6 ms·

The problem is that we’ve wound up in an unhappy place due to the weird perverse incentives of ideology. Taking homeless people off the street, whether to a hos

The problem is that we’ve wound up in an unhappy place due to the weird perverse incentives of ideology. Taking homeless people off the street, whether to a hospital or jail, costs a lot of money; so we lack something to do in a climate where a good chunk of the populace is rabidly against paying more money for anything.

TulliusCicero 9d ago
I think you're right that people are against these things, but wrong about the reasons. Taking homeless people to jail because they're homeless just seems stupid and pointless, not to mention harmful to the person going to jail. Shelters have the issue where people don't want them near where they live (for often justifiable reasons) but obviously they have to go somewhere.
- OroPla 9d ago
  Don't we already have rehabilitation centers? I definitely think that you have to take homeless people being a nuisance off the streets against their will. There's already plenty of invisible homeless people living out of a car that shower in the gym. They aren't a public nuisance and there should be structures where someone like that can get help from. But the actual homeless problem are the drug addicts and beggars that are a public nuisance. There's no solution to that problem other than moving them against their will, is there?
  - TulliusCicero 6d ago
    I totally agree. If homelessness is causing you to become a public nuisance (meaning lawbreaking) then clearly something has to be done. It should be a choice of help or jail, where obviously we'd prefer they get help, but jail is the stick. It shouldn't be a crime exactly to set up a tent in a park because you're homeless, but if you then refuse to get help from society to fix the underlying issue, that's not acceptable. Can't have it both ways.
  - bobthepanda 6d ago
    Generally speaking, there aren’t enough. If you wanted to find a shelter bed for every single person on the street in a major city like San Francisco right now, that’s not possible. And that’s just the physical space, not even the medical staff or caseworkers you would want to handle those. And you need those in jail too, because corrections officers can’t and don’t want to manage mental health episodes. Californian jails were at 200%+ capacity as recently as ten years ago until courts ordered that constituted cruel and inhumane punishment. Now most counties are around max capacity. In some states like Washington, mental health is so under capacity that even the willing do not have spaces to be admitted into, even accounting for the people whose insurance would pay for something like that.
- bobthepanda 9d ago
  I say this because this country has a history of dismantling systems and then not paying for replacements. We did it with state institutions, which were supposed to be replaced by community mental health centers but that never happened. And then we did it with jail overcrowding reduction, where we didn’t set up adequate recidivism reduction programs. Before the recent pivot to tough on crime, a lot of sentencing reform was started by Republican led states, simply because jail costs a lot of money.
trollbridge 9d ago
LA collectively spends about $3 billion on various things for homeless people, who number around 70-80,000. That’s $40,000 per person per year. What level of spending would you like to see?
- bobthepanda 9d ago
  The problem is to stop spending money we need to spend some money to set up something like a mental institution. Prison, which was being used for that purpose, costs California $127k a year https://www.lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost https://www.lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost Just the bed at a Californian state hospital for mental health treatment costs at minimum $150k+ a year. https://www.dsh.ca.gov/Hospitals/ https://www.dsh.ca.gov/Hospitals/ And both systems are already overcapacity
  - trollbridge 8d ago
    There isn’t currently the political will to start putting people in institutions against their will.
    - bobthepanda 6d ago
      Well yes, and also we don’t currently operate enough beds to put people into on account of those high costs.

TulliusCicero 9d ago

I think you're right that people are against these things, but wrong about the reasons. Taking homeless people to jail because they're homeless just seems stupid and pointless, not to mention harmful to the person going to jail. Shelters have the issue where people don't want them near where they live (for often justifiable reasons) but obviously they have to go somewhere.

OroPla 9d ago
Don't we already have rehabilitation centers? I definitely think that you have to take homeless people being a nuisance off the streets against their will. There's already plenty of invisible homeless people living out of a car that shower in the gym. They aren't a public nuisance and there should be structures where someone like that can get help from. But the actual homeless problem are the drug addicts and beggars that are a public nuisance. There's no solution to that problem other than moving them against their will, is there?
- TulliusCicero 6d ago
  I totally agree. If homelessness is causing you to become a public nuisance (meaning lawbreaking) then clearly something has to be done. It should be a choice of help or jail, where obviously we'd prefer they get help, but jail is the stick. It shouldn't be a crime exactly to set up a tent in a park because you're homeless, but if you then refuse to get help from society to fix the underlying issue, that's not acceptable. Can't have it both ways.
- bobthepanda 6d ago
  Generally speaking, there aren’t enough. If you wanted to find a shelter bed for every single person on the street in a major city like San Francisco right now, that’s not possible. And that’s just the physical space, not even the medical staff or caseworkers you would want to handle those. And you need those in jail too, because corrections officers can’t and don’t want to manage mental health episodes. Californian jails were at 200%+ capacity as recently as ten years ago until courts ordered that constituted cruel and inhumane punishment. Now most counties are around max capacity. In some states like Washington, mental health is so under capacity that even the willing do not have spaces to be admitted into, even accounting for the people whose insurance would pay for something like that.
bobthepanda 9d ago
I say this because this country has a history of dismantling systems and then not paying for replacements. We did it with state institutions, which were supposed to be replaced by community mental health centers but that never happened. And then we did it with jail overcrowding reduction, where we didn’t set up adequate recidivism reduction programs. Before the recent pivot to tough on crime, a lot of sentencing reform was started by Republican led states, simply because jail costs a lot of money.

trollbridge 9d ago

LA collectively spends about $3 billion on various things for homeless people, who number around 70-80,000. That’s $40,000 per person per year. What level of spending would you like to see?

bobthepanda 9d ago
The problem is to stop spending money we need to spend some money to set up something like a mental institution. Prison, which was being used for that purpose, costs California $127k a year https://www.lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost https://www.lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost Just the bed at a Californian state hospital for mental health treatment costs at minimum $150k+ a year. https://www.dsh.ca.gov/Hospitals/ https://www.dsh.ca.gov/Hospitals/ And both systems are already overcapacity
- trollbridge 8d ago
  There isn’t currently the political will to start putting people in institutions against their will.
  - bobthepanda 6d ago
    Well yes, and also we don’t currently operate enough beds to put people into on account of those high costs.