131–140 of 222 posts
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Certainly - and said drug cities would have billions poured into them, and outside assistance. Still cheaper than prisons.
So non drug addicted people work to help and support drug addicted people enjoy life?
Rent should be Anyone who is chronically homeless should be offered jobs and paid housing. If that doesn't work, then they become a ward of the state and treated as a child. [1] https://www.chase.com/personal/banking/education/budgeting-s... .
That’s going to be most of them, as most are drug addicts. And no I don’t have any stats for you, frankly just walk around SF or Portland, it’s obvious.
Have you considered that you only notice the addicts and mentally ill? Because they don't give a shit about being seen as homeless. Everyone else is probably trying to keep up appearances by hanging out in libraries or coffee shops during the day.
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Realistically, the only way we can solve this is with incarceration. This has little to do with the availability of housing, or the cost of housing. Some people will simply refuse to live in the housing that is provided. Many are so mentally ill and addicted to drugs that no amount of money we give them, either directly or indirectly, will get them off the streets. Proposed solutions that don't involve incarceration…
Trivia: what country incarcerates the most people per capita? Oddly, that country is the topic of discussion here. And I live and work in/near San Francisco and it's plenty a shit show depending on neighborhood, but a very far cry from an "open-air drug den". Let's dig in deeper for solutions.
I mean, you can stop right there. Our cities should not be like that. We need to have higher standards than that.
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>I don't see any advantage to being homeless You missed the "in SF" part of the sentence. In a sense you're correct, it is in part a market failure in SF for subsidizing homelessness. >Literally every human being without mental issues would prefer having a roof over their head I have a few times, on purpose. Not being responsible for a house can be liberating, depending on your life circumstances -- if you're not add…
Good for you. The closest I've come to homelessness is renting a room so shitty that sleeping in the lab at my university was preferable. And I hated even that. I'd never be voluntarily homeless.
So I bought a shitty car and slept in the forest. The car finally broke down. I wound up homeless. I found out I really loved the forest and spending my time outdoors. I loved to spend months at a time in tents, coming into town to do day labor. Really it's a life I dream of nearly daily now that I have responsibilities to my family that keep me chained to a desk 5 days a week, and to a child during the weekends.
Only once you've been homeless you realize the problems of the homeless are typically the reason why they became homeless - drugs/addiction, mental illness, criminal record, lack of skills for employment. I had none of those problems really, so to me it was just a new adventure, except I could go practically anywhere I wanted and just enjoy travelling. I knew how to live outdoors and can easily adapt a tarp for inclement weather so for me it was just fun, for real! But I know it isn't that way for someone who doesn't want that life. I could always just pick up a day of day labor, and after a couple weeks of that afford to rent another room -- many people have personal problems that keep them from doing that.
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Realistically, the only way we can solve this is with incarceration. This has little to do with the availability of housing, or the cost of housing. Some people will simply refuse to live in the housing that is provided. Many are so mentally ill and addicted to drugs that no amount of money we give them, either directly or indirectly, will get them off the streets. Proposed solutions that don't involve incarceration…
I know plenty of homeless people in San Francisco without drug issues. The reason they are on the street or living in their cars or crashing on a friends couch in between either other spot? They cannot afford rent. Both friends I am currently in contact with are also CURRENTLY employed.
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I agree that incarceration isn't progressive, but is it conservative? I mean I'm sure conservatives will appreciate brutalizing (those they perceive as) criminals for little more than the sake of it, but prisons in California aren't cheap, and is there much appetite for even more taxation?
This is a grotesque mischaracterization of conservatives. Just because a group of people do not agree with you does not make them violence-obsessed brutes.
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The advantage is that you save money by not needing to pay rent.
Not a ton of savings, tbh. You have to eat out every meal, deal with your shit getting stolen, lost sleep, probably lowered social status leading to less desirable jobs. Being poor is expensive.
If you do day labor all week you just made $500 and you only need $100 to survive the week. Pretty easy to sock money away that way... if you decide to rent a room a couple weeks of that gets you your first week in a weekly rental and from there you can clean up and get a regular factory job. I had a well oiled process that I ran that cycle quite a few times. AFter 1-3 months at a factory I would generally get a fork-lift job or something that paid even more and from there you're basically as rich as the average American.
Bonus: If you have HN skills your average wage from the fork-lift job will give you enough to buy a nice laptop, hi-speed internet and then a high-paying programming job -- although it's obviously not generally applicable (although I've done it).
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> homeless industrial complex First time I’m hearing of such a complex that sounds oxymoronic. How big is this complex? Who are the players? How do they make so much money to become a complex industry?
See motel owners getting paid $100k and even $250k+ per key by the government: https://mynorthwest.com/2744155/seattles-two-new-hotel-homel... The motels would be worth nowhere near that much if sold as a motel, and it is happening all up and down west coast cities. I know one property that sold for $150k per key, which would have sold for half that to a non government buyer, and the kicker is that it sits empty exce…
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> but if they were issued citations, they couldn't pay, and still don't have any way to get rid of their trash... I would think that using public money to haul away trash would have a pretty good return on investment for everyone concerned. One of the points of the justice system is to ensure that people are sufficiently disincentivized from doing things that society has decided shouldnt be done. We shouldnt consider…
that "[point] of the justice system" only works if you consider everyone in a vacuum and have the false notion everyone has equal access to resources. parent already outlined why people living on the street don't have the means to throw away trash in the right place, but you're focused on it "enabl[ing] bad behavior" and (i assume) in support of giving people that have no money fines (which also unfairly impact poore…
No false notions required -- all living people have a risk of loss of freedoms, which is why prison works.
> why can't there be more public garbage cans
I suppose this mostly makes sense until we start to have local businesses using them for free trash disposal. Why would I be more in favor of public trash cans you ask? (so you dont have to continue presuming...) Because it's enabling and encouraging an ideal behavior -- people dispose of their trash in an orderly manner.
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Because everyone knows that SF will tolerate behavior that other cities will not, and that attracts the most problematic homeless people from all over the country. It's practically a network effect for homeless encampments.
> attracts the most problematic homeless people from all over the country Here's a study someone else posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33010913 "The data shows that over 70% of all of SF's unhoused people became homeless while living in San Francisco"