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The Disappearance of the Public Bench

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Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#101

Post by Taek »

queenkjuul wrote: post #72
ipsento606 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I personally have close to a dozen friends who have spent between 2 and 6 weeks of their life (but not longer) living out of their car in a state of actual temporary homelessness. Almost always due to financial issues.

Temporarily living in vehicles is absolutely a thing.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#102

Post by Taek »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #97
Taek wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We didn't eliminate benches in public spaces because we wanted to reduce the presence of the nice, respectful, and polite homeless. We eliminated benches to reduce the presence of the problematic homeless, which has a much higher rate of drug abuse and mental illness.

>We eliminated benches to reduce the presence of the problematic homeless, which has a much higher rate of drug abuse and mental illness. We eliminated benches to reduce the rate at which the problematic homeless cross paths with the complainers. The DPW as an organization doesn't give a shit about how many commuter's asses a bench serves from 6am to 8pm. It just knows that every day when Karen sees a homeless man sl…

When I was in San Francisco, I had a homeless man with one eye (the empty eye socket actively oozing) come up to me unprovoked (quite literally unprovoked, I was just on a walk and not interacting with anybody at all), get within 2 centimeters of my face, and scream at the top of his lungs "I WILL MURDER YOU". He then walked away and nothing else of note happened (aside from me spending the rest of the evening with my pulse at 140).

Suffice to say, I don't think it's fair to categorize me as a Karen for asserting that San Francisco has a large number of problematic homeless people. I could give about 8 other stories (from SF, Boston, NYC, and Chicago) that happened to me, two of which (both SF) include grown men dropping their pants, exposing their genitals, and visibly pooping on public streets where children were present, with no attempt to obtain any degree of privacy.

These aren't stories from my friends, these are things that I personally witnessed and experienced. These aren't 'oh that guy is ugly and smelly' stories, these are 'if I did that myself I would be arrested' stories.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#103

Post by next_xibalba »

pstuart wrote: post #76
next_xibalba wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 don't think the police analogy works. The relevant question is not whether a big police budget solves crime. Not the expected outcome. The real question is whether, when crimes happen, the system is allowed to investigate, arrest, prosecute, punish, deter, and incapacitate criminals.

If you port the SF/PDX homelessness model into criminal justice, the analogy would be something like this: we spend a lot on police, but we also prevent them from arresting people, prevent prosecutors from prosecuting, treat enforcement as inhumane, and then decide that the problem is insufficient “resources” or “coordination.”

Money isn't irrelevant. It's that money cannot overcome a policy framework that refuses to impose obligations on the people causing damage. You can spend billions on outreach, services, navigation centers, nonprofit contracts, and harm-reduction.. etc etc. But if the answer to refusal is always “try again tomorrow,” then the system has no endpoint and fails.

YEs, involuntary institutionalization should be used carefully. Jail should not be the first answer for people whose problem is psychosis, addiction, or incapacity. But that doesn't concedes the central point: for many, voluntary help will not work. The only real solution is compulsory: treatment, supervised placement, or jail. And it can't be after multiple years of attempts while the person languishes on the streets and the commons are destroyed.

A crisis care program for homeless youth might be good upstream, but it doesn't address acute problems: chronically homeless people who are severely mentally ill, addicted, violent, or destructive (usually multiple at the same time), and who refuse help. Those cases require either 1) shelter or treatment (won't work for most), 2) secure care, or 3) jail.

Again, the question isn't “should we give up because spending has not solved homelessness?” The question is whether the current model is even capable of solving it. A system built around voluntary services, weak enforcement, and tolerance of public disorder will predictably produce encampments, addiction zones, and unusable public spaces no matter how much money it receives. The missing piece isn't just funding. It is authority, conditionality, and a cultural choice to protect the commons.

Also, zealously dismantle and prosecute the non-profit homelessness grift complex.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#104

Post by Anvoker »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #14
strictnein wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

Unfortunately, framing the problem as this kind of dichotomy is something people are inclined to do because then the problem can be reduced to the unwillingness of the opposing side to face reality.

Sometimes the dichotomy is correct, but the bias exists.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#105

Post by vavooom »

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…

[flagged]

Actually it stays present! [1] When controlled for any number of factors homelessness is clearly a housing issue.

> [1] https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#106

Post by watwut »

next_xibalba wrote: post #103
pstuart wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 don't think the police analogy works. The relevant question is not whether a big police budget solves crime. Not the expected outcome. The real question is whether, when crimes happen, the system…

You are talking about a country with one of highest incarceration rates in the world, certainly western world.

A country with so expensive legal defense that most simply cant afford it. And a country that punishes even attempt to go to court to defend oneself with years and years of additional prison time if you loose.

A country where it is near impossible to convince a cop or prosecutor of wrongdoing, a country that goes really out of its way to rationalize what would be a clear murder elsewhere. A country with qualified immunity too.

Oh, and a country willing to incarcerate on any quack pseudo science.

But, somehow ... it is prosecutors and police who need more help.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#107

Post by Danox »

America is not known for caring about public infrastructure if they can avoid it once upon a time most cities actually had a public work department that actually tried to keep you know the public places clean they don’t anymore if you want clean public places you have to go someplace else in the world. Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea.

Most of that stuff has been farmed out to subcontractors in America and that includes what your kids eat in most public schools, the school cafeteria is just one big vending machine these days.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#108

Post by thinkingtoilet »

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.

This sounds like it's from someone who say a video on the two square blocks in SF or Philly and has let the propaganda make them believe this is common everywhere in every American city.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#109

Post by next_xibalba »

watwut wrote: post #106
next_xibalba wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 don't think the police analogy works. The relevant question is not whether a big police budget solves crime. Not the expected outcome. The real question is whether, when crimes happen, the system…

You are talking about a country with one of highest incarceration rates in the world, certainly western world. A country with so expensive legal defense that most simply cant afford it. And a country that punishes even attempt to go to court to defend oneself with years and years of additional prison time if you loose. A country where it is near impossible to convince a cop or prosecutor of wrongdoing, a country that…

> But, somehow ... it is prosecutors and police who need more help.

I'm not sure how you get that from what I wrote. My solution is (like many, many places in the world): "treatment or jail, but we will not tolerate a destruction of the commons". PDX/SF could do this with the police they have, and it might even imply force reduction as getting those people off the streets would reduce A LOT of crime.

Yes, the U.S. has many significant problems. I agree. Is your suggestion that we have to address them sequentially, prioritized according to your preferences... or else do nothing?

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