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“No Defense of the Indefensible”: L.A. Judge Makes Landmark Homelessness Ruling

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Re: “No Defense of the Indefensible”: L.A. Judge Makes Landmark Homelessness Ruling

#111

Post by bifrost »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #93
bifrost wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because its illegal to commit someone to an institution who hasn't comitted a crime. San Francisco is trying a new approach but has only managed to get ONE person into conservatorship in the last 2 years because of all the roadblocks put up by a group called "The Coalition on Homelessness". https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/conservatorship-off-to-a-slo... To give you an idea, you have to be 5150'ed (aka put on a psychi…

> Because its illegal to commit someone to an institution who hasn't comitted a crime. I'm still not seeing what that do with "Reagan". If it's a law he instituted, that law could be changed back, yes?

No, the ACLU sued and its now the law of the land, its probably impossible to undue. Uninformed people blame Reagan for "closing the institutions" but you can't have an institution and nobody to put in it...

Re: “No Defense of the Indefensible”: L.A. Judge Makes Landmark Homelessness Ruling

#112

Post by bifrost »

staticautomatic wrote: post #14
bifrost wrote: post #7

Interesting how the article completely leaves out the Heroin/Fentanyl/Meth epidemic. SF is another example of what happens when public policy gets it wrong, our false compassion is killing people and city leaders are doing less than nothing about it.

What is the nature of this “false compassion”?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/us/san-francisco-drug-cri...

Here's a current article written by a local advocate, its unfortunately paywalled but you're probably aware of ways around that.

Here's a snippet:

I called Thomas Wolf, one of the loudest critics of the city’s policies, to run past him what I was hearing from professors and other experts who have spent their lives studying drug use.

“Forgive me for saying this,” Mr. Wolf politely told me, “but those people who you said you talked to — the experts — they have never shot dope, man. They never stuck a needle in their neck. They never spent a night on the street.”

Mr. Wolf has done all of those things, which makes him one of the most poignant voices in the debate over what San Francisco should do to address an epidemic that claimed 713 lives last year, more than twice as many as died from the coronavirus in the city in 2020.

“You can study homelessness and addiction in a book all day long,” Mr. Wolf told me. “But until you have experienced the power of addiction and the things you thought you would never resort to, you don’t really understand.”

Re: “No Defense of the Indefensible”: L.A. Judge Makes Landmark Homelessness Ruling

#113

Post by bifrost »

swiley wrote: post #89
bifrost wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In SF our homelessness is driven by drug abuse and the lack of ability to put addicts and the mentally ill into conservatorship, its well documented. > If we're on the subject of compassion, millions who are no longer able to acquire effective pain relief could use some. Could you clarify what you mean by that?

As someone looking at you guys from across the continent: at least part of your problem appears to come from a refusal to build dense housing which would allow people making something nearer average wage to sleep indoors.

Housing has very little to do with it. SF has always been an expensive city to live in and its surrounded with suburbs with affordable housing.

There are almost no homeless people in the surrounding areas because they come to SF for drugs and they know they won't be prosecuted for living their lifestyle. We're literally killing people by tolerating their bad behavior.

Re: “No Defense of the Indefensible”: L.A. Judge Makes Landmark Homelessness Ruling

#114

Post by bifrost »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #9
bifrost wrote: post #7

Interesting how the article completely leaves out the Heroin/Fentanyl/Meth epidemic. SF is another example of what happens when public policy gets it wrong, our false compassion is killing people and city leaders are doing less than nothing about it.

Opioids are at most a companion to the homeless epidemic. If we're on the subject of compassion, millions who are no longer able to acquire effective pain relief could use some.

They're really not.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/us/san-francisco-drug-cri...

Re: “No Defense of the Indefensible”: L.A. Judge Makes Landmark Homelessness Ruling

#115

Post by soledades »

pseudo0 wrote: post #96
soledades wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is somewhat begging the question, which is, at its core: “is the gov’t directly responsible for the humanitarian crisis at Skid Row.”

It was intended as more of a proof by contradiction. If we assume that the judge is correct in assessing this as a state created danger, then this standard would also apply to a wide variety of dangers that the government is also involved with, which have never been classified as such.

The notion that this reasoning would apply to an absurd (for your reductio ad absurdum) variety of cases is just a slight reframing of the point of contention.

By way of example, assume, for the sake of contradiction, that your argument is valid. Then, by similar reasoning, I could argue that any argument I disagree with can be taken to unreasonable extremes, and is therefore invalid, etc. etc. :P

Re: “No Defense of the Indefensible”: L.A. Judge Makes Landmark Homelessness Ruling

#116

Post by bifrost »

giantg2 wrote: post #88
bifrost wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from SF, I know exactly where "skid row" was, and I also worked there for about a decade. Nobody was shipped in from other parts of the city either unless you count people moving from other counties to where meth/heroin/fentanyl was easily available. You can count the number of people on the street, maybe 1 in 15 has an alcoholic beverage, the rest are smoking meth/fenty/heroin. SF's problems are all about drugs.

Oh, when they say Skid Row, they mean the 50 block one in LA (the most famous one). Maybe SF is different. It seems alcohol is still the most abused substance in the homeless population. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29852450/

AFAIK "Skid Row" is a generic term, and I did reference SF's specific area.

This is basically what you'll see every few feet in San Francisco's Tenderloin district:

https://twitter.com/DTenderloine/status/1382405311009488897

(Warning, extremely graphic)

Alcohol is certainly abused, but not as publicly as Heroin/Fentanyl....

Re: “No Defense of the Indefensible”: L.A. Judge Makes Landmark Homelessness Ruling

#117

Post by [deleted] »

dragonwriter wrote: post #107
temp8964 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read through and it seems to be a crazy plan for me. The judge appears to be extremely ideology driven and a believer of the critical race theory to his core. It is also laughable to think a judge has a grand plan to solve a societal issue. So a judge appointed himself to be the supreme planner of the city? The idea that a judge thinks himself can solve the homeless problem with a big plan is by itself pathetic.

> Read through and it seems to be a crazy plan for me. There’s no as actual plan, just “you will put the money you promised to spend on this in escrow so as to not put the plaintiff’s in a worse situation than you have already announced the intent to, and then you will make certain explanations and achieve certain goals by set times”. A plan would specify how those results will be met. > It is also laughable to think…

[deleted]

Re: “No Defense of the Indefensible”: L.A. Judge Makes Landmark Homelessness Ruling

#118

Post by AnimalMuppet »

celticninja wrote: post #24
disgrunt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As they should. This is judiciary overreach.

Yes let's leave these people in horrific environments and situations because we can. I can't believe that when common morality is so absent,that when it is so bad it has to be legally mandated, there are still people who think that leaving them to rot is ok. You are probably not a Christian, but you have a large Christian population and that they allow this to happen just highlights the hypocrisy of the entire idea o…

> Yes let's leave these people in horrific environments and situations because we can.

Yes, let's make sure that we keep the limits on government, because we've seen bad examples of what happens when the government isn't limited.

There's more than one problem that deserves compassion...

Re: “No Defense of the Indefensible”: L.A. Judge Makes Landmark Homelessness Ruling

#119

Post by AnimalMuppet »

giantg2 wrote: post #85
PeterWhittaker wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have my popcorn ready to watch the appeals process and policy discussions this should engender. I expect that much of the ruling will be struck down, but cannot help but think that the state-caused-danger has legs. Ultimately, my guess is that a superior court will set the judgement aside while upholding some elements as correct, then direct the city and county to address those specific elements deemed to have meri…

Yeah, the courts generally say that you have to accommodate or remedy whatever the general request or grievance. They generally do not write/rewrite policy. That's supposed be for the executive and legislative branch to come up with. It should be interesting to watch. My guess is we won't hear the final result for a few years... as usual.

Right, but... if I understand correctly, the judge ordered things to be done to stop the ongoing harm while the case was being decided. In order to avoid having to do this, LA is going to need to win an appeal about the temporary order before the 180 days runs out. Court slowness is now working against LA.

Disclaimer: IANAL, and all that...

Re: “No Defense of the Indefensible”: L.A. Judge Makes Landmark Homelessness Ruling

#120

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Camillo wrote: post #29

I'll never understand how the American system of government is meant to work. You've got a legislature that typically fails to legislate, an executive that sometimes does the legislature's job, and a judiciary that can randomly step in and write both laws and decrees as long as someone brings the case before them. I hasten to note that many of everyone's favorite decisions came out of this process, so it seems to wor…

The American system boils down to this: Never give anyone power that someone else cannot block. The point wasn't efficiency; the point was preventing authoritarianism.

Now, you can look at a case like this, and say that what the judge did is pretty authoritarian. But there's an appeals court above this court, and LA has already appealed. If this judge overstepped, the ruling can be overturned.

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