There's lots of noise in SF about homeless people "refusing shelter" and "They want to live in tents!" And that we should force them to accept the shelter against their own will, "for their own good!" Many SF folks rationalize their desire to not see homeless people, by convincing ourselves that refusing shelter is an irrational behaviour, and that we know better.
We don't consider the fact that people might be refusing shelter when that shelter is worse than a tent.
@mekkaokereke we enforce morality on people in many shelters- no partners, no sex, no drinking, no pets… in many of our mayor’s plans it sounds like they’re requiring drug addiction treatment… but if you’re in chronic pain (emotional or physical)
You’re not going to be interested in being forced into treatment.
@mekkaokereke Don't say every intervention. I know a few mentally ill people who will refuse shelter because "the CIA has bugs in the room", or other such imagined evils. (Not that the CIA is good - but these people are not interesting to the CIA)
@bluGill even then we have to take them seriously to get psychosis treated. You have to treat people as human beings with agency to get it to work.
And in the case of paranoia? It’s an irrational response but often to something that is also rationally distressing. The specifics may be way off base but the “I don’t want it” usually has a damn good reason.
@mekkaokereke Having dealt with such people you make it sound a lot easier than it really is. Their "I don't want it" doesn't have a good reason at all.
I'm not claiming all or most homeless are like this. I have no insight into the homeless in general. I just have insight into a subset. I'm not claiming SF doesn't need to do better.
If we force this person to move into an apartment then would they not be essentially correct that the government is tracking them around and modifying their behavior?
Obviously they would be wrong about the CIA specifically, but they would be correct that most shelters and supportive/transitional housing buildings have a lot of surveillance cameras which are actively reviewed by staff and sometimes law enforcement.
@mekkaokereke@aredridel It is a hard problem. My solution is to start on the low hanging fruit: people who would take shelter if it wasn't so bad. Then once we take care of them start looking at the rest. This solution is terrible, but it is better than we are doing now and we can do it.
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