste away and die on the sidewalk, or do you institutionalize them?
  - Loughla 5mo ago
    The answer to that question in a society that allows (mostly) autonomy of choice is that we let them die on the street. I'm not convinced that involuntary incarceration will actually fix the problem. I believe it will just take it off of the streets and out of the public consciousness.
    - 0xBA5ED 5mo ago
      Not a great solution, honestly. Long term drug abuse is almost never a victimless habit. I'm tempted to say never.
      - mx7zysuj4xew 5mo ago
        This isn't the 1980s anymore. Using drugs is perfectly fine. A ton of people here on HN take drugs regularly, but few think it's worth to rock the boat against this kind of nonsense you're spreading
        Loughla 5mo ago
        Have you ever interacted with a heroine or meth user? Sometimes using drugs is fine, depending on the drug, the reason, and the person. For example, I did cocaine once and immediately knew I needed to cut ties with those friends because if I had access to it regularly, I would ruin my life. Others can do coke recreationally and not have an issue. Others can't form the insight I had until their lives are in shambles, and maybe not even then.
- stult 5mo ago
  Yes, exactly, there's a reason the term is "continuum of care." There is no one-size-fits-all approach to solving addiction because, to quote Ted Lasso, all people are different people. Maybe some people do need to be involuntarily incarcerated, but many, many others would be able to recover with far less intrusive interventions. Also we are chasing a lagging indicator by focusing exclusively on the homeless population. The vast majority of people who end up homeless because of addiction would have benefited from some far earlier, far milder form of intervention, or from the absence of something that actively drove them into addiction, e.g. some quack pushing oxycontin on them because Purdue Pharma promoted it as non-addictive. Or job loss because of offshoring pushing them into economic despair that then drives addiction, which they are unable to recover from because of the lack of affordable or accessible retraining or educational opportunities. In many cases over the last 20-30 years, it was the combination of both job loss and careless opioid prescription that pushed people into an unrecoverable spiral, especially in the rust belt, where the opioid crisis hit the hardest. We may not have fixed the job loss side of the problem, but at least doctors aren't pushing pills the same way they were 10-20 years ago after Purdue's corporate downfall, so the number of people driven into addiction-mediated homelessness by that disaster should at least start tapering off soon. But if we don't help people before their lives fall apart with a continuum of support options that are accessible before they are in deep crisis, and are accessible to people who are beginning to spiral but don't yet appear to be in deep crisis, it will cost far more and be far more challenging to help them recover once they are on the street.
- xp84 5mo ago
  Nothing?? What are you talking about? Go look up how much tax money the SF government spends trying to help the unhoused in their current budget. But no amount will fix the problem because if you ask a drug addict if they want help (and it’s not help getting drugs) they usually say “no thanks.” Many addicts are never ready to accept that kind of help. Sadly.
  - JoshTriplett 5mo ago
    No amount of help will solve a housing problem in a city where people can't afford to live. Build more housing.
    - xp84 5mo ago
      Super strongly agree with you on that. But unfortunately building tons of housing is quite politically unpopular as well, unless it’s wildly stupid housing, like the “affordable housing” that costs more (paid by the city) to build than market rate costs for some reason.
- strictnein 5mo ago
  I didn't create this "false dichotomy", nor did I say that those were the only two options. I'm just observing the fact that the current system that the major cities in the US seem to be employing is to treat homeless as a valid choice, even if much/most of it is a result of addiction and mental illness. The end result of that treating it that way is the death and suffering of people who actually need lots of help and who would be better served by more aggressive tactics.
  - JoshTriplett 5mo ago
    I don't believe it's a deliberate decision by (most) policymakers. I think it's a structural failure across several axes, including failure to make enough housing for it to be affordable, and attacks on every front by people who treat all social programs and public assistance as evil. Most places have one or the other problem, if not both.
    - SoftTalker 5mo ago
      A drug-addicted/mentally ill chronically unsheltered person is not going to be able to afford a home at any price. If they could hold down any kind of regular job and sustain an income they would find someplace to live. Also most "affordable" housing initiatives attack it by mandating "affordable" for new construction instead of just letting developers build what they can make the most money building. No developer wants to build "affordable" homes if they can build and sell high-end homes. So by imposing "affordability" mandates, they just encourage developers to go elsewhere. New high-end homes make the older homes more affordable. New "affordable" homes simply don't get built, at least not in anywhere near the numbers that are needed.
      - JoshTriplett 5mo ago
        To your first point: people don't typically start out that way, things spiral down. And it's much harder to get out of that spiral if homes are completely unaffordable. It also doesn't help that the most temperate places (where you won't die of exposure if unsheltered) are also the least affordable places (because they're prosperous and haven't built nearly enough housing). > Also most "affordable" housing initiatives attack it by mandating "affordable" for new construction instead of just letting developers build what they can make the most money building. No developer wants to build "affordable" homes if they can build and sell high-end homes. So by imposing "affordability" mandates, they just encourage developers to go elsewhere. > New high-end homes make the older homes more affordable. New "affordable" homes simply don't get built, at least not in anywhere near the numbers that are needed. Complete agreement that the current approach is not working, yes. The right approach is to build, and keep building, until everything is affordable. And the political challenge is the existing cohort of people who think a house should be an asset that appreciates rather than a necessity of life that everyone should be able to afford. People who are put in a particularly bad position by that (e.g. difficulty moving or retiring because housing prices went down) may need help.
- Anvoker 5mo ago
  Unfortunately, framing the problem as this kind of dichotomy is something people are inclined to do because then the problem can be reduced to the unwillingness of the opposing side to face reality. Sometimes the dichotomy is correct, but the bias exists.
- mlsu 5mo ago
  At least in California, there are a lot of public support programs. I mean, a looooot of public support programs. A LOT. Like, to the point where the state is spending tens of thousands of dollars for each homeless person, and probably north of $100k per person per year for a subset. Talk to a firefighter or paramedic in a CA city sometime. They will tell you, there's "regulars" that they have to deal with every single week. The cops and firefighters know all of them by name. We're paying hours a day in overtime to basically have the cops, firefighters, and EMTs deal with the same small population of mentally ill people on the same street corner every week, for years. These people cannot get better because they choose not to stay in the mental hospital or substance abuse programs offered to them. Someone is 5150'd, placed on a 3-day hold, and 72 hours later they walk out of the hospital and back to the same street corner, where they have a mental breakdown again the following week. You can offer support -- they will basically tell you the same thing, I'm not sick at all, there's nothing wrong with me, I am not a danger to myself or others, and you are shit out of luck. At the same time, there are way more homeless people who are silently and cleanly living in their cars and showing up to work every day at a low wage job. Most people won't ever see them unless they look closely. Visit /r/urbancarliving sometime to get an idea of what that population looks like. Those people might get a 15 minute "knock" from the cops once a month. The actually progressive option is to involuntarily incarcerate people who need it, while not criminalizing car/RV living, offering work placement services, housing assistance etc. The most realistic thing would probably be to build subsidized mobile homes and clean, low-rent central places to park an RV. You correctly identified the biggest thing here though which is making housing affordable. Unfortunately, that will never happen.
  - showerst 5mo ago
    I mostly agree with your points, but I think the involuntary incarceration is a major rock and a hard place situation. There are definitely people for whom it would be a compassionate (and often societally optimal) thing to do. Giving the government the power to decide to take people away indefinitely is just a spectacularly bad precedent. Especially right now.
    - mlsu 5mo ago
- User23 5mo ago
  You should read a little book called Games People Play. Focus particular attention on the section on the game "Indigent." This isn't a resource allocation problem, or rather, it isn't a resource allocation problem the way you seem to think it is.
- JuniperMesos 5mo ago
  Any meaningful public support program that actually keeps severely-mentally-ill visibly-homeless people from acting crazy in public will necessarily involve involuntarily incarcerating at least some of them, some of the time. A lot of very dysfunctional people genuinely do not want to cooperate with meaningful public support programs or are simply too out of it to meaningfully consent or not consent to participation in such.
  - ohnei 5mo ago
    That is going right back to false dichotomy. Something can be meaningful and not clean up the streets of all things uncomfortable.
    - JuniperMesos 5mo ago
      Sure, but if it doesn't specifically solve the problem of cleaning up the streets of visibly-homeless people, then it doesn't solve the problem of public transit authorities wanting to remove benches from public transit waiting areas.
- jumpman_miya 5mo ago
  [dead]
queenkjuul 5mo ago
They would be better if they were given support. Locking people away is not a solution to anything. You've been sold a lie about the mentally ill, and the homeless, which isn't true.
mmooss 5mo ago
'I think you would be better served by not posting to social media and studying personal liberty and ethics.' Should I be able to enforce it? I think people who make comments like those above are much more dangerous than people on the street - the people on the street can't really do harm. Thankfully, we do have liberty, and they can do what they want - and I can do what I want - and it's none of your business whether it's healthy or not. People also smoke, are sedentary (lots of people here), eat very poorly, use psilocybin (relatively popular here), drink too much, etc. The only way to begin to approach it is, rather than making judgments on overused stereotypes (another reason to be banned from online comments), talk to each person and ask what they are doing and what they need. I know, I know - it's outrageous to ask the opinions of people you deem substandard, even about their own lives.
- HEmanZ 5mo ago
  Yes the guy who screamed “I’m going to f*ing kill you!” Out of nowhere at my daughter and then chased us, or set fire to random trees in my neighborhood for fun, or cut the copper wiring off the side of my house, or took sledge hammers to local park statues, these people are definitely not a problem. No the problem is really the people who think it should stop. Those horrible, insensitive people. They’r being so selfish. Drug addicted should have every right to pull you down screaming by your hair because they’re tweaked out of their mind. And after seeing that, you should be welcoming every one you see to your home. You’re really the problem for feeling uncomfortable walking by the man jerking off to passerby’s, so intolerant of you. (Every one of these is a true example I have witnessed, along with too much other insanity to write down, from just the last year in Seattle. so don’t tell me im exaggerating)
  - InsideOutSanta 5mo ago
    You are describing actual crimes, not homelessness. Nobody is saying that people who are violent should just be left to their own devices.
    - HEmanZ 5mo ago
      And no one is saying eat the homeless. My city is deadlocked on doing anything about the literal crimes I’ve described because acting against violent offenders is seen as oppressing the downtrodden. Building new shelter capacity is insanely difficult because no one wants concentrations of this near them, and concentrated homeless services turn the area into a waste land (like pioneer square) due to the amount of criminal and antisocial behavior. Raising enough money in taxes seems out of the question because everyone thinks someone else should pay. So you get common crime and antisocial behavior in much of the city and no one can do anything about it.
citizenpaul 5mo ago
The main reasons those places lost support is they became convenient prisons without due process. Why do you think there are so many horror movies based on the setting of a sane person involuntarily put there? While not ideal you gotta admit now that those people that need help are in your face rather than conveniently disappeared you are thinking about their plight some. Maybe try to think of something better than forever prisons and stop becoming a ghoul.
nextaccountic 5mo ago
[flagged]
AussieWog93 5mo ago
I think a big part of this queasiness comes from the fact that a lot of the institutions we would put addicts and mentally ill people in really were nightmarish. And ignoring the whole issue of the sanitariums being full of abuse, I don't think you can argue that sticking a drug addict in a regular prison full of criminals is good for them either.
jaapz 5mo ago
When a drug addict does not have an internal drive to be rid of their addiction, forced treatment will not help. Just putting them somewhere until the withdrawal symptoms fade will not change whatever drove them to use the drugs in the first place.

artyom 5mo ago

Them staying in the sidewalk is free. Or the cost is so indirect that nobody is responsible for it. Facilities like asylums and jails are super costly though. And extra expensive to operate if you don't want to treat the inmates as cattle.

Taek 5mo ago
The cost is not measured in dollars, but rather in the pollution of the pubic space. People feel less safe and more bothered. Stores nearby get less business, and suffer more theft. Passerbys get accosted.
AnotherGoodName 5mo ago
I'll add that treating the inmates like cattle is actually the most expensive option of all in the long term. The USA has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world largely due to high recidivism due to the system not providing proper rehabilitation. So it's costing the USA 65k/yr per inmate on average right now with the 5th highest incarceration rate in the world. The 4 countries above it are not nice places to live contrary to the thought that locking even more people up would make the USA just like the other western nations of the world. No other country is as stupid as the USA when it comes to homeless. They don't spend a lifetime $65k/yr repeatedly locking up such people. Instead they spend a fraction (when amortised over a lifetime of jail costs) on rehabilitation and public health programs.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5mo ago
> Them staying in the sidewalk is free. Disagree. When the tax-paying public doesn't feel safe around the people living on the sidewalk, they move and take their tax money with them. That means less money for services, roads, education... everything taxes pay for. That's the cost.
- amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
  That sounds correct in theory, but is it true? Are tax revenue down? Are vacancy rates up?

wiskinator 5mo ago

Yes, I don't think that arresting people for the crime of not having money is a good idea. We also cannot seem to fund any actual drug programs, because US citizens hate the idea of anyone getting something for free.

zdragnar 5mo ago
[flagged]
socalgal2 5mo ago
SF spends ~$100k per homeless person.
- lotu 5mo ago
  Yes but critically none of this money is actually given to the homeless person. So we aren't giving them anything for free we are just dealing with the consequences of them not having a proper support system. Spending money to do that is okay, because it doesn't really directly benefit the homeless person.
  - AnotherGoodName 5mo ago
    Also the essence of ‘San Francisco has a lot of homeless’ isn’t really a logical argument against those policies since homeless will often migrate to where the functional support services are. San Francisco may well be doing amazing things with getting people back on their feet at a relatively lower cost than prison. You need to go many levels deeper on statistics to understand if it’s working or not.
    - giraffe_lady 5mo ago
      > since homeless will often migrate to where the functional support services are. I've heard this a lot but I don't have any reason to believe it's true. Never seen a reputable study that asserts it. I've known a lot of homeless people but none that relocated for this reason. Most who moved were looking for work or trying to get closer to family. Most didn't move at all and were just where they had always been, or in the city they were living in when they became homeless.

pocksuppet 5mo ago

What's wrong with both? Why can't we have public benches, and also not arrest drug users if they are sitting on the benches and smoking?

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5mo ago
Because sitting on benches quickly turns into living on benches. Then the drug dealers move in, because there's a ready customer base of drug users. Then the productive members of society move out.
- pocksuppet 5mo ago
  So basically the problem is that productive members of society and drug dealers are incapable of existing near to each other? Why is that? I pass by some drug dealers sometimes on the way to work. I don't see the problem. Occasionally I get asked if I want to buy some drugs. I don't want to buy drugs so nothing else happens.
  - triceratops 5mo ago
    > [why are] productive members of society and drug dealers incapable of existing near to each other? Drug dealers are criminals. Criminals commit other crimes and attract other criminals and crime. For example, rival drug dealers who want to take their spot and use violence.
    - InsideOutSanta 5mo ago
      Seems like something decriminalizing drugs would solve then.
      - amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
        This only solves one problem (you don't get thrown in jail for using drugs), but there are other problems. Drug dealers and gangs still exist. The drug user doesn't know what he is actually buying. Overdoses are easy to do since you don't actually know what you bought. The way to solve these issues is legalization and regulation.

userbinator 5mo ago

but it is apparently the consensus. Not everywhere, fortunately.

thinkingtoilet 5mo ago

This sounds like it's from someone who say a video on the two square blocks in SF or Philly and has let the propaganda make them believe this is common everywhere in every American city.

pessimizer 5mo ago

> We've decided that putting the mentally ill in a facility and arresting people for public drug use is not something we're comfortable with at the expense of those other things. We've decided this about every kind of health care. Instead of providing treatment for people who can't afford its bizarre, artificial prices, we prefer to leave them on the street or warehouse them in prisons. After leaving them in prison for an arbitrary amount of time, we then release them into the streets again, with nothing, more screwed up than when they went in, to murder you. I have no idea what the "tough love" advocates are advocating for. Locking them up in prison is like hiding rotting meat in a freezer; it only works if you're willing to do it forever. The only answer that seems compatible with the spoiled upper-middle class worldview is to shoot the homeless (which often happened* in a lot of South American countries through semi-official paramilitaries), or to drive them into the wilderness outside of town to hopefully die on their own. As the layoffs of programmers continue, I predict there will be a lot of changes of heart that won't matter at all, because they will be coming from homeless people. Middle-class culture is all about only being interested in issues that harm you directly, even if that issue is somebody dying too loudly nearby. ----- [*] Happens? My info is out of date.

User23 5mo ago

This postulates that policy is set by consensus. Now I haven't done any scientific polling, but my informal anecdotal experience is so overwhelmingly to the contrary that I'm comfortable believing that consensus isn't determining policy here.

NotGMan 5mo ago

This. Even an extremely small population of homeless/junkies is enough to "taint" benches. The same with parks.

breakyerself 5mo ago

There are other options that are more effective than either of the things you mentioned, but people's feelings get in the way.