Generally these podcasts have guests that have a perspective and at least some expertise. Yes, they tend to gravitate towards the podcasters POV, but their views are their own. If the podcast was just Bari Weiss expressing her opinions I wouldn’t listen. Unlike Hannity, the content I find is fact based.
That's a good point. You would have to control for the social safety net, of course. But I am genuinely curious ad have not read a real analysis from a public policy perspective. Of course, if you go back to the early 80s, you deal with the deinstitutionalization
This is true. Conversely, I believe the policies of the last two decades have contributed to homeless from other states coming here.
Here is an example where “housing first” seems to be having some success. I suspect the difference in Houston and the west coast is the availability of more affordable housing options. Also I suspect Houston is much less moralistic and less bureaucratic in its approach. How Houston Moved 25,000 People From the Streets Into Homes of Their Own Contrast this with this failure in LA Opinion | The Way Los Angeles Is Trying to Solve Homelessness Is ‘Absolutely Insane’
Well yes, I think high rents and scarce housing is going to create more ineffective and brutal responses from city or state governments. The problem is, higher rents and scarce(r) housing are hitting other cities more and more now too.
The nation’s most populous city also has the nation’s largest homeless population, with 75,000, and like other high-rent cities, it has not been able to move the dispossessed to permanent housing nearly as fast as people are becoming homeless. But there is one key difference: The homeless in New York are far less visible on a daily basis than in West Coast cities where the population has exploded over the past couple years, leading several local governments to declare states of emergency. The city had fewer than 4,000 unsheltered homeless in an official count taken in January, While the effort is expansive, it’s also not cheap. Last year, New York spent nearly $1.7 billion in city, state and federal money to aid the homeless. And even with that commitment, the sheltering program has its critics among the homeless. Some 4,000 people continue to sleep outside. So NYC, likely with a much greater existing infrastructure as these policies go back 50 years, spends over $24,000 per year per individual. This source estimates that LA has 69,000 homeless. Over 69,000 people are homeless in LA County, according to LAHSA count. Even ignoring the likely need to build out infrastructure to match NY, and assuming that LA now spends SOME money, let's arbitrarily assume an extra $15000 per individual, and you're talking about $1.35 billion. LA County budget was about 38.5 billion, so that would be 3.5% of the budget. Of course, it would be about 35% of Alex Villaneuva's $3.6 billion budget, and I would be all for repurposing that. But the white people would protest. They want him out there abusing citizens and subverting democracy
Yeah, I'm convinced that for most cities and people, its a visibility issue. Florida has a large homeless population, but local governments have basically prevented large scale encampments with their sadistic policies. Years ago, the city of Orlando banned public feedings because they drew so many people downtown and it bothered the people living around Lake Eola. I remember when I was a kid, the city enacted an anti-panhandling ordinance (so cops could basically disperse beggars). You still cant go anywhere here without spotting homeless people, its just that the city and police have more tools to criminalize stuff homeless people do. People do not like being confronted by homelessness, and a capitalist society is incapable of providing affordable housing for all. So the policies all center around either hiding the problem or at best, temporary sheltering.
Like most problems the answers are usually not easy and are potentially expensive. But as I see it, trying to house mentally ill and drug addicted homeless when housing is in very short supply is probably not the optimal way to attack it. That may work somewhere like Houston, and I think I read where SLC had done something similar. But CA is a different beast. IMHO job one is to get them off the street - they aren’t helping anyone there, including themselves. After that you incrementally start trying to house them.
At the same time making it comfortable (in relative terms) for addicts to stay in one place and kill themselves and others isn’t in anyones best interests either.
Oh yeah. And not a right left thing. Met Ministries is very chic in Tampa, just north of downtown, and still far enough "away." But the area is gentrifying. No one wants outreach near them, even from churches,, even good "liberals". My DT liberal parish has very conflicted attitudes towards the issue
Harm reduction is an accurate description. I dont think anyone would say harm isnt being done, its that the alternative might be worse. And again, harm reduction is only a thing because society in general for many reasons (but mostly being that we have a for profit healthcare system and a war on drugs mentality) refuses to deal with the problem.
Not sure I can harmonize. Don't try to provide housing. Are you saying shelters, not housing? And I will have to read more before I decide that permitting tents really makes things worse for the actual homeless, as opposed to being a political issue. I take his argument, and tent cities are generally worse than shelters, but tent cities may not be worse, than no tents and routine law enforcement harassment. Not convinced on that from two paragraphs
Anyone see the recent CBS Sunday Morning piece on Oregon? The eastern part of the state wants to be adopted by Idaho.
I am saying efforts in the west to house appear not to be working because of all the cost and political factors. I’d say focus more on getting people shelter, then working on the addiction and housing issues. It is easy to be angry at “white” people or others who don’t want these people around, but these people are not “nice” people. They are violent, they will vandalize and they steal. I speak from experience. Once they have gotten this far they need professional intervention and it’s a long term and expensive path.
Portland and San Francisco are some of the whitest cities around and seem to be the most talked about when it comes to the problem (especially vis a vis crime), despite homelessness being a problem everywhere. That they are political stand-ins for a certain type of white liberalism is no accident. Most of the people that mention these places have no constructive interest in solving the problem, its just point scoring. What those places do have also is a lot of activists attempting to organize or help those populations (and push back against government/police brutality to those populations), and those tend to earn the ire of wealthier liberal types to (again, another stand-in for the tensions within the broader Democratic coalition).
The political factors don't interest me too greatly. They would if I held office. I acknowledge that this is a politically potent issue. There's always an issue of how much you compromise on a value in order to obtain power because you hopefully can't do anything without power. And this is an issue that threatens to put power in the hands of people who do far worse. But for purposes of discussion on the message board, I don't think too much about political impact unless I label it as such. I'm simply analyzing the issue morally. In terms of people's disgust, I understand I am in the minority. I'm in the very small minority on a lot of issues especially this one. Maybe I'm wrong. But one thing I feel certain on is that the option is not between not abusing them and professional intervention for long-term path. The latter is not usually an option. It simply a choice between abuse and non abuse. But when I refer to the white people not liking that I wasn't talking about treatment of the homeless as an issue. I was talking about Alex Villanueva as LA County Sheriff. He is a truly evil man. That was my meaning even if it wasn't clear in context. I would gladly cut his budget. He is pure darkness. And not necessarily on the homeless issue. I don't even know where he is on that issue. Read up a bit if you're curious
One thing I’ve found during my journey with a loved one is that many people who deal in the rehab and sobriety field as that often they will say if the person doesn’t want help, you can’t help them. And often they don’t want help until things get so bad and so uncomfortable that the suffering outweighs the addiction. That was kind of the case with us, I’d pay for housing and end up having a half dozen addicts/homeless people living in the place I’d pay for - in total squalor. Finally I quit, and after a period of terrible living conditions she’d had enough. While you and I would probably prefer not to live in a tent for people with these issues it may be comfortable enough not to make change. Having said that I have heard an expert who was an addict disagree with the approach, saying that if somebody had a flu or Covid you wouldn’t wait until they were at “rock bottom” to treat them. But the difference to me is with most illnesses you want to get better. From those articles I am convinced that letting these people sit there and kill themselves with fentanyl and permanently fry their brain with meth is the worst thing you can do for them, and everybody else around them. I’d rather see them in jail, without the attached criminal record. At least they’d stop harming themselves. For the record I think there are a lot better options than jail, but I think some type of intervention now is better than everybody trying to force an unworkable solution (more housing in the west coast) and making it a political issue when it fails.
west coast wants a perfect solution. single family units dispersed amongst the whole area with social services to follow. not practical. I have long abdicated for subsidized "camps" in rural areas where people could live, do manual labor in a communal effort, and receive social services within the camp setting. Isolate them from the drugs and stresses, allow them to earn some self-respect, maybe a trade/skill, and banked earnings through labor while not having to worry about rent, food, electric etc. Use the majority of the proceeds of the labor to help offset the operational costs. Camp should have farm elements to be self supporting +/- with respect to most food products. People could leave if they choose and can be expelled if needed.
