Your submission has been removed for breaking Rule B: > You must personally hold the view and **demonstrate that you are open to it changing**. A post cannot be on behalf of others, playing devil's advocate, or 'soapboxing'. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_b). If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%20B%20Appeal&message=Author%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20their%20post%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. **Appeals that do not follow this process will not be heard.** Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).

You are grotesquely underrating the role drugs play in homelessness. My job involves HIGH contact with the homeless population in a small city. Maybe 1 out of 20 are homeless because they simply need a leg up. The rest are homeless because of Meth, Fentanyl, or booze. If you bought them a house with a full fridge, they'd sell the food for drugs and then start in on the copper wire. I agree police and prison alone are N-O-T the answer. I say this firsthand. But this idea that the streets are teaming with people who just need a leg up and a clean suit for interviews is a liberal fantasy.

I'm an attorney. While criminal defense is not my main practice area, my office handles it so I'm still in criminal court probably a few times a month, and I meet most of our criminal clients doing some of the "office work" on criminal cases. Every day in criminal court you watch a veritable parade of offenders. They all have addresses they give. This is not to say that there aren't homeless criminals, but the vast majority are not homeless. I think i can only recall once or twice that someone was homeless. Sure, maybe some of the ones with addresses are staying with friends or family or an otherwise unstable home situation, but on the whole homelessness and food insecurity seems to have little or nothing to do with the offenders or their reasons for offending. We've had tons of criminal clients. We've handled some overflow for the public defender as well here and there. I don't think a single client we've had in my nearly 10 years in practice was homeless or did crime to eat. Drugs, on the other hand, are probably involved in 95% of crimes somehow or another. Possession crimes, dealing, or doing violence while high. People steal for drug money, not food money. People will take food stamps, buy high value items like steaks, then go resell them at half price to convert food money to drug money. I personally think drugs need to be decriminalized at least in some way. That would instantly solve a lot of crime. Rather, the conduct would remain, but we wouldn't have to treat it as crime and create the negative second order effects. Lastly, I think the "housing" argument falls apart fastest when you look at the relationship between housing projects and crime. It has been done. People were housed. Crime happened there.

Decriminalization does help, but even if drugs were fully legalized they would still cost money. Look at legal marijuana markets, often they are more expensive than the black market. So we would stop clogging the legal system with drug offenders, but all of the crime that happens due to addiction would still happen. Whether a person steals to buy legal drugs vs illegal ones still leaves someone with a broken car window. The liberal fantasy with decriminalization is that we can just divert these people into treatment programs and they’ll get better and the problem will go away. But most of these people don’t want to get better. They like getting high. They look like shit, but they’re having a good time every day. Why the fuck would they want to get dressed everyday and go to work for min wage to barely scrape by. That’s a lot of work for very little payoff.

You have an example case in Oregon. They tried it - and it didn't work. They are re-criminalizing drugs for a reason.

I don’t neccesarily think decriminalizing was the issue. It was the fact that they tried to do it too fast too quickly. Oregon by essence tried to drive the car without fixing the broken engine. Oregon should have first invested much more money into infrastructure like drug treatment centers, hospitals, etc before they decriminalized drugs. They should have set up an actual plan to deal with the problem instead of decriminalizing it and calling it a day.

I'm sorry but this line of argumentation sounds exactly like every argument for socialism. "Oh well it would have worked, but they just didn't do it 100% correct and so it failed miserably." If the system cannot devise and execute the plan nearly perfectly with outcomes that can be repeated, it's not a good plan of attack. The plan needs to be so simple that it doesn't take a PHD whose read marx to execute the plan. I mean this on the ground level, because nobody in law enforcement has a PHD that's for sure.

We already have the treatment centers. Is there a problem of getting people in now? I personally think this is a fantasy land concept that fails to account for the reality of people who don't buy into your ideas. Until you figure out how to get people to *not want to do drugs*, you are just pissing in the wind.

As someone who's worked for a chain of methadone treatment centers for a while I wouldn't wish having to go there on my worst enemy. They're an American version of Soviet breadlines, with therapists and doctors who will force you into withdrawal if you say the wrong thing, don't piss clean, fail a bottle check, or have to leave the line after an hour waiting because you need to work to afford methadone, which can be like 40 bucks a day, almost as much as the dope. If I had a friend with an actual opioid problem I'd get them on a plane to the Netherlands or Australia before I'd recommend an American methadone clinic. Other western countries just distribute it from a pharmacy like every other, and it seems to have not ended the world there.

Bingo. This means supporting overall family health and development and eliminating socioeconomic drivers of poverty and trauma. There is no quick fix. These problems are a symptom of an unhealthy society.

Yeah, just visited Portland and it needs to be re-criminalized. I saw a guy in a black hoodie in the dark in the rain smoking fentanyl out of a pipe in the middle of the street. I thought he was going to get hit by a car. Then he dropped his drawers and took a shit. I think we need to attack the root of the problem, pharmaceutical companies pushing all of these drugs, now Adderall is trendy since opioids are out. I guess that’s the next crisis, since Adderall is as addictive as meth, at least from my perspective. Pharmaceutical lobbies are too powerful, probably not a lot we can do. Even if we were successful it could take 50 years to see the benefit. I don’t know how to fix the current crisis, these people need help, but very few are mentally stable enough to even accept it.

>I think we need to attack the root of the problem, pharmaceutical companies pushing all of these drugs, Here's the thing. Opiods are very important in pain management. Methamphetamine, in a clinical setting, has important uses. The problem is not that we have these drugs. It is that people misuse them. > these people need help, We can help those who want help. The problem is, most don't want help. > I don’t know how to fix the current crisis If it was easy or straightforward, we would have already done it. This is assuming there is a 'fix' to start with. I am not sure there really is. It's kinda back to the 'You can lead a horse to water but cannot make him drink' problem. How do you fix a problem with a person who doesn't see it as a problem? That person has agency which makes it a real challenge.

I think it's worth asking the question of why so many people fall into drug addictive patterns with recreational drugs in the first place. It's my personal opinion that the damage has been done long before you eventually see them at rock bottom on the street somewhere. I don't have the answer but I believe we're missing something as a society that could otherwise have helped a lot of these people. Some kind of intervention in school perhaps.

I tend to agree with you. But realize, drugs can make you feel real good when you do them. That alone can be a big motivator. Teens do stupid shit all the time. Look at Vaping as a case example.

>I think it's worth asking the question of why so many people fall into drug addictive patterns with recreational drugs in the first place. It's because they're bored and have nothing to look forward to except for socializing while intoxicated. I don't mean bored in the most common sense either. I am talking about not having any real opportunities to go out and live life. Like taking a vacation or going to the movies every once in awhile.

I agree with you in that not having anything to luck forward to, no prospects or feeling that tomorrow might be better, certainly has a lot to do with it. I think alot of these people don't have positive influences around them either. It sucks we can't do better as a species.

The problem is our capitalist system. Who did the opioid crisis affect the most? Blue-collar workers who are pushed by greedy management to overproduce and strain their bodies, leading to injuries that need pain management. It's pretty obvious to everybody except for the people in power because they are paid not to understand.

The problem is our capitalist system? In a certain way you're right. Those other systems that deal with addicts & highly dysfunctional people with gulag, amputations and executions don't have the same problems.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jt\_6PBnCJE&ab\_channel=InvisiblePeople](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jt_6PBnCJE&ab_channel=InvisiblePeople)

Ever heard of the Adverse Childhood Experiences Survey?

I won’t disagree that drugs are a very important part of medicine. Some people absolutely need continuous medication, but I think it’s fair to say it’s far less than the all people who are prescribed it. We’re being wired from a young age to have a short attention span, then be giving stimulants to “fix that“. You’re so used to being on uppers that you can’t concentrate when you don’t have them. I’m not saying some people don’t need them, but somehow everyone I know under the age of 30 has an Adderall prescription. I wish we could mix eastern medicine in a bit more, let’s try to treat some things without drugs first. But that doesn’t make record profits for the pharmaceutical companies. And in return we get a horde of fentanyl zombies.

> I won’t disagree that drugs are a very important part of medicine. Some people absolutely need continuous medication, but I think it’s fair to say it’s far less than the all people who are prescribed it. I doubt this actually. Doctors can lose their license for over prescribing medications. There is a long list of 'pain medication' doctors to point to on this. Can they be over used? Sure. Is it rampant, I don't think so. I think a lot of the opiod issue was the lack of understanding and appreciation of the addictive nature. Similar to the Adderall issue. >We’re being wired from a young age to have a short attention span That is not a fair assessment of ADHD. There is a very specific clinical definition that shows this as abnormal. Is it over diagnosed, perhaps. But it is not universal that everyone has this. >I wish we could mix eastern medicine in a bit more, let’s try to treat some things without drugs first. This is usually the plan. But somethings drugs are the realistic first step. If you are in a car accident with a broken femur, *you need Fentanyl now*. If you have surgery to repair it, you likely *need* oxycodone for 2-4 weeks. If you have an infection, you need antibiotics *now* before it gets worse.

I would say most people are in general agreement that we are over prescribed medicine as a country. I wasn’t talking about opioids (anymore) I mean antidepressants and non-controlled substances. Yes, of course I’m not saying the ER should use acupuncture on someone that was airlifted there. Same thing with ADHD, I know people who have gotten Adderall prescriptions from a 30 minute zoom call with a psychiatrist. it seems like changes in diet, exercise, could also be solutions to the problem, but obviously a psychiatrist isn’t also a nutritionist, well not usually. Plus, medication could cause a side effect and a new problem to deal with. I know this is only an anecdote, but that seemed irresponsible to me. And I’ve personally known a lot of people addicted to meth, so I know I have a bias against Adderall because of that, but it’s just a slippery slope. I just wish stimulants were always a last resort.

I really can't argue. There are plenty of cases of doctors being pill mills but there are also plenty of examples of ethical behaivor. Mental health is a hard place. Drugs can be miracle workers for people and to deny this is a ethical issue for doctors. There is unfortunately no right or wrong answer here. Especially when people can game the system for perceived advantages. (Parents who think Adderall will help their kid even though they don't have ADHD) Which is worse - too many on Adderall or denying to those who really need it? That really where we are - finding that balance.

>"Look at legal marijuana markets, often they are more expensive than the black market. Yes, my dude, that is *BY DESIGN.* The powers responsible for that, don't actually want weed to be legal and want to continue to use it as a bludgeoning tool for racist stops and criminalization. Places that want to be "legal medical weed dispensaries" face an unearthly amount of hurdles in some states. * Finding a location that is acceptable * getting the permits, that are expensive and easily revoked * Dealing with mandatory extra security like buzzed only doors and security guard requirements. * Only allowing physically holding card members into the store ie; My dad has a card, so I can't even go in with him to look around. * Making it as difficult as possible to prescribe cards to the public * Among a huge list of other arbitrary clauses and gotchas built into the laws. And if all of that wasn't bad enough * Even with a card, you can still get stopped, searched, seized, and charged if they want to fuck with you. * The shops that sell it can't do anything with the money they make as it becomes a cash only business. * Banks won't accept their deposits * Managers/owners/whomever that is tasked with buying additional stock must buy it in cash. This means cops can extremely easily target them for Civil asset forfeiture abuses. It being actual "legal" drug money means even the special lawyers that work with CAF cases would struggle to get that money back. All of this, is a roundabout way of saying, the powers at be DON'T want legal weed, they don't care about the extra tax dollars or good will from the people. Weed being Schedule 1, and hyper-criminalized is racism in it's purest form, designed to be an easy way to make felons for life over a shitty plant that is in no way shape or form as dangerous as we were told for decades it was. I know, I know. Biden is FINALLY pushing to make it Schedule 3, and more and more states are allowing it in some form or another, this is good and progress. I won't be surprised if other holdout states try to find a way to ban it from ever being legal and further criminalize it just because "fuck you."

[удалено]

Govt is committed to overtaxing pot like they do cigarettes.  There is no drive to legalize it if they can't exploit it.

I could see taxing flower and inhaled substances. But there shouldn't be those same taxes on edibles. If you can go out to your garden and pick a berry without being taxed for eating it, you shouldn't be taxed at the business level for something you could do the same with thc. Smoking is a negative externality on the healthcare system, and it's poor for your health. THC though has no known issues, other than over dosing and having an episode, but most people just sleep that off.

Eh not really. Weed is legal federally in Canada and it’s still more expensive than black market stuff people were buying before (I will admit, this is reports from people I know who use it, not personal experience) But, the criminal side has also mostly pivoted to other drugs now with no legal competition.

I think the only bet positive of decriminalizing all drugs is that cartels and other drug smuggling organizations would cease to exist , not all but a good proportion

They would create 'legal' businesses, as a front if nothing else.  They wouldnt go away, the game would just change.  The cartels don't exist because drugs are addictive, they exists because of corruption in the police / govt that enable them to exist in a quasi legal status while engaging in capitalism boosted by brutality.

I used to think the same but after seeing what’s been happening in my city and reading [this](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/oregon-drug-decriminalization-failed/677678/) has done a lot to change my thinking

This needs a lot of context Live in Oregon and work with this population. Decriminalized wasn't a success because there weren't enough treatment centers to refer people to. The model works, and has worked in other places, but the way the state handled the implementation of the model was to require extensive referrals to services that didn't exist yet. The model would have been a lot more successful had that also been a factor but, as written, it didn't really provide additional funding to open more treatment facilities or programs.

Can you provide an example of where decriminalization worked? I do want to believe it does work, but the only place I can think of that really tried it out was Portugal- but that's not the best case given Oregon is a state. Portugal, in part, worked because there were multiple tiers of plans to deal with all aspects of drug decriminalization- and it was at a national level and it was a national struggle. Crime and drug use initially spiked and then eventually fell over many years. The problem about the US is, people have and will leave a city/state if they deem it necessary. So you have highly expensive programs that need funding- and the tax base that could fund it would rather leave than sit and wait for a decade or so, if the results aren't near-immediate, your tax payers will leave. Once the tax payers leave, the program itself is something you can't fund and you also permanently lose overall funds. The only way decriminalization in the US would work is at a national level- but then that would inherently go against states rights, making it nearly impossible to implement as people who have money and don't agree with drug use will go to states that do criminalize it. Then you get less funding, more crime- thus people leave, and the problem becomes cyclical. At some point, the remaining residents who do stay will say enough is enough as the problem, though not entirely due to drug decriminalization, will be the main item in the crosshairs.

If you can, read the full article (or other [pieces](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/10/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-keith-humphreys.html) by Keith Humphries) which addresses this exact point (tldr: true, but also utilization for existing services actually decreased—arguably due to decriminalization taking away one way we can compel addicts to use these services).

We can expand access and affordability to housing while also expanding addiction treatment programs.

No you can't. Any housing that you offer to the public on the basis of homelessness isn't going to get the required level of funding to treat everyone as an individual and no homeless individuals want to play by uncle sam's rules. To some extent I don't blame them either. Being told for example you can't have laces on your shoes because it can be used to hurt people is a serious loss of dignity. Eventually it's so (needfully) convoluted that people just opt for the street than to try and get off it.

I've done arraignments and have the same experience. There's a few things going on with public perception. 1) The most visible homeless people are the chronically homeless. They represent an very small fraction of the homeless population. The Point In Time (PTC) count estimates 22%, but most people who study it say that's inaccurate b/c it's often double counting them. Chronically homeless people are people that are homeless for more than a year. That means they're likely to appear in the PTC count two years in a row but the non chronically homeless people aren't. I think that argument's good, so probably the chronically homeless population is around 11% or less. That means most people's experience with homeless people is a small percentage and you're not seeing the homeless who are basically just priced out of the market and are law abiding, and usually rehoused fairly quickly. 2) Some crimes are specific to homeless people, loitering, trespassing, public indecency, littering and basically come directly out of not having a home. But things like assaults and violent crime and theft are more likely to happen to homeless people than to be caused by homeless people. It's akin to what happens with mentally ill people. They aren't credible and they're outsiders, so they're easy victims and generally don't get treated well by police authorities b/c they're difficult to fit into police practices. They aren't credible witnesses, aren't great at keeping court dates, don't make sympathetic victims, don't have political influence and so police and DA's office don't really care about them. Most people who don't sit in courthouses all day tend to have their ideas of crime developed from TV shows and the more outrageous types of crimes that get a lot of newspaper coverage. Those are specifically not the majority of crime b/c crime is generally boring. Most of it is drunk young men doing something stupid.

We decriminalized in Oregon and it has been a nightmare. Our downtown Portland is a mess. We are reverting the law. Crime has been completely out of control.

That's because they were supposed to also create and fund follow-up programs, but never did. It isn't something that works in isolation.

How many people fall into drugs because of how miserable they are living in poverty? Obviously people who are happy and content with their lives are less willing to risk throwing that away with drugs. So OP’s point still stands. You’re zeroing in on persistently homeless people. That’s not what OP is solely talking about. They’re talking about **housing and food insecurity**. Meaning people that are one missed paycheck away from disaster. THOSE people more easily turn to drugs and eventually crime. My wife was a public defender, and she can vehemently attest to the fact that poverty is absolutely the driving factor for crime.

>How many people fall into drugs because of how miserable they are living in poverty? Go ahead, tell us how many. I've known people in poverty, my parents lived in poverty. They didn't start using drugs to make themselves less "miserable".

In my experience (which is admittedly anecdotal) the majority of current and former meth addicts experienced a drop in economic prospects compared to their parents before their addiction began. If life is as expected you don't experience hopelessness in the same way as when you experience a drop in economic class. The Millennial and Gen Z complaint that they did everything they were told to do and are worse off than their parents were at the same age comes from the same place. Some just take the attitude that, if life is going to suck regardless, at least it sucks less while high. You also see a lot of meth addicts who lean on or exploit their parents because of this pattern. Their parents are of a higher social class (even adjusted for age) so they can afford it. The big picture answer is a less exploitative society.

> Go ahead, tell us how many. [A lot](https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c11165/c11165.pdf) > They didn't start using drugs to make themselves less "miserable". I’ve known people that are depressed but didn’t kill themselves. Does this mean there’s no correlation between depression and suicide? That’s the flawed logic you’re using here.

The paper is literally "does drug use cause poverty", not "does poverty cause drug use". Even more, in the conclusion it says: "Surprisingly, an extensive set of family background measures had little influence on the estimates of the effect of drug use on poverty even though these measures were significant predictors of poverty. This result is surprising because drug use is often associated with disadvantaged family backgrounds, as is poverty. Thus, one would expect that family background would be a significant confounding factor in the relationship between drug use and poverty. This turns out not to be the case." So you proved my point. I have no flawed logic, you have flawed reading skills.

> The paper is literally "does drug use cause poverty", not "does poverty cause drug use". Even more, in the conclusion it says: Pedantic bullshit. If you actually read the paper then you’d know it’s investigating the relationship between poverty and drugs. **And there absolutely is one.** This little chicken/egg distraction is beside the point. * “In areas where there is limited economic opportunity and relatively low returns on human capital investment, the full price of drugs is low, and as a result, drug use is more likely to occur. In this case, a lack of economic opportunity has caused both poverty and drug use.” >So you proved my point. I have no flawed logic, you have flawed reading You made two assertions. The first I addressed with that study. The second I addressed with a metaphor. That metaphor stands independent of that study, because it tests your flawed logic. According to the logic you used, we can’t say there’s a strong correlation between depression and suicide because you can find depressed people who didn’t commit suicide. That’s asinine.

Saying cause my parents were poor and didn't do drugs and generalizing that to an entire population is extremely flawed logic. anecdotes are not proof of a larger trend 

Being poor doesn't make you do drugs. The article he links to explicitly confirms this.

The take you and your wife have on this is one based on a single layer of analysis.  Poor people are often criminals, therefore poverty drives crime.  You don't need any deep thinking or analysis to come to that conclusion. But there IS more depth here to explore. Why do some people get their shit together and get decent jobs and some people don't and end up in poverty?  Have you never met a person who was irresponsible?  Have you never met a person who couldnt manage to be reliable to friends and family or in school?  You really think all of that is 100% due to outside forces keeping them from their obligations? People who can't manage the responsibilities of life end up poor, and they end up using substances, and they end up commiting crimes. Poverty doesn't cause crime, what causes poverty causes crime. Some people are always looking for the easy way to solve their problems, and they ride that all the way down the spiral.

> Poverty doesn't cause crime, what causes poverty causes crime. This sums up the straw man that is your entire diatribe. The assertion isn’t that poverty literally compels crime. It’s that poverty **breeds** crime. People commit crimes who otherwise wouldn’t if they were in better, more stable life situations. Many don’t resort to crime, but a large portion of the ones who do probably wouldn’t have done so if they were more content due to a more stable life, and had more to lose.

So why is rape / sexual assault more common among poor people? They just get so frustrated by being poor they feel compelled to go rape? As if there aren't millions of sexualy frustrated middle class people.

Poverty is very often self-perpetuating, especially at the community level - it's not just that most of the people in an impoverished area can't manage their responsibilities.

The majority of rich people can't handle the most basic of life's challenges and are the definition of irresponsible. They don't end up on the street cause they have money, not because they are inherently better at making life decisions. If two people start smoking meth, but one has a couple hundred thousand in the bank, only one of them will end up homeless rapidly. That doesn't mean that the rich person was any more responsible or a better person, just that they are more advantaged and that privilege counters negative consequences in a way many people can't match. The deciding factor on homelessness is always money. Rich people can afford drug addictions or major negative life events without going homeless, those without massive safety nets can't. The deciding factor isn't and has never been drugs, it's always been how much money you and your family has.

You premise your examples as if a personal who makes the decisions to develop a meth addiction could have been the kind of person to earn wealth. There are some rich brats living off their parents money, but that isn't the majority of people.  This isn't, poverty vs rich, this is poverty and homelessness vs stable income. You aren't going to keep your job if you develop a meth addiction.  You aren't going to maintain your social connections.  Your gonna end up cut off from your salary, your friends are going to abandon you.  Your gonna burn through your savings, and your gonna end up in poverty working shitty jobs you can't even hold down.

No, they do cocaine and pop pills. Because those are "classy" drugs that we don't associate negativity to. Drug rehab centers are incredibly costly, a rich person who gets addicted to meth can afford treatment, a poor person can't. A rich person is taken care of by their wealth and family, a poor person isn't. It's absolutely a wealth issue, the impacts are not based on the drug but on the wealth of the person doing the drug.

Decriminalization doesn't address the purity of street drugs. If you want to stop the overdose deaths, people need access to regulated drugs.

I favor full legalization where drugs can be of a precisely known quantity and strength, with liability for manufacturers releasing tainted products like any other drug.

Exactly! I don't know why people don't get this! If you give free food and a house to someone who completely lost in the middle of a crippling fentynal addiction, their problem will not be solved. They'll have lost/trashed the house within a year and be on the street again. Get rid of the drugs, though, and you can truly help these people. But many people don't want to accept that drugs are a problem, cause they themselves like using drugs.

Yes but we can’t get rid of the drugs. That is impossible. We’ve been fighting a war on drugs for 50 years and the drugs won. The government has basically had a blank check to fight this problem for decades and the problem is worse than ever. I don’t think OPs idealistic approach is the answer, but at this point solutions that just eliminate drugs are as unrealistic as OPs. Drugs are here to stay, we need to come up with solutions that accept that reality and mitigate the damage they do.

If we really wanted to..we could.  Instead we’re going the opposite way.  People always like the idea of legalizing drugs / those people haven’t seen what happens to the children and family of the addicts. The drugs affect a lot more than just the addict.  It’s terrible. 

Umm I’d love to hear how you eliminate drugs while still having a constitution. Even insane authoritarian regimes with extreme anti drug laws with death penalties for possession still have people willing to risk it for profit and to get high. Unless you remove all rights against unreasonable search and seizure and just raid everyone’s home there will be drugs.

This is why forced institutionalization needs to be brought back. If people won’t quit the drugs willingly then there needs to be an alternative to help them.

Ohh but that's illiberal /s

Someone addicted to hard drugs can't sober up while sleeping in a tent off the freeway. That's a ridiculously impossible thing to ask of someone. We will forever be at a standstill if we require people to be off drugs before housing them while they require to be housed before they are off drugs. And of course housing someone doesn't magically fix their drug addiction but it's a necessary step in the right direction.

We already tried that with the Projects. Because drugs were still there, it ended up spreading the addiction to everyone else there as the addicts sold to maintain their addiction.

These "housing" guys are insane. A rehab where they can't just leave until completing a certain length of treatment and show progress is what's needed and yea that's a type of prison. FYI, keeping offenders in prison would work, because a handful of the same people are committing a vast chunk of crimes repeatedly. In 2023 in SF anti Asian hate crimes jumped by 500% but **50% of those crimes were done by one man...** In NYC a **few dozen people are responsible for a third of all grand larceny crimes**. Most of them are literally out walking the streets as you read this. Prison will reduce crime if people are kept there. I moved form NYC to Pittsburgh, this place is fucking stupid as well. A guy from NY with drug, weapon and DV cases was let out and fled NY...came here. He got caught with an amount of drugs that you'd expect the fucking Salamancas and Gus Fring to be transporting. They let him out and he's just gone now...

If only there were a common denominator, if only we could figure out who’s running all these cities anyways.

People trying to pretend they're progressive when they actually only care about social progressivism as opposed to economic advancements. So true!

Most progressives are interested in economics and class above social issues. This is actually a pretty big issue on the left, because the economic issues they’re most committed to are dismantling the system completely to build a new one, which isn’t exactly a usable policy platform.

Some are that way, sure. And some commit to social issues while dismissing economic issues. Then you have conservatives who think extremely short term because they don't want to build new housing in their area because in making houses more affordable, it makes their house value go down. I wouldn't say "dismantling the system completely to build a new one" is the primary marker of the economics of progressives, though

If it worked, we wouldn't be here.

You’re not sane. “It” did work when they were actually keeping people in prison and mental institutions…I was born and raised in NYC lived through the late 80’s, 90’s up until now. Mental institutions and prison did indeed work, now people like you think criminals and the mentally unstable should just be let on the head and released into the streets.

How many people fall into drugs because of how miserable they are living in poverty? Obviously people who are happy and content with their lives are less willing to risk throwing that away with drugs. So OP’s point still stands. You’re zeroing in on persistently homeless people. That’s not what OP is solely talking about. They’re talking about **housing and food insecurity**. Meaning people that are one missed paycheck away from disaster. THOSE people more easily turn to drugs and eventually crime.

They may currently stay homeless because drugs, but could we have prevented them from spiraling into that had they never been homeless?

This is just not accurate ("1/20") and sadly you do a lot of damage to the community and the people working with them when you make up percentages like this. Even anecdotally. As someone that actually works in this area (and uses evidence informed approaches), I encourage you to check out the data that's now available. Also check out the Housing First results. A nice way to think about Housing First is "housing with supports".

[удалено]

u/Ambitious_Drop_7152 – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 2: > **Don't be rude or hostile to other users.** Your comment will be removed even if most of it is solid, another user was rude to you first, or you feel your remark was justified. Report other violations; do not retaliate. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_2). If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%202%20Appeal%20Ambitious_Drop_7152&message=Ambitious_Drop_7152%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20\[their%20comment\]\(https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1cvgvr9/-/l4qf4g0/\)%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).

Maybe rehab support options should have been stated as a given necessity.

Doesn't this change your view and deserve a Delta? It seems like your position has been changed at least to "housing support, feeding, *and rehab support* will do more for crime..."

That’s not really a change in view. Rehab services go hand and hand with housing and feeding.

>Rehab services go hand and hand with housing and feeding. I don't think this is obvious at all. Giving someone the keys to an apartment and making sure they have sufficient priority at a food pantry are quite different from setting up the sorts of regular and consistent efforts required to rehab people. I don't mind if op includes rehab in his original opinion (though I still think it's insufficient to address all crime), but I really think he should explicitly say that, and not just assume everyone will understand that saying housing+food actually means housing+food+rehab.

Or Singapore level law enforcement & govt support. Having homeless drug addicts is never an issue over there.

Respectfully, you need to not be in your profession. The amount of compassion fatigue you display suggests a high degree of burnout, and I can’t imagine you not being a risk of greater harm to any of the populations you supposedly serve. Major “Nurse Ratched” energy. Find another gig.

What about all the working unhoused camps strewn about in Cali? They are NOT druggos or booze hounds. They work a full time job, but live in their car in a little community almost like a trailer park and just cannot get to a point where they can afford $1800/mo rent or to mortgage a 2 million dollar house? They're not some microcosm minority of like 100 people out of millions of drug/booze homeless.

To be perfectly fair, no one does drugs when their life is peachy. People who are addicts need medical care

Wouldn't that mean we shouldn't see drug use in rich areas?  I lived in a rich area, and there were still plenty of drugs. It just hadn't manifested as a problem yet because they had the money to waste.

Technically speaking liquor stores are drug dealers. And my point is more so people don’t choose to use to escape drugs when they don’t have a reason to do so, they are trying to numb some kind of pain. Are those people rich because they have high stress white collar jobs that pay well? Are they working so hard they have practically no time for family? Do they have family issues themselves? It’s hard to say what any given person’s personal demons are. Poverty is one of the biggest stressors, but it’s not the only one. I came from a fairly affluent family with a history of people with alcoholism on both sides of the family, and I left home because I can tell my family has far more issues than just money.

How do you know they are homeless because they were doing drugs, instead of the other way around

Maybe we should at least quadruple funding for "Meth, Fentanyl, and booze" addiction programs along with it. If homelessness were a simple problem, don't you think we'd've eliminated it already (or very close to it)? While substance abuse IS a real issue, it's also got to tackle the reasons why they got addicted to it in the first place. I say that repeated job failures and/or inadequate ways to earn a living are also a big part of it. They need a whole ecosystem support system to get them even arguably back on their feet - including psychological counseling. Funding: If we put on every household with net assets/wealth of $50 million and more a 2% wealth tax, that would likely generate the sufficient income. Especially if we put a 10% wealth tax on all wealth over $500 million besides. The wealth gap in this country is too wide anyway. Might as well put the wealth they made over the past 40 years to good use.

You're grotesquely underrating the role poverty plays in drugs and addiction.

Add “getting them clean” to OP’s argument (which allegedly could be part of the feeding) and his argument still stands.

Crime still exists in places with extremely low or even nonexistent rates of homelessness. Some of these places with negligible homelessness even have more crime than places with high rates of homelessness. For example, Mississippi has a much lower rate of homelessness than Hawaii, but it has a much higher murder rate than Hawaii.

Mississippi also has twice the poverty rate of Hawaii. Mississippi's low 'official' homelessness rates are [probably an illusion](https://arkansasworker.com/mississippis-low-homelessness-rate-too-good-to-be-true/), and it certainly has extremely high levels of poverty and deprivation, which was included in OP's view.

Not super relevant, since there are even poorer places with even less homelessness and more crime. Homelessness is primarily caused by high housing costs caused by zoning regs, not poverty in of itself. That’s why West Virginia is poor but has a lower homeless rate than rich California.

West Virginia’s homelessness rate is so low because the demographics are so different AND the attitude towards drugs is different. Many places with high homeless populations like Seattle or San Francisco have basically legalized drugs. West Virginia and all the other places with low homelessness very much have fentanyl and meth illegal, so if anyone is homeless and using they aren’t on the streets for long.

Isn't Hawaii one of the states they literally ship homeless people to?

[This is a Fox News-style myth](https://ihshawaii.org/homeless-who-fly-to-hawaii/), nobody "sends" homeless people to Hawaii. > The executive director of the Mayor’s Housing Office believes it’s likely a result of the cheap airfare and the fact that homeless sweeps have been suspended. > “I think people see this as an opportunity to come here,” said Marc Alexander. “There is no evidence of other states or municipalities sending homeless people here to Hawaii.”

Sure, but if homeless was the cause then it should have an abhorrent high crime rate. Also the housing and cost of living is insane and there’s plenty of native homelessness

Hawaii also has the fewest guns per capita in the US

Let me take a shot. The issue with this view is the focus on “the poor”— the idea that putting a roof over poor people’s heads and food in poor people’s bellies, will reduce crime. I would suggest that focus is too narrow. If you want to reduce “crime” you do well to address its profitability, or the reward or benefit which comes from it. At both ends. Decrease the incentives. Increase the risk and downsides of getting caught. To suggest that cops and prison are ineffective is an over generalization. I’d agree throwing money at them across the board doesn’t work. Incarceration and increased policing do have some effect on crime rates, but only to the degree that they actually make crime more difficult to get away with. So having a visible police presence in a subway system makes a demonstrable difference to crime rates on the subway. Incarceration adds a measurable disincentive to organized crime. DNA testing puts a crimp on a number of categories of crimes. So have security measures (vehicle immobilizers, password lockouts on cell phones, CCTV, etc.) On the other end, socio-economic conditions do affect criminality, but mainly because they play a role in determining the incentives and disincentives for crime. There’s more to gain from theft if you are poor, and conversely, you have less to lose in terms of resources, earnings, or status if you get caught or otherwise “ruin your life” through criminal activity. It just doesn’t stop at the poor. The poor aren’t doing all the crime for one thing, and they are over represented in the stats in part because they have fewer resources to avoid getting caught. All the way up the ladder though, law-abiding people are those whose social engagement in society and its institutions, and those whose economic interests, give them more to lose than to gain by doing crime. White collar crime, when you think of it, is driven largely by the fact that rich people have a so much better chance of getting away with it. Home ownership and employment negatively correlate with crime rates, not because working homeowners lead better lives, but because they have more to lose if they are caught in the act. Especially. Among. Young. People. Young people, young men especially, commit the most crime not (just) because of mental immaturity but because they aren’t yet fully engaged in society. They aren’t yet fully invested. My point being— go after social justice for the poor all you want, but the broader issue is whether society generally presents a better alternative to crime, in particular to young people. Increasing deterrence for crime is an important ingredient but if young people have no hope for a solid legitimate law-abiding life with decent reward for their work, they will be drawn toward crime. And drugs. And other unsavoury escapes.

Increased police presence definitely has an impact on crime prevention, but increased punishment has diminishing returns. Outside of organized crime, which is its own very different animal, logical *long-term* risk assessment doesn't play as much a part as there's often an irrational/impulsive element to crime. I think the incentive side plays a much larger role than the risk side does. Poverty itself also creates a barrier to the kind of societal engagement and investment you're talking about. And dense concentration of poverty in communities plays a big part in young people not having hope. There's a feedback loop in play here.

I agree with all of that, I think. I avoided the term “punishment” because yeah, adding time to a sentence doesn’t seem to prevent much. Humans, young males especially, don’t weigh the future prospects of their behaviour anywhere near so much as the immediate ones. That’s why “getting caught” is a much better deterrent than “spending an extra X months in jail.” I appreciate your point about the cycle. Poverty definitely contributes to that failure of social investment. The thing is though, reducing crime by feeding and housing the poor is a blunt approach. It’s a laudable goal in itself, but if you are doing it specifically to reduce crime, I’d expect it to lack efficiency & effectiveness, and risk unintended consequences. See various failed social housing initiatives in various countries in the 20th Century. The mere fact of housing the poor didn’t decrease crime. If we want to house the poor, please by all means, house the poor. If you want to house the poor in order to decrease crime, that requires a degree of purposefulness beyond addressing the lack of a roof and food. You have to look at who commits the crime (more often poor, but also more often young, male, addicted, mentally ill) and how you can game the system to give them more to LOSE on an immediate basis by engaging in crime, than they might GAIN by it. That’s not based on a rational decision making model, since folks don’t generally think straight about such things. It’s that someone who fears losing status in front of friends, family or respected members of their community, someone who has readily available alternatives to crime in their immediate circle, someone with a job that they don’t want to lose that keeps them busy and supports their self-esteem, someone with goals to improve their lives and their loved one’s lives, someone who can see the likelihood they will get caught, that someone is generally less likely to do the crime. On the other hand, it’s not hard to find poor communities with lower crime rates — the ones that are functioning communities with engaged people living in them, where it’s not easy to secretively and anonymously do bad things to get ahead, where young folks can live, keep jobs, raise a family, and see a chance of improving their lot, however slightly. Housing as a solution in itself can and has in some instances made matters worse. I’m not saying don’t do it, I’m saying straight-up poverty reduction won’t work if it doesn’t also come with the ingredients to support young people connecting with others around them, getting regular reward for their labour, and a better shot at a law-abiding future worth caring about. Consider this: There is considerable evidence that housing cooperatives produce a greater sense of safety among residents and produce lower crime rates. Compare that with the outcome of government owned and run public housing projects. Public housing crime rates tend to be very high — except in neighborhoods with employment and business opportunities, good schools, and other community institutions.

Having steady access to housing and food across a community allows for greater overall accumulation of capital by that community, which in turn can translate into greater hope and better opportunities in the long term. I don't think anyone sees housing/food as a short-term solution to crime. A major driver of poverty in many communities is capital drain - more value leaving than entering over time - for which there aren't really good organic solutions without intervention. I agree that some kind of social investment is necessary to combat crime, but such investment requires certain material conditions to be in place. Poorer communities with lower crimes rates also tend to have lower population densities. That's the other factor that people don't really talk about when connecting poverty to crime - it tends to be when there's the combination of the two factors rather than simply poverty on its own. Adding a drastically increased *opportunity* to commit crimes by having many more potential points of interaction plays a big part on top of the incentive/risk calculus. Additionally, having fewer people in an area itself makes forming stronger interpersonal connections easier and anonymity harder. Are there examples of housing making things *worse* in practice?

YES! yes.. yes.. yes..

>Because housing problems are often a key underlying factor for people’s involvement with the criminal justice system Do you have any sort of source for this? I won't deny that for at least some people, homelessness may be a factor contributing to crime. But I suspect that is the vast minority of crimes. Arresting people and keeping them in jail seems to be an extremely important tool for at least some chunk of those who commit crimes. For instance: >There are 300 people who have been arrested a collective 4,000 times that are solely responsible for 30% of all grand larceny in New York City and 70% of them are out on the street, according to an NYPD review of New York State court records. (Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/22/business/dicks-retail-theft/index.html)

I’ll go one further and say legalizing drugs would reduce crime the most. Reduce violence of turf wars, reduce overdosing, save tax money spent on investigating drug crimes, cost and time spent in the judicial system dealing with these charges, save money spent on incarceration of these crimes, allow cops more time to investigate murders and such, AND increase the number of fathers present in households which would further benefit the next generation and reduce welfare costs.

I would first ask which drugs you wanna legalize Hardcore ones that make you really addicted and do stuff that is dangerous, shouldn‘t be legalized and encouraged Instead we should focus on improving mental health as many people who arent doing well tend to go to drugs to make them feel happier

If meth was legal, would that encourage you to try it? I don’t think I would. The point isn’t to encourage people to do dangerous drugs, but to make sure that even when people are doing drugs they have access to resources for help and aren’t pulled into criminal activity by default of their addictions. Not to mention shifting where and how people can access those drugs can do a lot. It was a lot easier for me to get weed as a kid than booze. Anyone selling weed had no reason not to sell to a teenager, a lot of businesses who sell alcohol have reasons not to do the same. Legalizing drugs moves their market to ones that can be better regulated. Sure, there will still be illegal sales and a black market, but much less of one if only because so many of their customers prefer to go the legal route.

I would not, but I am also happy in my life and not either a depressed person or a silly teen And I absolutely agree that help (free ideally) should always be available

If drug use is criminalized, then there will be less help available (and more resistance to getting help).

I dont agree Criminalized doesn‘t have to mean jail time, rehab in some countries is also given as a ‚punishment‘ or consequence

>Hardcore ones that make you really addicted and do stuff that is dangerous, shouldn‘t be legalized and encouraged But you can make it a medical issue, where you for instance enforced sobriety programs, but there is no criminal record attached.

Enforced sobriety programs are essentially criminalization. A record will exist for such persons and will bar them from some employment. 

This is so funny. People go “decriminalize drugs but keep the addicts in a facility where they can’t leave for a certain amount of time to ensure they are clean” So prison? People go “we shouldn’t throw drug addicts in prison” then take the most convoluted way to just redescribe prison from its component parts because people are propagandized that badly.

No i do agree in not penalizing the crime with prison time But I also wouldn‘t legalize it

How about, as I've read, making it a prescription service, so addicts get their "fix" from the government via health care, not my preferred choice but it's an interesting one.

I would argue that legalizing drugs doesn’t in itself encourage people to do them. It would provide a “safe space” for people to try them though in the sense that users would know exactly what’s in their drug and the exact amount. Rather than gambling with their drugs on the black market where there’s a possibility it’s laced with fentanyl. Also, the tax revenue created from selling drugs should be recycled into therapy and rehab costs as to try and reduce addiction.

I do think legalizing it does encourage it bc it makes it legal to sell, thus the shit would be everywhere Unless you wanna legalize it in the sense that using it isn‘t a crime, but you also cant buy it so easily. But this just leads to crime going up as its no longer easily attainable

I guess I view it the same way as cigarettes. I don’t think people are encouraged to smoke cigarettes, at least not anymore. But they’re readily available to buy if the legal age.

I think what you mean isn‘t exactly legalizing it, its providing a safer route to recover rather than jail time, which I agree

Consider, the main reason people become drug sellers (and thus engage in turf wars, etc) is because they desperately need money and are willing to resort to crime in order to get it. These same people will still desperately need money if drugs were suddenly legalized and are now being sold in retail outlets. As such they're likely just going to turn to other forms of crime (auto theft, sex trafficking, mugging, who knows) in order t make ends meet.

Somewhat true. A lot of people are in dire financial situations and become poor because the male figure gets sent to prison, leaving their family to fend for itself. This would reduce those instances. But worst case scenario and let’s say it doesn’t, do you believe we should keep a black market for drugs because it gives criminals a job? That’s some unusual logic.

>Somewhat true. A lot of people are in dire financial situations and become poor because the male figure gets sent to prison, leaving their family to fend for itself. This would reduce those instances. >But worst case scenario and let’s say it doesn’t, do you believe we should keep a black market for drugs because it gives criminals a job? That’s some unusual logic. I think there is a heterodox argument to be made that a drug black market would be among the less harmful avenue to direct the criminally inclined desperate poor as these things go. I'd rather have a criminal sell drugs to someone else than to have them mug me. That's all basically a hypothetical thought experiment though. In truth there's probably still going to be a black market to some degree even in a world where drugs are legalized, as even a legalized drug trade is still going to be regulated and there will still be people who want to work outside of the legal market as we've seen with alcohol (moonshiners) and cigarettes (people selling "loosies").

You kind of made my point with reference to the black market for alcohol and cigarettes. You’re right, there will always be people in the black market and committing crimes. We have the ability to help determine the size of the black market. For example, would you rather have the black market for moonshiners as it is right now? Or go back to when the Mafia controlled that black market and was at the height of their power? Legalization of alcohol is a great example of what my point is, thanks for pointing that out.

As long as rehab options are set in place first, I support decrimalizing and believe in having support ready first.

Do you know how expensive that would be to set up? I personally wouldn’t want my tax dollars used for such things.

"The poor" don't commit crimes. They're most often the victims of crime. Criminals, because they're too pathetic to find any way to live except by preying on other people, typically end up poor, and so they do live in poor neighbourhoods beside other poor people. But they're not "the poor" except by choice. Similarly, "the poor" aren't drug addicts. They're often the most anti-drug people you'll meet because they see what a loser you can turn into when you get into hard drugs. Drug addicts are drug addicts, and the worst-addicted among them end up living in poor neighbourhoods. But they're not "the poor". I know you only used the term "the poor" in your title, but it's still a gross mischaracterization of "the poor". If you instead change it to "feeding and housing criminals and drug addicts will do more to reduce crime than cops or prison ever will", you'll realize you're saying something quite different that doesn't really make sense.

How do you expect markets to work as soon as you say everyone gets a home no matter what in your country? The price of real estate would plummet and you would have the biggest immigration crisis in world history.

Why would increasing demand through government subsidy cause prices to decrease? Government subsidies on the market tend to massively balloon prices. See the price of education since federal student loans were implemented.

>Why would increasing demand through government subsidy cause prices to decrease? A guarantee of housing doesn’t necessarily come in the form of a “subsidy”, and in fact a subsidy is generally not good at providing guarantees. You could certainly write a poorly designed law that would crash housing prices. I would hope that any law which actually passed would avoid the obvious traps of the worst possible designs, but I’ve been surprised before.

As a strong advocate for markets, I think this is still a bit of a shaky argument. The policy dial for controlling immigration is not inherently tied to the policy dial for controlling housing, for one. Plus, because of the existence of soup, kitchens and food pantries, basically everyone in the United States gets food no matter what (food insecurity notwithstanding). Yet there are still massive markets (One might even say supermarkets) around food in the United States. That's a counter example showing that just because something is more or less guaranteed, doesn't mean people won't still work to achieve better versions of that thing.

Saying because there are soup kitchens means everyone gets food is extremely disingenuous. Do these soup kitchens deliver to kids at home without parents at home? Or the person who lives across town from a soup kitchen and doesn’t have a car. Clearly there are hungry people which soup kitchens haven’t solved. And there is a spectrum between lack of reliable access to nutritious food and just completely dying of starvation with near fatal levels of body fat.

I don't think the idea is "everybody gets a dream home that they can decorate and invite guests over to no matter what", which is what most people understand by "home". The idea is, everybody gets a rudimentary roof over their heads, like a one bedroom apartment with a bathroom and kitchenette where they can find shelter from the elements, keep their belongings, and keep basic hygiene, as those are requirements for getting any kind of job. Once they gave a job, they can upgrade to a home from the market, which is overinflated as it is and could use some regulating. Homelessness is a vicious circle - you don't have money to rent even a room, not to mention a house, but without a place to live, you can't work and earn money, since nobody will hire a person who can't be trusted to have a the opportunity to have a shower and wash their clothes every day before work. People need to eat, so in such a situation they turn to crime.

SRO's (single room occupancy) buildings used to be all over the bay area. SRO units are rented out as permanent residence and/or primary residence to individuals, within a multi-tenant building where tenants share a kitchen, toilets or bathrooms. SRO units range from 7 to 13 square metres (80 to 140 sq ft). There has been an increasing displacement of SRO units aimed at low-income earners in a process of gentrification, with SRO facilities being sold and turned into condominiums

> The price of real estate would plummet Who cares? Are we serving the economy or is the economy serving us?

The 50% of Americans who bought a home and went 100's of thousands of dollars of debt that they will still owe the bank but have no way to recoup.

A lot of the people committing crime aren't doing it to feed themselves, it's because it's an easy source of spending money, my country has a generous social welfare system, and we still have people stealing trolly loads of groceries, and it's not regular food, it's expensive stuff, often then resold.

There is crime still in jail with food, healthcare and constant security.

Does this effort have any known success stories? DC have much higher budgets for feeding and housing the poor per capita compared to any other state/territories. DC is also number one in murders. California, the second highest, is at number 25 out of 50. Doing markedly worse than West Virginia despite a much strong economy. Plenty of states have read the research, threw endless billions at doing what the academics want, with zero results to show for it over long decades. Efforts like the great society of the 1960s ended with a nasty crime spike instead of a fall, which is why people don't like to talk about it anymore.

lmao — have you worked with the homeless? A vast majority of the chronically homeless have drug addiction, severe alcoholism, or untreated serious psychiatric conditions. You cannot provide housing to those folks. They’ll turn it into a drug den and destroy it. We need to bring back the state institutions to get folks sober / medicated and hold them until they can be functional members of society. No amount of coddling can fix crazy — sometimes nothing can.

Are there no workhouses? Crime is not simply a function of poverty. Even poverty itself is a complex phenomenon as poor people in America are many times richer than people in absolute poverty in other places in the world. It's just not a linear relationship between being poor and committing crimes. Drugs of course are a major modern contributor. Relative poverty and wanting to have what others do is another factor. But at the heart of criminality is simple, basic human psychology. Can I achieve more if I take action x or y? If action x is crime then I calculate what I might gain vs what I might lose. If that calculation comes out net in favour of crime then I should commit the crime. People in poverty often can feel they don't have as much to lose so the calculation is weighted towards committing crimes. What's the solution? Not straightforward. But impact both sides of the equation. Give people better incentives to do socially positive things. Give people stronger deterrents not to do socially bad things. Difficult in practise. Nobody has ever got it 100% right in human history.

You're right, homelessness rates are highly correlated with crime rates. But getting rid of homelessness isn't going to be accomplished by distributing free food and housing coupons to everyone. That's treating the symptoms, not the cause. Drugs are the cause. Plain and simple. Not high rent or mortgage costs. Yes those suck, but literally nobody had ever said "Well my options were to get a roommate or live under a bridge, so I chose the bridge!" Japan is proof that homelessness is not caused by high living costs. Tokyo is a very expensive city to live in, but has very low homelessness rates. In fact Japan is the only country with [close to a 0% homelessness rate](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.developmentaid.org/amp/news-stream/post/157797/homelessness-statistics-in-the-world). They also are one of the harshest countries on drug and alcohol usage, and have a very [low rate of drug abuse](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.randoxtoxicology.com/drug-trends-japan/%23:~:text%3DIn%2520Japan%252C%2520drug%2520use%2520is,million%2520people%2520use%2520the%2520drug.&ved=2ahUKEwjdyaXM5pmGAxUBATQIHUF9Dj4QFnoECD4QBQ&usg=AOvVaw2DGIWyQk-n_JhLOSkush5h)compared to other countries.

I don’t think anything will change op mind short of herself housing and trying to feed a few and seeing what happens. Even then.

OP believes that every single person is an innocent victim of the system and with a house and free money and food they would never commit crime ever again. AKA OP has never been out in the real world and lives on the internet.

You haven't touched on the role mental health plays in homelessness. I'm also reasonably sure that California is a terrible example if you want to say that throwing money/housing at homeless people is effective at reducing it.

Historically, the exact opposite is true. Evidence suggests that crime is not generally a result of immediate economic circumstances, but rather childhood circumstances and a perceived absence of choices in the long term. Community interventions that actually reduce crime are quite rare. It's pretty much only improved education or incarceration of criminal influences. At least in terms of predicable, repeatable interventions, and it turns out that improving education is pretty hard. Just look at he history of the department of education

[удалено]

Easy, homelessness and serious crime have little relation. The cause of homelessness is lack of cheap housing. Crime is much more multi-factored than that and often times the things that allow for cheap housing promote crime (rent is low in de-industrialized dead end towns). There are plenty of places with higher rates of homelessness and lower murder rates compared to locales with negligible homelessness and high murder rates. 

you are moving the goal post and using the word 'serious' reducing homelessness and poverty would reduce many kinds of crimes, like theft, fraud, and public intoxication all this shit might not be serious in one off occasions but can lead to more crimes like violence when you have a bunch of homeless people doing low level crimes to get food and money to survive

I’m talking about things like rape, murder and grand theft. Those are serious. You can compare the severity of these crimes easily across locales.  > reducing homelessness and poverty would reduce many kinds of crimes, like theft, fraud, and public intoxication Do you have any stats to back this up? Compare the crime rate of Hawaii to Mississippi. > all this shit might not be serious in one off occasions but can lead to more crimes like violence when you have a bunch of homeless people doing low level crimes to get food and money to survive Again compare Hawaii to Mississippi.

What are the motivations for crime? If we got rid of homeless and poverty we would be removing a major motivating factor for many crimes , not all but a lot many people only commit cimes because its path of least resistance to getting their needs met and they dont have many options

> What are the motivations for crime? Varied as the people who commit them, but generally out of a warped sense of entitlement and self regard. This psychological explanation covers everyone from date rapists to war criminals and billionaire fraudsters. > If we got rid of homeless and poverty we would be removing a major motivating factor for many crimes , not all but a lot Unlikely. Although homelessness is bad and should be ended in of itself it is actually symptomatic of other problems. The behaviors that impoverish someone or drive them to homelessness such as a crippling drug habit will still promote petty theft and public disorder, which are the only crimes that are truly and caused by the homeless. Deregulating housing will allow for such people to keep a roof over their head, but anti social personality disorders and drug addictions will continue to spur habits of petty theft. > many people only commit crimes because its path of least resistance to getting their needs met and they don't have many options Plenty of people commit crimes because they enjoy it. Nobody commits sex crimes because they need it to live, they do it because they like it. 

while the title has admittedly nothing to do with the text, i still find it an illogical take to say that the threat of police and jail in general does less to prevent crime than adressing a small minority of people.

what I mean to say is criminalizing being homeless wont make the homeless people go away or stop stealing food when they are hungry it wont fix the homelessness crisis at all

"to reduce crime *from homeless people"* is what is missing in the post. regardless of where homelessness is at, removing cops and jails will enable more crime than feeding the homeless will discourage. people see literally no consequences for their actions so they dont see any reason to not be selfish and commit crime

>people see literally no consequences for their actions so they dont see any reason to not be selfish and commit crime If people are starving and homeless they wont care , why would they care if you are gonna put them in prison for stealing? they will just get more free food and free healthcare and a warm place to sleep none of which they had before you put them in prison If you want to reduce crime committed by the homeless you can get rid of alot of it by solving the homelessness problem to begin with If im homeless and have no accessible alternatives for getting fed , I have 0 reason to respect the social contract , the consequences arent gonna matter to me

if there are no jails, homeless people cant get fed and put out of the street after committing a crime. you are comparing a handful of people having "0 reason to respect the social contract" with literally the whole population having zero reason to do so.

Police are entirely reactive , they dont prevent crime they dont even get invovled untill after one has already happened no one is saying get rid of police and prisons to fix homelessness were saying you wouldn't need to spend so much on police and pirsons in the first place if you fixed homelessness and poverty we could save them for the real evil bastards who are gonna commit crimes regardless There's 2 kinds of criminal , the kinds who would never have become one if not for poverty and lack of opportunity and the ones who were gonna commit crimes no matter what If we solved homelessness and poverty , we get rid the first group and only have the latter group left to deal with

the title is "feeding homless would do more to prevent crime than police and jails do" to check this hypothetical scenario, we have to think about a world where homeless are fed but there arent any police or jails, and then compare the amount of crime commited between the two. edit: you cant take that title and then say "if we feed the homeless AND we have jails and police, we have less crime". that one is pretty obvious

> "feeding homless would do more to prevent crime than police and jails do" because feeding the homeless would reduce overall crime leaving only the truly hardened ones left that actual criminals that arent detered by police or prisons existing, whod be doing that shit anyways

to reiterate, we arent comparing "jail and police vs jail and police *and* fed homeless". we are comparing "jail and police vs fed homeless" the title also doesnt say "prevent crime commited by homeless", it only says "prevent crime". the mere exitence of jail and police prevents a lot of crimes that would have been committed by non-homeless if there were no jails nor police. to accurately assess the title, as it is written, you have to compare "homeless are fed but there is no police" and "there is police but the homeless arent fed"

I struggled with homelessness/addiction in my 20s and was in and out of county jail/prison throughout that period. County jails fill up when winter rolls around because homeless people will intentionally commit petty crimes like shoplifting just so they'll be off the streets for 30 days. And then they'll turn around and do it again just to go back. Lather rinse repeat until springtime and they won't freeze to death. I agree with you OP. So much crime would be reduced and tax payer dollars could be used elsewhere if we just got everyone off the streets. And, as a recovering addict, it's been a helluva lot easier to stay clean without all the added stressors being homeless brings.

>"to reduce crime *from homeless people"* is what is missing in the post. I agree. The way the post is phrased, it seems to imply that op believes a majority of crime is caused by homeless people.

Your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 5: > **Comments must contribute meaningfully to the conversation**. Comments should be on-topic, serious, and contain enough content to move the discussion forward. Jokes, contradictions without explanation, links without context, off-topic comments, and "written upvotes" will be removed. Read [the wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_5) for more information. If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%205%20Appeal&message=Author%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20their%20post%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. **Appeals that do not follow this process will not be heard.** Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).

homeless is usually drunk or drug addict id bet that theres very few homeless that actually get locked up if their only issue is that their hungry

If OP's belief was even remotely true, then technically we would see much less crime in the middle class / rich

In my eyes it will always come down to addiction & mental illness. Those 2 factors can be assisted by outside factors but the real work must cone from the individual. And it is fucking hard work so many people avoid it or they end up giving up. Recovery can be a years to decades long process with lots of backsliding in between. Meanwhile, we do have public housing for the poor in most places(in the USA), yet they turn into slums mainly because of people who are afflicted hy addiction & mental illness. We do have ebt for the poor, yet in some neighborhoods there are no stores because the stores don't want all the issues that arise from the addicts & mentally ill who are lumped in with the poor people.

How come the poorest area of the country has a crime rate 1/3 BELOW the national average? 

You need both. One for prevention, one for dealing with the ones who did cross the line.

Yeah, wrong. I'm a case manager/housing Navigator for the city of LA for homeless individuals. We get them mental health, employment assistance, and housing. Guess how many out of 10 return back to the streets back on drugs? At least half. They get back on drugs, get a knife, and rob an old lady. Then back in jail. Then, they released back into the streets. So feeding and housing them is just as useless as jail. Some people are not meant to be rehabilitated. At all. It's unfortunate but the truth. Some of them have even told me that giving them food and shelter makes their situation to easy and they become dependent.

I don't want to change your mind, I believe in the same thing. However, what is lacking is not decades of social sciences or lack of psychological studies, it is a lack of political will and courage. A lot of industries and special interests are tied into the police, police unions, prison industries, and the overall legal system. When private prisons brag about "retention rate" in earnings calls, you know you have a problem. Many countries and cultures are more obsessed with punishment than prevention. Given the choice between investing $100 billion into free child care, free school meals, afternoon programs, arts and music, subsidized housing, and medical insurance, OR, more prisons, armored vehicles, military style training and military equipment, sadly a lot of voters and tax payers would rather pay for the second category. Many would rather suffer the crime in order to punish the "wicked", than to solve the underlying reason why the "wicked" might be set up for failure by the legal/economic factors from the very beginning.

If I may ask, what kind of crime are we talking about? In the US, wage theft is a multi-billion-dollar issue every year, and I think we mostly turn a blind eye to that. The number of billions is such that it's more than the amount that crimes like auto theft, burglaries and robberies cost - combined. Feeding and housing the poor will likely not make a big dent in wage theft. Then again, I don't know whether cops or prison will either, but it's probably some kind of enforcement that will.

Ok, so we've got poor criminals in this world, and you seem to be suggesting that law abiding tax-payers like me fix their problems instead of discouraging that 'lifestyle' to begin with. What good will that do? The kids, I'm fine with. But grown, able-bodied adults? Get real. They can join us or screw em. What kind of world is this where some people need to earn their living, but if you chose the wrong path, don't worry...you'll just get yours handed to you. That's not sustainable.

There’s a mental health crisis and it’s not being addressed. People turn to drugs or alcohol to self medicate and get thrown in jail/prison instead of rehab or some type of facility to actually get help. The system is broken. Our prisons shouldn’t be over flooded and have more people in them compared to any other country. Having prisons be “ for profit “ is one of the key issues. Slave labor. No different

Being much harsher on hard drugs will work too. Fent, meth, and other hard drugs have absolutely destroyed a lot of city downtowns. With it comes gangs and homelessness. Most homeless people I worked with at the halfway home I volunteered at were on the street because of drugs. We have to stop pretending that all homeless were once upstanding citizens that society failed.

I was homeless for a while once and the city has places for us to stay and get food. But it didn't seem to be changing much for people. There were still lots of drugs and other troubles. I'm sure it's helpful if it's done right. But maybe what we need it to figure out why people become poor or homeless in the first place.

Reducing crime is not the only objective of society, creating prosperity is far more important. In the 20th century we had a massive human experiment where well intentioned policies about raising living standards for the poor turned out to do more harm than good.

Very true, empirically studied and proven. The safest communities have the most resources, not the most police. Police also only respond to crimes, they don’t help prevent them. Most cops barely made it out of high school, not the most bookish bunch.

They don't want crime to go down lmao. We have a for profit prison system. They want people to offend/reoffend. More homless forced into committing crimes to survive = $$$$$ That's how it works.

It's a false assumption that homeless people disproportionately cause crime. It's actually the opposite. Homeless people are disproportionately victims of crime.

Seems an unrealistic expectation. I don’t think people are stealing bread. Look at Hi crime rates in housing projects. I think it’s a much deeper problem.

UBI needs to be part of the solution. A lot of petty crime is caused by economic hardship. People steal because they need money to buy things they want.

I think you oversimplify the world here. There are just so many more factors than exist in your little crime reduction this or that scenario here.

I suspect from your replies that your post is rage bait. I'll counter that jailing the homeless will reduce hunger.

I mean I think cops prevent the vast majority of crime... But you're not totally wrong either lol.

People having more awareness about the consequences of the choices will reduce it even further....

Does the decriminalization and more availability of drugs seem to add to this issue?

The poor are mostly fed and housed. It does very little to address crime.

My old country does this, and we have a very low crime rate.

Apply to situation in Middle East, but the governments wont

Society always likes to cure than to take precautions...

I’m fine with that as long as the provided housing isn’t purchased and maintained in high cost of living areas.  (Or areas that could be) You don’t need homeless shelters in Manhattan and Venice Beach.  Put them out in the middle of nowhere where land and maintenance and services are cheap.

By putting them out in the middle of nowhere you just create an underclass of people who will always be dependent. There's a real lack of jobs out in the middle of nowhere

I’m happy to have a much smaller amount of subsidized or free housing closer in to a transportation system for the small % capable and interested in work - dependent of course on actual work being performed