7 ms·

What a strange false dichotomy. Either we do absolutely nothing to help people, or we involuntarily incarcerate them? The actually progressive option is to pro

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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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.
        JoshTriplett 6mo ago
        > If you want authoritative source, here's UCLA study from the blessed pre-COVID era: https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Co https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Co... Which specifically leads with a page saying: > Hundreds of studies - including our own - show economic pressures are the primary drivers of homelessness, that housing people ends homelessness, and that targeted financial assistance helps people at risk of homelessness stay stably housed Also, the cited study blatantly does not show the numbers ("close to 100%") you claim it has, even leaving that aside. You're also now equivocating between drugs and mental illness, as well as between drugs and alcohol. And you're not taking into account the direction of cause and effect (e.g. which came first, the homelessness or the addiction). I understand that you're also referencing anecdata from social workers. In those cases, there's an inherent bias: people with a drug problem are going to be harder and more memorable cases, which makes them feel like a larger proportion than they are. People homeless for economic reasons are likely to loom less large in people's minds than the times they dealt with someone who had a drug problem.
        cyberax 6mo ago
        [flagged]
    - queenkjuul 6mo ago
      [flagged]
  - Taek 6mo ago
    We didn't eliminate benches in public spaces because we wanted to reduce the presence of the nice, respectful, and polite homeless. We eliminated benches to reduce the presence of the problematic homeless, which has a much higher rate of drug abuse and mental illness.
    - cucumber3732842 6mo ago
      >We eliminated benches to reduce the presence of the problematic homeless, which has a much higher rate of drug abuse and mental illness. We eliminated benches to reduce the rate at which the problematic homeless cross paths with the complainers. The DPW as an organization doesn't give a shit about how many commuter's asses a bench serves from 6am to 8pm. It just knows that every day when Karen sees a homeless man sleeping on that bench at 5AM she submits a complaint from the web form. From their stupid "not my job, I just solve tickets" keyhole view of the situation removing the benches makes the problem smaller and they will iterate on that until complaint equilibrium is reached.
      - Taek 6mo ago
        When I was in San Francisco, I had a homeless man with one eye (the empty eye socket actively oozing) come up to me unprovoked (quite literally unprovoked, I was just on a walk and not interacting with anybody at all), get within 2 centimeters of my face, and scream at the top of his lungs "I WILL MURDER YOU". He then walked away and nothing else of note happened (aside from me spending the rest of the evening with my pulse at 140). Suffice to say, I don't think it's fair to categorize me as a Karen for asserting that San Francisco has a large number of problematic homeless people. I could give about 8 other stories (from SF, Boston, NYC, and Chicago) that happened to me, two of which (both SF) include grown men dropping their pants, exposing their genitals, and visibly pooping on public streets where children were present, with no attempt to obtain any degree of privacy. These aren't stories from my friends, these are things that I personally witnessed and experienced. These aren't 'oh that guy is ugly and smelly' stories, these are 'if I did that myself I would be arrested' stories.
        6mo ago
- queenkjuul 6mo ago
  Oh yeah, 60 years of arresting people in the US for drug crimes has gone so well. Couldn't be better! Cities that decriminalized have better outcomes. I hope people like you lose every election for the rest of time.
  - 0xBA5ED 6mo ago
    Which specific cities are you referring to that have better outcomes and which ones have worse outcomes?
  - linksnapzz 5mo ago
    People seem to not like stepping over fentanyl zombies. It's a vote winner.
- mmooss 6mo ago
  > arresting people tends to work and alternatives tend to not What I've read many times is that (essentially) the oppposite is widely accepted consensus: Arresting never works. The US tried the 'drug war' for decades and it was ineffective. Do you have evidence otherwise? It's also unjust to criminalize illness and medical problems for poor people (rich people get sympathy, rehab, and lots of second chances). What does work is overdose prevention, including needle exhanges and safe injection sites, treating addition as the disease it is (which is how it's treated for rich people), and housing (people experiencing the great instability and stress of homelessness are much less likely to make other changes). Maybe some others I'm not thinking of, too.
zdragnar 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo ago
    Not a great solution, honestly. Long term drug abuse is almost never a victimless habit. I'm tempted to say never.
    - mx7zysuj4xew 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo ago
  No amount of help will solve a housing problem in a city where people can't afford to live. Build more housing.
  - xp84 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo ago
User23 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo ago
  That is going right back to false dichotomy. Something can be meaningful and not clean up the streets of all things uncomfortable.
  - JuniperMesos 6mo 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 6mo ago
[dead]

Taek 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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.
      - JoshTriplett 6mo ago
        > If you want authoritative source, here's UCLA study from the blessed pre-COVID era: https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Co https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Co... Which specifically leads with a page saying: > Hundreds of studies - including our own - show economic pressures are the primary drivers of homelessness, that housing people ends homelessness, and that targeted financial assistance helps people at risk of homelessness stay stably housed Also, the cited study blatantly does not show the numbers ("close to 100%") you claim it has, even leaving that aside. You're also now equivocating between drugs and mental illness, as well as between drugs and alcohol. And you're not taking into account the direction of cause and effect (e.g. which came first, the homelessness or the addiction). I understand that you're also referencing anecdata from social workers. In those cases, there's an inherent bias: people with a drug problem are going to be harder and more memorable cases, which makes them feel like a larger proportion than they are. People homeless for economic reasons are likely to loom less large in people's minds than the times they dealt with someone who had a drug problem.
        cyberax 6mo ago
        [flagged]
  - queenkjuul 6mo ago
    [flagged]
- Taek 6mo ago
  We didn't eliminate benches in public spaces because we wanted to reduce the presence of the nice, respectful, and polite homeless. We eliminated benches to reduce the presence of the problematic homeless, which has a much higher rate of drug abuse and mental illness.
  - cucumber3732842 6mo ago
    >We eliminated benches to reduce the presence of the problematic homeless, which has a much higher rate of drug abuse and mental illness. We eliminated benches to reduce the rate at which the problematic homeless cross paths with the complainers. The DPW as an organization doesn't give a shit about how many commuter's asses a bench serves from 6am to 8pm. It just knows that every day when Karen sees a homeless man sleeping on that bench at 5AM she submits a complaint from the web form. From their stupid "not my job, I just solve tickets" keyhole view of the situation removing the benches makes the problem smaller and they will iterate on that until complaint equilibrium is reached.
    - Taek 6mo ago
      When I was in San Francisco, I had a homeless man with one eye (the empty eye socket actively oozing) come up to me unprovoked (quite literally unprovoked, I was just on a walk and not interacting with anybody at all), get within 2 centimeters of my face, and scream at the top of his lungs "I WILL MURDER YOU". He then walked away and nothing else of note happened (aside from me spending the rest of the evening with my pulse at 140). Suffice to say, I don't think it's fair to categorize me as a Karen for asserting that San Francisco has a large number of problematic homeless people. I could give about 8 other stories (from SF, Boston, NYC, and Chicago) that happened to me, two of which (both SF) include grown men dropping their pants, exposing their genitals, and visibly pooping on public streets where children were present, with no attempt to obtain any degree of privacy. These aren't stories from my friends, these are things that I personally witnessed and experienced. These aren't 'oh that guy is ugly and smelly' stories, these are 'if I did that myself I would be arrested' stories.
      - 6mo ago
queenkjuul 6mo ago
Oh yeah, 60 years of arresting people in the US for drug crimes has gone so well. Couldn't be better! Cities that decriminalized have better outcomes. I hope people like you lose every election for the rest of time.
- 0xBA5ED 6mo ago
  Which specific cities are you referring to that have better outcomes and which ones have worse outcomes?
- linksnapzz 5mo ago
  People seem to not like stepping over fentanyl zombies. It's a vote winner.
mmooss 6mo ago
> arresting people tends to work and alternatives tend to not What I've read many times is that (essentially) the oppposite is widely accepted consensus: Arresting never works. The US tried the 'drug war' for decades and it was ineffective. Do you have evidence otherwise? It's also unjust to criminalize illness and medical problems for poor people (rich people get sympathy, rehab, and lots of second chances). What does work is overdose prevention, including needle exhanges and safe injection sites, treating addition as the disease it is (which is how it's treated for rich people), and housing (people experiencing the great instability and stress of homelessness are much less likely to make other changes). Maybe some others I'm not thinking of, too.

zdragnar 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo ago
  Not a great solution, honestly. Long term drug abuse is almost never a victimless habit. I'm tempted to say never.
  - mx7zysuj4xew 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo ago
No amount of help will solve a housing problem in a city where people can't afford to live. Build more housing.
- xp84 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo ago

User23 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo ago
That is going right back to false dichotomy. Something can be meaningful and not clean up the streets of all things uncomfortable.
- JuniperMesos 6mo 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 6mo ago

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