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US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

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Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#191

Post by moshun »

diogenescynic wrote: post #180
pseudalopex wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most homeless are elderly and mentally Ill. The solutions are institutionalization and retirement housing/pensions but no state did this after Reagan and instead made homelessness an issue to ignore. Most homeless people are working age and homeless under a year. Costs of living are the strongest correlates of homelessness rates.

>Costs of living are the strongest correlates of homelessness rates. I suspect this is strongly skewed by half of all homeless living in California where they seem to be mostly from out of state and coming here for the weather, lenient drug laws, and many social benefits. You can just ask them and they will tell you--most of them are from red states where they'd be locked up for what they do here. As such, they came…

You seem to be under an assumption that unhoused people are making detailed plans to travel cross-country to do drugs in California. As opposed to the reality that most unhoused Americans migrate here because our laws and weather are a bit less cruel.

Seems fairly obvious that outlawing sleeping on the streets will make homelessness itself a defacto crime, which will ultimately benefit the prison industrial complex by providing a whole new stream of nearly free labor, thanks to the 13th Amendment. Tack on the housing swiftly becoming unaffordable almost anywhere in the country (major metropolitan areas especially) and you’ve got a recipe for dystopian profits.

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#192

Post by harlanji »

moshun wrote: post #191
diogenescynic wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Costs of living are the strongest correlates of homelessness rates. I suspect this is strongly skewed by half of all homeless living in California where they seem to be mostly from out of state and coming here for the weather, lenient drug laws, and many social benefits. You can just ask them and they will tell you--most of them are from red states where they'd be locked up for what they do here. As such, they came…

You seem to be under an assumption that unhoused people are making detailed plans to travel cross-country to do drugs in California. As opposed to the reality that most unhoused Americans migrate here because our laws and weather are a bit less cruel. Seems fairly obvious that outlawing sleeping on the streets will make homelessness itself a defacto crime, which will ultimately benefit the prison industrial complex b…

I became homeless in SF 6 years ago, probably would have been out after like a year if not for pandemic. Same program over and over, feels like I'm about to get off the street again 3 hours outside SF. Housing here is so reasonable. $1,000 for a 2 bedroom right in town. Plenty of employment. Not saying where I am until I'm off the street. But I've been working on survival guides and my 'Homeless Guy' vlog videos are popping my channel off.

We really need to get homeless people distributed to small towns. Centralizing them in big cities is so backwards. There are indeed 2+ strata of homeless as another has mentioned, I'd call them addicts and life happened-ers. I'm the latter, life happened and pandemic and more life happenings made it into a complex/non-linear situation.

Literally been working 6 years to get like $20k to fix my life with. Used to be a software engineer, got into a legal dispute and that messed me up bad, gotta get into housing before I try to fix that and then try to get back into tech. Not interested in free jobs that I don't go through the normal pipeline for, happy enough working as a dish washer / grocery clerk for the past several years. I'm not available by email or phone, too difficult to communicate logistics. Can't wait to get back to meaningful tech work tho.

I'm one case, the life happened-ers are all different. But I think getting them to small towns to rebuild is definitely the way. Really easy for me to save money and nobody knows I'm homeless, just very very slow. But it's fair and sustainable.

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#193

Post by SeanAnderson »

pseudalopex wrote: post #174
SeanAnderson wrote: post #97

I don't really understand how it could be any other way. If you envision a hypothetical city which has too many unhoused persons relative to the city's financial ability to support those people - then what? The unhoused just die in the street unable to be moved somewhere that has sufficient resources to support them? I get that there's a lot more nuance to this problem and that the ruling can be abused/used to enforc…

What cities say they have the resources to support other cities' homeless people?

On some level, the answer is likely none because there's not much in it for them. That said, cities declare themselves as "sanctuary cities" well enough so it's not unreasonable to think this could be extended - although immigrants provide more economic benefits than the unhoused.

Still, it doesn't have to be ungrounded in numbers. Take GDP per capita for a city, normalize it by cost of living, and pass a federal law saying cities are only required to support an unhoused population that represents a percentage of the normalized cost burden.

Cities already bus unhoused people to other cities to try and shift the burden of responsibility. We could at least orchestrate the process in a way that fairly divides the economic cost. As it stands, it's just whoever acts faster and with fewer morals benefits and relatively poor areas with desirable outdoor weather shoulder the burden.

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#194

Post by edmundsauto »

jjav wrote: post #107
legitster wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Faced with the ability to legally incarcerate nearly 600,000 people, states likely won't hesitate to do just that without a second thought. Prisoners cost ~ $40k a year annually in taxes. It's actually cheaper to house them - so I don't think states are going to be gung-ho about doing either.

> Prisoners cost ~ $40k a year annually in taxes. The racket is that many prisions are private for-profit companies. So this is a way to funnel taxpayer money into those corporations. Who in turn are friends and campaign contributors of the politicians who push for more people into prisions. So it all feeds itself and the cost doesn't matter. The more cost, the better (to them).

What is the relevant population of prisoners who could be in a profit system? I have seen that only a small single digit percentage of prisons are for profit. It would be great to estimate the scale of those so I understand if this is a base case or edge.

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#195

Post by vharuck »

Terr_ wrote: post #26
wilg wrote: post #5

Dumb decision, but we really just gotta build more homes mainly. A good overview of why this is the best solution to homelessness: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...

> Dumb decision Well, what's the alternative? Do you believe all local laws such as "FooBar park closes at dusk" are federally unconstitutional , and that actually enforcing any of them is "cruel and unusual punishment" against people who desire to camp there overnight? Remember: It's perfectly possible to say that certain situations are unlawful/unjust/immoral for other reasons, it's not like "I think it violates th…

In this case, an alternative was the city providing a homeless shelter. The only shelter in town required those staying there to participate in religious activities. So the homeless people had to choose between (1) arrest (2) forced religious participation, or (3) leaving town.

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#196

Post by squigz »

asdff wrote: post #131
crooked-v wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of this judgment is that cities can now illegalize homelessness without needing to build any shelters .

Well, most cities with a homeless crisis today don't exactly have the spare jail capacity to actually enforce anything like that, so I think giving some tools where you can be pragmatic about where an issue is presently taking place while you can attempt to solve it on the back end is useful. My city has already passed laws about homeless camps near dangerous intersections for pedestrians who have to step into the st…

> most cities with a homeless crisis today don't exactly have the spare jail capacity to actually enforce anything like that

I've never heard of a jail capacity shortage in America, so could someone provide some data on this?

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#197

Post by dantheman »

canada_dry wrote: post #90
nimbius wrote: post #45

I feel like the outcome of this is unilaterally bad. Most homeless are elderly and mentally Ill. The solutions are institutionalization and retirement housing/pensions but no state did this after Reagan and instead made homelessness an issue to ignore. Faced with the ability to legally incarcerate nearly 600,000 people, states likely won't hesitate to do just that without a second thought. For a country that prides i…

> states likely won't hesitate to do just that Especially those that have for-profit prison system - which in some cases have state legislators as investors/stakeholders.

You do realize that real problem is the prison guard union and public prisons right?

Private prisons represent 8% of all prisoners...

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#198

Post by dantheman »

edmundsauto wrote: post #194
jjav wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Prisoners cost ~ $40k a year annually in taxes. The racket is that many prisions are private for-profit companies. So this is a way to funnel taxpayer money into those corporations. Who in turn are friends and campaign contributors of the politicians who push for more people into prisions. So it all feeds itself and the cost doesn't matter. The more cost, the better (to them).

What is the relevant population of prisoners who could be in a profit system? I have seen that only a small single digit percentage of prisons are for profit. It would be great to estimate the scale of those so I understand if this is a base case or edge.

8%

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#199

Post by foogazi »

diogenescynic wrote: post #180
pseudalopex wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most homeless are elderly and mentally Ill. The solutions are institutionalization and retirement housing/pensions but no state did this after Reagan and instead made homelessness an issue to ignore. Most homeless people are working age and homeless under a year. Costs of living are the strongest correlates of homelessness rates.

>Costs of living are the strongest correlates of homelessness rates. I suspect this is strongly skewed by half of all homeless living in California where they seem to be mostly from out of state and coming here for the weather, lenient drug laws, and many social benefits. You can just ask them and they will tell you--most of them are from red states where they'd be locked up for what they do here. As such, they came…

> most of them are from red states where they'd be locked up for what they do here. As such, they came to California because they can get away with it and it's the easiest place to survive

This sounds eerily similar to the origin story of the early American colonies

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#200

Post by kelseyfrog »

pseudalopex wrote: post #154
crooked-v wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely expect mass arrests and quasi-deportations of the homeless (along the lines of "we won't prosecute you if you take this bus ticket to San Francisco") over the next few months in red states and in red cities in blue states.

Why not blue cities in blue states? California's governor and San Francisco's mayor praised the decision.[1] [1] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/sf-supre...

Because it's inhumane to treat people as a punishment?
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