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An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

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21–30 of 109 posts

Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#21
post #4

Unclear to me if they're homeless because of addiction, or became addicted after becoming homeless. This distinction would seem crucial to me.

In my view, there's some causation running in both directions going on here. There's not ever going to be a clean "X causes Y" in this model. For some percentage of the population, the fact that they were homeless led to their addiction problem. For some percentage of the rest of the population, their addiction either directly led to or significantly contributed to them becoming homeless. Debating about which one "is the one true cause" misses the point, and won't lead us closer to a solution.

Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#22

I appreciate the author identifying what is really going on with homeless on the West Coast. Any visit to Portland, Seattle, SF, LA corroborates this. We need to crack down on those that are perpetuating and benefiting from this crisis.. the dealers, cartels, and yes, the pharmaceutical companies.

Cracking down on dealers does not work. I believe that we should legalize every drug under the sun, but require the “dangerous ones” (e.g. heroin due to risk of respiratory depression) be done under medical supervision.

The only exception being that drugs like Fentanyl should stay illegal, under the hopes that having legal morphine, heroin etc completely eliminates the demand for it. (Often fent is acquired by dealers, rather than directly by the end consumer. Although there are people that do Fent recreationally, god have mercy on them...)

Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#23
post #4

Unclear to me if they're homeless because of addiction, or became addicted after becoming homeless. This distinction would seem crucial to me.

Almost everyone has some kind of support network, whether it's extended family or friends, that would offer a spare bed or a couch. Sure, they won't let you stay forever, but it will keep you off the street until you can get yourself together. People who are living on the street, for the most part, have burned through all the support their family and friends are willing to give. Their addiction or mental illness (or…

“People who are living on the street, for the most part, have burned through all the support their family and friends are willing to give.”

I have experienced this with one person. She didn’t become homeless but it had reached a point where the whole family said “enough is enough, we can’t help anymore”. Interestingly this was the turn around. Once nobody was willing to help anymore she pulled herself together and straightened things out. It’s still not perfect but much better. If she hadn’t had the energy or intelligence to get her life in order she would be homeless or dead now.

Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#24

I think the question to ask is what created the opioid problem in the first place - I tend to think it's lack of regulation in the pharma space. I've criticised the author (Chris Rufo, associated with the conservative and intelligent design group Discovery Institute) in his earlier pieces (see https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/acwqng/podcast_s... ) where he used seemingly incomplete estimates on the funding…

And if you tightly regulate the “pharma space” and those drugs are harder to get, the same addicts will just find a substitute drug. The “War on Drugs” has been an abysmal failure.

If you lock up the users, you’re just spending more money housing non violent offenders. If you lock up the sellers, someone else will take their place. Homeless drug addicts don’t fear jail, how could it be any worse than life on the street addicted to drugs?

I have no idea what the answer is, but I suspect it is a better social safety net where people think they have a fair shot in society where they don’t view drugs as an escape or have the mindset of having nothing to lose. I honestly haven’t thought about solutions that deeply.

Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#25
This article aside, my general understanding has been homelessness is very often a symptom of mental health issue. Yes, there are people (read: families) who would obviously prefer not to be homeless. But many others are there because individual rights / protections are such that we can not force them to do otherwise.

Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#26
I don't think it's "disguised" as a housing crisis: dishonest advocates took advantage of superficial similarities between the housing cost crisis to claim that homelessness was driven by it. I don't think most people serious about understanding the homelessness issue instead of exploiting it for their pet cause think that the housing crisis is a primary driving factor (though I'd be surprised if it wasn't contributing)

Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#28

I think the question to ask is what created the opioid problem in the first place - I tend to think it's lack of regulation in the pharma space. I've criticised the author (Chris Rufo, associated with the conservative and intelligent design group Discovery Institute) in his earlier pieces (see https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/acwqng/podcast_s... ) where he used seemingly incomplete estimates on the funding…

And if you tightly regulate the “pharma space” and those drugs are harder to get, the same addicts will just find a substitute drug. The “War on Drugs” has been an abysmal failure. If you lock up the users, you’re just spending more money housing non violent offenders. If you lock up the sellers, someone else will take their place. Homeless drug addicts don’t fear jail, how could it be any worse than life on the stre…

Drugs are often an escape but not always from immediate societal pressure. Ppl with (emotional) pain with likely eventually self-medicate. That is, addiction is a symptom. The problem is, we tend to want to treat that symptom and remain in denial that there are underlying root problems.

Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#29

From my anecdotal experience living in an area filled with fentanyl shooting drug addicts I've noticed they generally are substance abusers with other drugs, such as meth or heavy drinking, ilegally procured prescription pills, cocaine etc., they have groups of fellow substance abusers they meet with daily to combine resources and when the money runs out switch to other drugs that are cheaper to buy like bags of hero…

Coming from Germany I found it interesting how much the US culture depends on ingesting substances to make you feel better. Be it painkillers or “superfood” or other things. That makes the US really vulnerable to all kinds of addictions. As a kid I remember only a few occasions where I took any kind of medicine but today’s kids know a ton about all kinds of drugs and it seems pretty standard to take some.

Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#30

I appreciate the author identifying what is really going on with homeless on the West Coast. Any visit to Portland, Seattle, SF, LA corroborates this. We need to crack down on those that are perpetuating and benefiting from this crisis.. the dealers, cartels, and yes, the pharmaceutical companies.

These street drug networks are pretty sophisticated and hard to crack down on.

For example a typical street operation like openly selling baggies outside of a legalized injection clinic or to a homeless camp is often done by the addicts themselves, who will always only be holding just enough so they don't see much jail time if they are arrested. Security of this street dealing is overseen by very obvious looking prison gang members who hold no evidence and make sure to never take the money from the street addict peddling their baggies of heroin or crack instead there are drops coordinated with the huge prison goon nearby to prevent any robberies. Resupply is done through complicated handoffs and drops with a network of a few dozen addicts who've been recruited to sell for the gang. The gang themselves are buying off other mid level gangs who in turn are buying from higher level/cartels.

You can try to put a cop on every corner and disrupt the handoffs, or harass these enforcers off the street, but soon your police force is going to run out of overtime money, not to mention the other factor which is gang violence "management". The police know if they decimate the current street gang controlling the street trade that a dozen other gangs will immediately start fighting to be the successor meaning there will be high profile shootings going on in the media, which in turn puts pressure on city hall, which in turn puts pressure on the police chief to do something to stop the violence which eventually means relaxing enforcement on whatever gang currently controls the homeless drug trade so long as they stay in their lane and don't escalate their street violence into the media or against people not involved in the trade. It would be nice to arrest and stop the midlevel and high level suppliers but nobody has figured out how to effectively do that with limited enforcement resources either.

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