151–160 of 375 posts
Since I moved out of SF I’ve wondered if there will ever be some public epiphany that with their well-intentioned policies they’ve reinforced what they most wanted to destroy: a society of the haves and have-nots.
The issue is not poverty at all . The issue is addiction. This constant framing of the homeless as dispossessed victims, rather than substance abusers with agency, makes it impossible to solve the issue.
> There are 50% more injection drug-users in San Francisco than there are students enrolled at its public high schools Makes me wonder how SF compares to NYC in the 70s and 80s.
It suffered from the same flight to the suburbs many American cities suffered from and benefited from the reversal of that trend.
But whose to say we’re not entering another cycle where QOL suffers in big cities so people leave (usually the wealthiest first) and you see a downward spiral.
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Stealing in Texas is a significantly riskier proposition than stealing from someone in California.
Especially burglary. The scariest stories of post-Chesa SF for my money are the home invasion ones when the owners/tenants are present in the home. Burglaries in Texas don’t happen unless the thief is 100% certain nobody is home.
https://dfw.cbslocal.com/tag/home-invasion/
To be clear “home invasion” is Burglary with people present https://www.merriam-webster.com/legal/home%20invasion)
I think the article is implying the answer to the failed 'left' policies is to replace them with more 'right-wing' policies. I've seen bills popping up that involve criminalizing the homeless or making camping illegal except in designated areas [1], [2]. These are really just 'out of sight, out of mind bills'. Homeless will not respond to criminalization of being homeless just as addicted people don't respond to legi…
I'm sympathetic to a leftist solution here, but let's not ignore the reality of what happened when we built huge public housing buildings in the 50s and 60s. They were a failure for everyone involved, and there aren't any easy solutions.
That changed somewhat later, and the left is fine with funding as long as it’s not in their back yard.
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Poverty is the cause of drug addiction. That explains the rampant drug abuse in the wealthy?
Nobody said poverty is the only cause of drug addiction period. The point was that with homeless people, the poverty and homelessness tends to be what causes the drug addiction.
("in San Francisco") From 2005 to 2020 the estimated number of unsheltered homeless people nearly doubled, even as homelessness declined nationwide. One possible explanation: California has become the dumping ground for the nation's homeless population. We have a nationwide shortage of housing. Both in person and online, I continue to hear homeless people plan to move someplace relatively warm and dry while stuck on…
I'm fairly sure this is an issue with at least all the western democracies. Not to mention other countries. That issue includes housing that is used as an investment, eg kept empty / kept high priced. Then there's the unsuitability of a lot of housing, eg not enough rooms, too many rooms, poor locations.
If your employee, nanny, maid, servant or dogsbody has a one hour drive to get to work each morning, don't expect them to stick around if they can change to a better opportunity.
The great resignation sums this up nicely. Why work there when I can work here?
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> with their well-intentioned policies they’ve reinforced what they most wanted to destroy: a society of the haves and have-nots. As a newly-former SF resident and worker, what I witnessed over the past decade confirms your sad summary. The unintended consequences of misguided yet well-intentioned political policies.
There is nothing well-intentioned about NIMBYism. While all this culture war keeps us busy, cars and short buildings laugh at us.
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Mayor of Denver never went to these camps. You may be talking about the Mayor of Aurora (city next to Denver) who just decided one day to pretend to be homeless. He didn’t work with any organization or ask about the problem. He just went to the most visible camps, met the most visible people and essentially just increased the stigma. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/auroras-mayor-went-unde...
So you’re saying his own experiences should be dismissed because he didn’t gather information through “official” channels?
That's a rather disingenuous take.
Isn't it plausible that taking anecdotal evidence at face value doesn't actually add insight to not only the root causes but also the prevalence of some of it's different categories?
I mean, spending a week living in a tent isn't exactly a way to gather proper statistics on the issue, not to mention the likelihood that the observer might be biased to begin with.
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I'd encourage you to develop some first-hand experience working with this population of resistant addicts.
I have it. My brother is a paranoid schizophrenic who lived in public housing and got care. He was and is an addict and many of the people around him were addicts, but not all of them. I visited quite a bit. Anyway, he stayed alive and was ok because of the care he got, he left everyone alone and didn't ever hurt anyone but himself.
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It's good that people investigate homelessness and go one level deeper. But why do they stop at drug addiction? Or worse, decide that drug addiction is the underlying root cause that now needs to be treated with rehab, detox, or what have you. Drug addiction is not the cause of poverty. Poverty is the cause of drug addiction. The stories of the people who get into drugs recreationally, then descend into addiction, an…
No, it's the result of policies that tolerate and support people refusing to engage with society. Why don't you try going to Chinese slums and seeing if there's homeless? China is equally as capitalistic and has more wealth inequality than the US. And the same problems in housing costs. Homelessness is an American (West Coast liberal) problem. Funny how East Coast cities don't have these problems.
Hard to imagine anybody takes you seriously in life posting things this ignorant. Like, I can only be led to believe you've read not one singular thing about homelessness on the East Coast.
"West Coast Liberal" is also hilarious but probably not an argument for HN.