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The Disappearance of the Public Bench

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Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#61

Post by queenkjuul »

strictnein wrote: post #7
TheBlight wrote: post #3

I also like clean safe unobstructed sidewalks and parks but along with benches, we've made a decision. We've decided that putting the mentally ill in a facility and arresting people for public drug use is not something we're comfortable with at the expense of those other things. I don't personally ageee with this decision but it is apparently the consensus.

> it is apparently the consensus And what a strange consensus it is. The prevailing belief seems to be that preventing people from slowly/quickly killing themselves on the street (or, more accurately, dying from addiction) is somehow not "progressive" and the moral thing to do is to pretend like these people have made the choice of their own volition and that we cannot judge them for this choice. In reality, the peop…

They would be better if they were given support. Locking people away is not a solution to anything. You've been sold a lie about the mentally ill, and the homeless, which isn't true.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#62

Post by antonvs »

next_xibalba wrote: post #5
pstuart wrote: post #2

Gosh, if only there was some way we could solve homelessness! Don't worry about it, as at least we can drop tens of billions of dollars to show the Iranians how big and powerful we are.

SF spends more per capita than anywhere in the world on homelessness. And it’s barely made a dent. The solution is upstream of money. It’s policy decisions derived from cultural values. In other places in the world, where homelessness is vanishingly rare, these people are made to choose: “you will get treatment or you will go to jail, but we will not tolerate the destruction of the commons.”

Another factor in other places in the world is much lower economic inequality.

The US has chosen to divide its population in this way.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#64

Post by gottorf »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #6

This has little to do with the homeless and everything to do with a society that's shifted from seeking to facilitate positive things (e.g. the comfort of some random person on some random occasion) to one that wouldn't invent fire or sliced bread if it thought that doing so would be good for the wrong kind of people. This is intensified in spaces administrated by government due to the incentives of government and th…

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Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#65

Post by pocksuppet »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #52
pocksuppet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with both? Why can't we have public benches, and also not arrest drug users if they are sitting on the benches and smoking?

Because sitting on benches quickly turns into living on benches. Then the drug dealers move in, because there's a ready customer base of drug users . Then the productive members of society move out.

So basically the problem is that productive members of society and drug dealers are incapable of existing near to each other?

Why is that?

I pass by some drug dealers sometimes on the way to work. I don't see the problem. Occasionally I get asked if I want to buy some drugs. I don't want to buy drugs so nothing else happens.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#66

Post by antonvs »

cyberax wrote: post #35
jmyeet wrote: post #32

I believe expensive housing is at the root of many societal problems, it's not even funny. We don't have park benches because we've adopted hostile architecture to keep out "undesirables". This mostly means "homeless people". But why are there so many homeless people? The primary reason is housing unaffordability [1]. One of the funny things about China is that there are a lot of "experts" who insist on reading the t…

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I'm about to blow your mind with a simple phrase: correlation is not causation.

Seriously though, you have an unsupported belief and you're looking to cherry-pick ways to support it. It's not rational.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#67

Post by pstuart »

AmazingEveryDay wrote: post #45
jedimastert wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know oddly enough, if you just put someone up in a real place to live for like a year, that's enough for the majority of people to get back on their feet.

I'd like to believe that! Can you link to any research to back up your claim?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-...

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#68

Post by pstuart »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #54
jedimastert wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know oddly enough, if you just put someone up in a real place to live for like a year, that's enough for the majority of people to get back on their feet.

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Why are you singling out immigrants? The homeless in our metro area are very much domestically produced.

But you do help illustrate a concern: homelessness is ultimately a federal issue, as some states dump theirs on other more "accepting" states.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#69

Post by queenkjuul »

Taek wrote: post #15
JoshTriplett wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a strange false dichotomy. Either we do absolutely nothing to help people, or we involuntarily incarcerate them? The actually progressive option is to provide meaningful public support programs , and also make housing affordable (by building enough housing). The US mostly doesn't do either of those, but it should.

I'm not sure if you've had a drug addict in your life at any point, and if not that is a blessing. Drug addiction is a dark place and it's very common that the availability of free support programs is entirely rejected by the user, and the only hope at a normal life requires forceful intervention by family and friends. The only way to solve drugs on the street is to look at the cities that have solved them and copy w…

Oh yeah, 60 years of arresting people in the US for drug crimes has gone so well. Couldn't be better! Cities that decriminalized have better outcomes.

I hope people like you lose every election for the rest of time.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#70

Post by queenkjuul »

Auracle wrote: post #22
JoshTriplett wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be equating "homeless" with "drug addict". The article talks about taking away public benches because of homelessness. There are different programs needed for drug addiction than for homelessness. Not everyone who's homeless has a drug problem, and not everyone with a drug problem is homeless.

That Venn diagram is pretty close to a circle, at least when talking about homeless people that don’t have a friend/relative they can stay with.

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