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An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

city-journal.org

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Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#41

Post by newhotelowner »

hackermailman wrote: post #15

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…

My business is in a county with high drug addicts. This used to be a growing county in the mid-70s with a high number of manufacturing jobs with good pay. As manufacturing started to decline, drug usage started to go up.

I moved from California. One thing I noticed that doctors in this area will easily prescribe pills compare to Calfornia. Everyone takes pain killers. Pretty much everyone carries pain killers all the time.

Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#42

Post by opportune »

fwip wrote: post #19
astura wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In Seattle, prosecutors and law enforcement recently estimated that the majority of the region’s homeless population is hooked on opioids, including heroin and fentanyl.... For the unsheltered population inhabiting tents, cars, and RVs, the opioid-addiction percentages are even higher—the City of Seattle’s homeless-outreach team estimates that 80 percent of the unsheltered population has a substance-abuse disorder.…

Also from the article: the mayor estimates the rate at 1 in 3. Still no word on methodology.

Might be a difference in wording. As I recall, 2/3 of Seattle homeless are not sleeping on the street (instead they are in cars or shelters), which may make them "sheltered". The other 1/3 are in the street and if most of them are addicts, then yes, about 1/3 of total homeless are addicted as well

Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#43

Post by epistasis »

> If this figure holds constant throughout the West Coast, then at least 11,000 homeless opioid addicts live in Washington, 7,000 live in Oregon, and 65,000 live in California (concentrated mostly in San Francisco and Los Angeles)

This is a pretty silly assumption to make when the data for San Francisco and Los Angeles show different, where less than a third of the homeless is addicted.

And given how the housing crisis is so much worse in San Francisco and Los Angeles than Seattle, it's choosing exactly the wrong data points to extrapolate from.

Further, it ignores how once someone is homeless it is much easier to fall into addiction, as other homeless people are often your support network and there's a higher incidence of addiction among the homeless, spreading it.

All too often "not my fault" is a reason to avoid addressing the parts that are our fault.

Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#44

Post by jseliger »

hackermailman wrote: post #30
electriclove wrote: post #6

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 pris…

This is quite close to the plot of the The Wire. It's amazing that, 20 years later, we're still having the exact same discussions. Although I suppose that David Simon knew that, when he was working on The Wire, he was in some ways reproducing the same structures that have been in place since the "War on Drugs" and the '70s.

Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#45

Post by Consultant32452 »

I think this is a belonging crisis disguised as an addiction crisis. People mostly become addicted because they don't have strong social ties to family, friends, church, whatever. If it were just a physical reaction to drugs every Grandma with a hip replacement would be a junky on the streets. But good luck putting families back together again.

Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#47

Post by chiefalchemist »

scarface74 wrote: post #39
chiefalchemist wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even though I wish I could say that I was insightful enough to think about that when I originally posted, if you define a social safety net from the social viewpoint, it would also probably help if people dealing with emotional issues had someone to turn to and we treated clinical depression as a medical issue more often than we do. But, I am far out of my area of expertise to know anything about clinical depression.

Np. We're on the same side. The gist of my point is we (i.e., USA) are fond of treating symptoms and then we wonder why they persist.

Frankly, imho, this is often driven by politicians. They're fond of make campaign promises to solve Issue X. The problem is, they've gotten the problem wrong.

Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#48

Post by lazyasciiart »

This is a dishonest narrative propped up with misunderstood statistics. He claims that saying "30% of homeless people" are addicts contradicts the claim that "80% of unsheltered" - but he's been arguing about how to get rid of homeless people for long enough to know that unsheltered is a subset of the homeless, and generally the group with the most issues (which is why they are sleeping outside and not even in a car).

Oddly enough, he fails to include any of the research we do have about the connection between cost of housing and rate of homelessness. When rents go up, homelessness goes up. http://fortune.com/2018/12/14/rent-homelessness-housing-inco... When affordable housing disappears, evictions go up and homelessness goes up. http://komonews.com/news/local/washington-homelessness-resul...

One recent positive change was a state law increasing the time a tenant has to pay rent late from 3 days to 14 days. There are many programs that will help pay a one-time late rent, but none of them are instant. Lots of tenants will accept a landlord saying that if you're not out in three days you'll be evicted and spend that time scrambling to leave instead of scrambling to pay, so that they have a chance at renting again in the future - and there's a ton of evidence that preventing the initial step into homelessness is by far the cheapest and most successful way to prevent longterm issues. https://seattle.curbed.com/2019/4/26/18518477/eviction-refor...

Of course, Rufo and people who quote him admiringly tend not to support interventions like this at the point of entering homelessness, since they are committed to the idea that not having a place to live is not a cause of homelessness (which, to be clear, INCLUDES those who are staying with friends or using their social safety net).

Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#49

Post by pessimizer »

scarface74 wrote: post #24
seltzered_ wrote: post #12

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…

If heroin were freely available (it costs almost nothing to produce), heroin addicts could be productive members of society, and would have nothing to fear in seeking treatment.

Nodding is the only thing dangerous about heroin addicts who have access to heroin, everything else is a symptom of prohibition. Additionally, long-term heroin addicts who have a consistent supply don't really nod much, or for long. It's the gaps in supply (of unadulterated drugs with a predictable purity) and the consequent simultaneous reduction of tolerance and increase in desperation that causes accidental overdoses and deep nodding.

Nodding is of course dangerous for drivers and operators of heavy machinery, but it should be treated like we treat any other sort of chronic seizure issue.

Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis

#50

Post by Gimpei »

quakingaspen wrote: post #20

While this article alleges that addiction is the root cause of homelessness, it makes no effort to prove that claim. That there is correlation between the two is clear, but claiming that addiction is the root cause of homelessness of the west coast is just fear-mongering. Determining root cause is important to finding the right solution. Further cracking down on homeless people will just transfer them from the street…

Not saying I disagree with you, but west coast cities do have temperate climates that I would think attract more of the chronically homeless. I'd much rather live on the street in LA in the winter than SLC.
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