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The Disappearance of the Public Bench

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Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#71

Post by cyberax »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #59
cyberax wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Care to read it past the preface? I already read the entire thing. You may stop accusing me of bad faith or insufficient research at any time. > Page 5, Figure 4. Thank you for confirming that you cited a chart listing 75% of unsheltered people and called it "close to 100%". I gave exact numbers from the studies I referenced; you exaggerated yours. A more relevant figure from the study is figure 2: 51% of unshelter…

> Thank you for confirming that you cited a chart listing 75% of unsheltered people and called it "close to 100%".

I already said that the study is from pre-COVID time, and puts the lower bound due to its conservative methodology.

And yes, I consider it proving my point, even that conservative estimate shows that for the vast majority of unsheltered homeless the problem is not in housing availability. It's mental health and/or drug abuse.

> A more relevant figure from the study is figure 2: 51% of unsheltered people (and 6% of sheltered) say that substance abuse is a cause of their homelessness. Also see figure 3 for other relevant causes.

Self-reporting, again. It's also kinda beside the point. Right _now_ the unsheltered homelessness is a drug problem however it began earlier.

Unless you just want to wait until all the addicts just die of overdoses?

> There are many attempted claims in this thread that people "don't want help", and none of that is supported.

I cited another study. There is also the experience in Seattle or SF. I guess you live somewhere in a town where the worst substance abuse is someone getting a bit too much booze?

Portland tried to decriminalize drugs and add voluntary treatment options. Their drug treatment hotline apparently helped 17 to enter treatment. Not percent, people.

> On top of that, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48057738 for a more nuanced point about lagging indicators: the right interventions happen much earlier in that downward spiral.

Yes. We need absolutely relentless pressure. If you're caught doing drugs, you need to have only two choices: treatment or jail. You can then get into housing, but with random mandatory drug screening. Constant, unyielding pressure with 100% certainty of consequences.

For people who are NOT on drugs, I fully support emergency housing assistance, job training, and/or help with getting disability status.

> That is nowhere near the same as a claim that homelessness, in general, is a problem of drug addiction, or that the Venn diagram is a circle. That claim is actively harmful towards efforts to build systems that actually help people.

No. They are people who are actually not blinded by the ideology and CAN SEE THE FUCKING PROBLEM in the first place.

> False. Stop assuming that people who come to different conclusions than you have have not done thorough research.

Sorry. But not buying it.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#72

Post by queenkjuul »

ipsento606 wrote: post #46
JoshTriplett wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That Venn diagram is pretty close to a circle False, and harmful. US HUD says it's ~16% of homeless people, other sources give different numbers, but it's certainly not a majority, let alone anywhere near 100%. The biggest problem, unsurprisingly, is housing cost . The US GAO states that a $100 increase in median rent correlates to a 9% rise in homelessness. Rents have gone up a lot more than that.

> US HUD says it's ~16% of homeless people, other sources give different numbers, but it's certainly not a majority "Homeless people" is a broad category that includes people temporarily living in vehicles, bouncing between family members, or sleeping on a friend's couch. It also includes people who are about to lose their home, young people living alone. But when everyday people use the term, they usually mean, spec…

The people you think are "temporarily" living in vehicles are not doing so temporarily.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#73

Post by pstuart »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #53
fragmede wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$10 billion would build a lot of homes. If you give homeless people homes, they're not homeless anymore. The problem is also political, unfortunately. $10 billion isn't going to change zoning laws and a NIMBY attitude of freezing things in time. If they like that point in time so much, they should build a museum, sheesh!

> $10 billion would build a lot of homes. If you give homeless people homes, they're not homeless anymore. But that doesn't answer the question. It's "a lot" of homes, but less than a tenth of what would be needed. And you need a bunch of social workers too at minimum.

That wouldn't be enough to do the job but it would be a great start if it was done right. My point was we've flushed $50B (and likely far far more) and what do we get for it? High gas prices. So hurray for the push for renewables and EVs, but there's nicer ways to do it.

> And you need a bunch of social workers too at minimum

Ok, sure. Remember, we're spending the $50B that's been lit on fire so this gives us more jobs and a happier country. And that money circulates in the economy rather than expatriated profits by the defense contractors.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#74

Post by margalabargala »

cyberax wrote: post #34
svpk wrote: post #10

I'd add that we also chose policies that made housing expensive. It used to be much cheaper to live in NYC for example, but housing options included what was essentially a dorm room with shared facilities. Those were outlawedes for various reasons. There are also a lot of other policy factors that push up housing prices. Cheap housing isn't a panacea, but if there was sub $500 dollar rent in NYC you'd see a lot less…

[flagged]

Well, all else being equal, building more means cheaper housing than not building more.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#75

Post by charcircuit »

Loughla wrote: post #38
zdragnar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These programs exist, but they are underutilized to a significant degree. From a partner who used to work in one, people: - didn't trust the program and wouldn't sign up - didn't actually want to quit using so they avoided it - wanted to get the benefits from the program without changing anything (i.e. showed up to get free food etc) - tried but didn't like it and went back to using Very few people actually went all…

The answer to that question in a society that allows (mostly) autonomy of choice is that we let them die on the street. I'm not convinced that involuntary incarceration will actually fix the problem. I believe it will just take it off of the streets and out of the public consciousness.

>I believe it will just take it off of the streets and out of the public consciousness.

If antisocial people do not exist in the public consciousness, then that means the problem is fixed. Even you never have to worry about locking your front door, then the problem of burglars has been fixed even if technically would be burglars may exist in prison.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#76

Post by pstuart »

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.”

SF has a famously broken city government. As does Portland (the metro I now live in). Note they have huge budgets for their police and there's still plenty of crime -- does that mean they should give up on having police?

I think if it were treated as a hybrid program (federal/state/county) there could be synergy that could make it work (more eyeballs on it, more shared resources, etc).

And as far as treatment or jail, we do need the power of involuntary institutionalization but it needs to be wielded with utmost restraint and scrutiny. I have family that could have used this, it's pretty much the only way with some. But it always has to be done in the context of helping rather than punishing.

There's so much we could do: start a kind of CCC for homeless youth as a baseline starting point and give them paths up and out. Heal those you can and those you can't at least put them somewhere where they can't ruin it for others. I imagine the emotional response to that would be "send them to jail", I completely understand but it's a lot cheaper if we do something else.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-... https://community.solutions/what-cities-with-successful-home...

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#77

Post by anal_reactor »

scoofy wrote: post #24

[flagged]

I'm really baffled by the amount of anti-social behavior. Case in point: trash. Where I live it's so common to litter that most people simply don't consider littering something wrong. The idea "if people didn't litter we wouldn't be living in a garbage dump" isn't even a part of the social discourse, and the solution is to keep raising taxes to fund more cleaning services. When I see this, it's very hard for me not to think that my tax money is wasted on people who will never respect it, and there's very little wrong with elitism. My second favorite is people having big-ass pavements but bravely deciding to walk on the cycling path because why not. Bonus points if it's a parent with a stroller.

On the benches specifically, I've noticed something interesting. I don't mind sitting on the ground, and when I cannot find a bench, I do exactly that. People often assume I must be homeless.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#78

Post by queenkjuul »

gottorf wrote: post #60
wiskinator wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I don't think that arresting people for the crime of not having money is a good idea. We also cannot seem to fund any actual drug programs, because US citizens hate the idea of anyone getting something for free.

> arresting people for the crime of not having money Such people are not arrested for not having money, but instead for being a pox upon the public by virtue of their behavior.

Aka "the behavior of having no money in public" i.e. laying on benches or sitting on trains etc

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#79

Post by mmooss »

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…

'I think you would be better served by not posting to social media and studying personal liberty and ethics.' Should I be able to enforce it? I think people who make comments like those above are much more dangerous than people on the street - the people on the street can't really do harm.

Thankfully, we do have liberty, and they can do what they want - and I can do what I want - and it's none of your business whether it's healthy or not. People also smoke, are sedentary (lots of people here), eat very poorly, use psilocybin (relatively popular here), drink too much, etc.

The only way to begin to approach it is, rather than making judgments on overused stereotypes (another reason to be banned from online comments), talk to each person and ask what they are doing and what they need. I know, I know - it's outrageous to ask the opinions of people you deem substandard, even about their own lives.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#80

Post by mmooss »

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…

> arresting people tends to work and alternatives tend to not

What I've read many times is that (essentially) the oppposite is widely accepted consensus: Arresting never works. The US tried the 'drug war' for decades and it was ineffective. Do you have evidence otherwise? It's also unjust to criminalize illness and medical problems for poor people (rich people get sympathy, rehab, and lots of second chances).

What does work is overdose prevention, including needle exhanges and safe injection sites, treating addition as the disease it is (which is how it's treated for rich people), and housing (people experiencing the great instability and stress of homelessness are much less likely to make other changes). Maybe some others I'm not thinking of, too.

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