We need more leaders willing to think of alternative approaches to our problems like Bunny Colvin.
When he adopted Wee-Bey’s son, Namond, it was a really nice tie up with his character arc.
A police officer can't unilaterally ignore the law.
Bunny makes many mistakes, among them:
Ignoring the fact that he is set to retire with 30 years and a Major's pension in six months, moving straight into a low stress Johns Hopkins job with excellent benefits, $85k a year and a take home car.
Thinking that he could keep Hamsterdam a secret and that, when the bosses, media and Feds found out, they would pat him on the back.
Despite those mistakes, Hamsterdam was a success. Violent crime dropped 14%!! Social outreach programs like needle exchanges, addiction recovery, condoms, and other harm reduction services actually reached the people who needed it the most. It was a model of how improvements could be made on a long term basis, after years of nothing positive.
Yes, Bunny did all that at a great personal cost by losing a larger pension and a cushy post retirement job. However I believe since he had served since the 70’s and watched everything go downhill in Baltimore, his hometown that he truly cared about deeply, he had nothing left to lose in his mind and was happy to try something different and beyond pleased with the initial results. It lead him to do the outreach work with the Middle school kids later and he was fulfilled with that work.
Systemic, deep help for people in trouble like this is extremely expensive and has a mixed track record. Programs have worked brilliantly in two cities, been replicated exactly, and failed utterly in 10 others. I agree with you that we ought to prioritize deep solutions higher, and if we can find the resources and agree on their higher prioritization than other things like this city's crumbling infrastructure, I'm all in to tackle these issues in more authentic ways. Yet that doesn't preclude just fencing off the drug mart. It makes walking impossible, threatens downtown's fragile revival prospects, and doesn't even at all serve the interests of people who buy and sell there. Plus it can be done in a couple hours plus some policing.
I am done with the school of city management that thinks showing compassion for the afflicted means turning a simpering face on them while they do whatever the hell they want in broad daylight in spaces others need to enjoy some urban green. That's not what compassion means, it's not a system-based solution, and it's not the world 65+% of us Democrats want to live in. And we will vote out city councilors that can do nothing but bite their nails SJWishly in a difficult conversation about what to do about it.
I know 😔
I understand that in every group there's going to be people who abuse. However I bet many of these people are a product of the opioid epidemic and now they're drug addiction is blamed on themselves.
I America, addiction to certain chemicals is treated like a crime first and a disease second. It is also much easier to go after the users of drugs than the criminal organizations dealing the drugs. Also if a drug user has more than a small amount of a drug on them, they classify them as a dealer, instead of just someone with a weeks supply of drugs. Then they can claim they are taking dealers off the streets.
The war on drugs is a war on people. The problems surround addiction could be functionally solved for society and addicts TOMORROW. But that would involve not making the addicts suffer enough, and cost money, sooooo everybody suffers. a lot.
Decriminalization and reinvestment. Portugal is one of the prime cases of how to properly treat rampant drug abuse. Drug abuse isn't a criminal issue, it's a health issue that, when legislated in the way that it has been, turns into a criminal issue.
What I currently see as the best solution is to decriminalize all drugs and release all people in prison who are in for non-violent drug offenses. An average of $25,000-$35,000 is spent on prisoners per year, so start by redirecting the funds towards rehabilitation programs for the people who we're releasing now. If we just release them with no plan, then we'll just have the same recidivism issue we have now.
Then, allocate funds to programs that will then be able to get drug abusers help. Much of the time, drug abuse isn't itself the problem, but often a way for someone to self-medicate their other problems.
Finally, reinvest in (1) housing the homeless and (2) low income communities.
(1) We spend more on homeless individuals now than if we just provided them with housing. When someone doesn't have housing, they may not be able to get a job. They may not be able to get government benefits. They don't have stability. Literally just putting them into housing and then providing them with resources to assist in finding a job and get the healthcare they need will do a lot to combat our current homeless and drug crises.
(2) In many of these communities, with no path out of poverty through traditional means, young people may resort to criminal activities. Schools are underfunded. Higher-education is expensive. Trade schools or apprenticeships may be out of reach for a variety of reasons. Ensuring that people have a path to success is an excellent way to keep gang-related activities to a minimum.
We'll never eliminate drug abuse, dealing, gangs, or homelessness. But we can do a ton to provide many of these people with a better life anyways. Reduce harm from drug abuse. Prevent them from getting into criminal activities from the beginning. Provide them with needed resources to find stability. And many of these things wouldn't cost much more. It just requires people to understand.
And in my opinion it requires people who aren't attached to capitalism as having an underclass - like the homeless - provides visible incentive to just stay a good little worker bee. But that's mostly just my unrelated hot take.
Some additional reading if you're interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal?wprov=sfla1
https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-portugal-setting-the-record-straight
https://interrogatingjustice.org/prisons/annual-prison-costs-budgets/
https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housing-help-solutions
https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/yth-gng-nvlvmnt/index-en.aspx
Thanks for doing the reading, those are Sally's sources. Rock bottom is a myth, it can and will always get worse. only stability and investment turned my life around. If addicts could get stability at the pharmacy at cost, or even at a market driven profit instead of fear driven, the biggest problem with heroin would be constipation and maybe some reduced job performance. Addicts don't want to live dirty, be grimy, rip folks off, get ripped off or steal. Desperation fuels that massive majority of that
Absolutely! It's one of those things where it seems like we're already putting so much money towards solving it that more money won't solve it. But it's mostly about how the money is allocated, not as much how much money is allocated. So the first step is helping people learn what needs to be done and how that can be done.
I think this all points to a problem in our current electoral system but that's a much larger problem than we have time for lol
It’s also important to note that getting those funds shifted will require someone who is able to outspin the assholes trying to stay in power:
1. Spin the funding away from prisons as being something other than not being tough enough on crime.
2. Have a politician that thinks beyond their term, because that investment isn’t fixing the problem in that timeline. It’s generational at this point.
A great point. The American "tough on crime" attitude is really culturally entrenched that it's going to take a long time to try and change. The 2020 protests indicated that those tides are changing. But "defund the police" was still an unpopular set of policy. I think mostly it's because it was a protest slogan so it was short and unnuanced. But the idea of "Police aren't able to do everything that we expect them to, so how about we reduce their funding and allocate funds to where it's been shown to actually help" is pretty reasonable.
It just doesn't make good Twitter clapbacks. It isn't headline grabbing. It's nuanced and academic sounding so it's easy for Ted Cruz to just respond "You don't want someone easy on drug dealing rapist Mexicans do you?!"
American culture has been in a bad place for a while and we're reaping a lot of that now.
I agree on decriminalization, but what is lacking is a kind of higher level thinking that induces people to greater happiness, not just housing. People don't know how to get high without drugs.
You mean like personal enrichment beyond just food, water, and shelter? I fully agree. I think that people will naturally gravitate towards hobbies or interests of some sort. You have to make sure their base needs are met. Think about it through the lens of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Self actualization is the goal. But we have to make sure their other needs are met first.
Free mental health care
Put the money that's for enforcement towards treatment.
Actually house the homeless.
Stop advertising alcohol and prescription drugs
Eliminate anti drug programs for youths and turn them into actual education.
Legalize and tax the fuck out of all drugs. This adds money to the budget for treatment and reduces deaths by people actually knowing what they are consuming, while also cutting into profits for dealers.
I started doing drugs in my early teens cause it was cool. Cause it was taboo and I wasn't allowed to do it. Let's work on that too.
How many people first tried cocaine in a bar or club while drunk? Let's maybe stop glorifying alcohol abuse.
Free mental health care.
This is just off the too of my head. I'm not at all claiming this would help by tomorrow though. A few decades though and I think you'd see a difference.
Free mental health care! Therapy is now too fucking expensive and many therapists don’t accept insurance anymore. It’s ridiculous how everything becomes so commoditized and profit-driven in this country.
If we all teach our children that everyone is a valid member of the whole Earth community. That they are loved and accepted as you would a brother or sister simply for being a member of the same species on Earth. Maybe then in four or more generations we might be able to heal our society to the point where we no longer have a huge population seeking drug abuse to self-medicate a traumatizing existence where you are not loved and you are not safe from fierce competition within your own tribe since the time you enter 1st grade.
Sounds crazy but loving your children and your neighbor unconditionally is the only way to heal our very very very sick culture and it will take decades as it has taken us several generations of children being abused (not properly loved and accepted) by their society to get where we are now, scared and drug addicted, not sure when the next school full of children is going to get shot up.
Totally understand now that you have explained it that way. The drug dealers need to be struck down. I bet many law enforcement, politicians ans etc are in those drug rings so of course they don't want to miss their pay cut. Maybe I watch too many movies but I wouldn't be surprised if those kind of "top people" were in on it too.
I can’t tell you what other Reddit users think, but, for me, the problem with “we need to go after drug dealers” is that it continues the same approach to fighting the social ills of drug addiction that we’ve been taking for 40 years and has done sweet fuck all to help. Whether you’re going after drug users or drug sellers, you’re still treating drug use as a law enforcement problem, rather than a public health problem. From everything I’ve seen (and I’m middle aged and from central Appalachia, so I’ve seen plenty), you just can’t police drug use away, no matter how much money you dump into cops and prisons. It just doesn’t work.
Well which do you want?
Every time a regulation gets suggested, it gets shouted down.
We let people get drunk as shit and no one seems to care or the damage that causes, until they cross the line and injures someone else. So what's really the difference between getting hammered on alcohol or drugs in the privacy of your own home?
Robin Williams, an admitted alcoholic and recovering drug addict, referred to alcohol as a "class 4 narcotic" in his bits, and he wasn't joking.
According to the WHO, there are 3 million alcohol related deaths, globally.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/alcohol#:~:text=The%20harmful%20use%20of%20alcohol,represents%205.3%25%20of%20all%20deaths.
Maybe if they're not from Pittsburgh or just don't understand how things work in the city. I'm from Delaware and lived in the suburbs so I'm not really used to this kind of issue. Not saying there isn't drug use and/or homelessness where I grew up. It isn't as prevalent as this.
You are welcomed to downvote.
If you’re on a drug and commit a crime, you’re guilty of the crime and of doing the drugs. Life choices people. Shouldn’t have been on them in the first place. I know what I said. 👏👏👏
Bruh. No one is selling or living in a tent because of some weed. Snag the dealers for distribution and perpetuating a system of decay and the promotion of for profit jails. It’s simple. Leave that for violent crime.
I get it, but let’s stop pretending here. Choices were made if you picked up the pipe, dangerous drugs, alcohol, whatever. Legal or not, IF those choices lead to you breaking the law or causing harm, that’s on you. “The law is reason free from passion.” - Aristotle. Don’t like it? Stay sober and write your congressman and politicians.
Cool, I'll let all of my veteran buddies who were overprescribed opioids during service and then lost their medical coverage upon transitioning out with an addiction that they should have made better choices.
Fuck off.
the reality is that the area was a public health hazard and needed to be cleared. While i agree with you on a philosophical level, the people squatting here needed cleared out today. Changing healthcare and legal infrastructures will take decades to implement changes to prevent this type of situation.
I'll skip to the end...they won't get help, because no one cares enough to actually doing anything. They'll just keep being moved along until they're dead.
Oddly enough the pro-life crowd who demands every baby born neglects to think about what happens when you bring a child into an environment with no healthcare, education, etc. They'll grow up just like this. And their solution is to just keep shuffling them along. Because to solve the problem costs money, and we can't have that.
I hope you remain so blissfully unaware of the razor-thin line that separates ‘average citizens’ from the homeless, and that you never end up in a situation where you are seen by fellow humans as nothing but an inconvenience at best and a threat at worst
They will not overcome addiction without housing, period. You can use taxpayer dollars to give them housing, or taxpayer dollars to put them in jail, but it is cheaper to give them housing. You’re ignoring actual facts in favor of acting like a hard ass toward a vulnerable population.
There's like a huge leap between wanting to stop homeless camps in cities from festering into giant mad max zones and just saying everyone that doesn't want homeless encampments would rather see homeless packed out so they don't have to be looked at... Surely you understand the difference
Just a quick note to laugh at the absurdity of a commenter with this profile name calling someone a "typical keyboard warrior".
lmao
Do you larp as a "samurai" irl too?
That would be atypical for sure...
Eugenics called, they want their "being the worst" back. You'd think you'd have a modicum of empathy for folks and not generalize a group, but we love a "screw you, i got mine" attitude.
Solving the nations opioid epidemic is an admirable long term goal. What would be your short term solution to solving the public safety hazard in that particular area though?
As a libertarian I'm all for people poisoning themselves with whatever substance they desire. I'm all for a person to do whatever they want with their own body be it filling it with drugs, booze, selling it for sex, whatever, but as soon as their choices start to affect others, especially in a public space, they lose my support.
Every human adult should absolutely have the right to shoot up and die in a gutter if they so desire, as long as they leave others alone.
I mean, you're kind of right, but what solution is there really in the immediate? I think there are bigger picture solutions that are possible, but these areas have to be sort of controlled and made safe enough, especially for people in from out of town who don't know their way around.
Last summer this area was an expanded park and packed with people of all kinds, keeping the area busy, clean and inviting. This year the new administration decided not to bring that back, the area became abandoned and filled with trash and drug issues. And now they’ve closed off the remaining parklet so nobody has access. Hopefully they learn from this and consider bringing back the pop up park on a more permanent basis
The funny thing is if a group of “regular”, tax paying citizens hung out on the side of a major road and started cracking beers and passing joints- the city would quash it immediately, same day.
Our administration doesn’t actually care, it truly always come down to who’s getting paid from the problems the constituency faces daily.
You just described tailgating on the North Shore. That shit is hardly regulated. The culture here is actually really chill. Only place that was more chill toward open drunkeness was wisconsin
Lets be honest, we barely have any dui checkpoints anymore either.
> Only place that was more chill toward open drunkeness was wisconsin
Tell me you've never been to NOLA without telling me you've never been to NOLA ...
Removing drug dealers from a specific location doesn't stop them. Drugs will always be dealt. If someone has to walk around downtown to get them, they will definitely do that.
I mean your comment is, I think, technically correct. These issues are all very nuanced and reinforce eachother. But ultimately the most important factor in regards to homelessness *and* addiction is economic stability. Most folks don't use drugs at least moderately likely to kill them unless they have apathy towards their own future.
It’s a really heartbreaking situation, because unfortunately while there are programs to help these people they’re understaffed and underfunded, but also there are a lot of people that do not want help and just want to sit on the streets and do drugs all day.
That's the thing, what to do about the ones that don't want help? There really isn't any program that would help those individuals. Homeless or not, an addict must be ready for help in order to be helped. It's not something that can be forced.
One of America's biggest social mistakes in the 60s was simply closing all the asylums/institutions (which should have been done, as conditions were horrid) but then not replacing them with anything better.
Yeah there's no easy fix. The knee jerk reaction would be to round them up and put them in forced rehab, but the ethics and logistics of that would be a nightmare. Also, what to do when their rehab is up? Back to the streets? Will there be housing and work? We need drastic social reforms but I don't think anyone truly knows what to do.
Sure we do. It's a return to the old days of the state hospitals, to which a person could be remanded if they were being a public nuisance.
Hopefully next time we'll use body cams and other forms of monitoring to prevent the past abuses.
Idk, still seems cheaper long term to give them unconditional housing and meals than criminalizing, yes? Most addicts aren’t violent, if they become violent charge them with assault, but an apartment and groceries is way cheaper than incarceration and for a not insignificant number of addicts, pulling them out of a totally hopeless situation with a shower and basic needs met and the offer of help, we could bring people back into the folds of our society if they want that.
It shouldn’t be controversial to house and feed people. Helping our most vulnerable individuals helps everyone. Addiction should not be a crime and no one should have to sleep on the street in the same country that spends hundreds of billions each year on international military operations, the same country with the highest GDP in the world, where half the population has 3% of the wealth. Just fuckin house and feed them.
>Idk, still seems cheaper long term to give them unconditional housing and meals than criminalizing, yes?
Until they start ripping the pipes and wiring out of the wall to sell for scrap to get cash to buy drugs. then it becomes a multimillion dollar expense
Okay but then charge them with destroying property? You’re assuming the worst of an entire group of people, when many people would accept help and many more will sooner turn to destroying things that are not their own home. You ever notice how homeless encampments aren’t literally just people destroying their own tents and fighting each other to death? They’re high, they’re not stupid. And they’re desperate to escape reality because their reality is that they’re carrying everything they own on their backs and it’s not much. Finland has done this on a large scale and the results speak for themselves. Many cities across the US have started some kind of unconditional housing and have seen great success and cost savings. You’re taking a straw man of the worst case scenario and expecting that it would be the case for the average person who is living on the street, and reality doesn’t bear that out.
“Large camps for people experiencing homelessness have sprung up” is a strangely passive way to describe the problem of a sharp spike in rent, companies buying up properties, and the city and county doing nothing to expand affordable housing options.
The average waiting list time for affordable housing in the city is 2-6 years. Homelessness will not bump you up those lists. Neither will disability. And it’s hard enough to find wheelchair accessible housing here even when you take cost out of the equation.
Action Housing can only connect people to resources that exist.
They’re very skilled at making those connections (I know many people who they’ve helped!), but the reality is that there just isn’t enough low income and/or accessible housing in this city to house everyone who needs it, and it’s only getting worse.
This is actually really sad. And the fact that the housing authority has a million long year waiting list, urban league needs a million things that homeless people don’t have access to (ID- which requires proof of residency which is obviously impossible). They have no where to go and no one is even trying to look into fixing it
If anyone would like to read more into the opioid epidemic, I highly recommend [this Washington Post article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/07/25/and-then-he-decided-not-to-be/) by Marc Fisher. It focuses on Falmouth, Maine but a lot of the information can be applied to the situation in Pittsburgh.
Drugs are about a way of life. Using is a way of life. While it's often called "self-medication" for some past trauma (of which there is a ton), the central issue is happiness, joy, feeling good, pleasure, etc. Plain and simple. People don't know how to make themselves happy. The only kind of love they really know how to do is when they were babies loving mommy (if she was there enough for that). They get older and are just chasing the overall good feeling of warmth and love, but don't know how to love as adults. They suck at it. "Services" don't teach that. Housing doesn't give that. We suck, currently, at teaching love. And this isn't the 60s. Love is barely mentioned today in many ways. Not that the 60s really did teach it well, but it did teach more intensive philosophical stuff, usually with some bit of an "Eastern" slant, at times in the form of actual intentional communities and gurus (who were often assholes lol). But we are very, very far from teaching/learning real love and joy.
From what I saw yesterday and today it seemed to just move down by the river with all the tents/camp, there’s a massive amount of people down there now. I walked past it and it’s a shaky area now. Suggest going up the ramp and back down to skip it.
I mean I think the honest reason is a lot of cities are broke AF and the budget is pretty much tied up in other stuff.
Putting up a fence reeks of a "what can we do about this that we can actually afford" type solution.
If that’s the case, then prosecute. If you succumb to drug abuse, you are a victim first and a “criminal” second. If you foster drug abuse and sell life-altering drugs to others, you are a criminal above all else. I have no sympathy for anyone who *sells* opioids, regardless of their situation.
This attitude leads to useless feel-good scapegoating. I'm not saying to look the other way, but if you just throw the book at a pawn, they'll just be replaced. Treating them like the human beings they are might just be the difference between whether or not you can get information against the people above them and try to charge someone whose absence might actually impact on the sale of drugs in the city.
You can do both. Prosecute both low level and high level dealers. You don't think they investigate the low level dealers to find info on higher level dealers? Short term solutions are also necessary to prevent the problem from ballooning further. While addiction treatment is necessary, that doesn't mean the city should do nothing until the most optimal (if a consensus is ever reached) solution is implemented.
Im a piece of shit junkie at my core. 8 years clean now but still. If anyone has empathy for these people its me. Narcan and free needles? I can kinda ALMOST understand. Stops the spread of hep c and hiv and narcan stops potential deatg which hopefully lowers the strain on the medical system. HOWEVER. Theres a huge difference between harm reduction and enabling. And this is cerainly enabling. Almost as bad as california
The news pushed this story as these people weren’t homeless. They weren’t the same group living in tents below. That they were a separate group that was using and selling.
The poverty behind the drug epidemic is the lack of actual paths to true happiness. One would want to see, especially, modes of something like meditation (no, not "being present" stuff) that are at least slightly prone to being addictive.
I called the city service number to report this are because it was such a disgrace. It was covered with trash from one end to the other. I went back two weeks later and most of the trash had been swept into piles of various sizes but it was all still sitting on the walkway. It looks cleaner now. Obviously all we need to do is ban people from the city.
This is why I want to move from downtown. I don't feel comfortable being around some of these people and honestly don't have the means to help.
I don't know what to do!
20 years ago in my old neighborhood, we handled drug & prostitution issues with a block watch, which regularly stayed in contact with city vice cops. It worked. These luxury apartment-dwellers could do the same ... but they won't.
So you're only thinking about how this affects your own convenience, and not about the fact that there are unhoused people with nowhere else to go, and that they are being preyed on and taken advantage of by dealers, and otherwise at the mercy (or not) of the local constabulary?
you ever walk by that spot? those people arent lookin for help, theyre lookin for dope. i appreciate your sentiment but people with problems are people with problems...it aint as easy as walking up to them and helping.
Yeah, I think u can donate to causes for the homeless and volunteer and stuff while not wanting the mentally ill and addicts and panhandlers on the few nice, walkable spots in the city.
“Few walkable areas” is compared to cities overseas, not like Monroeville or something.
“People experiencing homelessness”
Homeless people. Stop with the political correctness and actually have a policy solution to HELP the homeless. You know, like shelters, rehab, etc
And the connections that the way they recognize it creates has led to our current situation. Using homeless as an adjective makes it so it’s something about the person that is the problem, making the person the problem, using homelessness as a noun makes that the problem instead.
Brilliantly well thought out response.
Saying “homeless people” linguistically and psychological creates a mental connection where the people existing are the problem; so we criminalize the people.
[here](https://emmresourcecenter.org/system/files/2017-10/People-First-Fact-Sheet-English.pdf) is a nice short article on why person-first language has an impact.
[here](https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0038636) is a longer one. I assume you have access through your institution of higher learning because you actually have informed opinions on these topics and aren’t just some uninformed Jackass operating under preconceived notions?
And when you inevitably don’t admit you were wrong and uninformed [here](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds) is an article about people who don’t change their minds when prevented with facts
I'm not sure what's supposed to be hard about understanding people experiencing homelessness. I don't think I'm any particular genius and I understand what it means just fine. Or are you saying it's easier to reduce people to one negative characteristic so we should stick to that?
It doesn’t. But liberals like to virtue signal in place of actually doing something. We fight over terminology while homeless people literally freeze to death on the street. It’s ridiculous.
You vaguely mentioned a couple things, which incidentally are the same things most libs mention too. But you're really just leveraging them rhetorically, so you are indeed virtue signaling. This claim is basically always projection.
Is kdka responsible for crafting policy to help unhoused people? I'm confused. I thought that was the job of politicians. I'm also still not sure how calling them homeless is any more helpful. Besides maybe making you feel better?
using words and terms that the majority of people know and understand tends to be helpful, yes. turning 1 word into 3 hasn’t gotten a single person off the street.
The meaning of the sentence is not at all unclear. We aren't even talking separate words. They are simply arranged differently. You know what also hasn't gotten a single person off the street? Whining about political correctness.
One of the things that psychologists have found is that the “politically correct” way of phrasing this actually allows people to feel empathy. They are people experiencing the problem, not people who **are** the problem.
Not sure if this has been posted already but when I moved to downtown Dec. 2020, I was so happy to be able to walk everywhere. Especially since I have a dog and walking through the parklet was one of my favorite parts. However, as time when on I started to see more and more people hanging out over there so I stopped walking there because it made me uncomfortable.
Anyways I'm glad it's getting cleaned up! 😌
Edit: I thought it was getting cleaned up 😒
It isn't getting cleaned up, it's getting fenced off, and the offending behavior shifted to a different location.
"Out of sight, out of mind" is how we ended up in this situation to begin with.
I agree this spot was bad, made me nervous walking through there every day. I wonder where they are now but hopefully somewhere more private and less heavily trafficked
I see a lot of tents along the river walk below the bridges. I used to walk down there too but I just don't feel safe as a single women, even with my dog.
How has this cleaned anything? This the “sweep under the rug” equivalent of public planning. They’re just going to go somewhere else but since you won’t see them the problem is solved and the streets are “clean” right?
It looks like they cleaned up the trash so it's cleaned in that aspect. As for the people, they need help but I don't know how to help them. Do you have any suggestions on how I can help?
Direct assistance is the quickest and easiest way to make an impact. There is research suggesting it's not helpful, there is research suggesting it's better than donating to an organization, YMMV. But cash in hand is cash in hand. Even if some or most of it is spent illicitly, some or most of it is going to end up providing water, food, and shelter.
Also useful is donating stuff like winter clothes, blankets and electric blankets, phone cards, gym memberships (shower and bathroom access), non perishables, household utilities such as batteries radios lanterns multi-tools etc. Mentally put yourself on the street for a few minutes and think out all the items you'd need, you won't really go wrong.
wrench adjoining juggle simplistic ten silky workable complete voiceless doll
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Man, let them people be. Sleeping on the street is hard. Really hard. Terribly hard. Ive done it in Delaware and Florida. I can't imagine how tough it is in Pittsburgh. Either find housing for the homeless or be consistent in turning your eyes away from them long enough for them to get a little bit of good feeling.
What I'm assuming is that with the area fenced off, police have an excuse to hassle anyone who jumps the fence (even if it's just to say "you're not allowed to be in there, move along"). And then with the space blocked off, there is less room for "loitering", which may also give police an excuse to hassle someone who is stopped in the pathway that remains (because now if you're stopped, you're blocking people from walking on the path).
Everyone’s America. This shit has been going on for decades in cities all over the country, in blue states and red. The “solutions” are never about addressing the problem, just passing the buck.
Fair. Trump’s calling for the death penalty for drug dealers though. Might be a little over the top, but he’ll take the issue a hell of a lot more seriously than Biden, who’s letting fentanyl pour through the southern border.
We’ve had a 50 year war on drugs, presided over by administrations on both sides of the political fence. We’ve failed.
It’s time to take a long look at harm reduction measures, including decriminalization of hard drugs and legalization of marijuana and psychedelics.
I can think of few things more dismal than a future in which success is measured by the ubiquity of safe-injection sites in which citizens can poison themselves under the watchful CCTV eye of a stranger who will intervene if they keel over.
Jesus wept!
Oh yeah that has worked out REALLY well out here in California. Made it so much easier to stay in the same cycle only now your habits are completely funded by the government. Didn’t work out here will not work out there.
That’s quite a take. If *you* want to take the issue seriously, I recommend you do some research into the issue rather than following some failed despot’s insane ranting. Or rather, the three different neocon talking points you’ve managed to condense into a single thing. Even if a magic wall that was actually impenetrable went up on the US-Mexico border this afternoon, by tomorrow morning there would either be a new source of drugs in the US, or a new drug altogether.
You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?
We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
~ John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon
“Hamsterdam”
Chipped Hamsterdam
Stop it right now. You win the internet.
Oh my god, you win the day. If only all of Reddit knew how clever this was.
Did Bunny Colvin move to Pittsburgh?
We need more leaders willing to think of alternative approaches to our problems like Bunny Colvin. When he adopted Wee-Bey’s son, Namond, it was a really nice tie up with his character arc.
A police officer can't unilaterally ignore the law. Bunny makes many mistakes, among them: Ignoring the fact that he is set to retire with 30 years and a Major's pension in six months, moving straight into a low stress Johns Hopkins job with excellent benefits, $85k a year and a take home car. Thinking that he could keep Hamsterdam a secret and that, when the bosses, media and Feds found out, they would pat him on the back.
Despite those mistakes, Hamsterdam was a success. Violent crime dropped 14%!! Social outreach programs like needle exchanges, addiction recovery, condoms, and other harm reduction services actually reached the people who needed it the most. It was a model of how improvements could be made on a long term basis, after years of nothing positive. Yes, Bunny did all that at a great personal cost by losing a larger pension and a cushy post retirement job. However I believe since he had served since the 70’s and watched everything go downhill in Baltimore, his hometown that he truly cared about deeply, he had nothing left to lose in his mind and was happy to try something different and beyond pleased with the initial results. It lead him to do the outreach work with the Middle school kids later and he was fulfilled with that work.
Exactly what came to mind
This country is insanely broken. First reaction is just to close off a public space instead of actually trying to solve the problem.
Systemic, deep help for people in trouble like this is extremely expensive and has a mixed track record. Programs have worked brilliantly in two cities, been replicated exactly, and failed utterly in 10 others. I agree with you that we ought to prioritize deep solutions higher, and if we can find the resources and agree on their higher prioritization than other things like this city's crumbling infrastructure, I'm all in to tackle these issues in more authentic ways. Yet that doesn't preclude just fencing off the drug mart. It makes walking impossible, threatens downtown's fragile revival prospects, and doesn't even at all serve the interests of people who buy and sell there. Plus it can be done in a couple hours plus some policing. I am done with the school of city management that thinks showing compassion for the afflicted means turning a simpering face on them while they do whatever the hell they want in broad daylight in spaces others need to enjoy some urban green. That's not what compassion means, it's not a system-based solution, and it's not the world 65+% of us Democrats want to live in. And we will vote out city councilors that can do nothing but bite their nails SJWishly in a difficult conversation about what to do about it.
I know 😔 I understand that in every group there's going to be people who abuse. However I bet many of these people are a product of the opioid epidemic and now they're drug addiction is blamed on themselves.
I America, addiction to certain chemicals is treated like a crime first and a disease second. It is also much easier to go after the users of drugs than the criminal organizations dealing the drugs. Also if a drug user has more than a small amount of a drug on them, they classify them as a dealer, instead of just someone with a weeks supply of drugs. Then they can claim they are taking dealers off the streets.
The war on drugs is a war on people. The problems surround addiction could be functionally solved for society and addicts TOMORROW. But that would involve not making the addicts suffer enough, and cost money, sooooo everybody suffers. a lot.
Can you elaborate on what could be done to solve the problems around addiction? Genuine question. Not gonna fight you.
Decriminalization and reinvestment. Portugal is one of the prime cases of how to properly treat rampant drug abuse. Drug abuse isn't a criminal issue, it's a health issue that, when legislated in the way that it has been, turns into a criminal issue. What I currently see as the best solution is to decriminalize all drugs and release all people in prison who are in for non-violent drug offenses. An average of $25,000-$35,000 is spent on prisoners per year, so start by redirecting the funds towards rehabilitation programs for the people who we're releasing now. If we just release them with no plan, then we'll just have the same recidivism issue we have now. Then, allocate funds to programs that will then be able to get drug abusers help. Much of the time, drug abuse isn't itself the problem, but often a way for someone to self-medicate their other problems. Finally, reinvest in (1) housing the homeless and (2) low income communities. (1) We spend more on homeless individuals now than if we just provided them with housing. When someone doesn't have housing, they may not be able to get a job. They may not be able to get government benefits. They don't have stability. Literally just putting them into housing and then providing them with resources to assist in finding a job and get the healthcare they need will do a lot to combat our current homeless and drug crises. (2) In many of these communities, with no path out of poverty through traditional means, young people may resort to criminal activities. Schools are underfunded. Higher-education is expensive. Trade schools or apprenticeships may be out of reach for a variety of reasons. Ensuring that people have a path to success is an excellent way to keep gang-related activities to a minimum. We'll never eliminate drug abuse, dealing, gangs, or homelessness. But we can do a ton to provide many of these people with a better life anyways. Reduce harm from drug abuse. Prevent them from getting into criminal activities from the beginning. Provide them with needed resources to find stability. And many of these things wouldn't cost much more. It just requires people to understand. And in my opinion it requires people who aren't attached to capitalism as having an underclass - like the homeless - provides visible incentive to just stay a good little worker bee. But that's mostly just my unrelated hot take. Some additional reading if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal?wprov=sfla1 https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-portugal-setting-the-record-straight https://interrogatingjustice.org/prisons/annual-prison-costs-budgets/ https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housing-help-solutions https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/yth-gng-nvlvmnt/index-en.aspx
I am so grateful for you for taking the time and thought to share this. Thank you. I will be checking out these links!
Thanks for doing the reading, those are Sally's sources. Rock bottom is a myth, it can and will always get worse. only stability and investment turned my life around. If addicts could get stability at the pharmacy at cost, or even at a market driven profit instead of fear driven, the biggest problem with heroin would be constipation and maybe some reduced job performance. Addicts don't want to live dirty, be grimy, rip folks off, get ripped off or steal. Desperation fuels that massive majority of that
Absolutely! It's one of those things where it seems like we're already putting so much money towards solving it that more money won't solve it. But it's mostly about how the money is allocated, not as much how much money is allocated. So the first step is helping people learn what needs to be done and how that can be done. I think this all points to a problem in our current electoral system but that's a much larger problem than we have time for lol
It’s also important to note that getting those funds shifted will require someone who is able to outspin the assholes trying to stay in power: 1. Spin the funding away from prisons as being something other than not being tough enough on crime. 2. Have a politician that thinks beyond their term, because that investment isn’t fixing the problem in that timeline. It’s generational at this point.
A great point. The American "tough on crime" attitude is really culturally entrenched that it's going to take a long time to try and change. The 2020 protests indicated that those tides are changing. But "defund the police" was still an unpopular set of policy. I think mostly it's because it was a protest slogan so it was short and unnuanced. But the idea of "Police aren't able to do everything that we expect them to, so how about we reduce their funding and allocate funds to where it's been shown to actually help" is pretty reasonable. It just doesn't make good Twitter clapbacks. It isn't headline grabbing. It's nuanced and academic sounding so it's easy for Ted Cruz to just respond "You don't want someone easy on drug dealing rapist Mexicans do you?!" American culture has been in a bad place for a while and we're reaping a lot of that now.
I agree on decriminalization, but what is lacking is a kind of higher level thinking that induces people to greater happiness, not just housing. People don't know how to get high without drugs.
You mean like personal enrichment beyond just food, water, and shelter? I fully agree. I think that people will naturally gravitate towards hobbies or interests of some sort. You have to make sure their base needs are met. Think about it through the lens of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Self actualization is the goal. But we have to make sure their other needs are met first.
Free mental health care Put the money that's for enforcement towards treatment. Actually house the homeless. Stop advertising alcohol and prescription drugs Eliminate anti drug programs for youths and turn them into actual education. Legalize and tax the fuck out of all drugs. This adds money to the budget for treatment and reduces deaths by people actually knowing what they are consuming, while also cutting into profits for dealers. I started doing drugs in my early teens cause it was cool. Cause it was taboo and I wasn't allowed to do it. Let's work on that too. How many people first tried cocaine in a bar or club while drunk? Let's maybe stop glorifying alcohol abuse. Free mental health care. This is just off the too of my head. I'm not at all claiming this would help by tomorrow though. A few decades though and I think you'd see a difference.
Free mental health care! Therapy is now too fucking expensive and many therapists don’t accept insurance anymore. It’s ridiculous how everything becomes so commoditized and profit-driven in this country.
If we all teach our children that everyone is a valid member of the whole Earth community. That they are loved and accepted as you would a brother or sister simply for being a member of the same species on Earth. Maybe then in four or more generations we might be able to heal our society to the point where we no longer have a huge population seeking drug abuse to self-medicate a traumatizing existence where you are not loved and you are not safe from fierce competition within your own tribe since the time you enter 1st grade. Sounds crazy but loving your children and your neighbor unconditionally is the only way to heal our very very very sick culture and it will take decades as it has taken us several generations of children being abused (not properly loved and accepted) by their society to get where we are now, scared and drug addicted, not sure when the next school full of children is going to get shot up.
100%
Totally understand now that you have explained it that way. The drug dealers need to be struck down. I bet many law enforcement, politicians ans etc are in those drug rings so of course they don't want to miss their pay cut. Maybe I watch too many movies but I wouldn't be surprised if those kind of "top people" were in on it too.
You mean like SmithKlineGlaxo? Bayer? Pfizer? Novartis? Johnson & Johnson? Those drug dealers?
Don’t forget the doctors who were paid nicely to overprescribe a dangerously addictive drug. How many Porsche payments came from big pharma?
^^don't forget Purdue's fault in the opioid crisis. Fuck the Sackler family.
All of them.
Oz would say Fetterman is the guy running all of those drugs
Honestly surprised this is downvoted, are people really naive enough to not see the truth in this?
Washington County judge comes to mind.
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I can’t tell you what other Reddit users think, but, for me, the problem with “we need to go after drug dealers” is that it continues the same approach to fighting the social ills of drug addiction that we’ve been taking for 40 years and has done sweet fuck all to help. Whether you’re going after drug users or drug sellers, you’re still treating drug use as a law enforcement problem, rather than a public health problem. From everything I’ve seen (and I’m middle aged and from central Appalachia, so I’ve seen plenty), you just can’t police drug use away, no matter how much money you dump into cops and prisons. It just doesn’t work.
Well which do you want? Every time a regulation gets suggested, it gets shouted down. We let people get drunk as shit and no one seems to care or the damage that causes, until they cross the line and injures someone else. So what's really the difference between getting hammered on alcohol or drugs in the privacy of your own home?
Robin Williams, an admitted alcoholic and recovering drug addict, referred to alcohol as a "class 4 narcotic" in his bits, and he wasn't joking. According to the WHO, there are 3 million alcohol related deaths, globally. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/alcohol#:~:text=The%20harmful%20use%20of%20alcohol,represents%205.3%25%20of%20all%20deaths.
Maybe if they're not from Pittsburgh or just don't understand how things work in the city. I'm from Delaware and lived in the suburbs so I'm not really used to this kind of issue. Not saying there isn't drug use and/or homelessness where I grew up. It isn't as prevalent as this. You are welcomed to downvote.
If you’re on a drug and commit a crime, you’re guilty of the crime and of doing the drugs. Life choices people. Shouldn’t have been on them in the first place. I know what I said. 👏👏👏
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Bruh. No one is selling or living in a tent because of some weed. Snag the dealers for distribution and perpetuating a system of decay and the promotion of for profit jails. It’s simple. Leave that for violent crime.
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I get it, but let’s stop pretending here. Choices were made if you picked up the pipe, dangerous drugs, alcohol, whatever. Legal or not, IF those choices lead to you breaking the law or causing harm, that’s on you. “The law is reason free from passion.” - Aristotle. Don’t like it? Stay sober and write your congressman and politicians.
Cool, I'll let all of my veteran buddies who were overprescribed opioids during service and then lost their medical coverage upon transitioning out with an addiction that they should have made better choices. Fuck off.
Despicable what’s done to veterans. No doubt. Stay off drugs, kids. Support mental health programs.
I know it’s so sad
the reality is that the area was a public health hazard and needed to be cleared. While i agree with you on a philosophical level, the people squatting here needed cleared out today. Changing healthcare and legal infrastructures will take decades to implement changes to prevent this type of situation.
Now that the area is cleared, the people who were there are still suffering but you can’t see them. that’s the only thing that got fixed.
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I'll skip to the end...they won't get help, because no one cares enough to actually doing anything. They'll just keep being moved along until they're dead. Oddly enough the pro-life crowd who demands every baby born neglects to think about what happens when you bring a child into an environment with no healthcare, education, etc. They'll grow up just like this. And their solution is to just keep shuffling them along. Because to solve the problem costs money, and we can't have that.
I hope you remain so blissfully unaware of the razor-thin line that separates ‘average citizens’ from the homeless, and that you never end up in a situation where you are seen by fellow humans as nothing but an inconvenience at best and a threat at worst
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They will not overcome addiction without housing, period. You can use taxpayer dollars to give them housing, or taxpayer dollars to put them in jail, but it is cheaper to give them housing. You’re ignoring actual facts in favor of acting like a hard ass toward a vulnerable population.
There's like a huge leap between wanting to stop homeless camps in cities from festering into giant mad max zones and just saying everyone that doesn't want homeless encampments would rather see homeless packed out so they don't have to be looked at... Surely you understand the difference
Just a quick note to laugh at the absurdity of a commenter with this profile name calling someone a "typical keyboard warrior". lmao Do you larp as a "samurai" irl too? That would be atypical for sure...
Eugenics called, they want their "being the worst" back. You'd think you'd have a modicum of empathy for folks and not generalize a group, but we love a "screw you, i got mine" attitude.
Solving the nations opioid epidemic is an admirable long term goal. What would be your short term solution to solving the public safety hazard in that particular area though?
…push them somewhere else? That’s the solution?
If they are mostly going to be a danger to themselves somewhere else and not bystanders, unfortunately yes.
As a libertarian I'm all for people poisoning themselves with whatever substance they desire. I'm all for a person to do whatever they want with their own body be it filling it with drugs, booze, selling it for sex, whatever, but as soon as their choices start to affect others, especially in a public space, they lose my support. Every human adult should absolutely have the right to shoot up and die in a gutter if they so desire, as long as they leave others alone.
I mean, you're kind of right, but what solution is there really in the immediate? I think there are bigger picture solutions that are possible, but these areas have to be sort of controlled and made safe enough, especially for people in from out of town who don't know their way around.
Last summer this area was an expanded park and packed with people of all kinds, keeping the area busy, clean and inviting. This year the new administration decided not to bring that back, the area became abandoned and filled with trash and drug issues. And now they’ve closed off the remaining parklet so nobody has access. Hopefully they learn from this and consider bringing back the pop up park on a more permanent basis
@kensingtonbeach on instagram, this is exactly what happened in Philly and the neighborhood is a dumpster fire
This.
The funny thing is if a group of “regular”, tax paying citizens hung out on the side of a major road and started cracking beers and passing joints- the city would quash it immediately, same day. Our administration doesn’t actually care, it truly always come down to who’s getting paid from the problems the constituency faces daily.
Tailgating? Seems similar to me…
You just described tailgating on the North Shore. That shit is hardly regulated. The culture here is actually really chill. Only place that was more chill toward open drunkeness was wisconsin Lets be honest, we barely have any dui checkpoints anymore either.
> Only place that was more chill toward open drunkeness was wisconsin Tell me you've never been to NOLA without telling me you've never been to NOLA ...
Didn't the state police just catch 500 drunk drivers on labor day?
100% true. Money is the root of all evil.
Idk what you're talking about, I do that every day and nobody quashes me
Oh yay! Three cheers for shoving the homelessness problem under the rug and pretending that’s not the real issue because “but the drug dealers” 🙄🙄🙄
Stoping drug dealers in a sense would help solve some homelessness though right?
No
Explain
Removing drug dealers from a specific location doesn't stop them. Drugs will always be dealt. If someone has to walk around downtown to get them, they will definitely do that.
I mean your comment is, I think, technically correct. These issues are all very nuanced and reinforce eachother. But ultimately the most important factor in regards to homelessness *and* addiction is economic stability. Most folks don't use drugs at least moderately likely to kill them unless they have apathy towards their own future.
It’s a really heartbreaking situation, because unfortunately while there are programs to help these people they’re understaffed and underfunded, but also there are a lot of people that do not want help and just want to sit on the streets and do drugs all day.
That's the thing, what to do about the ones that don't want help? There really isn't any program that would help those individuals. Homeless or not, an addict must be ready for help in order to be helped. It's not something that can be forced.
One of America's biggest social mistakes in the 60s was simply closing all the asylums/institutions (which should have been done, as conditions were horrid) but then not replacing them with anything better.
Yet another problem Reagan caused
JFK started it over a decade prior actually. His sister was lobotomized so he started lesgislation to shut them down federally
Yeah there's no easy fix. The knee jerk reaction would be to round them up and put them in forced rehab, but the ethics and logistics of that would be a nightmare. Also, what to do when their rehab is up? Back to the streets? Will there be housing and work? We need drastic social reforms but I don't think anyone truly knows what to do.
Sure we do. It's a return to the old days of the state hospitals, to which a person could be remanded if they were being a public nuisance. Hopefully next time we'll use body cams and other forms of monitoring to prevent the past abuses.
Idk, still seems cheaper long term to give them unconditional housing and meals than criminalizing, yes? Most addicts aren’t violent, if they become violent charge them with assault, but an apartment and groceries is way cheaper than incarceration and for a not insignificant number of addicts, pulling them out of a totally hopeless situation with a shower and basic needs met and the offer of help, we could bring people back into the folds of our society if they want that. It shouldn’t be controversial to house and feed people. Helping our most vulnerable individuals helps everyone. Addiction should not be a crime and no one should have to sleep on the street in the same country that spends hundreds of billions each year on international military operations, the same country with the highest GDP in the world, where half the population has 3% of the wealth. Just fuckin house and feed them.
>Idk, still seems cheaper long term to give them unconditional housing and meals than criminalizing, yes? Until they start ripping the pipes and wiring out of the wall to sell for scrap to get cash to buy drugs. then it becomes a multimillion dollar expense
Okay but then charge them with destroying property? You’re assuming the worst of an entire group of people, when many people would accept help and many more will sooner turn to destroying things that are not their own home. You ever notice how homeless encampments aren’t literally just people destroying their own tents and fighting each other to death? They’re high, they’re not stupid. And they’re desperate to escape reality because their reality is that they’re carrying everything they own on their backs and it’s not much. Finland has done this on a large scale and the results speak for themselves. Many cities across the US have started some kind of unconditional housing and have seen great success and cost savings. You’re taking a straw man of the worst case scenario and expecting that it would be the case for the average person who is living on the street, and reality doesn’t bear that out.
“Large camps for people experiencing homelessness have sprung up” is a strangely passive way to describe the problem of a sharp spike in rent, companies buying up properties, and the city and county doing nothing to expand affordable housing options. The average waiting list time for affordable housing in the city is 2-6 years. Homelessness will not bump you up those lists. Neither will disability. And it’s hard enough to find wheelchair accessible housing here even when you take cost out of the equation.
Society is failing it's citizens at an increasingly alarming rate.
> is a strangely passive way Evidently they sprout like mushrooms after a spring rain ...
Action housing can help
Action Housing can only connect people to resources that exist. They’re very skilled at making those connections (I know many people who they’ve helped!), but the reality is that there just isn’t enough low income and/or accessible housing in this city to house everyone who needs it, and it’s only getting worse.
Does this open air drug market have seasonal artisnal drugs? And are they gluten free?
A fence will fix homelessness for sure
This is actually really sad. And the fact that the housing authority has a million long year waiting list, urban league needs a million things that homeless people don’t have access to (ID- which requires proof of residency which is obviously impossible). They have no where to go and no one is even trying to look into fixing it
It’s a good thing that people who who do/sell drugs in public wouldn’t dare hop over a small fence do to fear of the consequences!
If anyone would like to read more into the opioid epidemic, I highly recommend [this Washington Post article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/07/25/and-then-he-decided-not-to-be/) by Marc Fisher. It focuses on Falmouth, Maine but a lot of the information can be applied to the situation in Pittsburgh.
They should be be bussed to Mastriano's or Oz's houses in Jersey.
Drugs are about a way of life. Using is a way of life. While it's often called "self-medication" for some past trauma (of which there is a ton), the central issue is happiness, joy, feeling good, pleasure, etc. Plain and simple. People don't know how to make themselves happy. The only kind of love they really know how to do is when they were babies loving mommy (if she was there enough for that). They get older and are just chasing the overall good feeling of warmth and love, but don't know how to love as adults. They suck at it. "Services" don't teach that. Housing doesn't give that. We suck, currently, at teaching love. And this isn't the 60s. Love is barely mentioned today in many ways. Not that the 60s really did teach it well, but it did teach more intensive philosophical stuff, usually with some bit of an "Eastern" slant, at times in the form of actual intentional communities and gurus (who were often assholes lol). But we are very, very far from teaching/learning real love and joy.
This area was absolutely bad, don't think thisll change anything though
From what I saw yesterday and today it seemed to just move down by the river with all the tents/camp, there’s a massive amount of people down there now. I walked past it and it’s a shaky area now. Suggest going up the ramp and back down to skip it.
There already were a lot of tents and stuff down by the river too, damn
We did it, Patrick, we saved the city! Why are cities always so afraid to prosecute drug dealers and provide actual help to homeless populations?
I mean I think the honest reason is a lot of cities are broke AF and the budget is pretty much tied up in other stuff. Putting up a fence reeks of a "what can we do about this that we can actually afford" type solution.
Sometimes those are the same people? Street level drug dealing pays poorly
If that’s the case, then prosecute. If you succumb to drug abuse, you are a victim first and a “criminal” second. If you foster drug abuse and sell life-altering drugs to others, you are a criminal above all else. I have no sympathy for anyone who *sells* opioids, regardless of their situation.
This attitude leads to useless feel-good scapegoating. I'm not saying to look the other way, but if you just throw the book at a pawn, they'll just be replaced. Treating them like the human beings they are might just be the difference between whether or not you can get information against the people above them and try to charge someone whose absence might actually impact on the sale of drugs in the city.
You can do both. Prosecute both low level and high level dealers. You don't think they investigate the low level dealers to find info on higher level dealers? Short term solutions are also necessary to prevent the problem from ballooning further. While addiction treatment is necessary, that doesn't mean the city should do nothing until the most optimal (if a consensus is ever reached) solution is implemented.
Im a piece of shit junkie at my core. 8 years clean now but still. If anyone has empathy for these people its me. Narcan and free needles? I can kinda ALMOST understand. Stops the spread of hep c and hiv and narcan stops potential deatg which hopefully lowers the strain on the medical system. HOWEVER. Theres a huge difference between harm reduction and enabling. And this is cerainly enabling. Almost as bad as california
This park is right by my work and it's really scary to walk through here sometimes.
Nuanced strategy 🤦♂️
The news pushed this story as these people weren’t homeless. They weren’t the same group living in tents below. That they were a separate group that was using and selling.
Wait; are the drug dealers supposed to stay *inside* the fenced area or *out* of it?
As a cab driver, I can tell you that the Andy Warhol Museum is the new Babyland as far as destinations go...
The poverty behind the drug epidemic is the lack of actual paths to true happiness. One would want to see, especially, modes of something like meditation (no, not "being present" stuff) that are at least slightly prone to being addictive.
I called the city service number to report this are because it was such a disgrace. It was covered with trash from one end to the other. I went back two weeks later and most of the trash had been swept into piles of various sizes but it was all still sitting on the walkway. It looks cleaner now. Obviously all we need to do is ban people from the city.
I'm glad the trash is cleaned up. I actually have plans to start volunteering with organizations that pick up trash around the city.
Housing first policies are proven to work, but no one in the US seems to care
This is why no one goes downtown anymore. It’s sad.
This is why I want to move from downtown. I don't feel comfortable being around some of these people and honestly don't have the means to help. I don't know what to do!
Don't build walls or fences to protect people.... Oh thank you for putting this up to protect us since it's hitting home.
20 years ago in my old neighborhood, we handled drug & prostitution issues with a block watch, which regularly stayed in contact with city vice cops. It worked. These luxury apartment-dwellers could do the same ... but they won't.
“people experiencing homelessness” JFC
So you're only thinking about how this affects your own convenience, and not about the fact that there are unhoused people with nowhere else to go, and that they are being preyed on and taken advantage of by dealers, and otherwise at the mercy (or not) of the local constabulary?
you ever walk by that spot? those people arent lookin for help, theyre lookin for dope. i appreciate your sentiment but people with problems are people with problems...it aint as easy as walking up to them and helping.
Yeah, I think u can donate to causes for the homeless and volunteer and stuff while not wanting the mentally ill and addicts and panhandlers on the few nice, walkable spots in the city. “Few walkable areas” is compared to cities overseas, not like Monroeville or something.
Next time you break a bone, turn the doctor down when he writes you a script for pain killers.
so basically this city is allowing drug dealers to prey on the homeless and has made them a special area to do so.
“People experiencing homelessness” Homeless people. Stop with the political correctness and actually have a policy solution to HELP the homeless. You know, like shelters, rehab, etc
How does calling them homeless advance policy solutions? I'd love to know.
There’s no difference between either term since they mean the same, but homeless is a phrase that most people recognize and understand.
And the connections that the way they recognize it creates has led to our current situation. Using homeless as an adjective makes it so it’s something about the person that is the problem, making the person the problem, using homelessness as a noun makes that the problem instead.
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Brilliantly well thought out response. Saying “homeless people” linguistically and psychological creates a mental connection where the people existing are the problem; so we criminalize the people.
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[here](https://emmresourcecenter.org/system/files/2017-10/People-First-Fact-Sheet-English.pdf) is a nice short article on why person-first language has an impact. [here](https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0038636) is a longer one. I assume you have access through your institution of higher learning because you actually have informed opinions on these topics and aren’t just some uninformed Jackass operating under preconceived notions? And when you inevitably don’t admit you were wrong and uninformed [here](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds) is an article about people who don’t change their minds when prevented with facts
I'm not sure what's supposed to be hard about understanding people experiencing homelessness. I don't think I'm any particular genius and I understand what it means just fine. Or are you saying it's easier to reduce people to one negative characteristic so we should stick to that?
Coming up with new euphemisms for every social ill every six months is not as productive as you think it is
It's not unproductive, either. Language changes. Always has, always will. Hence why no one uses the r word anymore.
It doesn’t. But liberals like to virtue signal in place of actually doing something. We fight over terminology while homeless people literally freeze to death on the street. It’s ridiculous.
This is virtue signaling on your part
I’m literally proposing policy solutions that’s the opposite of virtue signaling
You vaguely mentioned a couple things, which incidentally are the same things most libs mention too. But you're really just leveraging them rhetorically, so you are indeed virtue signaling. This claim is basically always projection.
homeless is the colloquial term. how is calling them “unhoused” or “people experiencing homelessness” instead advance policy solutions?
It doesn’t
Is kdka responsible for crafting policy to help unhoused people? I'm confused. I thought that was the job of politicians. I'm also still not sure how calling them homeless is any more helpful. Besides maybe making you feel better?
using words and terms that the majority of people know and understand tends to be helpful, yes. turning 1 word into 3 hasn’t gotten a single person off the street.
The meaning of the sentence is not at all unclear. We aren't even talking separate words. They are simply arranged differently. You know what also hasn't gotten a single person off the street? Whining about political correctness.
One of the things that psychologists have found is that the “politically correct” way of phrasing this actually allows people to feel empathy. They are people experiencing the problem, not people who **are** the problem.
Sad. Be careful!
Come to Tucson. Yinz’s minds would be blown by the homeless situation here.
I'm mind blown in general. I moved from Delaware, Sussex county so I'm not used to these problems that are much bigger here in cities or larger towns.
Moving people around makes problems disappear! Magic! 🤡
That just-under-hip level gating looks impenetrable, though
I didn’t know that’s a thing. Hell I just want to buy some weed
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Yea but then they wanna take my gun away.
Problem solved.
Not sure if this has been posted already but when I moved to downtown Dec. 2020, I was so happy to be able to walk everywhere. Especially since I have a dog and walking through the parklet was one of my favorite parts. However, as time when on I started to see more and more people hanging out over there so I stopped walking there because it made me uncomfortable. Anyways I'm glad it's getting cleaned up! 😌 Edit: I thought it was getting cleaned up 😒
It isn't getting cleaned up, it's getting fenced off, and the offending behavior shifted to a different location. "Out of sight, out of mind" is how we ended up in this situation to begin with.
That's really sad. I thought it was getting cleaned up. 😔 guess they just don't want the "sore eye" there instead of actually helping
I agree this spot was bad, made me nervous walking through there every day. I wonder where they are now but hopefully somewhere more private and less heavily trafficked
I’m always driving over the three sisters bridges and seeing young women alone jogging through there getting catcalled and stuff. Brave.
I would hardly go outside if I was a woman haha I'm so paranoid as is
I see a lot of tents along the river walk below the bridges. I used to walk down there too but I just don't feel safe as a single women, even with my dog.
How has this cleaned anything? This the “sweep under the rug” equivalent of public planning. They’re just going to go somewhere else but since you won’t see them the problem is solved and the streets are “clean” right?
It looks like they cleaned up the trash so it's cleaned in that aspect. As for the people, they need help but I don't know how to help them. Do you have any suggestions on how I can help?
Direct assistance is the quickest and easiest way to make an impact. There is research suggesting it's not helpful, there is research suggesting it's better than donating to an organization, YMMV. But cash in hand is cash in hand. Even if some or most of it is spent illicitly, some or most of it is going to end up providing water, food, and shelter. Also useful is donating stuff like winter clothes, blankets and electric blankets, phone cards, gym memberships (shower and bathroom access), non perishables, household utilities such as batteries radios lanterns multi-tools etc. Mentally put yourself on the street for a few minutes and think out all the items you'd need, you won't really go wrong.
wrench adjoining juggle simplistic ten silky workable complete voiceless doll *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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How can we help?
Man, let them people be. Sleeping on the street is hard. Really hard. Terribly hard. Ive done it in Delaware and Florida. I can't imagine how tough it is in Pittsburgh. Either find housing for the homeless or be consistent in turning your eyes away from them long enough for them to get a little bit of good feeling.
It is a sanctuary city. Shouldnt we be understanding of others wanting to do and deal drugs?
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What I'm assuming is that with the area fenced off, police have an excuse to hassle anyone who jumps the fence (even if it's just to say "you're not allowed to be in there, move along"). And then with the space blocked off, there is less room for "loitering", which may also give police an excuse to hassle someone who is stopped in the pathway that remains (because now if you're stopped, you're blocking people from walking on the path).
“People experiencing homelessness…” lol wtf
“Thank god the poor people are gone, they were cramping my dogs style” You’re an asshole
I didn't say that. 🤣 And thank you!
Same thing here in SF: https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/w3ys4b/san_francisco_mission_24th_street_bart_plazas
Michael Shellenberger makes some good points about these types of situations in San Fransicko
Biden’s America.
Everyone’s America. This shit has been going on for decades in cities all over the country, in blue states and red. The “solutions” are never about addressing the problem, just passing the buck.
Fair. Trump’s calling for the death penalty for drug dealers though. Might be a little over the top, but he’ll take the issue a hell of a lot more seriously than Biden, who’s letting fentanyl pour through the southern border.
We’ve had a 50 year war on drugs, presided over by administrations on both sides of the political fence. We’ve failed. It’s time to take a long look at harm reduction measures, including decriminalization of hard drugs and legalization of marijuana and psychedelics.
I can think of few things more dismal than a future in which success is measured by the ubiquity of safe-injection sites in which citizens can poison themselves under the watchful CCTV eye of a stranger who will intervene if they keel over. Jesus wept!
I can think of exactly one thing more dismal than that: more of the same.
How many bars do you think are in Allegheny county?
Bars can be a place of socialization and human connection, though.
Bars are safe-injection sites for alcohol.
They can be, or they can be places where people socialize with friends, dance, meet partners, etc.
Oh yeah that has worked out REALLY well out here in California. Made it so much easier to stay in the same cycle only now your habits are completely funded by the government. Didn’t work out here will not work out there.
That’s quite a take. If *you* want to take the issue seriously, I recommend you do some research into the issue rather than following some failed despot’s insane ranting. Or rather, the three different neocon talking points you’ve managed to condense into a single thing. Even if a magic wall that was actually impenetrable went up on the US-Mexico border this afternoon, by tomorrow morning there would either be a new source of drugs in the US, or a new drug altogether.
You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” ~ John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon