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San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

city-journal.org

41–50 of 79 posts

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#41
post #28
post #6

Why do we expect that people should live in house or have a home? Maybe we need to design our cities and public places in a way that they would be approachable for people living outside? Why we wouldn't have camping spots in cities with infrastructure that supports living outside?

> Why do we expect that people should live in house or have a home? Because we're not animals, and have lived in at least caves since 10.000 years or more... Also because it's 2019, and there's no excuse. Maybe you could try some living in "camping spots in cities" in winter, for example?

[deleted]

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#42
post #32
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deciding to enforce crimes would not fix the problem, but move it somewhere else and/or make it less visible - which is what most other cities are doing...

Well the alternative, not enforcing laws, is clearly not working. Law enforcement everywhere is about moving crime out to the margins. It will never stamp out all crime, but it does tend to reduce the quantity of it. And I'm not even convinced that "moving it elsewhere" is necessarily a bad thing. I'd rather have most crime concentrated in a small area than distributing it over a large area. Regardless, people should…

The alternative is building houses. When you put people in houses they cease to be homeless. They did it in Helsinki, and it worked: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle...

Very simple deductive reasoning actually, I wonder how people did not come up with it yet.

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#43
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets do an experiment. Go to a park in the middle of London, and set up a tent, and scatter used needles on the sidewalk. You'll be involuntarily moved out of the park within a couple of hours. Since your governments go ahead and remove people who are trying to live in public spaces, you don't see them, and you assume they don't exist. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/10/berlin-has-been-payin... https://www.politi…

where are they moved to? Police station/overnight jail? Or a shelter of sorts?

Europe in general has MUCH tougher laws against "anti social" behavior and public nuisances that the homeless by definition of their lifestyle are bound to violate. They also have better safety nets and support systems (shelters, discounted housing, addiction treatment, etc). Details vary by country and city, obviously.

To stereotype the heck out of it:

In the US a homeless person pitches a tent under an overpass and everyone tries their hardest to ignore it.

In Europe a homeless person pitches a tent under an overpass and within the hour the cops show up, rough him up for constructing an unauthorized shelter on the crown's land and then cart him off to a shelter that keeps him a few nights and then sends him on his way with all the support he needs to not be homeless anymore.

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#44
post #20

Wow, that article's rhetoric is seething with social darwinistic class hatred. All these voluntary homeless seems to be conspicuously absent in western Europe. At least at this scale. Insisting on, which the author clearly does according to a quick googling, firmly supporting and perpetuating an economic system that creates these dystopian features and then calling for their forceful removal, through weasel language,…

Lets do an experiment. Go to a park in the middle of London, and set up a tent, and scatter used needles on the sidewalk. You'll be involuntarily moved out of the park within a couple of hours. Since your governments go ahead and remove people who are trying to live in public spaces, you don't see them, and you assume they don't exist. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/10/berlin-has-been-payin... https://www.politi…

That's because there are decent welfare systems in most those countries, reducing the scale of the problem to individuals, rather than volunteers trying to mitigate the immediate needs.

My point regarding hypocrisy is more important long term; you're immoral if you're a supporter of the Arsonist party then demanding to forcefully remove all the wildfire refugees because they're causing inconvenience to the "proper" citizens.

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#45
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civilization is exactly about imposing a philosophy on how people should live. Like it or not, that's how it works. If you don't want to play ball, there are plenty of open spaces in the US where people can live off the land without creating a public health hazard. If people don't want to be homeless, we should do everything in our power to help them get into housing, sustainably. But if they do? No thanks, do that s…

Philosophy on how people should live is not a set in stone. It's a moving target and it should be moving in a direction of achieving the best outcome for everyone, regardless if they're investment bankers or heroin addicts. People thinking like you have been trying to stop progress since we got down from the trees. It's this ridiculous idea that how things are now is something that has to be kept and preserved. It is…

> People thinking like you have been trying to stop progress since we got down from the trees. It's this ridiculous idea that how things are now is something that has to be kept and preserved.

Wait, aren't you the one arguing people should move back up into the trees? Well, not even the trees, you are just arguing they should live on the ground, and even our primitive primate ancestors weren't stupid enough to want to do that.

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#46
post #20

Wow, that article's rhetoric is seething with social darwinistic class hatred. All these voluntary homeless seems to be conspicuously absent in western Europe. At least at this scale. Insisting on, which the author clearly does according to a quick googling, firmly supporting and perpetuating an economic system that creates these dystopian features and then calling for their forceful removal, through weasel language,…

Lets do an experiment. Go to a park in the middle of London, and set up a tent, and scatter used needles on the sidewalk. You'll be involuntarily moved out of the park within a couple of hours. Since your governments go ahead and remove people who are trying to live in public spaces, you don't see them, and you assume they don't exist. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/10/berlin-has-been-payin... https://www.politi…

> Since your governments go ahead and remove people who are trying to live in public spaces, you don't see them, and you assume they don't exist.

From this, I assume you aren’t from the UK and don’t actually have any idea about homelessness here?

[Shelter](https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness) and [Centrepoint](https://centrepoint.org.uk/) are two of the biggest homeless charities here and they do a lot of work and are closely related with the local councils. Maybe do some research, the provide so much good information.

Please also bear in mind, the local councils have a [legal responsibility](https://www.compactlaw.co.uk/free-legal-information/public-h...) to look after homeless in their borough.

And this is purely anecdotal, but a lot of people I know here care a lot about homeless people. Walk around London and see how often you’ll see people buying a homeless person a coffee or some food.

Whereas in the US, I heard a lot of people say that homelessness is a choice and that they should just stop being homeless. Bewildering.

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take children playgrounds for example - you have them where you have a lot of families with kids, right? And that makes sense since that is kind of public infrastructure supporting the needs of a certain population. However, homeless people are not considered as population, they're considered as aberration. If we consider them as just another population we need to support with public services, maybe every neighborhoo…

Kids playgrounds are nice because they are not a health risk to anyone. Shelters are there. And in shelters they get all they need. How is this different from a campground? The only difference you are talking about is that in campings they would have a tent instead of a roof, unless I am missing something. Homeless people don't want to go in. They don't want to give up drugs. How do you think that providing a "campin…

You don't get it. Why would they need to quit drugs or go somewhere? If we want that, we're capable to put them by force where ever we want. We're also able to put them on drug rehab by force if we want to.

But the point is something else. If it turns out homeless people are assembling under the bridge, redo the bridge to be liveable or create something nearby that would attract them to go and live there. If they're throwing trash around, put people there to collect trash or create an environment where it would be easier to dispose trash in a safe way. Money is beint spent to assimilate homeless people and it's obviously not working.

Don't tell me that a country who put a man on Moon can't deliver sanitary service to millions citizens so they have to shit on the streets?

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#48
post #27
post #6

Why do we expect that people should live in house or have a home? Maybe we need to design our cities and public places in a way that they would be approachable for people living outside? Why we wouldn't have camping spots in cities with infrastructure that supports living outside?

Setting up camping-like facilities to serve the entire homeless population would likely turn every park in the city into an always-populated campsite. Pretty sure that's not what we want.

who are "we" that don't want that? The homeless population would definitely want that.

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Philosophy on how people should live is not a set in stone. It's a moving target and it should be moving in a direction of achieving the best outcome for everyone, regardless if they're investment bankers or heroin addicts. People thinking like you have been trying to stop progress since we got down from the trees. It's this ridiculous idea that how things are now is something that has to be kept and preserved. It is…

> People thinking like you have been trying to stop progress since we got down from the trees. It's this ridiculous idea that how things are now is something that has to be kept and preserved. Wait, aren't you the one arguing people should move back up into the trees? Well, not even the trees, you are just arguing they should live on the ground, and even our primitive primate ancestors weren't stupid enough to want t…

I'm arguing that everyone should be living as close to how they want as possible

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#50
An excellent article that beautifully summarizes the frustration of many residents and highlights obvious policy solutions to address them, such as Proposition Q.

>>>Providing the mentally ill with the “liberty” to decompose on the streets is cruelty, not compassion.

The policies employed by Breed’s government misuse resources in a quixotic effort at fighting addiction by providing more means to be addicted. The “need more housing zoning” argument is absurd and employs a fallacious premise that homeless people need to be housed in-situ.

This article provides great relief for residents, homeless folks, and drug-dealing scum.

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