DOJ looking at options for homeless, mentally ill

Its a lot of the same people, since shelters are only open at certain times. Certainly spikes at times of the year when sleeping outdoors is not ideal. There are encampments I've heard of outside of the city, and that's certainly a different mix of people, but they tend to police themselves from what I've been told (how effectively, I don't know, but they avoid cops and don't want attention from them and want to stay away from jail). Different set of activists working with them than say, the Christian-oriented shelters who see cops all the time and have to work with them as best they can, as they are in the middle of the city.

 

I would support a managed, bare bones minimalist approach to the down on your luck types - basic cheap housing. The problem is we are just not capable of that - for various reasons, one being the right wing won’t fund anything, and two the left wont allow such an approach because of various interests and regulations it can’t be built.

Some places like Houston and SLC the “housing first” model has worked because you can construct affordable options. In places like CA it can’t because you can’t construct anything affordable. So in CA Housing first advocates oppose shelters because they think the draw attention and resources away from more permanent solutions. But more permanent solutions are unaffordable due to regulation and political constituencies, and NIMBYism, so you get neither more shelters nor more housing.

 

I dont really know if its the "left" (it confuses me how people use that term broadly) ... city government Democrats and liberals are essentially Republicans when it comes to cops, housing, and keeping rich city-dwelling people happy, and they tend to line up against the people advocating things like public housing, rent control, tenant's unions, police reform, even homeless advocates ... they despise activists nearly as much as Republicans, if not more TBH. Lots of Blue state governments behind bringing the recent Grant's Pass ruling into being - they want to clear encampments and arrest people willy nilly too. Now people are blaming immigration for housing prices and scarcity on top of that. I dont know how we can do anything without some kind of sense of social solidarity. Capitalist/market ideology tends to pit people against each other in a competition for scarce resources, and we get stuck with the fallout. But nothing will change until its contested politically. Just another thing cowardly poll-watching Dems have adopted a do-nothing attitude about because they think public opinion is fixed, and doing nothing is the path of least resistance.

 

Democrats - Ezra Klein (whom I’m guessing you view as a Zionist capitalist pig ) goes into this great deal.

 

Well, he's a lot less stupid and trolly than Matty Yglesias.

 

Yes, yes, I realize the homeless come in all stripes (put mental illness to the side, we’re all mentally ill) but working with them over the years I’ve found that a goodly percentage of homeless are high functioning and prefer the freedom of their encampments to the strings attached to facilities designed to remedy their situation.

 

But isn't that a function of the facilities having requirements/aims of rehabilitation? Find it hard to believe someone would turn down free housing.

 

Trust me, there are strings attached with such facilities that some do not prefer. Why else would someone actually prefer to be on the streets ?

 

If DOJ would just put the mentally ill president in prison like they were supposed to, I would be happy.