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S.F. sued over homeless camp sweeps: city charged with criminalizing unsheltered

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Re: S.F. sued over homeless camp sweeps: city charged with criminalizing unsheltered

#121

Post by andirk »

twblalock wrote: post #31
olivermarks wrote: post #10

'Unsheltered' is a propaganda word and a fig leaf for the very sad reality that we have a chronic opioid and meth crisis which tips many people over into serious mental illness. Giving these individuals expensive housing is not going to solve anything. California is a magnet for substance abuse casualties and as then SF mayor Newsom found at the end of his grandiose plan to 'end homelessness' ever more people arrived…

Realistically, the only way we can solve this is with incarceration. This has little to do with the availability of housing, or the cost of housing. Some people will simply refuse to live in the housing that is provided. Many are so mentally ill and addicted to drugs that no amount of money we give them, either directly or indirectly, will get them off the streets. Proposed solutions that don't involve incarceration…

Trivia: what country incarcerates the most people per capita? Oddly, that country is the topic of discussion here. And I live and work in/near San Francisco and it's plenty a shit show depending on neighborhood, but a very far cry from an "open-air drug den". Let's dig in deeper for solutions.

Re: S.F. sued over homeless camp sweeps: city charged with criminalizing unsheltered

#122

Post by runarberg »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #22
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the problem there is that simply being homeless isn't a crime (which I will say seems to me to be reasonable - the alternative is things like the Victorian Poorhouses). Throwing trash all over the place (since there are no public trash services to speak of in most cities, and homeless people don't have service from trash haulers) is a crime, but if they were issued citations, they couldn't pay, and still don't…

> but if they were issued citations, they couldn't pay, and still don't have any way to get rid of their trash... I would think that using public money to haul away trash would have a pretty good return on investment for everyone concerned. One of the points of the justice system is to ensure that people are sufficiently disincentivized from doing things that society has decided shouldnt be done. We shouldnt consider…

If that is the point of the justice system, then we really need to reconsider in light of how actual humans behave.

It has been shown multiple time over in experimental settings that punishment is a pretty poor means of modifying behavior. The deterrence of punishment is marginal at best. For punishment to work consistently you need to apply it consistently and immediately, law enforcement does neither.

There are other means of modifying behavior that are both scientifically proven and have shown results in the real world. This includes accommodating the desired behavior while disincentivizing the undesired ones.

If you want the unhoused to leave their surroundings cleaner, give them trash cans, public kitchens, safe use shelters, regular street cleaners, etc. If you don’t want them to pitch a tent on 17th and Mission, designate an area where they can.

No the point of the justice system is to give victims of crimes some solace that justice has been served. It has nothing to with the behavior of criminals.

Re: S.F. sued over homeless camp sweeps: city charged with criminalizing unsheltered

#123

Post by lotsofpulp »

bombcar wrote: post #116
lotsofpulp wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the drug addicted were capable of operating their own cities, they already would be. They obviously need a non drug addicted population to support them.

Certainly - and said drug cities would have billions poured into them, and outside assistance. Still cheaper than prisons.

So non drug addicted people work to help and support drug addicted people enjoy life?

Re: S.F. sued over homeless camp sweeps: city charged with criminalizing unsheltered

#124

Post by triceratops »

twblalock wrote: post #97
triceratops wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think so? What makes SF have so many more drug addicted or mentally ill people, compared to cities with sane housing prices?

Because everyone knows that SF will tolerate behavior that other cities will not, and that attracts the most problematic homeless people from all over the country. It's practically a network effect for homeless encampments.

> attracts the most problematic homeless people from all over the country

Here's a study someone else posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33010913

"The data shows that over 70% of all of SF's unhoused people became homeless while living in San Francisco"

Re: S.F. sued over homeless camp sweeps: city charged with criminalizing unsheltered

#125

Post by scelerat »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #50
jwlstn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this were true why are the giant homeless populations almost exclusively in insanely expensive housing markets like SF, LA, NYC? Drug addiction is far worse in WV yet they don't have a major homeless problem. Explain this discrepency please if it's all because of drugs

It seems like they are literally bussing in homeless into San Francisco because of the services and money. It has become a drug distribution hub that is supported by the govt and tax money. There is little to no consequence for peddling drugs on the streets right under the nose of law enforcement.

Do you have a source for this?

Re: S.F. sued over homeless camp sweeps: city charged with criminalizing unsheltered

#126

Post by positus »

hotpotamus wrote: post #109
twblalock wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, the only way we can solve this is with incarceration. This has little to do with the availability of housing, or the cost of housing. Some people will simply refuse to live in the housing that is provided. Many are so mentally ill and addicted to drugs that no amount of money we give them, either directly or indirectly, will get them off the streets. Proposed solutions that don't involve incarceration…

I agree that incarceration isn't progressive, but is it conservative? I mean I'm sure conservatives will appreciate brutalizing (those they perceive as) criminals for little more than the sake of it, but prisons in California aren't cheap, and is there much appetite for even more taxation?

This is a grotesque mischaracterization of conservatives. Just because a group of people do not agree with you does not make them violence-obsessed brutes.

Re: S.F. sued over homeless camp sweeps: city charged with criminalizing unsheltered

#127

Post by horns4lyfe »

andirk wrote: post #102

Rent should be Anyone who is chronically homeless should be offered jobs and paid housing. If that doesn't work, then they become a ward of the state and treated as a child. [1] https://www.chase.com/personal/banking/education/budgeting-s... .

That’s going to be most of them, as most are drug addicts. And no I don’t have any stats for you, frankly just walk around SF or Portland, it’s obvious.

Re: S.F. sued over homeless camp sweeps: city charged with criminalizing unsheltered

#128

Post by triceratops »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #114
triceratops wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just make city policies such that there's no advantage to being homeless in SF I don't see any advantage to being homeless. Literally every human being without mental issues would prefer having a roof over their head. This is a market failure.

The advantage is that you save money by not needing to pay rent.

Not a ton of savings, tbh. You have to eat out every meal, deal with your shit getting stolen, lost sleep, probably lowered social status leading to less desirable jobs. Being poor is expensive.

Re: S.F. sued over homeless camp sweeps: city charged with criminalizing unsheltered

#129

Post by LawTalkingGuy »

abeppu wrote: post #40
olivermarks wrote: post #10

'Unsheltered' is a propaganda word and a fig leaf for the very sad reality that we have a chronic opioid and meth crisis which tips many people over into serious mental illness. Giving these individuals expensive housing is not going to solve anything. California is a magnet for substance abuse casualties and as then SF mayor Newsom found at the end of his grandiose plan to 'end homelessness' ever more people arrived…

> Giving these individuals expensive housing is not going to solve anything. The "housing first" approach does seem to have a number of successful examples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First#Evidence_and_out... > we have a chronic opioid and meth crisis which tips many people over into serious mental illness. But also the most visible homeless population is not the only homeless population, and people who b…

On the ground in a city determined to kill people with its liberal drug policies I can say this housing-first does NOT save junkies. Its main benefit is to provide people who do not know the conditions and the costs a way to attack those of us who do. Read the wiki page - their examples are primarily before 2010 when the opioid crisis really kicked in and many of the examples are about alcohol addiction - not hard drugs.

You can't give a junkie anything you don't want them to trade for drugs. If you give them an apartment they'll sell the plumbing fixtures and everything else. They'll also go back to sleeping outside, right next to where they procure their fentanyl, because nothing but acquiring and using matters.

Vancouver and SF also both insist you can't give someone a dingy basement suite (like many of their residents actually pay for and live in) but you have to give them a bright cheery condo in an expensive area. All done seemingly to avoid ever having enough money to house more than a few people. Housing first isn't actually being tried, in a way that taxpayers or foreign drug-policy experts would expect.

It's more about the careers of the literal thousands of people, poverty pimps, who "manage" the problem every day, and the power it gives them in city council to make sweeping decisions for the city. The number of lives lost positively correlates with dollars spent because the money goes to feel-good nonsense and bandaids, and actually counter-productive measures like fentanyl vending machines which have been proven to increase, not replace, street crime.

Re: S.F. sued over homeless camp sweeps: city charged with criminalizing unsheltered

#130

Post by caminante »

triceratops wrote: post #107
closeparen wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good weather, good services, no law enforcement harassment.

You're saying mentally ill, drug addicted people are capable of making rational decisions such as this. But in another thread, you also claimed that regular people who "would be successful and housed" in cheaper places don't make the seemingly rational decision to move away. How?

Something about SF is a draw for homeless people.

According to a 2019 survey [0], only 70% of people were living in SF prior to being homeless, and of those 70%, approximately half had lived in SF for less than ten years.

To me, that's staggering if 30% of the homeless population was already homeless before they moved to SF, and if another 30% became homeless within 10 years of moving to SF.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_San_Franci...

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