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In fighting homeless camp, Irvine's Asians win, but at a cost

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Re: In fighting homeless camp, Irvine's Asians win, but at a cost

#71

This really is a regional problem. I live around the area, near the beautiful Santa Ana trail which connects two counties to the ocean. A few months ago, I rode down the 40-mile stretch for the first time in a long time, and I was absolutely shocked to see the extent of the tent city near the Anaheim Angels stadium. The people living there were living on hard times, it felt post-apocalyptic in some sense. The tent ar…

As a local, would you accept a regional sales tax increase of 1% if it paid for real housing and counseling services for the residents of the camp?

No.

Re: In fighting homeless camp, Irvine's Asians win, but at a cost

#72

This really is a regional problem. I live around the area, near the beautiful Santa Ana trail which connects two counties to the ocean. A few months ago, I rode down the 40-mile stretch for the first time in a long time, and I was absolutely shocked to see the extent of the tent city near the Anaheim Angels stadium. The people living there were living on hard times, it felt post-apocalyptic in some sense. The tent ar…

> This really is a regional problem

Maybe. In the Bay Area, try riding the BART between Oakland and Dublin. There are a lot of sprawling shanty towns by the tracks. Just north of the stadium in particular.

Re: In fighting homeless camp, Irvine's Asians win, but at a cost

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a local, would you accept a regional sales tax increase of 1% if it paid for real housing and counseling services for the residents of the camp?

Yes if the housing and services are equally distributed in all the neighborhoods. Each region/city should host an proportional number of homeless.

> Each region/city should host an proportional number of homeless.

And what if they don’t and simply bus their homeless out of town to yours[1]?

Implementing something like that intra-State would be hard enough. Doing it across States is impossible without the Federal government running it and I doubt that’d ever happen.

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/12/22/25650858/how-wea...

Re: In fighting homeless camp, Irvine's Asians win, but at a cost

#74
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes if the housing and services are equally distributed in all the neighborhoods. Each region/city should host an proportional number of homeless.

> Each region/city should host an proportional number of homeless. And what if they don’t and simply bus their homeless out of town to yours[1]? Implementing something like that intra-State would be hard enough. Doing it across States is impossible without the Federal government running it and I doubt that’d ever happen. https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/12/22/25650858/how-wea...

Then our town will spend our 1% busing them back to where they came from. The issue is that why should my town or city take them in when town or city X isn't.

Re: In fighting homeless camp, Irvine's Asians win, but at a cost

#75
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know what the answer is, or how to deal with it. The answer is to give them a home, help to get back into a regular life and make sure they don't run into the same issues again that led to their homelessness. Finland has managed to achieve this, why can't the rest of the western world follow?

Most of these people had homes and jobs once, but prefer drugs and alcohol over the rules and expectations of those who provided said homes and jobs. Homelessness is not a sudden condition, it is the result of thousands of choices to indulge in selfish behavior. Inflicting family oriented communities with shelters for these people is the wrong approach. We need to provided a path out of homelessness that enforces sob…

How do you know this about these people? Frankly I think the population is far too large to come to one conclusion across the board.

And what is a “family oriented” community? Is that just code for making other people deal with the problem and not taint your backyard?

And you think you can just expect people to “get a job”, like that is straightforward? Like there’s just so much opportunity out there, with more than enough income from one job to survive in these crazy-expensive places? (Hint: No way.)

Re: In fighting homeless camp, Irvine's Asians win, but at a cost

#76

I'm Asian/Canadian (arrived in Canada in 1988 at 8) and have worked in the US since 2009. I consider myself a 0.5 generation immigrant. Talking my parents, other first generation immigrants, and even some second generation etc. They do have a common view. If we came here with very little (my parents arrived with $200 in their pockets), worked hard, and eventually became successful then why can't other people do the s…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

Re: In fighting homeless camp, Irvine's Asians win, but at a cost

#77
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we came here with very little (my parents arrived with $200 in their pockets), worked hard, and eventually became successful then why can't other people do the same. such logic error is called "survival bias" - they only look at those who didn't fail by the system.

Of course, but that is their point of view.

That just makes their point of view wrong. I'm not sure what you're saying here.

Re: In fighting homeless camp, Irvine's Asians win, but at a cost

#78
post #40
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people got rich in Russia too. That doesn't mean it was something open to anyone.

Sounds like something losers tell themselves to feel better. After all, you just need to rise early, work hard and strike oil to make it rich.

Please don't post unsubstantive or baity comments to HN. It leads to lousy subthreads, like this one.

A better approach is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: it looks like you've also been breaking the site guideline that asks people not to use HN primarily for political or ideological battle. Could you please fix this? That word 'primarily' is an important marker—being on the wrong side of it means being a negative contributor to HN regardless of which views you're arguing for. There's more explanation of this here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16402648

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16185062

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Re: In fighting homeless camp, Irvine's Asians win, but at a cost

#79
post #43

This really is a regional problem. I live around the area, near the beautiful Santa Ana trail which connects two counties to the ocean. A few months ago, I rode down the 40-mile stretch for the first time in a long time, and I was absolutely shocked to see the extent of the tent city near the Anaheim Angels stadium. The people living there were living on hard times, it felt post-apocalyptic in some sense. The tent ar…

> I don't know what the answer is, or how to deal with it. The answer is to give them a home, help to get back into a regular life and make sure they don't run into the same issues again that led to their homelessness. Finland has managed to achieve this, why can't the rest of the western world follow?

Firstly, Finnish climate is a lot different than Southern California with an average temperature of 65F. If the government or society never acted on the problem in Finland it would be a humanitarian crisis with people freezing to death. It is much easier to neglect the problem in SoCal because of the climate.

Second, the state of California is so far in debt, it would put a further strain on its economics. There is simply no money to pay for "solving" the problem, and because people aren't dying in the streets en masse (like they would in Finland during the winter) nobody wants to pay for it.

Third, even if we could solve the problem practically, it would be a recurrent problem. There is a problem of people expecting handouts and capitalizing on them. So throwing money at the problem will simply not fix it.

I'll end with an anecdote from 20-ish years ago. We were having lunch at McDonald's, and a homeless guy walks by: "Hey buddy, you gonna eat all that?".

"Uh, yeah," struggling to finish my mouthful as I'm trying to answer.

"Maaan, it ain't even fun being homeless anymore!" and walks away.

How do you fix that?

Re: In fighting homeless camp, Irvine's Asians win, but at a cost

#80
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another angle I've seen, in Austin, is that people who are close to falling off that cliff are among the least tolerant of those who have. Those who are scraping by with service jobs are often least tolerant of the mentally-ill homeless person who hassles them on the way to work, and quickest to call the police. If you are a first-generation immigrant, I think it often means you do not take it as a given that you can…

> Irvine boasts a median home value of $740,000. I don't see these people as 'nearly falling off'. I see these as people who don't want to have the value of their homes fall even one cent because 'we got here on our own hard work'.

Certainly, but that was no doubt true before it became an immigrant community. First generation immigrants are more likely to have experienced a very different level of wealth earlier in their life, which makes one's attitude towards the possibility of losing it different than if you were born into that class and society and had always been there.

But, I could be wrong.

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