Doesn’t Portland have a housing affordability problem? Why was the answer to “people are using drugs in public because they can’t afford a place to do it in private” to legalize public use? I swear we’ll do anything to address the consequences of lack of housing except actually build enough houses.
To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use
761–770 of 1001 posts
Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use
#762Earlier quoted context omitted.
You solve homelessness directly by giving people housing. Free housing paid for by people like me, and ideally others, who are more than happy to take what I make and give it to people who need it more than I do. And you don’t need to be rich to do it. It’s a decision on how much money etc you actually need to be fulfilled. If that takes a zombie proof bunker and multiple houses and first class flights and…and… then…
Yes, and we can solve drug addiction directly by giving people drugs. What is free housing? Free as in indefinitely free with no strings attached? Free utilities, free services, free food, perhaps free transportation? Free furniture, free healthcare, free drugs, free clothes, free HOA? Do you think the violent addicts everyone complains about just need a house, and starting from day one they will become productive me…
The answer is a community that cares about this person and is going to invest in them. Period
That’s it that’s the solution.
Until every person on earth has a supportive loving community - which mathematically works out very easily - we’ll never solve these problems.
There is absolutely no logistical or material reason that we can’t do this. It’s also not biologically determined - fear and greed are not inherit in humans, those are all learned behaviors. I fear however it’s going to take generations to undo how much we have invested in domination based systems rather than partnership based structures.
Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use
#763Drug legalization is something I have come 180 on (or at least, 90 degrees). Portland did everything! They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs, counsellors, etc. ODs have more than doubled, and the shelters are half empty! They are not one more social program away from cleaning out the streets. I think the experiment has radically failed and I'm ready to say I was wrong. While I don't want to go back t…
The first priority should be cleaning up the cities for the benefit of the actual taxpayers. Absolutely do not let drug addicts overwhelm your downtown cores and make them terrible. You don't need to lock them up indefinitely, but you do need to move them somewhere else where they won't have hugely negative effects on the city and its populace. It may not make life for the addicts better, but it won't make life for t…
...but you do need to move them somewhere else ...
So, make them somebody else's problem? Great plan. :|
Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use
#764Drug legalization is something I have come 180 on (or at least, 90 degrees). Portland did everything! They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs, counsellors, etc. ODs have more than doubled, and the shelters are half empty! They are not one more social program away from cleaning out the streets. I think the experiment has radically failed and I'm ready to say I was wrong. While I don't want to go back t…
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Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use
#765Earlier quoted context omitted.
You solve homelessness directly by giving people housing. Free housing paid for by people like me, and ideally others, who are more than happy to take what I make and give it to people who need it more than I do. And you don’t need to be rich to do it. It’s a decision on how much money etc you actually need to be fulfilled. If that takes a zombie proof bunker and multiple houses and first class flights and…and… then…
Your thought process in commendable but years of this has made me cynical. No one wants to live in the same apartment complex as junkies. If you put them all together it turns into a crime filled cesspool. A hard drug addict is essentially toxic to any situation you drop them in. The solution is to forcibly treat them in rehab centers and then maybe follow up with free housing. This is followed up by drug testing for…
I have to tell you that I have quite a bit of experience on this and a little bit of compassion and love goes along way.
Maybe talking to people one on one asking who they are how their day is, can you help them? Can you get them anything?
This time last year I helped a man named John stop sleeping outside by supporting him and giving him the moral and ethical support that he needed to reconnect with his family and he was off the streets and a couple of months. When we reconnected, he said that it was because of my outreach that he was able to have what he needed to reach back out to his family. It cost me 50 dollars in groceries/medical kit and about an hour of my time.
So it’s eminently possible, you can do it every single day that you go out into the world.
You simply choose not to.
Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use
#766Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sad reality is that current forms of law enforcement aren't working when it comes to hard drugs and addiction. Putting people in prison for getting addicted to crack is not exactly going to make anyones lifes better. But it has also become quite obvious that you can't have free-range junkies shooting up in what is supposed to be the economic center of a city. I suspect in a few decades forced rehab will become th…
You can't help a person if they don't want to be helped. At the very least you can remove them from the society to make it safe and maybe make the person rethink their life. By shielding a drug addict from the consequences of their wrong life choices you are preventing their potential rehabilitation, unless they've been lost completely, of course.
comment you are replying to said "forced rehab" - this is not sheltering people from the consequences of their actions, it's forcing them to accept them and change those actions.
Rather hard examples of this that I've seen have been locking someone up in the psychiatric ward to get them detoxing. Or I have a friend who is a Vietnam vet, who got addicted to heroin whilst there. He ended up getting injured and was in a full body cast for a bit. The doctor in charge of him decided it was a good time to get him sober, so he spent a couple agonising weeks in a full body cast suffering through heroin withdrawal, and he's been clean since.
Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use
#767I live in the Seattle area, which is struggling with public drug use just like Portland. Like Portland, we've lived for decades with very progressive politicians who have lead successful decriminalization efforts and spent huge sums of public funds on treatment and harm reduction programs. After several decades and many, many millions of dollars spent, the problem is, by every measure, absolutely the worst it's ever…
I wonder if it attracted a 'type'. Because I know many people who have since moved to portland and they all have a type.
It could be that portland is taking a huge number of people that would otherwise be a drain elsewhere. Maybe we shouldnt consider this an outright failure, but look at some federal support.
Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use
#768Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if the underlying issue is capitalism itself though?
So what alternative are you proposing? Socialist countries have addiction issues too...
When I think about the endgame of capitalism, I think about the kids in coalmines and the gilded age, the extractive and horrible conditions that allow for widespread unfulfilling company-store-owned worklife to flourish under the guise of progress.
I'm not sure if there are any solid alternatives for this endgame actually, but we may already be in it, and pervasive addiction to me seem to go hand it hand with unhappiness.
Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use
#769Drug legalization is something I have come 180 on (or at least, 90 degrees). Portland did everything! They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs, counsellors, etc. ODs have more than doubled, and the shelters are half empty! They are not one more social program away from cleaning out the streets. I think the experiment has radically failed and I'm ready to say I was wrong. While I don't want to go back t…
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Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use
#770Drug legalization is something I have come 180 on (or at least, 90 degrees). Portland did everything! They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs, counsellors, etc. ODs have more than doubled, and the shelters are half empty! They are not one more social program away from cleaning out the streets. I think the experiment has radically failed and I'm ready to say I was wrong. While I don't want to go back t…
I appreciate your sharing and open mindedness. It seems like some things don’t have perfect solutions and we are “stuck” picking which downsides we want to deal with. It seems that if we want to be the most kind to druggies (not lock them up) it comes at the expense of the normies - people trying to live, work, raise families, run businesses, etc. It seems that for the last few decades society decided that normies ar…
How much is the effect exacerbated by Portland being a kind of a magnet? In a large country like the US there is a lot of potential for immigration and making the situation very skewed.