It's not just the free fare - it's the abysmal lack of shelter options and the attempts by cities to criminalize encampments and force people to find somewhere indoors to avoid arrest.
100% this, I’ve been homeless and slept on the bus or subway to stay warm (and safe) and not once did someone try to help me. And now I’m years out of being in that situation and I am part of the same problem, I almost never take public transportation and use Lyft or my car to get around.
I live in Boston and arrived at my usual subway stop with a half-eaten breakfast sandwich and an iced coffee in hand. There was a "kid" (probably late teens, early twenties) sleeping on the bench and he looked like someone who was newly arrived in a tough place. I thought of my own pre-teen son and thought of what I'd want someone to do if they encountered him in this state.
When I approached He asked for change, which I didn't have, so I asked if he wanted the remaining half of my sandwich and iced coffee instead. The sheer joy of his reaction as he took the sandwich and coffee is something I'll always remember.
It was the breakfast I was planning on eating. It wasn't a grand gesture by any stretch, but it was a lot more than anyone else had done for him that day.
Just 'cause no one less was helping doesn't make you a saint for giving your leftovers. Maybe you can take this as a lesson for next time you're in opportunity to give.
I think the city should just provide enough shelters for the homeless. That seems cheaper than running public transport that's not getting used the way it's intended.
It's hard to fix every cause of homelessness, but providing shelters is pretty easy.
The rationale for why "just add more shelters" is hard has been explained to me as:
* nobody wants a shelter built near them
* even if it does get built, it's often women/children only
and the second bullet point isn't (afaik...) just sexism or anything, it's just picking risk categories. Consider all the following like you were an insurance company trying to appraise how costly it is to do business with a group of people: Apparently homeless men are, collectively, more expensive to shelter than women/children because they're plagued by more expensive issues - more violence, more drug issues, etc. So homeless shelters frequently can't afford to operate if they try to shelter men. So it becomes an issue of "women/children only" or "it's literally too expensive to safely run the (both-genders) shelter to be feasible".
But leaving those men on the street in also expensive for society. I understand this is how it works for any individual shelter, but for the city as a whole, they're going to be paying for this one way or another, whether they provide shelters, let them sleep on the bus (a great place for people with violence/drug issues) or just abandon them to the streets to let them figure it out on their own. I think providing shelters, and maybe guidance with their problems, is still going to be the best option for the city. As long as they can look at the entire context, and not just a single shelter.
> I’ve been homeless and slept on the bus or subway to stay warm (and safe) and not once did someone try to help me.
The way in which you wrote this could be misinterpreted, so any clarification would be welcome: did you then or do you now feel as though someone is obligated to help you? If so, who and in what ways?
It didn't end well, but, the majority of people who are homeless are invisible, they don't appear to be any different than the average city person. The people who are being complained about are by in large people who are in need of public health services that have been slashed since the 1980s in the United States or never existed. I don't have a solution
Want to make sure this part of the comment is also highlighted because big homeless shelters can be really difficult, scary, and even dangerous places, even when there are beds available, and so unhoused people have to wrestle with whether it's safer/more desirable to sleep outside rather than deal with all that. And that's not to mention all the cumbersome rules and religious proselytizing they might have to deal with in shelters. Warehousing people is not a good option.
Well they should, shouldn't they. Nobody should be able to monopolize and ruin the commons, whether or not they have a home.
The problem isn't the criminalizing of sleeping in public spaces, it's the lack of publicly funded shelters and publicly funded (incl. mental) healthcare for the homeless.
We should pay to give them a place to sleep, and punish them just like anyone else if they choose to set up camps in public spaces.
You conveniently left out the part where your parent commenter wants to build shelters so that people don't have to sleep under bridges, whether rich or poor.
And they conveniently left out that that is exactly what the law has been ruled to say - if there are available suitable shelters then you can criminalize sleeping in public areas.
> We should pay to give them a place to sleep, and punish them just like anyone else if they choose to set up camps in public spaces.
A little empathy would clarify that if there were any (holistically) better option, then homeless people would be preferring that to sleeping on the streets.
Firstly there needs to be "enough" available shelter, which accommodates the richly varied life situations of people. Secondly, it's no use having these shelters in the middle of nowhere such that their tenants are disconnected from a thriving economy and the rest of society.
The commons are, after all, for common use, and it is coercive to punish the homeless (often considered "riff raff") for "ruining the commons" if one's delicate (bourgeois) sensibilities are affected.
Well, semantics...SCOTUS refused to hear. But by refusing, it was an implicit support -- but I wouldn't call it a ruling. A ruling would be more along the lines of indelible -- this was more a filibuster.
You'll change your mind as soon as you don't have a place to stay. Getting arrested because you were involuntarily evicted for your home is bullshit and tried to sleep somewhere is bullshit.
Couldn’t you use your car? 24 hour fitness for showers? I see many people do that. They don’t bother anybody. They’re actually trying to work very hard, it’s just the property values are so costly, that they end up homeless in their car.
The homeless that are on the street are typically very hostile and going through drug withdrawal. It can become a public safety issue then.
A car isn't an option for everyone. I personally don't have a car. And 10 years ago when I was homeless, I couldn't afford to keep the car I had; it got towed because I couldn't afford to pay for the registration. On a more practical note, I was too big to sleep in my car anyway.
If you'll hold off on the criminalization until all the shelters are built, maybe, but the former is easier than the latter and not everyone is equally invested in the two endeavors.
Shelters without forced religious services.
Without forced NA/AA.
Shelters that will allow families to stay together.
Shelters that don't take away walkers and oxygen tanks due to being "weapons".
Shelters that are safe, for everyone, especially if you are trans.
Ones that allow folks to actually improve their life instead of waiting hours for food and mandatory classes.
Bonus points if they provide for pets as well: I know of at least one woman that stayed with an abusive partner because of this. Her only friend in the country (!) was her dog. (He died while she was pregnant, so she got a better life, but no dog).
It is unfortunate that the shelters we do have are rarely good enough.
If such shelters existed in my city, I’d seriously consider becoming homeless for a while to save for a deposit on a home loan faster than I otherwise would while paying rent.
It doesn't really mean these would be comfortable places - it would still just be shelter. The stuff I listed are just basic things I think we should do for people, regardless of situations. Folks shouldn't suffer due to misfortune.
I don't think society is at a place to do such a thing, but I'd personally like to see everyone getting the option of low-cost to free basic housing. A single person would minimally get a private room and bathroom: More likely a proper studio with a small kitchen. Clean, secure, and functional. Easy-to-clean and easy-to-replace surfaces and appliances. Professional cleaning 2-4 times a year, mandatory.
Of course, I think we should only have shelters for folks that have temporary emergencies and homes for everyone else. People will still need shelter from time to time even in a more perfect world - fires, floods, abuse, money mistakes, and so on happen.
This is all a dream and I don't think we'll get to this point soon enough.
What is it that's preventing us from forcing our politicians to offer better options? I would vote for a solution to this, and even donate money to it, if enough other people were doing the same.
Don't most people feel the same about this issue? What systemic problem is preventing a huge mass of people who agree on this from making a meaningful change happen?
It's just a much harder problem to solve than you realize it is.
The truth is a lot of the homeless people that aren't in shelters choose not to go to shelters. Why? The biggest reason is because shelters don't allow drugs or alcohol, and if you're an addict that's an immediate pass.
There are other reasons too. Sometimes couples want shelter together, but most are separated by gender (and for good reason: to prevent sexual assaults). Sometimes a person has a pet, and pets are generally not accepted at shelters.
So, what do you do? Allow people to shoot up in a shelter? Or deny heroin addicts shelter? As I said, it's not obvious how to fix this. It's definitely not just a "build more beds" situation in most cities.
I think it's to start treating addiction as a mental health issue and reopen facilities dedicated to treating more serious mental disorders - in a lot of places mental institutions were closed because of perceived (sometimes quite real) mistreatment but they were never replaced, society just moved on - so now you've got a mix of folks on the street, addicts, inherently mentally disabled and the jobless.
Jobless homeless are easy to solve and is generally a transient condition, it's extremely dangerous period of their lives but most people will recover in a small number of years with the right support structures - the mentally disabled without support structures are a permanent problem and we just need to provide funding for permanent support workers for them - lastly, addicts are heavily ostracized but their condition is potentially recoverable - still, addiction treatment is a multi-year or decade process and addicts need solid support structures including a stable living situation to dig their way out.
So more beds won't help, the funding going into care is pathetic and it has constant exponential costs on society - more drug users on the streets today means even more tomorrow as more people fall into that cycle. I think legalization of the softer drugs would help, we've done it with MJ up here in Canada and we have yet to devolve into a lawless anarchy, but I really don't know about things like heroin or meth.
Yeah, housing first is absolutely the way to go. Sadly the very thing causing homelessness also makes housing-first much more difficult: astronomically-expensive real estate. Condos in Seattle cost more than $500/sqft, and investing tons of money to construct these buildings further props up the ridiculous valuations.
Socialized housing is absolutely the answer, but homelessness will never be solved until we stop treating housing as an investment. Housing increasing in value is also housing increasing in cost. Investment growth is diametrically opposed to affordability.
How can socialized housing be the answer? Government has proven repeatedly that it cannot build housing as efficiently as private companies. Government housing projects also very quickly turn into slums since there are insufficient employment opportunities nearby.
The single best thing governments could do is increase density in areas with high economic opportunity. This can also be done very easily with a few strokes of the pen: Higher density zoning, and a land value tax.
Land value tax is critical as it ensures that landowners must develop their land rather than simply rent-seek if they are lucky enough to own in a desirable and growing area.
Interesting. Question: do you think that if all of a sudden a wand was waved and everyone homeless in a given city/geography was magically housed that there would still be (eventually, over time) further homelessness or do you think that homelessness would cease to exist from that point forward? What do you think would happen in say, 5-10-15 years out?
When a city is more hospitable to the homeless, it attracts more homeless. The homeless problem in California's major cities is in part due to their their (relatively) accommodating treatment of the homeless.
Cities, even states, aren't ever going to be able to fully tackle this problem alone - there needs to be a massive initiative at the federal level.
I think my "obvious" solution is that you let people use, and provide methods for them to use safely (needle exchanges, etc.), and offer them support to quit using.
By stopping people at the first step, you make it a lot harder to provide the second (safe use) and third (use reduction).
Nitpick: I don't like to use the term "homeless people", because it puts homeless first and the emphasis on them as a fixed group of people. They're just people who at this time have housing insecurity, and I think this framing means we can solve it by providing people with safety and security and resources.
> They're just people who at this time have housing insecurity
They're homeless, trying to hide that reality with a non-sense PC euphemism doesn't change that. This attitude isn't helping, it's obfuscating and bad. They're not housing insecure, short people aren't height-challenged, disabled people aren't differently-abled.
Homelessness is an immutable characteristic they can't change? Sounds like you're reinforcing why the change in framing is helpful and emphasizing their personhood first, their living conditions second.
> So, what do you do? Allow people to shoot up in a shelter?
And the answer is yes, obviously. Safe-injection sites and opiate maintenance programs work.
And you also go several steps further by ending drug prohibition entirely. Prohibition has created an environment where the only opioid drugs available are highly concentrated and easy to smuggle, just as alcohol prohibition converted a nation of beer and wine drinkers to whiskey addicts. With raw plant forms of coca and poppy available, we'll see far fewer people shooting up heroin or smoking crack (just as we see today in places where cultivation and consumption of these plants is commonplace).
Unfortunately the answer is not obviously yes. A long time ago I volunteered in a shelter. High (and drink) guests can be more violent and argumentive; fights will break out over people stealing drugs. They pass out and make messes with bodily fluids that have to be cleaned up. They leave dirty needles laying around.
Few people, including other guests, want to deal with these and the safety issues and so fewer come (including the volunteers).
If folks can steal other people's stuff, it is not a good shelter. It doesn't matter if it is drugs or any other personal belonging. If folks can steal drugs, they can steal money as well.
Build better shelters.
But more than that: You can require certain things, like not being violent with other folks. That they clean up their own messes. Provide mental and physical health care at the shelter and offer medical help in weaning off drugs. This won't work in an environment that isn't safe and secure, for both the person and their stuff.
More unpopularly: Require that they shoot up in the proper location, where there are sharps boxes and so on. Get treatment for folks or employ trained staff to help folks shoot up (if you can't help folks stop, we can do it as safely as possible).
Are you saying that you volunteered at a location which expressly served as a safe-injection or maintenance program site? Or a place where addicts clandestinely acquired and used heroin?
This discussion is about the former: is it a good idea to have safe injection or maintenance facilities at or near shelters? The consequences you are describing sound to me like symptoms of the latter, which are not widely described at actual safe injection or maintenance sites.
I volunteered at a shelter in a Boston suburb and the problems were fairly small compared to big cities. This was a while ago so heroin wasn't much of a problem; by far the drug of choice was alcohol with crack a distant second. You cannot allow alcohol in a shelter, it is a recipe for disaster.
The problem with simple solutions is that many people don't want to do what you think they should do. They don't want safe injection, they want their hit now. They want to drink until they pass out. They want the freedom to make bad choices.
If you give everyone houses, it relieves pressure from the housing system which causes rents to go down. Therefore, every landlord opposes actually solving homelessness. Since we have government by the rich and landed, we get their position encoded in policy.
The degree to which reality diverges from this prescription is the degree to which the politicians fear either a) a declining bushiness environment or b) riots
If you provide a real, quality outlet to all people facing homelessness, then people fear eviction much less. Therefore, they will readily turn to the public option in times of crisis rather than scrabble to pay rent. This lack of fear of the the landlord results in less negotiating power.
The problem is that as soon as they increase your taxes to pay for something that you want to pay for, they will take that money and use it for something else.
That's not a problem but a feature of government. Otherwise the government will just focus on dirt roads and horses. Don't like taxes? Move to Somalia.
You’re saying it good when the gov’t raises taxes to pay for outreach to the homeless, but then spends the money on something else, like a new stadium?