[nostromo]

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.

[munk-a]

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.

[epicureanideal]

As I was saying, what's stopping us from forcing the politicians to provide better options?

Is there some way we can organize a discussion about practical solutions to this issue, and then pick that and tell the politicians to go do it?

I'm not saying our current solutions are good by the way, which seems to be what some people replying are interpreting my comment as.

I'm personally in favor of just state funded small apartments, where yes, if they want to shoot up, let them shoot up.

[ahelwer]

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.

[aeternum]

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.

[ridethewave]

>homelessness will never be solved

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?

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

> in a given city/geography

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.

[ridethewave]

>there needs to be a massive initiative at the federal level.

What would that look like to you?

[AaronFriel]

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.

[gnaritas]

> 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.

[AaronFriel]

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.

[jMyles]

You say it's not obvious, but then you ask:

> 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).

[deeg]

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).

[Broken_Hippo]

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).

[jMyles]

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.

[deeg]

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.

[lazyasciiart]

Yes, you can have alcohol in shelters, it is cheaper, safer, and in all ways except performing a puritan morality play, better. It's called low barrier shelters, or housing first. Seattle's DESC housing has been successfully providing it for decades. Plenty of successful programs have implemented it in multiple countries. It is not a new idea or an untested idea. You can't have it in a shitty "shelter" that just lays out sleeping mats by the dozens in a big empty room and then turns out the lights, no. So what?