And what else will I complain about when I go downtown? I want to be able to complain about how we need to clean the riffraff of the streets, but it gives me no joy if we’re actually getting them off the streets! I need something to fucking whinge about!
I also live downtown, and my primary issues are homeless stealing things off our front porch, the neighbors that think every night is a good fireworks night, and the 2 homes that previously had 6 scruffy lookin guys hanging out in front of them for months that are now in cinders.
Bias Rating: RIGHT Factual Reporting: MIXED Country: USA Press Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE Media Type: Website Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: MEDIUM CREDIBILITY
So what’s your point then, that homeless people are a lost cause and therefore shouldn’t be helped? Attempts to house the homeless have resulted in property damage in the past, so we shouldn’t bother?
Perhaps you should take a step back and try asking why those projects failed and how to fix the problems instead of concluding that free housing programs could never work.
If you really want to analyze the situation with some nuance then maybe try looking at real sources instead of opinion articles from right-wing “news” sites:
My point is that a lot of homeless people aren’t to be trusted to take care of the space they live in. There would have to be some screening to make sure that these people are capable of not destroying the public good they are being offered for free. I don’t think it’s really debatable that there are some truly awful homeless people, violent, mean, entitled, and not fit to live in a proper society. It’s something people need to face the facts on. So we need to find out how to help the good homeless people before we let the bad ones ruin it for the rest of them.
There is already an order of magnitude more unused housing than unhoused people- the problem is that the market is involved and that requires winners and losers.
That’s why you have people dying of exposure in the richest country in the history of the world. God damn america.
Are the homeless people where the empty homes are? That’s the concern I have. There are really cheap empty houses throughout the country, but the homeless are congregate in large groups in some of the most expensive states/cities in the country. I dont think there are that many empty homes in San Francisco that are available for rent/purchase that are just being left empty for months at a time.
It’s off the aggregate numbers. I’m sure that there’s a lot of useless suburban sprawl pumping the numbers up. The “most efficient system” is an abject failure when it comes to housing people unless the only metric you care about is revenue generation for shithead inheritors.
if you give houses to homeless people indiscrimately, many of those houses will be uninhabitable in 2 years. What do you do then? Give them another house to wreck?
I didn’t make any claims about housing first policy, read the comment you are replying to. I know you barely looked at the articles because they are not about the same single hotel.
Leaving these literature reviews on housing first policy here for those who want to form their own opinion instead of getting it from right-wing “news” articles:
Leaving these literature reviews on housing first policy here for those who want to form their own opinion instead of getting it from right-wing “news” articles:
Housing first is a proven strategy in dealing with homelessness. The fact that every state has not adopted these policies to help eliminate the homeless population shows this is more a cultural issue than a lack of housing.
According to the Census there are a lot more empty houses than homeless people. Let that sink in and you start to realize all is not what it seems.
Until someone is safe and has their basic needs met it is impossible to work on issues such as mental health and addiction.
The solution exists but it is going to take a lot of our time, money, and most importantly a cultural shift away from blaming people to accomplish it.
If we could fix our homelessness then we would show that we truly care about our citizens rather than just paying a lip service to our most vulnerable people.
According to the Census there are a lot more empty houses than homeless people. Let that sink in and you start to realize all is not what it seems.
This particular statistic needs to be handled carefully. There are problems with both its definition and its nature. Empty housing has a fairly broad definition that includes housing that is unfinished, in the middle of repairs, or unfit for habitation.
The nature of housing with relationship to homelessness depends a lot on where the homeless people are and where the housing is. Empty housing in towns and cities that are depopulating is unlikely to be all that useful. Simply taking people from cities with high levels of homelessness, ripping them out of their communities, and plopping them down into communities that other people are leaving is not a favor.
Also, you shouldn’t just warehouse unhoused people in whatever housing is available. Many of them have mental illnesses that need good access to mental health services, transit, and jobs. Just because they’re under a roof doesn’t mean the job is done. The housing should be tailored to the various populations that it will be serving.
I encourage you to lookup up Housing First if you have not already. While it may be misleading to say there are 16 million vacant home to half a million homeless people (32 homes for every homeless person), for the reasons you mentioned, it is entirely possible house these people.
No one who knows about this issue is thinking about warehousing people. Like you said they need a stable place to live, access to services, transportation, and work when they are ready.
I’m familiar with Housing First. I mostly just didn’t want to see a misleading use of statistics left unchallenged. Statistics around housing are difficult to grasp, so I often see them used in a misleading way, usually unknowingly.
Take one statistic, the rental vacancy rate in my city, Portland. It has lately been around 4%. Given the number of homeless people in the city, that feels like a travesty. But when you start to do calculations, that turns out to be an average of 2 weeks every four years. If you have tenants moving out after four years, that’s barely enough time to do a few repairs, let the paint dry, and finding new tenants. What seemed like a loose market turns out to be a very tight market.
I understand this building in downtown Vancouver probably had issues with people sleeping here, but placing a bunch of concrete filled pylons is fucked up.
not really, more like they exist to help prevent people from getting stabbed from a meth addicted homeless person who is convinced you are satan trying to steal their soul
80’s crime world movies are fascist propaganda by the way. This person is demonstrating how popular culture is also political.
There is a such thing as a crazy madman killer in our society. They’re called school shooters, and they live in the suburbs. The cartoon that exists in this person’s head about what homelessness is and who it’s a danger to didn’t come out of thin air.
80’s crime world movies are fascist propaganda by the way.
We’ve really turned the word “fascist propaganda” to mean anything that goes against your worldview. There are definitely crazed homeless people who do not care one bit about committing needless violence. I’ve experienced it first hand. Back when I lived in NYC there were some of the absolutely most deranged people I’ve ever seen in my life, one guy stabbed a indian knick knack stall owner with a piece of glass for legitimately no reason. The guy almost died. It is what it is, but I think burying your head in the sand is not really a viable way forward.
Anyway as I was saying there’s inherently evil people out there and we need a police response to keep them suppressed for the safety of the good people of whom I and maybe(?) you are one.
Well, to be fair there are indeed enough houses… We kinda just assumed they would, by the grace of the market, end up distributed among virtually all people and at a fair price. The reason they never did and increasingly don’t is one of the largest unsolved problems in economics /s
This is so weird, isn’t it? I reran the model thousand times, it can’t be wrong! I mean, what’s supposed to be wrong? The assumptions? That’s ridiculous! Let me readjust the factors once more…
The houses aren’t in the right place where people need them, however. Where are there millions of unoccupied homes in California, Oregon and Washington?
Oregon alone is short something like 150,000 housing units. I can’t ever recall seeing an empty house that stayed vacant for very long.
Most homeless i have ever talked to dont want this. They want no strings attached crack homes not crack houses. If you even so talk about how shitty a lot of these people are you get pounded down with how awful of a person you are and blahblah. I have worked with and have been in clise contact with a lot of homeless and much of the time they are disgusting people inside and outside.
Well I don’t think we should judge all homeless people based solely off your close proximity to them.
Your position sort of assumes that anybody who disagrees with you only holds their beliefs because they themselves have never had your close proximity.
Downvote cuz youre over generalizing, maybe you get those type of people if youre working in a homeless camp with addicts, then youll encounter the people who have been down in their luck and when theyre addicted they dont see a way out.
People outside of the homeless camp could be completely different cause they havent reached the point of being an addict and homeless where they need that service.
I mean we can just look at historical precedent. Back when the drug crisis started and Nixon decided to start the War on Drugs Switzerland took a completely different approach and started what they called care centers. Somewhere you could go to get heroin of high quality administered by doctors for free, you would also then get somewhere to sleep somewhere to shower and keep your things. Access to social workers and mental Care Professionals to help you get your life back on track.
They saw a 85% success rate within the first year. 85% of people that went into those facilities had a stable job on their own household of some variety within the first year and a follow-up study of how they were doing 5 years later showed that they had stayed employed and housed and not regressed.
But that would require people in the US to be willing to look at them as people and not just criminals who did it to themselves. These people are literally broken, you can’t treat their actions as you would a normal person because they are not mentally stable.
Wow, you are an awful person, lmao. You require people to remain in destitution because you anecdotally dealt with rude people? Perhaps they were rude because you’re an awful person?
I dont require anyone to be in anything. I was simply giving my opinion. From my experience a lot of homeless prefer to stay homeless because they like that lifestyle. At the same time, we have people like you who want to shower them with things they dont want.
I want to decommidify housing, as there’s no need for that. You want people on the streets, and are making up lies to justify your hatred for poor people.
I have heard of homeless people reject wanting to live in housing because they had rules like no meth or curfew. Ask yourself why do homeless shelters run under capacity when there are still people on the street. Why is it that homeless populations are increasing but the percentage of people in shelters is decreasing?link to info on homeless
The honest truth is there are a lot of families and people who are down on their luck and my heart goes to these people. I also know there are a lot of addicts who dont give a flying fuck.
I dont think housing being a commodity has anything to do with this problem more than scarcity of homeless shelters. But if you made it easier to own a home for the unfortunate, we will likely see the same outcomes. Other countries like Britain or France have decommodified housing and they still have a sizable homeless population.
If you give the individuals who reject rules a luxury of owning a home, the only thing being solved is the eye sore by having certain people moved out of public view. The rest frankly just like being in the environment.
Does your housing have curfews enforced upon you? Does it require you to get rid of all of your possessions? Are you kicked out of it due to preexisting conditions? I am assuming not and I would guess that you would reject such housing as well. They are rejecting being treated as lesser human beings.
why do homeless people care about curfews they don’t have any pressing matters they need to deal with past 9pm other than scoring drugs and committing crimes. nothing good happens past 9pm
Well, a lot of them have shitty jobs too. Like when I worked at a grocery store, evening crew would be there until 11pm. So I guess they would just get fucked then. There are a lot of working homeless.
Not at most shelters in high pop zones like mine. They fill up and won’t leave a bed vacant. There’s also no ins and outs, and there’s usually a few people moaning or screaming. Some asshole is usually wandering around looking at everyone’s stuff, and you are limited on the amount of possessions you are allowed to bring in with you (Which totally makes sense but still sucks to have to leave anything large you may have somewhere out of eyesight). It’s a hellscape. I’m honestly amazed they fill up with how shitty they are to get any sleep in.
Uh, they’re poor and probably rough hygenically, which means swing shift is their primary option. Your advice might as well be “be better!”. The point is that these aren’t all crackheads and crazy people. Also I don’t think late jobs are as uncommon as you think they are. I personally wish they had daytime shelters to better serve what I really believe to be the most rehabitable members of the homeless population.
When I worked nights, there were always multiple people who lived out of their cars working with me.
Idk, thats their business, that is the point. Also if we wanted to treat drug abuse seriously, there would be medical facilities to provide drugs legally so that they can receive proper treatment, reducing the black market sales and most likely drug related crime
I disagree that giving drug addicts a free and unlimited supply of drugs is the best way to fight drug addiction. Treatment (with forced holds) I’m a proponent of.
Not exactly doable since living spaces legally must have egress windows, and shopping malls… Don’t really have many outer walls for that compared to the amount of space internally they have
I mean houses cost money, and we know the government don’t like spending in the first place, they just worried about public image not the root of the problem
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