[fatdog]

Why do homeless people camp on sidewalks? Because it works. The question becomes, "works for what?" The proposition appears to mean to make camping "not work," by imposing risk and cost on campers. It's responding to a symptom, but it's like treating cancer with crutches.

What does the street provide an alley or park doesn't? I've said before, the perceived security from non-underclass people walking by. Police protect non-underclass people from violence, and the homeless get this additional benefit by extension by being nearby. In shelters and tent cities, you are more likely to be targeted for crime.

Sure people without addresses have a right to safety and security of person like everyone else, but their behavior (often due to mental illness or drug use or factors outside of their direct control) makes it extra difficult/costly to provide it.

Other people pay a lot of money in tax to the state to reduce their daily exposure to violence, regardless of the factors that might contribute to it. Tent cities are a source of risk, and they are provocative symbols of the limits of the ability of the local government to operate credibly. Governments, mainly for their own sake, must remove tent cities when they pop up, arguably because that's what they were originally chartered to do.

Some may say that the homeless are "just trying to live," but it could be said they are hovering around public services without any sense of responsibility to the local society that provides them.

They are human beings, but ones who take advantage of the lack of a continuous tribal identity in cities, where they can live with people believing they are someone else's problem. People who don't learn to get along get run out of small towns (or worse). Add a drug addiction to severe mental illness, and you basically get a municipal zombie problem.

To me, homelessness is only a complicated problem from the perspective of an ideology that cannot tolerate examples of the limits to its power. Everyone else has solutions, just not ones that reinforce the narcissism of maternalistic policymakers.

[pavlov]

... without any sense of responsibility ... ones who take advantage ... people who don't learn to get along ...

All this sounds like you're blaming the homeless. Your last paragraph suggests that you have solutions to the problem. What are they?

[imagist]

Call me crazy, but I think it's pretty obvious that the only solution to homelessness is homes.

Of course that's the compassionate solution, but compassion holds little weight in the libertarian idealist sociopathy of Silicon Valley. But even from a cost perspective housing is the only solution.

You can make homelessness illegal, but then you're just housing the homeless in prisons. If you're going to house people anyway, there are cheaper ways to do it than with a prison.

You can bus the homeless somewhere else, but there's a long history of other places bussing people back to SF. Given the homeless want to be in SF because of climate, opportunities, etc., the average is that they're more likely to end up there.

Unless there's something else I haven't thought of, that really only leaves housing.

Existing programs are intended to get people into a position where they can obtain housing, but these de facto don't work very well, because they attempt to get them other things before housing. Housing before a job works better than a job before housing. Housing before addiction treatment works better than addiction treatment before housing. None of the existing solutions are sustainable as long as the person isn't housed. It's unrealistic to expect someone to hold down a job or kick their addiction while living on the streets. Without housing, no auxiliary solution is sustainable.

So not only is the only solution to homelessness housing, but it's housing first.

[Kalium]

Oddly enough, it tends to not be the idealist libertarians in Silicon Valley and San Francisco who oppose housing.

[fatdog]

Begs the question of, homes where. Public housing, hotel rooms, condominiums, remote cabins, camps, shelters, the devil is in those details.

"Homeless" is a euphemism, more of a metonym for a cluster of issues that form an identifiable other. It's a general problem of how should a society deal with extreme exceptional minorities. From a majority rule perspective, there are probably still more homeless people than millionaires (let alone billionaires) in the bay area, so maybe they will organize and win the right to camp anywhere.

Rich people need permits, licenses, planning permission, and community consent to build homes. Tent dwellers, not so much. In fact, if the resolution doesn't pass to prevent people from camping in the street, what's to stop anyone from setting up pre-fab luxury sidewalk camps like those at burning man.

[imagist]

> Begs the question of, homes where. Public housing, hotel rooms, condominiums, remote cabins, camps, shelters, the devil is in those details.

There are a wide variety of options. One which has historically worked well in Europe is to provide an area of shipping containers converted into simple homes with a shower, toilet, cot, and padlock on the door.

> "Homeless" is a euphemism, more of a metonym for a cluster of issues that form an identifiable other.

No, "homeless" is not a fucking euphemism. It means "without a home", just like "jobless" means "without a job" and "hopeless" means "without hope" and "grasp-on-reality-less" means "without a grasp on reality".

> Rich people need permits, licenses, planning permission, and community consent to build homes. Tent dwellers, not so much.

These permits, licenses, planning permission, and are community consent are necessary to prevent people with a wide variety of options from making decisions that harm other people.

Tent dwellers arguably cause harm to others by being there, but they don't have other options. The voluntarily homeless are few and far between.

The two kinds of laws are incomparable: one seeks to limit the harm done by people with too much power, while the other tries to write out of existence the only option a group of people have.

> In fact, if the resolution doesn't pass to prevent people from camping in the street, what's to stop anyone from setting up pre-fab luxury sidewalk camps like those at burning man.

When this becomes a problem let me know. Meanwhile, maybe we can talk about current real problems that exist, like the people who we are literally forcing to rot to death in our streets.

[j45]

I'm no expert in the area, but Housing First programs seem to be getting popular and having some results.

To me it seems if we say food and shelter are our first needs, it's hard to work on other health and life issues without those first.

Very few people choose to end up in the circumstances that lead them to be homeless and once there, I can't say many people with homes and resources would fare much better if both were taken away.

[murbard2]

> You can make homelessness illegal, but then you're just housing the homeless in prisons.

Not if you resort to corporal punishment which doesn't impose a cost on the taxpayer and can still act as a deterrent on the most destitute. (N.B. not an endorsement)

[zo1]

Not the OP, but I suggest state-run work-camps or mini-work-cities for the sane and able-bodied. The rest get taken to either psychiatric facilities, or to dedicated facilities for the physically-disabled.

The able-bodied and sane get put to work in work camps. It need not be back-breaking labour. It can be absolutely anything. The point behind it is to ease them back into a normal functioning life. Give them a pretend-life that is safe. A bank account with fake-money, or real-money but limit the things they can spend it on. I.e. shops at the work-camp, entertainment, furniture stores for their temporary fake living accommodation. If it's real money, tell them that they can keep it once they've demonstrated that they are ready to go back into society.

We claim to "rehabilitate" criminals, so I fail to see why we can't do something on a similar effort-level for the really needy individuals in our society. Giving them money, free-food, and packing them into people-warehouses does not really help them. It just drags the problem along.

[restalis]

"I suggest state-run work-camps or mini-work-cities for the sane and able-bodied."

My take is that you failed to understand how chronic homelessness works. Excluding the mentally ill, most of the said "able-bodied" individuals (including drug addicts) are there by choice. They managed to limit their needs and wants to a minimal levels and cover those with almost no work at all. As far as I could understand the way homeless people think, there are only small windows of opportunity for some external motivation to reach them, and that's in the times when they can't cover their basic needs, like shelter in a really cold weather, or water in a really dry day. Even these are looked at as nice-to-have not a must-have, so the effect of leverage is weak, as many of them will rather try to suffer and endure it through at the first sign of required work from their part.

"We claim to "rehabilitate" criminals, so I fail to see why we can't do something on a similar effort-level for the really needy individuals in our society."

I think you again fail at understanding what's the deal with criminals and homeless and why the society works to rehabilitate the criminals but not the homeless. (Actually the homeless that can be rehabilitated are actually worked on, as in the homeless that themselves work on their condition are helped.) The imprisoned criminals are a group of people that for some reason were considered dangerous to be left active in the society. So not necessarily the punishment for their crimes but the threat they continuously pose is the primary reason for their temporary or permanent disposal from the rest of society. Rehabilitation comes as a natural step for these active people, as they are active and potentially still useful for society. The homeless, on the other hand, don't pose much threat to society, and the main problem with any assumed social program involving them is that most of these are not active. There isn't much drive to change anything, neither from society (unless there is something political about it), nor from the homeless themselves.

[nickthemagicman]

Would you put them on trains to get to these camps? Tatoo a handy identification number on them?

[krinchan]

> Your last paragraph suggests that you have solutions to the problem. What are they?

Right? I read that word soup and walked away with the paraphrase, "I'd tell you how to fix it, but I'm afraid you just aren't smart enough to understand."

[restalis]

I walked away with something different. Homelessness is supposed to be a complicated problem if you don't get into details. The key is not to treat the mass of the homeless people as a whole but to understand and consider each of the factors that lead to people ending up living on the streets. To address this requires work of course, but for some reason it seems more convenient to be left as a perpetual problem.

[jessriedel]

> Other people pay a lot of money in tax to the state to reduce their daily exposure to violence,

Just to be clear, police and courts use an extremely small fraction of tax revenue.

[jsprogrammer]

Could you please expand on the argument that governments were originally chartered to remove tent cities?