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Where did all the public bathrooms go?

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Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#701

Post by ajmurmann »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #455
anon48293 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Prison isn't the right idea. But getting them into some sort of treatment would make sense. And that could be court mandated for repeat offenders for some crimes.

That was what was supposed to happen in Oregon when they decriminalized drugs. However, building the treatment centers, shelters, etc took forever, in part due to communities pushing back against these facilities being built in their neighborhoods, and you still need a well-staffed justice system with sufficient judges and public defenders to actually process offenders in a timely fashion or at all. Lack of public defenders, judges and jail capacity is why Portland has so much catch and release, not due to unwillingness to enforce the law.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#702

Post by ajmurmann »

dspillett wrote: post #532
ajmurmann wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of their homeless are addicted to drugs or nectary ill? It seems in the US almost all visible homeless fall into at least one of those groups. Fentanyl and meth seems to be largely a North America issue. I previously was curious how other countries dealt with it. The only country I found that had previously had a meth issue was Estonia or Latvia (not sure anymore). It apparently was really bad for years. The…

> Fentanyl and meth seems to be largely a North America issue. I previously was curious how other countries dealt with it. It isn't a particular drug: if it isn't Fentanyl or meth it will be something else, whatever is available. In the UK it is a mixed bag, but for many the problem substance is alcohol which isn't controllable the way other drugs are because of it being legal and so commonly used in a non (or at lea…

I was under the impression that the more recent type of meth leads to symptoms indistinguishabl from schizophrenia that last many month of abstinence. Source: https://www.econtalk.org/sam-quinones-on-meth-fentanyl-and-t...

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#703

Post by meric_ »

lux-lux-lux wrote: post #692
mancerayder wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that not connected to police enforcement, though? In Europe and now the US the new generations are anti-police, anti-enforcement and generally consider authority and rules to be proof of an unjust society (X group is N percent more likely to receive a criminal summons when ..). In the US in slow motion we could see a world in which you could go to a big chain pharmacy and retrieve your own toothpaste and shamp…

NYC ended up spending $1,440 per dollar in fares recovered on stopping fare jumpers, which is probably why the decree came about in the first place. Is there a particular reason why you think setting gargantuan amounts of money on fire over trivial offenses makes sense?

Because those trivial offences are a nuisance. BART spent millions implementing fare gates which so far, is at a huge loss, but it's dramatically lowered maintenance cost and crime on the transit.

Similarly stores with loss prevention guards are probably losing money, but I'd much rather that than having to click a button to unlock items, etc.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#704

Post by marknutter »

gjm11 wrote: post #607
xyzelement wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think bottom quintile refers to the worst people not necessarily the poor or whatever.

My impression was that OP was using it rather fuzzily, conflating "poor" and "bad" and "unpleasant to be around" and whatever other notions of "bottom" might be floating in the air, in the service of a general air of contempt toward Those People. I took it to mean wealth when talking about taxes, to mean behaviour when talking about laws and risks to life and property, and to be deliberately ambiguous when talking ab…

> My impression was that OP was using it rather fuzzily, conflating "poor" and "bad" and "unpleasant to be around" and whatever other notions of "bottom" might be floating in the air, in the service of a general air of contempt toward Those People.

That assumption says a lot more about you that it does the person you were responding to.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#705

Post by hackable_sand »

adwn wrote: post #620
mrngld wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the burden of proof is on your position. When activists in my area pick a fight with local government, it's never over that invisible group. Indeed, as far as I can tell, they don't give a rip about the veterans living in the forest over by the VA hospital. I've never seen them over there. They're too busy picking fights defending the ones pooping at the downtown parks (and not in the public toilet) or trying…

> they just want volunteers for the hard-to-staff weekday shower-cleaning shift This may sound like a loaded question, but I assure you, that's not my intention. If you want to provide for those "invisible" homeless, who aren't drug addicts or mentally ill, shouldn't the primary volunteer pool consist of exactly those invisible homeless people? Or in other words, once you have organizers, why do you need external vol…

HN comments always seem to be driving in the right direction and then yank the steering wheel at the last moment.

Gotta be some kind of weather vane for you guys.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#706

Post by sgirard »

grehbies wrote: post #685
Libcat99 wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One day a bridge collapsed, and no one came to fix it. This is how an empire dies. One toilet/park/swing at a time.

About a half a dozen who were nearby when the bridge collapsed, and, of those, only two actually missed seeing it happen. *Everyone* heard it, though: a great roaring waterfall of concrete and steel that echoed across the derelict plains for minutes and miles. The local folk would have told you that it was the river flooding a month earlier what had done it; that, and the heat of that summer havign roasted the old ta…

What book is this from? I would like to read it.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#707

Post by xp84 »

lux-lux-lux wrote: post #692
mancerayder wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that not connected to police enforcement, though? In Europe and now the US the new generations are anti-police, anti-enforcement and generally consider authority and rules to be proof of an unjust society (X group is N percent more likely to receive a criminal summons when ..). In the US in slow motion we could see a world in which you could go to a big chain pharmacy and retrieve your own toothpaste and shamp…

NYC ended up spending $1,440 per dollar in fares recovered on stopping fare jumpers, which is probably why the decree came about in the first place. Is there a particular reason why you think setting gargantuan amounts of money on fire over trivial offenses makes sense?

Capitulating to the antisocial persons by just giving up just sends a message to others that this behavior is acceptable. It moves the Overton window. Someone who used to think turnstile hopping was the kind of thing only crooks and low-lifes do sees people doing it more and more, witnesses and hears about how there are no consequences, and can't help but reframe it as more like driving 70 in a 65mph zone -- a harmless thing that "everybody does" and is totally fine. The city has enough money, and after all, Mamdani said he'll make those rich guys pay more! That'll cover my share! Meanwhile transit deteriorates severely.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#708

Post by cortesoft »

anon48293 wrote: post #431
cortesoft wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US “locks people up” at a much higher rate, and for longer, than Japan does. About 1% of the adult population is in jail in the United States, and it’s about 0.03% of the population in Japan. The US puts people in jail at 30x the rate Japan does. It is not because the US doesn’t lock people up enough.

Yes it is. It’s because they let them out again.

That is 1% of adults being CURRENTLY locked up, not people who have ever been locked up in their life. That means the stat already factors in how long they are in for.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#709

Post by modo_mario »

crote wrote: post #498
mvdtnz wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We in the west have surrendered with weak punishments and lax enforcement for anti social behaviour. In many cases even abolishing laws or putting in place public policy that prevents the imprisonment of people who commit "low level" crimes. There's a certain segment of the population who will (largely unsuccessfully) try to shame you if you promote a tough on crime approach. In my country the entire justice system h…

So how come the weak-on-crime Western European countries are not drowning in homeless drug addicts?

There's a growing amount of visible homlessness near here in Brussels and the other big cities in Belgium and a lot of other western european cities

Influences related to migration have overwhelmed whatever support systems there are to tackle this.

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