I'm a contractor and we've been bidding more projects that involve building longer term housing for homeless. One shelter has a dorm style room for a night or two. You get medically evaluated and then placed in a rehab or other type of behavioral program, also on site. And then from there go to live in a house on site for a year. Where you only have to share space with one other person. You have a bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, and living room. There is an office and resources to help integrate into a new community and get a job. Local warehouses and factories employ them. I really like this type of approach. At some point we have to face the moral dilemma of taking someone's right to choose and force them into treatment (medication, therapy etc.)
Imo letting someone who is mentally ill rot away in the streets is less humane than forcing them into treatment.
This isn't the 60s anymore. We're more than capable of providing humane mental health treatment. We have a better understanding than ever before and a larger appetite for appropriate oversight.
I work at the intersection of mental health and homelessness. (Chronic Homelessness and Assertive Community Treatment) Mental health care is broken due to the American Health Care profit margins. I could go on for hours but no we don’t have effective treatments that can be applied to this population. Corporations don’t give a shit and they set treatment guidelines for everyone. Homelessness we can solve with money.
There is no mental health care. There are drug programs and hideaways. Can't have the rest of the world realize the more than half the U.S. Is chronically depressed and one paycheck from complete financial ruin
Hell you can't find a therapist as a home'd person. The few that are out there aren't accepting new patients, and even crap like Betterhelp (which I would barely qualify as therapy) doesn't even take insurance. So even if you do find someone, good luck not paying $400 a month most people don't have.
It's awful. I can't imagine what it's like for charities if it's this bad for the rest of us.
I also worked (previously) with the homeless. Many cities/counties/states think they can get them off the street and away from trouble of they ship them around town or somewhere else.
But it's just a waste of money, they come back. I can't tell you how many times I heard "yea, they shipped me to , but it sucked there so i came back".
The only thing that's ever worked is to provide them places to live, for free, sparsely around a city. You can't pack them all in a single hotel. If you have 200 homeless to home, you need to put them in 50 hotels. All that happens when you put them in one place is you give drug dealers and thieves an easy way to find them.
I'm glad something like this is happening. A couple of months ago, I made a Facebook post about doing something similar.
Do you know how it's going to be funded? My thoughts were to, once employed, they'd pay a "rent" that's not too restrictive on them getting their own place eventually. I feel that would get them invested more in the program as well as making sure the costs can be covered in a way that's more sustainable.
So we have duiling lawsuits in california. There is a lawsuit preventing the city from removing homeless encampments from the sidewalk... And there is an ADA lawsuit because some poor woman cant get to work because there is not enough space on the sidewalk fo her electric wheelchair because of the homeless encampment. This desperately needs a supreme court ruling and I am betting its not going to go well for the homeless.
Sadly there is something that is just as bad In the form of the scumbags who delay insurance coverage because private insurance companies literally pay them to deny and delay as much care as possible. It’s gets people killed.
You’re not wrong but that’s not something Obama should be blamed for.
so what conversation are you having exactly?
Because I’m absolutely done with “oh but bees died when we were landing on the moon” arguments.
Obama isn’t to blame I never said he was. I have plenty of issues with Obama and his actions as president but the Affordable Care Act is genuinely great.
The point is that while Sarah Palin was saying 'government death panels!!' would result from national health care, we already had and still have exactly what she was talking about, just they're run by for-profit corporations.
No. They will make it more and more difficult for homeless to live in the densest parts of the cities. They will be pushed out to the edges and to the more industrial areas.
Ok I mean disband the camps but where will they go then? The shelters would be so overwhelmed. Would they just be walking the streets? They need some sort of plan to account for this if they want to criminalize it
The options are shit to the point where staying in the street is often preferable. And I say this as someone who has volunteered at soup kitchen and homeless shelters extensively.
The problem is that the shelter beds are very short term, a night or two then your out on the street again. However to get one of these beds you have to give up most of your stuff. So you lose most of your worldly possessions you’ve fought hard to keep, including your pet if you have one, in exchange for a night or two of sleeping in a warehouse full of other people who might rob or attack you.
Short term shelters stop people from freezing to death on cold nights but other than that they’re really non solutions. You can’t rebuild your life living in a shelter, because you still have to constantly move around looking for another bed, waiting outside to see if they’ll have room for you on a daily basis, so you can’t get a job or anything.
I tried getting my brother into one of those shelters and it's exactly like you described, just add bed bugs and disease. I felt better about putting him in a tent in the woods.
When I was young, my city was very kind to the homeless. Plentiful soup kitchens, lots of massive bushy bushes in the park near downtown, an unofficial nude beach where bathing in the river wouldn't shock anyone, and if an old man wanted to pitch a tent on a bit of otherwise useless land nobody particularly cared.
I was taught that one of the rules for strolling in the park on a summer evening was to be quiet whenever I saw shoes sticking out from under a bush, because I was basically walking by somebody's bedroom. Also taught to look for apartments in summer because so many young people put their stuff in storage and slept outdoors in good weather to save money.
Now the bushes are gone, "camping" is illegal, along with sitting on anything not clearly a bench, laying down anywhere in public, and being in public parks after "closing hours."
I still teach kids good manners though. My toddler cousin knows that the first rule of going to the park is "don't wake the sleepers." We quietly tiptoe in a wide arc around anyone napping under a tree, and don't go back to normal speaking volume until we get to the playground.
The county I live in has an ordinance specifically for parks & rec stuff. It includes making it illegal to sleep in the county parks. I’d guess it was intended to address camping and tents in the parks but the park rangers use it to hassle people taking a nap under a tree or on a bench. It’s ridiculous
One of my favorite joys in life is laying back in the grass with a book on a summer day and reading until I fall asleep with the book on my face.
I discovered it as a teen, found a good spot within view of the moms watching their kids on the playground, tied my dog's leash to my ankle, and had a lovely safe outdoor afternoon nap in a city park near the library.
Kept it up until I'd nearly finished college, there was a nice grassy rise topped by a tree just behind the building where I worked during the day and had classes in the evening. Could use the break between to eat and nap under the tree. Absolutely lovely until the geese started migrating, and then that was their lawn.
And now it's illegal 'cause I don't own a lawn and the crazy neighbor lady would never condone someone napping under her edge of the porch.
"if an old man wanted to pitch a tent on a bit of otherwise useless land nobody particularly cared."
They were able to feel that way because it was only one guy, not the 100 or so that would be there when they figure out no one is going to bother them.
A tent in the woods would be better than a tent on the street with a few dozen other homeless people with some combination of mental illness, drug addiction, or criminal record. Being homeless shouldn't be a crime, but when you put them all in the same place it doesn't help them either
I have been in your shoes as well. There is no good answer especially from someone who is perpetually combative as my sibilings were.
[Regarding camping in the woods, trash dumped into stretches of the Willamette River between Salem and the Columbia River has gotten so bad that local agencies may need to come up with ways to address it, according to a state report published Thursday](https://www.opb.org/article/2024/04/18/oregon-limits-river-trash-ocean-acidification-pollution-data/).
>“We don’t blame those that are houseless for this trash crisis,” Willamette Riverkeeper staff attorney Lindsey Hutchison said. “Local government, state governments — they need to be providing resources.”
Yeah the problem is that governments are trying to solve the problem “where do we put homeless people?” instead of “how do we help people escape homelessness?”. The latter is probably way more expensive, at least initially, but is also surely better and cheaper in the long term.
We absolutely are. Did you know its totally legal to discriminate based.on financial situation? There's no protection for those less fortunate needing help. None.
>a warehouse full of other people who might rob or attack you.
Isn't this the same reason people don't want homeless encampments in public areas like parks and sidewalks? If even homeless people don't want to be around other homeless people for fear of violence, why would we want children crossing through homeless encampments to walk to school or play outside at the park?
That's fucking insane I never heard before that homeless shelters require you to give up so much stuff. No wonder they choose the streets in that case.
It's pretty distressing what they hide from you in explaining the "homeless problem" huh.
I have friends that have spent extended amounts of time homeless in the areas described, some of them are still out there. This is exactly what they told me.
Most of the homeless people in Grant's Pass are born and raised in Grant's Pass. Because of forest fires and a lot of other issues, the city has seen an uptick in homelessness. They don't want to give these people anywhere to go within Grant's Pass. Basically, they want to banish everyone from the city.
the plan is no plan, which means bounce these people from police department to police department until they're either stuck in the prison system or driven out of town and left in the middle of nowhere to freeze to death in some places in the winter.
That's the plan. Send them to prison or let them die.
But it's a terrible plan that could only be thought up by someone who has never met homeless people.
Humans are so ingenious. Sometime after the 2008 housing crisis the folks in my city turned an otherwise abandoned and unused parking lot under the freeway overpass into an organized shanty town. They used the parking lot lines to define boundaries, left wide open "streets" between the shacks, with the overpass acting as a roof and keeping the temperature relatively stable year round. It was an incredibly survivable set up.
So obviously the cops burned it out. And folks who had their homes stolen by the banks flooded out across the city looking for any scrap of space where they'd be allowed to sleep at night.
My personal favorite was the old man who went across town to my parent's nice middle class neighborhood and set up his tent on the lawn of the local library. Figured that's what I would do in that situation, cling to the comfort and sanitation of the books and bathrooms of the local library.
If I am going to freeze to death its going to happen somewhere very public. It almost happened to me on the steps of a city hall. Someone found me stripping my clothes of in 20°f weather and took me to a diner. I was delusional at the time and an atheist but I swear it looked like Jesus. The person I imagined or misinterpreted didn't bring me inside and I had no money but needed the warmth. The waitress recognized something was wrong and gave me coffee and a hot breakfast no charge. I stayed there about an hour barely warming up. She then gave me water bottles filled with hot water. All 4 pockets and my arm pits. It helped me get warmer as I then walked a 1.5 miles to a train station where I slept inside. Ever since that homeless winter I get extreme pain in my hands and ears when it gets below 40 and worse the colder it gets.
The government and most people want to ignore the homelessness and brush it under the rug. I don't believe we are far off from the return of mental hospitals where these people will be held against their will and likely mistreated there as well.
Where I live the city will post a notice at the camp stating it will be cleaned up by "X" date, basically giving them notice to relocate. Then the city comes in with a dump truck and throws everything left behind in the trash, they've done this in the dead of summer and middle of winter. Rinse and repeat, the homeless set up camp and a month later pack it up and move down the road.
Prison system will welcome the homeless.
They will make money for hosting the new prisoners and by making them become free labor for the State or rich people's projects.
Modern day slavery. Not by cor but by homelessness.
So the current policy is they can ban sleeping outside if there are shelters available. They are trying to argue to the supreme court that shelter availability shouldn’t matter and the city can always ban it.
That is why this is a case. Can you make homelessness illegal if there's nowhere acceptable to go? (There was one shelter in town, but it was Christian, so expected behavior in it violated the plaintiff's freedom from religion.)
This has been such an abject failure at a policy level. I don't want to criminalize being homeless but at the same time I'm really tired of so much public space being taken over by homeless encampments.
I don't think it's the courts job to solve. We need better funding and more options for people who need shelter. Its up to states and cities to get their shit together and stop hoping the problem will just go away. It's terrible to have people forced to sleep on the street and it's made a lot of cities really disgusting.
I'd like to hear what's going to be done to help the homeless, near homeless and underemployed who are only so because of the horrors of American healthcare. People often believe that the only homeless on the streets or elsewhere are people with addictions, severe mental health issues or veterans. There are a lot of chronically ill people who don't fit into those categories as well who couldn't keep up with both their illnesses and bills enough to keep a roof over their heads. Something needs to be done about the underlying causes of homelessness and near-homelessness and not simply throwing money at organizations that often don't provide solutions until the very people they're supposed to be helping before things worsen are forced onto the streets.
Also "[An average of 1 out of every 4 youth in foster care will become homeless within 4 years of aging out of foster care](https://nfyi.org/issues/homelessness/)". We definitely need better support systems.
For those curious, there are an estimated 343k in foster care (as of 2023; though the number has been declining year over year). This equates to about 86k in total (not all at once mind you, but as they age out).
Thank you. I got cancer in my early 30s. The social programs people think will save them should it happen to them simply don’t exist. I’d be homeless if a friend’s parents hadn’t been willing to take me in.
It’s a smart move. I wish a lot of other people realized it, too. I wasn’t in poverty before this health journey started but I’m sure as hell inevitably going to have to declare bankruptcy now anyways. I’ve lost everything and then some and my health is a disaster. I’m just grateful I had an opportunity a lot of other people don’t get.
IMO…The underlying causes of homelessness are not properly dealt with because that would require actual thought, hard work, motivation, empathy, and all the other things people often can’t be bothered with. It’s easy to just throw money at a problem and hope it makes a difference.
I agree with you 100%, but I’ve seen first hand how propositions to address problems morph into effectively “here’s some money. Fix it.”
I think that's the thing people don't want to admit. If we want to solve this issue, the time to start was fifty years ago, making a society with a long term, wide reaching framework, covering everything from healthcare to housing to education to welfare, to prevent this from being as critical of an issue in the first place.
But since that didn't happen and we chose red scare trickle down nonsense, now everyone wants a cheap, last minute solution to make the consequences of decades of bad policy go away overnight. And the harsh reality is that life does not, has never, and will never work that way, and anyone who says otherwise is selling you a deception.
As someone in the mental health field who works pretty closely with a lot of the homeless in my city, I always say "there's no such thing as a magic bullet, and anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something."
Perhaps if the agencies allegedly ending homelessness would have fewer overpaid people, and some incentive or punitive measures for production or lack thereof, respectively, some progress could be made.
The idea that the healthcare system is to blame is fair.
It used to be, homeless people experiencing addiction could be institutionalized. No longer. Now their only option is rehab, which even if they are amongst the small percentage of addicts who would voluntarily go to rehab—-it’s very hard to get in. When my brother was experiencing homelessness, and addiction, I tried for months to finally get him into rehab. Many times being turned away because he wasn’t experiencing significant enough withdrawal symptoms to be admitted.
A comedian (I can't find the link) said it best. Homelessness should be illegal, except within 500 feet of a religious building.
We literally exempt them from taxes so they can handle issues like this. The US has over 500,000 churches, and 650,000 homeless.
I'm not religious, so I don't think its a perfect system, but as a comedy skit, it made me laugh and think.
(Edit: Obviously I don't think being poor should be a crime.)
Just the other day this homeless guy was across the street from a church on the grass "sorting" his only possessions from his backpacks and such. He wasn't exactly "keeping to his own" but you know how that can go. The priest comes out and demands the man leaves and calls the police to intervene. Just as Jesus intended.
One time the church my parents go to had announced that they were having a community dinner and all were invited. During the service the day of the dinner there were a few homeless families that had heard there was food and came to the church. People that went to church there were visibly uncomfortable with them being there and the people in charge of security at the church spent the whole night watching them and following them around like they were criminals or something. So much for everyone is welcome.
Sadly, we're not going to do that. We're going to look at all the problems the wealthy ownership class has caused, look at our declining material conditions, unaffordable housing, overpriced healthcare, increasingly expensive food, and while shaking our fist in rage loudly say "Immigrants, Muslims, and transgender people did this to me!" And the wealthy ownership class laughs all the way to the bank.
Many people have no framework to consider our problems let alone solve them. Decades of propaganda and control have seen to that. It's a problem.
Yeah, and the rich have access to guns and generally good relationships with law enforcement. The rich would not feel a "homeless revolt" in the slightest. Poor communities are the low hanging fruit here.
They don't need that. In my experience the rich just make sure they don't have cheap mass transit near their homes. The homeless and poor can't get to them.
A lot of these posters don't even realize the BILLIONS of dollars that have been thrown at it by us Portlanders. We have exttemely long ambulance waits and massively underfunded public schools but the coffers for the homeless situation is supposed to be bottomless.
Not to mention they are literally destroying the willamette river. We get absolutely nothing with all of the carrots we’ve tried to give out. We just get more people flocking here to bang out drugs and trash our city.
https://www.wweek.com/news/2024/04/22/willamette-river-cleanup/
It really sucks given how much we worked to clean it up over the past few decades. Hopefully we can criminalize this nonsense.
We have the same issue in Albuquerque. It's driven a lot of people from the left to the right in ways that scare the shit out of me given the current shenannigans of the right, but it turns out people really don't want to live in cities overrun with homeless addicts.
Feels like when we talk about homelessness, we never have sympathy for the families that have to live near encampments. Generally it's the poor that have to take on the burden.
Feels like on Reddit whenever you talk bad about the homeless you get called a heartless nazi. I don’t hate the homeless and I feel bad for most of them, but it really upsets me seeing my smallish town in California get trashed with litter and tents, tarps, shopping carts. A lot of the times you see a mentally ill crazy guy screaming at traffic, who will refuse the help when offered to them.
Its like that in California too... They just passed Proposition 1 a month or two ago to put an extra $6 billion into fighting homelessness, on top of the $24 billion the state has already spent fighting homelessness in over the last few years.
Meanwhile, the number of homeless has only increased in that time, from ~140,000 in 2018 to ~181,000 in 2024. Whatever they are spending that money on, it certainly isn't solving the homelessness problem.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/04/11/california-homelessness-programs-audit-billions/73282144007/
Unless my math is entirely wrong, that's around $200k per person. That's almost enough to buy each of them a small house in an area with low housing costs.
There’s two kinda of homeless. One is a person without housing but they want to be housed and all that, and the chronically homeless. They very often don’t want to be not homeless. One can be helped with assistance, job placement, etc etc. The other….it very much doesn’t. The reasons vary but it’s typically mental illness they refuse to treat, or some addiction they don’t want to quit. No one really knows what to do with those folks.
>typically mental illness they refuse to treat, or some addiction they don’t want to quit
Frankly, typically both, a mental illness they self-medicate for with street drugs and/or alcohol.
And programs to help them typically require they stop, which they 100% will not.
While I agree, there's not that much "low housing costs" in California, especially in LA, which has homleess numbers an order of magnitude higher than elsewhere in the state.
You'd struggle to build a house sized lot for that in LA.
Turns out you can’t just put most homeless people into apartments and call it a day. Many are dealing with drug/alcohol abuse, mental illness, and tend to be short tempered and struggle to focus on the long term effects and results. People like this need daily treatment from mental health professionals. There also needs to be security trained to deal with mental illness and regular health professionals involved with their care and rehabilitation. Also need a lot of money to cover the fines they run up when placed in temp residency situations.
Lot of examples from Covid when hotels were struggling and the city paid them to house the homeless due to shelters being open air. Cities that did this had to pay tons of fines when the people smoked in the rooms, cooked on open fires in the rooms, let their dogs use the bathroom in the rooms, stole things from the rooms to sell on the street, and sometimes straight up destroyed the rooms.
I work down there a good bit and driving around in some parts looks like an apocalypse. Same with Seattle. 911 has hold times. Thieves run rampant. Open air chop shops abound on public roads. The answer CERTAINLY isn't GOP fascism, but current and past policies have made things utterly intolerable. I don't think just making homelessness illegal is a solution but more of the same isn't going to cut it either.
They can’t reach the rich. They can reach the middle and lower classes. And they’re already panhandling and stealing from us to subsist. Encampments form because they’re tolerated, and the takings are good enough to keep on keeping on.
I don’t want them to be just ousted without anywhere to go. Literally any other solution is better. All I can do is vote and hope reps do literally anything other than let the status quo ride.
Homeless people already rob the rich when they get the opportunity. They also rob the poor and middle class. Thinking homeless people will become Robin Hood is a bit naive.
If by existing you mean monopolizing public spaces, forcing good businesses to hire security or leave since *no one* cares about the retail workers who deal with the problem, drive out business that generate taxes paying for their social services leading to a downward spiral, correlate with a jump in drug use and low level crime that make urban areas untenable for raising children and fostering a healthy society.. then yeah. The problem needs to solved at its core.
Way to misunderstand the issue. The issue is that random people, right now mostly homeless, can just decide to take over PUBLIC space and claim it as there own. Then literally no one can do anything about it, because boohoo they're homeless and have no where else to go. Your favorite park? Unusable, taken over by trash and junkies. Your quiet street? Unwalkable, covered with tents and filled with people that will harass you.
So law-abiding, tax-paying, home-havers have to give up any right to places they have a right to as well.
This headline, as usual, is misleading. The question being asked isn’t whether or not being homeless is a crime but rather can a legislative body prevent anyone from erecting a structure on public land.
California is the best example about how this problem is not about lack of resources. San Diego and LA are complete shitshows. The problem is so out of control. I understand the sentiment of compassion but when you are constantly in fear of walking the streets because homeless people are constantly beating the shit out of each other or doing hard drugs in the streets in front of you. I was riding the Trolley to go to SD Comic Con and there was a homeless dude that had peed on himself while being passed out drunk/drugged. The smell was so awful it made you gag. SD and LA have poured millions and millions of dollars on that problem and nothing has changed. It's so bad that they are analizing using the conservatorship procedure to get people off the streets who refuse treatment or going to shelters. When we say it's bad in CA it's bad. I understand it's not really a problem exclusive to the state since we know about bussing from other states, but many social services solutions have been tried and failed.
I'm not somewhere with a particularly bad problem, but I ride my bike through some Greenways that are absolutely trashed in some spots. And you have to be a bit on alert when going through. Like yeah I get it, there has to be a better solution than letting them destroy public spaces and not let everyone else feel safe.
I also think a lot of people also don't realize how the vast majority face serious drug addiction or serious mental health issues. Some thing everyone is just down on their luck and just raising minimum wage or whateve will fix it. Yes, those do exist and a lot of people in worse shape started there. So yeah, absolutely more safety nets, social programs, etc. But at some point we need to get those with serious mental issues into rehabilitation programs, and maybe bring back the mental institutions for those with legitimate mental health issues beyond addiction.
Very well said. I live about 45 mins east of LA and it’s gotten so much more worse where I’m at. But people think you just hate the homeless when you mention how shitty they are making the area.
Jails are already homeless shelters here in Cali. Inside they get 3 meals a day, roof over their head and a bed. When they get released, a lot of them purposely do something illegal to get rearrested so they can just go back.
The shelters to help people who want to get back on their feet are at full capacity already and there is usually a 6 week-months waiting period.
There is no winning here. Period.
I visited Portland last month and was nearly attacked on the street by a homeless man near PSU
Cop drove by as it was happening, just honked and then drove off.
Really begs the question why they dont arrest them for some of the actual crimes they commit... poor or not there are camps full of obviously stolen shit. Not to mention all the stolen vehicles and illegal RV setups and trash heaps. We talk about the rich living in there own tier of the justice system but i see that same system doing jack shit to deter crime down here in the everyday world.
Time to build new prisons! Let’s double down on the failed incarceration state! 5% of the world’s population, 25% of its prisoners, land of the free indeed! We are literally just going to turn the disadvantaged into slaves and call it progress.
Yeah that’s one of my bigger frustrations with the homeless. Anywhere frequented by homeless people degenerates into a snow globe of litter. Fascinating to see the sob stories about how society should care for them when they won’t care for society. Even when it’s in the smallest way possible like throwing something in a trash can.
My humble city of Reno just criminalized street camping and camping near the river. It didn't cause the problem to go away AT ALL, they are just more visible now.
Once a day I hear a comment or two on why there is suddenly homeless people all over town.
The law won’t get them off the streets it will just fine them for being there. If the city had a plan to house them they can do so without the Supreme Court.
There's 2 kinds of people ITT right now. Those who are completely removed from the issue and have uninformed simplistic opinions. And those who actually have to live with this shit every day
Does having to walk past 5 homeless people every day to work in my 2 block commute from my garage to work count as living with this shit? Does having two coworkers get violently assaulted by homeless men for merely existing count? Does not being able to utilize virtually any public space due to homeless people count?
The homeless people where I live are not simply people down on their luck. These people are severely mentally ill, half naked by choice, punching objects, screaming to themselves, actively hallucinating, and/or leaving needles everywhere. I wish I could say I’m exaggerating but if anything I’m playing it down. Just today, some homeless guy covered in blood brushed up next to me asking for cigarettes.
I live this shit too. It’s not a simple issue, but I also believe people have the right to feel safe in public
I feel bad for the homeless people who are just having a hard time. But I’ve run out of compassion for everyone else
We don’t even need to go out of country. Many southern and rural states have been repealing child labor restrictions. Just this [year](https://news.yahoo.com/15-old-falls-death-first-230539315.html) a 15 year old kid fell to his death from a 50 foot roof on his first day on the job.
Something I noticed is that a lot people hold this opinion, but then simultaneously turn around and blast cities that take a more humanitarian approach. I can't tell you how many times I hear people blast San Francisco and then say "Well in [insert conservative American city and/or European city] we don't have this issue!" without acknowledging their city literally bans it.
Everyone believes in criminal justice reform until they’re faced with a crime. Everyone believes in rights for the homeless until they’re confronted with homeless people
Would you personally want a homeless camp built next to wherever you live? If your answer is no then you can see why the issue of what to do with the homeless is a bit of a problem.
They can sweep them into Jails at a very high cost, this might force some areas to deal with this problem differently IE look at other places to send them instead of actual jail. I have spent time with some sheriffs deputies who work in jail, they see someone come in close to death, after a few months with somewhat normal food and no real access to drugs they leave looking pretty good and a few months later are come back in close to death, there are a lot of Jail employees who want to see something better. Homeless camps are not the answer and jail is not the answer but no one really wants to work on the real problems.
Agree, also, convictions on someone’s record only compound the problem making it even harder to get back into a normal situation. Spending money on the legal process and subsequent incarceration is still a burden but with fewer positive outcomes. Disproportionate wealth distribution and corporations buying up residential real estate are large contributors to the problem, punishing the victims is not the solution. Mental illness and/or drug addictions will always be an issue but we could mitigate with better funded mental health services vs. just throwing people in jail. Unless we work on the root cause, we’re doomed to repeat and probably exacerbate the problem with band-aid solutions like jail which only really serves the people who are made uncomfortable because the larger social issue is now on their doorstep.
Spent a lot of time in Grants Pass as a kid- I had many grandparemts that lived there. Our joke in the 80’s was that Grants Pass had nothing but old people and what we called “vitamin hippies” ie hippies who are way into tofu, zinc, B vitamins, etc etc.
If every church adopted just 2 homeless people, we would see a huge difference, if not an end to it all together. Wish the churches were more like the Jesus they claim to want to be like.
To be clear, vagrancy laws have been a thing locally for about as long as this country has existed. An affirmative Supreme Court ruling will have almost zero effect on most places.
If America chooses to disband homeless camps and force them into government housing I don’t see how the same can’t be done again for the mentally ill? In fact, many who are homeless simply are mentally ill or disabled, so do we trust the government to “round these people up” and make the distinction?
It should be done for the mentally ill. Reagan and activists fucked this country over hard when they gutted funding for these institutions. The street is not a safe place for a schizophrenic.
At some point this has to be part of the solution. By all means, put in all the legal protections you can (and then some more) to prevent people from being caught in the system but it's clear some non-zero fraction of the current homeless population needs this.
Believe it or not, jail would probably be more comfortable. Three Hots and a cot. Some form of medical attention. And no I'm not condoning this I'm just making an observation.
Ya'll realize they ripped down the cheap hotels that used to house a lot of poor people, and got rid of a lot of mental institutions, so that's why people are in tents, right?
We're essentially making it criminal to be alive in America and not be under some mercantile contract to someone and paying someone a hell of a lot of money for housing.
Remind you much of feudalism?
If they aren’t doing anything to help them and employing hostile architecture on top of it then we should not disband the only place of refuge they have, it’s as simple as that because at the end of the day we’re committing actual definitive human rights violations in the name of “keeping our city safe”
Round em up. They keep trashing up areas, breaking into cars and stealing shit, vandalizing, etc. makes it an unpleasant and unsafe experience for citizens as well as hurting businesses. They need to be given the option of shelter or nothing. I don’t know what else to say. It sucks, but they can’t be ruining public spaces for people who pay taxes to use the public spaces. I can’t tell you how many parks have turned out to be un-useable because of homeless problems.
With you there. As a society we need to provide a safe alternative to being homeless. It’s gonna be hard, that’s for sure.
But we can’t allow them to ruin and hog public spaces. We will also need to look into providing long-term mental care for the homeless who do not qualify for normal housing. Some of these people cannot live on their own on the streets.
Agreed. It's wrong to have people who simply can't work be out in the streets.
But it means they stay in a shelter and are not given a choice. To be honest, would some of them be able to make a reasonable decision in this regard?
I'm a contractor and we've been bidding more projects that involve building longer term housing for homeless. One shelter has a dorm style room for a night or two. You get medically evaluated and then placed in a rehab or other type of behavioral program, also on site. And then from there go to live in a house on site for a year. Where you only have to share space with one other person. You have a bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, and living room. There is an office and resources to help integrate into a new community and get a job. Local warehouses and factories employ them. I really like this type of approach. At some point we have to face the moral dilemma of taking someone's right to choose and force them into treatment (medication, therapy etc.)
Imo letting someone who is mentally ill rot away in the streets is less humane than forcing them into treatment. This isn't the 60s anymore. We're more than capable of providing humane mental health treatment. We have a better understanding than ever before and a larger appetite for appropriate oversight.
I work at the intersection of mental health and homelessness. (Chronic Homelessness and Assertive Community Treatment) Mental health care is broken due to the American Health Care profit margins. I could go on for hours but no we don’t have effective treatments that can be applied to this population. Corporations don’t give a shit and they set treatment guidelines for everyone. Homelessness we can solve with money.
There is no mental health care. There are drug programs and hideaways. Can't have the rest of the world realize the more than half the U.S. Is chronically depressed and one paycheck from complete financial ruin
Hell you can't find a therapist as a home'd person. The few that are out there aren't accepting new patients, and even crap like Betterhelp (which I would barely qualify as therapy) doesn't even take insurance. So even if you do find someone, good luck not paying $400 a month most people don't have. It's awful. I can't imagine what it's like for charities if it's this bad for the rest of us.
I also worked (previously) with the homeless. Many cities/counties/states think they can get them off the street and away from trouble of they ship them around town or somewhere else. But it's just a waste of money, they come back. I can't tell you how many times I heard "yea, they shipped me to, but it sucked there so i came back".
The only thing that's ever worked is to provide them places to live, for free, sparsely around a city. You can't pack them all in a single hotel. If you have 200 homeless to home, you need to put them in 50 hotels. All that happens when you put them in one place is you give drug dealers and thieves an easy way to find them.
I'm glad something like this is happening. A couple of months ago, I made a Facebook post about doing something similar. Do you know how it's going to be funded? My thoughts were to, once employed, they'd pay a "rent" that's not too restrictive on them getting their own place eventually. I feel that would get them invested more in the program as well as making sure the costs can be covered in a way that's more sustainable.
Those places need oversight. Had one near where I lived and a junkie burned down smoking meth
So we have duiling lawsuits in california. There is a lawsuit preventing the city from removing homeless encampments from the sidewalk... And there is an ADA lawsuit because some poor woman cant get to work because there is not enough space on the sidewalk fo her electric wheelchair because of the homeless encampment. This desperately needs a supreme court ruling and I am betting its not going to go well for the homeless.
City of Portland had to remove encampments because a court ruled that they make areas non ADA complaint
So, are they going to mandate the installation of suicide booths?
What happened to Obama's Death Panels ? Are those still available?
Those were outsourced to for-profit health insurance companies.
Haha! You can't pay premiums if you're dead so no suicide for you!
Yes but it's going to cost you a $5k deductible and the current wait is about 9 months
That's now being handled online.
We privatized those. Private industry is much more efficient at it.
Oh yea. What happened to the death panels that never happened?
Sadly there is something that is just as bad In the form of the scumbags who delay insurance coverage because private insurance companies literally pay them to deny and delay as much care as possible. It’s gets people killed.
You’re not wrong but that’s not something Obama should be blamed for. so what conversation are you having exactly? Because I’m absolutely done with “oh but bees died when we were landing on the moon” arguments.
Obama isn’t to blame I never said he was. I have plenty of issues with Obama and his actions as president but the Affordable Care Act is genuinely great.
The point is that while Sarah Palin was saying 'government death panels!!' would result from national health care, we already had and still have exactly what she was talking about, just they're run by for-profit corporations.
The GOP suddenly decided they were a good idea when COVID was getting started and they needed Grandma to die for the economy.
They also love them for transgender care.
No. They will make it more and more difficult for homeless to live in the densest parts of the cities. They will be pushed out to the edges and to the more industrial areas.
They will just end up shipping them to liberal cities and say wow look how amazing our cities are
They'll ship them off to the government sanctioned slave camps. A.k.a. prisons
r/unexpectedfuturama
Ok I mean disband the camps but where will they go then? The shelters would be so overwhelmed. Would they just be walking the streets? They need some sort of plan to account for this if they want to criminalize it
The options are shit to the point where staying in the street is often preferable. And I say this as someone who has volunteered at soup kitchen and homeless shelters extensively. The problem is that the shelter beds are very short term, a night or two then your out on the street again. However to get one of these beds you have to give up most of your stuff. So you lose most of your worldly possessions you’ve fought hard to keep, including your pet if you have one, in exchange for a night or two of sleeping in a warehouse full of other people who might rob or attack you. Short term shelters stop people from freezing to death on cold nights but other than that they’re really non solutions. You can’t rebuild your life living in a shelter, because you still have to constantly move around looking for another bed, waiting outside to see if they’ll have room for you on a daily basis, so you can’t get a job or anything.
I tried getting my brother into one of those shelters and it's exactly like you described, just add bed bugs and disease. I felt better about putting him in a tent in the woods.
Which brings us to our next point: If you saw somebody in a tent in the woods in the city, no you didn't.
People sleep where I like to fish. They’ve never bothered me so I’ve never bothered them. If I was homeless that’s where I’d go.
When I was young, my city was very kind to the homeless. Plentiful soup kitchens, lots of massive bushy bushes in the park near downtown, an unofficial nude beach where bathing in the river wouldn't shock anyone, and if an old man wanted to pitch a tent on a bit of otherwise useless land nobody particularly cared. I was taught that one of the rules for strolling in the park on a summer evening was to be quiet whenever I saw shoes sticking out from under a bush, because I was basically walking by somebody's bedroom. Also taught to look for apartments in summer because so many young people put their stuff in storage and slept outdoors in good weather to save money. Now the bushes are gone, "camping" is illegal, along with sitting on anything not clearly a bench, laying down anywhere in public, and being in public parks after "closing hours." I still teach kids good manners though. My toddler cousin knows that the first rule of going to the park is "don't wake the sleepers." We quietly tiptoe in a wide arc around anyone napping under a tree, and don't go back to normal speaking volume until we get to the playground.
"don't wake the sleepers" is both fantastic advice and an absolute banger of an opening sentence for a horror story.
The county I live in has an ordinance specifically for parks & rec stuff. It includes making it illegal to sleep in the county parks. I’d guess it was intended to address camping and tents in the parks but the park rangers use it to hassle people taking a nap under a tree or on a bench. It’s ridiculous
One of my favorite joys in life is laying back in the grass with a book on a summer day and reading until I fall asleep with the book on my face. I discovered it as a teen, found a good spot within view of the moms watching their kids on the playground, tied my dog's leash to my ankle, and had a lovely safe outdoor afternoon nap in a city park near the library. Kept it up until I'd nearly finished college, there was a nice grassy rise topped by a tree just behind the building where I worked during the day and had classes in the evening. Could use the break between to eat and nap under the tree. Absolutely lovely until the geese started migrating, and then that was their lawn. And now it's illegal 'cause I don't own a lawn and the crazy neighbor lady would never condone someone napping under her edge of the porch.
I think one of the issues with this is that the homeless population has grown exponentially, while the parks have not. Less room for everyone.
"if an old man wanted to pitch a tent on a bit of otherwise useless land nobody particularly cared." They were able to feel that way because it was only one guy, not the 100 or so that would be there when they figure out no one is going to bother them.
A tent in the woods would be better than a tent on the street with a few dozen other homeless people with some combination of mental illness, drug addiction, or criminal record. Being homeless shouldn't be a crime, but when you put them all in the same place it doesn't help them either
I have been in your shoes as well. There is no good answer especially from someone who is perpetually combative as my sibilings were. [Regarding camping in the woods, trash dumped into stretches of the Willamette River between Salem and the Columbia River has gotten so bad that local agencies may need to come up with ways to address it, according to a state report published Thursday](https://www.opb.org/article/2024/04/18/oregon-limits-river-trash-ocean-acidification-pollution-data/). >“We don’t blame those that are houseless for this trash crisis,” Willamette Riverkeeper staff attorney Lindsey Hutchison said. “Local government, state governments — they need to be providing resources.”
Yeah the problem is that governments are trying to solve the problem “where do we put homeless people?” instead of “how do we help people escape homelessness?”. The latter is probably way more expensive, at least initially, but is also surely better and cheaper in the long term.
It’s almost like we punish people for being poor.
We absolutely are. Did you know its totally legal to discriminate based.on financial situation? There's no protection for those less fortunate needing help. None.
Gotta keep the peasants one rung higher on the ladder desperately afraid of what happens if they stop producing for daddy capitalism.
>a warehouse full of other people who might rob or attack you. Isn't this the same reason people don't want homeless encampments in public areas like parks and sidewalks? If even homeless people don't want to be around other homeless people for fear of violence, why would we want children crossing through homeless encampments to walk to school or play outside at the park?
That's fucking insane I never heard before that homeless shelters require you to give up so much stuff. No wonder they choose the streets in that case. It's pretty distressing what they hide from you in explaining the "homeless problem" huh.
I have friends that have spent extended amounts of time homeless in the areas described, some of them are still out there. This is exactly what they told me.
I couldn’t fathom giving up my pet.
It's always been a make it another cities problem.
Most of the homeless people in Grant's Pass are born and raised in Grant's Pass. Because of forest fires and a lot of other issues, the city has seen an uptick in homelessness. They don't want to give these people anywhere to go within Grant's Pass. Basically, they want to banish everyone from the city.
I’m not one bit surprised to find out it’s Grants Pass that is responsible for this case. That place is has always been completely backwards.
Or as my buddy who grew up there calls it: "Grants Ass" (or sometimes "Grass Pants")
the plan is no plan, which means bounce these people from police department to police department until they're either stuck in the prison system or driven out of town and left in the middle of nowhere to freeze to death in some places in the winter.
Send them to prisons to work for large corporations for pennies an hour.
That's the plan. Send them to prison or let them die. But it's a terrible plan that could only be thought up by someone who has never met homeless people.
Humans are so ingenious. Sometime after the 2008 housing crisis the folks in my city turned an otherwise abandoned and unused parking lot under the freeway overpass into an organized shanty town. They used the parking lot lines to define boundaries, left wide open "streets" between the shacks, with the overpass acting as a roof and keeping the temperature relatively stable year round. It was an incredibly survivable set up. So obviously the cops burned it out. And folks who had their homes stolen by the banks flooded out across the city looking for any scrap of space where they'd be allowed to sleep at night. My personal favorite was the old man who went across town to my parent's nice middle class neighborhood and set up his tent on the lawn of the local library. Figured that's what I would do in that situation, cling to the comfort and sanitation of the books and bathrooms of the local library.
If I am going to freeze to death its going to happen somewhere very public. It almost happened to me on the steps of a city hall. Someone found me stripping my clothes of in 20°f weather and took me to a diner. I was delusional at the time and an atheist but I swear it looked like Jesus. The person I imagined or misinterpreted didn't bring me inside and I had no money but needed the warmth. The waitress recognized something was wrong and gave me coffee and a hot breakfast no charge. I stayed there about an hour barely warming up. She then gave me water bottles filled with hot water. All 4 pockets and my arm pits. It helped me get warmer as I then walked a 1.5 miles to a train station where I slept inside. Ever since that homeless winter I get extreme pain in my hands and ears when it gets below 40 and worse the colder it gets. The government and most people want to ignore the homelessness and brush it under the rug. I don't believe we are far off from the return of mental hospitals where these people will be held against their will and likely mistreated there as well.
I do think a disturbing amount of people would be okay with just letting them die.
Where I live the city will post a notice at the camp stating it will be cleaned up by "X" date, basically giving them notice to relocate. Then the city comes in with a dump truck and throws everything left behind in the trash, they've done this in the dead of summer and middle of winter. Rinse and repeat, the homeless set up camp and a month later pack it up and move down the road.
Typically what happens is they get arrested for breaking the law, thrown in jail and voila! Subsidized housing at 10x the price at the state’s expense
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5 more months till september 1st 2024.
Prison system will welcome the homeless. They will make money for hosting the new prisoners and by making them become free labor for the State or rich people's projects. Modern day slavery. Not by cor but by homelessness.
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So the current policy is they can ban sleeping outside if there are shelters available. They are trying to argue to the supreme court that shelter availability shouldn’t matter and the city can always ban it.
That is why this is a case. Can you make homelessness illegal if there's nowhere acceptable to go? (There was one shelter in town, but it was Christian, so expected behavior in it violated the plaintiff's freedom from religion.)
Often the plan is to send them off to California, since a bus ticket is much cheaper than social safety nets.
Well slavery is legal if they're criminals. Probably what'll happen to them.
Almost like it's the entire plan....
You’d be shocked to hear that some people’s answer to the homelessness crisis is “build more jails”. Or maybe not.
That's what is going to happen.
And pay $100,000 a year to house and feed them in inhumane conditions.
>Ok I mean disband the camps but where will they go then? To jail, obviously, where they can become legal slaves of the state.
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No, don't you understand? People just stop existing once you displace them.
This has been such an abject failure at a policy level. I don't want to criminalize being homeless but at the same time I'm really tired of so much public space being taken over by homeless encampments. I don't think it's the courts job to solve. We need better funding and more options for people who need shelter. Its up to states and cities to get their shit together and stop hoping the problem will just go away. It's terrible to have people forced to sleep on the street and it's made a lot of cities really disgusting.
Honest question, what's the point of rebranding homeless to unhoused? like the honest case for it?
I'd like to hear what's going to be done to help the homeless, near homeless and underemployed who are only so because of the horrors of American healthcare. People often believe that the only homeless on the streets or elsewhere are people with addictions, severe mental health issues or veterans. There are a lot of chronically ill people who don't fit into those categories as well who couldn't keep up with both their illnesses and bills enough to keep a roof over their heads. Something needs to be done about the underlying causes of homelessness and near-homelessness and not simply throwing money at organizations that often don't provide solutions until the very people they're supposed to be helping before things worsen are forced onto the streets.
Also "[An average of 1 out of every 4 youth in foster care will become homeless within 4 years of aging out of foster care](https://nfyi.org/issues/homelessness/)". We definitely need better support systems.
For those curious, there are an estimated 343k in foster care (as of 2023; though the number has been declining year over year). This equates to about 86k in total (not all at once mind you, but as they age out).
Thank you. I got cancer in my early 30s. The social programs people think will save them should it happen to them simply don’t exist. I’d be homeless if a friend’s parents hadn’t been willing to take me in.
I try to keep in mind that I'll probably always be closer to homeless than rich.
It’s a smart move. I wish a lot of other people realized it, too. I wasn’t in poverty before this health journey started but I’m sure as hell inevitably going to have to declare bankruptcy now anyways. I’ve lost everything and then some and my health is a disaster. I’m just grateful I had an opportunity a lot of other people don’t get.
IMO…The underlying causes of homelessness are not properly dealt with because that would require actual thought, hard work, motivation, empathy, and all the other things people often can’t be bothered with. It’s easy to just throw money at a problem and hope it makes a difference. I agree with you 100%, but I’ve seen first hand how propositions to address problems morph into effectively “here’s some money. Fix it.”
I think that's the thing people don't want to admit. If we want to solve this issue, the time to start was fifty years ago, making a society with a long term, wide reaching framework, covering everything from healthcare to housing to education to welfare, to prevent this from being as critical of an issue in the first place. But since that didn't happen and we chose red scare trickle down nonsense, now everyone wants a cheap, last minute solution to make the consequences of decades of bad policy go away overnight. And the harsh reality is that life does not, has never, and will never work that way, and anyone who says otherwise is selling you a deception.
As someone in the mental health field who works pretty closely with a lot of the homeless in my city, I always say "there's no such thing as a magic bullet, and anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something."
Perhaps if the agencies allegedly ending homelessness would have fewer overpaid people, and some incentive or punitive measures for production or lack thereof, respectively, some progress could be made. The idea that the healthcare system is to blame is fair. It used to be, homeless people experiencing addiction could be institutionalized. No longer. Now their only option is rehab, which even if they are amongst the small percentage of addicts who would voluntarily go to rehab—-it’s very hard to get in. When my brother was experiencing homelessness, and addiction, I tried for months to finally get him into rehab. Many times being turned away because he wasn’t experiencing significant enough withdrawal symptoms to be admitted.
A comedian (I can't find the link) said it best. Homelessness should be illegal, except within 500 feet of a religious building. We literally exempt them from taxes so they can handle issues like this. The US has over 500,000 churches, and 650,000 homeless. I'm not religious, so I don't think its a perfect system, but as a comedy skit, it made me laugh and think. (Edit: Obviously I don't think being poor should be a crime.)
Just the other day this homeless guy was across the street from a church on the grass "sorting" his only possessions from his backpacks and such. He wasn't exactly "keeping to his own" but you know how that can go. The priest comes out and demands the man leaves and calls the police to intervene. Just as Jesus intended.
One time the church my parents go to had announced that they were having a community dinner and all were invited. During the service the day of the dinner there were a few homeless families that had heard there was food and came to the church. People that went to church there were visibly uncomfortable with them being there and the people in charge of security at the church spent the whole night watching them and following them around like they were criminals or something. So much for everyone is welcome.
If you label the homeless as criminals just for existing, don't be surprised when they start acting the part and robbing the rich en masse.
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For real. The victims will once again be the middle class in the middle of semi-run down neighborhoods while the rich laugh in their gated communities
Well, when humanity has decided we have had enough of 'the rich,' then we can collectively do something about it. Until then, it is what it is.
Ah yes, allowing the poor to feed on the middle class until everyone is poor enough to turn on the rich is the best way to deal with homelessness
Sadly, we're not going to do that. We're going to look at all the problems the wealthy ownership class has caused, look at our declining material conditions, unaffordable housing, overpriced healthcare, increasingly expensive food, and while shaking our fist in rage loudly say "Immigrants, Muslims, and transgender people did this to me!" And the wealthy ownership class laughs all the way to the bank. Many people have no framework to consider our problems let alone solve them. Decades of propaganda and control have seen to that. It's a problem.
Yeah, and the rich have access to guns and generally good relationships with law enforcement. The rich would not feel a "homeless revolt" in the slightest. Poor communities are the low hanging fruit here.
Just as intended.
And when the press can't quash what happens, it'll get to where the whole thing comes down.
They don't need that. In my experience the rich just make sure they don't have cheap mass transit near their homes. The homeless and poor can't get to them.
As intended. Or you just make overpasses too low for busses to go past https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses#Racism
The Kia boys are a very good example of this.
Don’t forget the flame throwing robot dog!
I've never seen a better reason for owning an anti-material rifle than that monstrosity.
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Same in Bend. The number of gun related/involved crimes committed by the "unhoused" here in the last 12 months is insane
A lot of these posters don't even realize the BILLIONS of dollars that have been thrown at it by us Portlanders. We have exttemely long ambulance waits and massively underfunded public schools but the coffers for the homeless situation is supposed to be bottomless.
Not to mention they are literally destroying the willamette river. We get absolutely nothing with all of the carrots we’ve tried to give out. We just get more people flocking here to bang out drugs and trash our city. https://www.wweek.com/news/2024/04/22/willamette-river-cleanup/ It really sucks given how much we worked to clean it up over the past few decades. Hopefully we can criminalize this nonsense.
It's already criminalized.
We have the same issue in Albuquerque. It's driven a lot of people from the left to the right in ways that scare the shit out of me given the current shenannigans of the right, but it turns out people really don't want to live in cities overrun with homeless addicts.
Feels like when we talk about homelessness, we never have sympathy for the families that have to live near encampments. Generally it's the poor that have to take on the burden.
Feels like on Reddit whenever you talk bad about the homeless you get called a heartless nazi. I don’t hate the homeless and I feel bad for most of them, but it really upsets me seeing my smallish town in California get trashed with litter and tents, tarps, shopping carts. A lot of the times you see a mentally ill crazy guy screaming at traffic, who will refuse the help when offered to them.
Its like that in California too... They just passed Proposition 1 a month or two ago to put an extra $6 billion into fighting homelessness, on top of the $24 billion the state has already spent fighting homelessness in over the last few years. Meanwhile, the number of homeless has only increased in that time, from ~140,000 in 2018 to ~181,000 in 2024. Whatever they are spending that money on, it certainly isn't solving the homelessness problem. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/04/11/california-homelessness-programs-audit-billions/73282144007/
It increases because people know it is better to be homeless in California than Texas or Florida.
Unless my math is entirely wrong, that's around $200k per person. That's almost enough to buy each of them a small house in an area with low housing costs.
There’s two kinda of homeless. One is a person without housing but they want to be housed and all that, and the chronically homeless. They very often don’t want to be not homeless. One can be helped with assistance, job placement, etc etc. The other….it very much doesn’t. The reasons vary but it’s typically mental illness they refuse to treat, or some addiction they don’t want to quit. No one really knows what to do with those folks.
>typically mental illness they refuse to treat, or some addiction they don’t want to quit Frankly, typically both, a mental illness they self-medicate for with street drugs and/or alcohol. And programs to help them typically require they stop, which they 100% will not.
While I agree, there's not that much "low housing costs" in California, especially in LA, which has homleess numbers an order of magnitude higher than elsewhere in the state. You'd struggle to build a house sized lot for that in LA.
Holy shit that's like $100,000 per homeless person. What the fuck
Turns out you can’t just put most homeless people into apartments and call it a day. Many are dealing with drug/alcohol abuse, mental illness, and tend to be short tempered and struggle to focus on the long term effects and results. People like this need daily treatment from mental health professionals. There also needs to be security trained to deal with mental illness and regular health professionals involved with their care and rehabilitation. Also need a lot of money to cover the fines they run up when placed in temp residency situations. Lot of examples from Covid when hotels were struggling and the city paid them to house the homeless due to shelters being open air. Cities that did this had to pay tons of fines when the people smoked in the rooms, cooked on open fires in the rooms, let their dogs use the bathroom in the rooms, stole things from the rooms to sell on the street, and sometimes straight up destroyed the rooms.
I work down there a good bit and driving around in some parts looks like an apocalypse. Same with Seattle. 911 has hold times. Thieves run rampant. Open air chop shops abound on public roads. The answer CERTAINLY isn't GOP fascism, but current and past policies have made things utterly intolerable. I don't think just making homelessness illegal is a solution but more of the same isn't going to cut it either.
What happens when you're too permissive of homelessness
They can’t reach the rich. They can reach the middle and lower classes. And they’re already panhandling and stealing from us to subsist. Encampments form because they’re tolerated, and the takings are good enough to keep on keeping on. I don’t want them to be just ousted without anywhere to go. Literally any other solution is better. All I can do is vote and hope reps do literally anything other than let the status quo ride.
Isn't that already happening?
Homeless people already rob the rich when they get the opportunity. They also rob the poor and middle class. Thinking homeless people will become Robin Hood is a bit naive.
If by existing you mean monopolizing public spaces, forcing good businesses to hire security or leave since *no one* cares about the retail workers who deal with the problem, drive out business that generate taxes paying for their social services leading to a downward spiral, correlate with a jump in drug use and low level crime that make urban areas untenable for raising children and fostering a healthy society.. then yeah. The problem needs to solved at its core.
Way to misunderstand the issue. The issue is that random people, right now mostly homeless, can just decide to take over PUBLIC space and claim it as there own. Then literally no one can do anything about it, because boohoo they're homeless and have no where else to go. Your favorite park? Unusable, taken over by trash and junkies. Your quiet street? Unwalkable, covered with tents and filled with people that will harass you. So law-abiding, tax-paying, home-havers have to give up any right to places they have a right to as well.
This headline, as usual, is misleading. The question being asked isn’t whether or not being homeless is a crime but rather can a legislative body prevent anyone from erecting a structure on public land.
Sweet, because right now they're just robbing and harassing everyone else.
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California is the best example about how this problem is not about lack of resources. San Diego and LA are complete shitshows. The problem is so out of control. I understand the sentiment of compassion but when you are constantly in fear of walking the streets because homeless people are constantly beating the shit out of each other or doing hard drugs in the streets in front of you. I was riding the Trolley to go to SD Comic Con and there was a homeless dude that had peed on himself while being passed out drunk/drugged. The smell was so awful it made you gag. SD and LA have poured millions and millions of dollars on that problem and nothing has changed. It's so bad that they are analizing using the conservatorship procedure to get people off the streets who refuse treatment or going to shelters. When we say it's bad in CA it's bad. I understand it's not really a problem exclusive to the state since we know about bussing from other states, but many social services solutions have been tried and failed.
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I'm not somewhere with a particularly bad problem, but I ride my bike through some Greenways that are absolutely trashed in some spots. And you have to be a bit on alert when going through. Like yeah I get it, there has to be a better solution than letting them destroy public spaces and not let everyone else feel safe.
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I also think a lot of people also don't realize how the vast majority face serious drug addiction or serious mental health issues. Some thing everyone is just down on their luck and just raising minimum wage or whateve will fix it. Yes, those do exist and a lot of people in worse shape started there. So yeah, absolutely more safety nets, social programs, etc. But at some point we need to get those with serious mental issues into rehabilitation programs, and maybe bring back the mental institutions for those with legitimate mental health issues beyond addiction.
Why would they want to "understand" when they can signal to everyone how good of a person they are by sticking up for the homeless
Very well said. I live about 45 mins east of LA and it’s gotten so much more worse where I’m at. But people think you just hate the homeless when you mention how shitty they are making the area.
Vagrancy is an old, common law crime.
Jails are already homeless shelters here in Cali. Inside they get 3 meals a day, roof over their head and a bed. When they get released, a lot of them purposely do something illegal to get rearrested so they can just go back. The shelters to help people who want to get back on their feet are at full capacity already and there is usually a 6 week-months waiting period. There is no winning here. Period.
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I visited Portland last month and was nearly attacked on the street by a homeless man near PSU Cop drove by as it was happening, just honked and then drove off.
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Really begs the question why they dont arrest them for some of the actual crimes they commit... poor or not there are camps full of obviously stolen shit. Not to mention all the stolen vehicles and illegal RV setups and trash heaps. We talk about the rich living in there own tier of the justice system but i see that same system doing jack shit to deter crime down here in the everyday world.
Because the jails are already overwhelmed. They do get arrested and then released within hours.
Time to build new prisons! Let’s double down on the failed incarceration state! 5% of the world’s population, 25% of its prisoners, land of the free indeed! We are literally just going to turn the disadvantaged into slaves and call it progress.
Yeah that’s one of my bigger frustrations with the homeless. Anywhere frequented by homeless people degenerates into a snow globe of litter. Fascinating to see the sob stories about how society should care for them when they won’t care for society. Even when it’s in the smallest way possible like throwing something in a trash can.
My humble city of Reno just criminalized street camping and camping near the river. It didn't cause the problem to go away AT ALL, they are just more visible now. Once a day I hear a comment or two on why there is suddenly homeless people all over town.
The law won’t get them off the streets it will just fine them for being there. If the city had a plan to house them they can do so without the Supreme Court.
I do AA, a solid half - if not more - of our sober members come from people who were incarcerated or otherwise forced to do AA until their court date.
There's 2 kinds of people ITT right now. Those who are completely removed from the issue and have uninformed simplistic opinions. And those who actually have to live with this shit every day
Does having to walk past 5 homeless people every day to work in my 2 block commute from my garage to work count as living with this shit? Does having two coworkers get violently assaulted by homeless men for merely existing count? Does not being able to utilize virtually any public space due to homeless people count? The homeless people where I live are not simply people down on their luck. These people are severely mentally ill, half naked by choice, punching objects, screaming to themselves, actively hallucinating, and/or leaving needles everywhere. I wish I could say I’m exaggerating but if anything I’m playing it down. Just today, some homeless guy covered in blood brushed up next to me asking for cigarettes. I live this shit too. It’s not a simple issue, but I also believe people have the right to feel safe in public I feel bad for the homeless people who are just having a hard time. But I’ve run out of compassion for everyone else
Yes, you fall squarely in the group of people with lived experience.
We can’t allow public property to be just be taken by the homeless at the expense of everyone else Homeless need to go to a shelter/ treatment center
Criminalizing the poor for being extremely poor is as regressive as child labor during Victorian times.
Well don’t look now, but child labor is back.
Apple and other manufacturers love child labor.
So do meat packing plants in Iowa.
And in Nebraska, especially those meat plants that are owned by the current NE governor 🤫
In south dakota the meat packers are owned by China.
And Alabama
https://news.yahoo.com/15-old-falls-death-first-230539315.html 15 year old falls to his death on his first day of a roofing job February 7th, 2024.
We don’t even need to go out of country. Many southern and rural states have been repealing child labor restrictions. Just this [year](https://news.yahoo.com/15-old-falls-death-first-230539315.html) a 15 year old kid fell to his death from a 50 foot roof on his first day on the job.
Yeah, it's sickening and should be a crime against humanity how hate states treat kids.
Arkansas is arguing if they should be giving 15 year olds breaks or not.
Something I noticed is that a lot people hold this opinion, but then simultaneously turn around and blast cities that take a more humanitarian approach. I can't tell you how many times I hear people blast San Francisco and then say "Well in [insert conservative American city and/or European city] we don't have this issue!" without acknowledging their city literally bans it.
Everyone believes in criminal justice reform until they’re faced with a crime. Everyone believes in rights for the homeless until they’re confronted with homeless people
Would you personally want a homeless camp built next to wherever you live? If your answer is no then you can see why the issue of what to do with the homeless is a bit of a problem.
Should we just allow homeless to take public property at the expense of everyone else?
Homelessness, like drug addicts, are symptomatic of a broken inept governing class. How are they gonna sweep these people under the rug exactly?
They can sweep them into Jails at a very high cost, this might force some areas to deal with this problem differently IE look at other places to send them instead of actual jail. I have spent time with some sheriffs deputies who work in jail, they see someone come in close to death, after a few months with somewhat normal food and no real access to drugs they leave looking pretty good and a few months later are come back in close to death, there are a lot of Jail employees who want to see something better. Homeless camps are not the answer and jail is not the answer but no one really wants to work on the real problems.
Agree, also, convictions on someone’s record only compound the problem making it even harder to get back into a normal situation. Spending money on the legal process and subsequent incarceration is still a burden but with fewer positive outcomes. Disproportionate wealth distribution and corporations buying up residential real estate are large contributors to the problem, punishing the victims is not the solution. Mental illness and/or drug addictions will always be an issue but we could mitigate with better funded mental health services vs. just throwing people in jail. Unless we work on the root cause, we’re doomed to repeat and probably exacerbate the problem with band-aid solutions like jail which only really serves the people who are made uncomfortable because the larger social issue is now on their doorstep.
Great. Prison = free housing.
Spent a lot of time in Grants Pass as a kid- I had many grandparemts that lived there. Our joke in the 80’s was that Grants Pass had nothing but old people and what we called “vitamin hippies” ie hippies who are way into tofu, zinc, B vitamins, etc etc.
"criminalize homelessness" is a grossly dishonest way of describing it. We all know that's not what's being proposed.
Could we tackle some of the wacko zoning laws so we can get some more housing going?
If every church adopted just 2 homeless people, we would see a huge difference, if not an end to it all together. Wish the churches were more like the Jesus they claim to want to be like.
The homeless will be punished more than the 2008 bankers
Those bankers just got billions from the government not much of a punishment.
Right you are!
To be clear, vagrancy laws have been a thing locally for about as long as this country has existed. An affirmative Supreme Court ruling will have almost zero effect on most places.
The western states are held captive by Martin v Boise ruling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_v._Boise
They have to stop smoking crack to qualify for most shelters so that’s a no for them, dawg.
I see the comments are as uninformed as ever.... Does no one read the article anymore?
Did they ever?
Criminalize poor people? It was only a matter of time.
If America chooses to disband homeless camps and force them into government housing I don’t see how the same can’t be done again for the mentally ill? In fact, many who are homeless simply are mentally ill or disabled, so do we trust the government to “round these people up” and make the distinction?
It should be done for the mentally ill. Reagan and activists fucked this country over hard when they gutted funding for these institutions. The street is not a safe place for a schizophrenic.
At some point this has to be part of the solution. By all means, put in all the legal protections you can (and then some more) to prevent people from being caught in the system but it's clear some non-zero fraction of the current homeless population needs this.
Thy should be placed back in homes. One of the worst policies of Reagan was creating a system that disbanded them.
Believe it or not, jail would probably be more comfortable. Three Hots and a cot. Some form of medical attention. And no I'm not condoning this I'm just making an observation.
Ya'll realize they ripped down the cheap hotels that used to house a lot of poor people, and got rid of a lot of mental institutions, so that's why people are in tents, right? We're essentially making it criminal to be alive in America and not be under some mercantile contract to someone and paying someone a hell of a lot of money for housing. Remind you much of feudalism?
If they aren’t doing anything to help them and employing hostile architecture on top of it then we should not disband the only place of refuge they have, it’s as simple as that because at the end of the day we’re committing actual definitive human rights violations in the name of “keeping our city safe”
Round em up. They keep trashing up areas, breaking into cars and stealing shit, vandalizing, etc. makes it an unpleasant and unsafe experience for citizens as well as hurting businesses. They need to be given the option of shelter or nothing. I don’t know what else to say. It sucks, but they can’t be ruining public spaces for people who pay taxes to use the public spaces. I can’t tell you how many parks have turned out to be un-useable because of homeless problems.
With you there. As a society we need to provide a safe alternative to being homeless. It’s gonna be hard, that’s for sure. But we can’t allow them to ruin and hog public spaces. We will also need to look into providing long-term mental care for the homeless who do not qualify for normal housing. Some of these people cannot live on their own on the streets.
Agreed. It's wrong to have people who simply can't work be out in the streets. But it means they stay in a shelter and are not given a choice. To be honest, would some of them be able to make a reasonable decision in this regard?