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To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

nytimes.com

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Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#351

Post by hifreq »

losteric wrote: post #328
hifreq wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Available shelter space, housing vacancies: https://www.kqed.org/news/11668623/why-do-thousands-of-l-a-s... https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/san-f... https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/top-stories/story/2020-... > wages are the lowest they have been in decades This is an endless argument. Why can't a person with 0 skills rent an apartment in San Francisco? Some wages are very low. If you can't…

You're acting like people aren't emotionally attached to their home cities. Most people are born and raised in the same city or area their whole lives. The adult illiteracy rate is 20% and less than 40% get any kind of 4 year degree. Options are limited. People will cling to hope and the life (and community!) they know, until they're broke and lost their job... and at that point, they straight up can't move to Fresno…

> You're acting like people aren't emotionally attached to their home cities.

Respectfully, you misplace the responsibility. When people go through a rough breakup, we don't call for the person experiencing attachment anxiety to be housed with their ex just because it would make things easier for one party at least temporarily. Life is full of hard moments and challenging choices. The fact that something is hard doesn't mean giving up is the healthiest path that the society should encourage.

Talk to people who work in social services. The fact is, visibly homeless (street homeless, most often addicted people) are in this situation not because they have tried everything else and have no choices. They don't seek employment and often refuse help. They are not part of a community (unless you consider other homeless people they randomly ended up living close to their true community).

As usual, the discussion about homeless is kind of pointless without clarifying which segment we are talking about. Homeless families with children, disabled non-addicts, etc are not someone I include in this discussion, and I never see them living on the street.

Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#352

Post by notfed »

hifreq wrote: post #155
namesbc wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Homeless shelters are full, wages are the lowest they have been in decades, and US health care is the most expensive in the world

Available shelter space, housing vacancies: https://www.kqed.org/news/11668623/why-do-thousands-of-l-a-s... https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/san-f... https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/top-stories/story/2020-... > wages are the lowest they have been in decades This is an endless argument. Why can't a person with 0 skills rent an apartment in San Francisco? Some wages are very low. If you can't…

The articles you've cited don't show a problem with "vacancies", but with mismanagement, lack of funding, and lack of sanitization/maintenance.

To add an independent voice, here's ChatGPT responding to "summarize this article in one paragraph", for each article you linked to:

> https://www.kqed.org/news/11668623/why-do-thousands-of-l-a-s...

The article discusses the significant problem of empty beds in Los Angeles County's homeless shelters, despite a large homeless population. Investigations reveal safety and sanitation issues in many shelters, such as bedbugs, rats, foul odors, and lax medical care. Half of the LAHSA shelters had 78 percent utilization. Homeless individuals cite issues like theft, harassment, and violence within shelters, prompting some to prefer living on the streets. There's no unified oversight system, and the is much room for improvement to ensure humane conditions in shelters.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/san-f...

Approximately 7,800 homeless people in San Francisco, 2,100 have been approved for subsidized housing, yet challenges persist in moving them indoors. The city cites issues such as a shortage of case managers, complicated paperwork, and resistance from the homeless to certain unit conditions. Although efforts have been made to address the problem, including a $62 million investment in case managers, the average wait time has increased to five months, a significant delay considering the program's annual budget of $356 million. The article calls for an in-depth audit of the permanent supportive housing program and urgent action to house homeless individuals promptly.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/top-stories/story/2020-...

The article discusses California's Project Roomkey initiative, launched by Governor Gavin Newsom in April 2020 to lease 15,000 hotel rooms for homeless individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the program's progress has been slow, with only about half of the rooms occupied over a month into its implementation. Challenges include delays in preparing rooms for occupancy, a shortage of service providers, and difficulties in transitioning residents into permanent housing. While some counties, like Sacramento, have seen relative success, others, such as San Diego and Orange County, struggle to fill leased rooms. The initiative, funded by FEMA, targets homeless individuals aged 65 or older and those with health conditions susceptible to COVID-19, but the article raises concerns about the overall effectiveness and limited coverage of the program in addressing the state's homelessness crisis.

Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#353

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

slily wrote: post #268
theossuary wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well what they do is: - Have a government who owns almost all the land, and provide subsidized housing to over 75% of the citizens. - Provides universal healthcare, again subsidized through the government - And forces quotas for all ethnicities to ensure everyone is equally represented everywhere. So I guess we could try it Singapore's way, but Republicans keep saying it's a bad idea.

If Singapore's economic and social policies were successful, surely people would want to move there? Perhaps skepticism is warranted from teh evil republicanz - the subject of this submission, decriminalization of drug use, was touted largely by left-wingers based on a few similar, seemingly-successful, small-scale efforts in Europe. Now we know how that turned out.

Many people do want to move to Singapore, and follow through with it. The population is over 40% immigrants.

Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#354

Post by hotpotamus »

memonkey wrote: post #339
anonygler wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I have been thinking about how I (and many others) go to work for a corporate job that has ultimately no meaning in life just to be able to get paid to provide for a family that i only get to hang with on saturday and sunday and if i'm lucky 2 weeks straight out of the year. am i alive?

Presumably you at lease derive meaning from your family; not all of us even have that.

I often hear “Had a wife in kids in Baltimore, Jack. I went out for a ride and I never went back” from “Hungry Heart” by Bruce Springsteen in my head when I think about mid-life discontent. That and “Office Space”; it seems to be the rule that we experience it rather than the exception.

Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#355

Post by chmod600 »

rjbwork wrote: post #324
chmod600 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "legalize and regulate" mean? Isn't that true of most drugs? We are talking about what those regulations should be and what to do when people break the regulations.

Probably as many regulations as there are on alcohol or tobacco or pharmaceuticals (which I'm also not a fan of the doctor/pharmaceutical gated access to other drugs). If you produce it has to be pure, tested, not adulterated, with standards for production facilities. If you consume, only in particular establishments or at home, and you can't drive while under the influence. If someone breaks those regulations, then…

So you'd arrest all of the homeless addicts and put them in jail for consuming in an unapproved place?

Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#356

Post by coffeecloud »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #283
coffeecloud wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What option is there besides give people housing, let them lived unhoused, or jail them for not acquiring housing?

You will never eliminate severe mental illness. You can, however, create systems that understand human incentives. If you can't even imagine options that don't involve systemic centralized planning, we are so far from moving towards peaceful solutions that my only incentive is to ship the antisocial people to your neighborhood.

I asked a pretty straightforward question and you responded with a very vague tangent. What other options are there besides giving people homes or allowing them to live on the street?

Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#357

Post by thrawy2to15 »

xkjyeah wrote: post #185
drewg123 wrote: post #110

Nowhere in these comments have I see anybody take the position that decriminalization is not enough; drugs need to be legalized and regulated. I have a close friend whose relative is a heroin addict. According to her, a lot of overdoses are due to almost no "heroin" actually being heroin, rather its fentanyl cut to varying degrees of strength. Not knowing what you're taking, and not knowing how strong it is, can lead…

Literally, fentanyl is legal and regulated. It's used as an anaesthetic.

This needs to be part of the conversation.

To most people 'fentanyl' == 'The Devil', and rightly so after so many deaths.

However it does still have legitimate medical use.

Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#358

Post by theossuary »

creato wrote: post #287
theossuary wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well what they do is: - Have a government who owns almost all the land, and provide subsidized housing to over 75% of the citizens. - Provides universal healthcare, again subsidized through the government - And forces quotas for all ethnicities to ensure everyone is equally represented everywhere. So I guess we could try it Singapore's way, but Republicans keep saying it's a bad idea.

They also: - Have extreme penalties for drug offenses. - Have highly effective surveillance and law enforcement. I guess we can all find what we want in Singapore: an effective police state winning the war on drugs, or an effective welfare state.

If extreme penalties for illicit drug use were the part of the equation that worked, then why does Saudi Arabia's drug problem continue to get worse? They've had a marked increase in the abuse of amphetamines, cocaine, and opioids over the last two decades.

Maybe stop cherry picking the parts that you like and pretending like they're the parts that worked?

https://www.unodc.org/pdf/report_2000-09-21_1.pdf

https://www.unodc.org/pdf/trends2003_www_E.pdf

https://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2008/WDR_2008_eng_we...

https://www.unodc.org/res/wdr2022/MS/WDR22_Booklet_3.pdf

Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#360

Post by amluto »

boh wrote: post #343
rjbwork wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually don't think we should decriminalize. Just legalize it and let people get pure product at dirt cheap prices. There's no reason to fund crime (drug dealers/organized crime), maim and kill users, push users into poverty, and generate and push the externalizes of drug use onto the rest of society. This is the choice we have made and continue to make a society under a prohibitionist regime, decriminalization or…

Oxycontin was legal, how well did that go?

It’s not clear to me that making it legal was the problem. The marketing was catastrophic. The amount of messaging, in doctors’ offices and otherwise, about using long-acting painkillers, getting ahead of the pain, making sure your pain was treated, etc was ridiculous.

Nowadays, the messaging is quite different. And we’re starting to learn that the opioids may not even work for the things people like using them for, regardless of how dangerous they are:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Yes, that’s an RCT with oxycodone users reporting more pain after 6 weeks compared to placebo.

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