[ceejayoz]

You should look in to the defund proposals, then, because that's what they're typically advocating; moving these responsibilities (and their funding) out of the police department.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defund_the_police

> "Defund the police" is a slogan that supports divesting funds from police departments and reallocating them to non-policing forms of public safety and community support, such as social services, youth services, housing, education, healthcare and other community resources.

[astrange]

I have, which is why I already responded to this with "reducing police funding won't lead to money going to those other places".

"Education" is a trick because the same taxes don't fund police (cities) and education (school districts). Making one go down wouldn't cause the other to go up, or even increase voter support for it.

[ceejayoz]

Can you clarify: Are you asserting it's literally impossible, along the lines of being actively unconstitutional or impossible in some fashion, or that "well voters won't want to"?

[astrange]

Some things, like housing, are so expensive that canceling other projects wouldn't actually get them done. The solution is to find ways to make them cheaper.

Other things, like education, are actually unrelated because they're literally different tax districts (eg property vs sales tax) applied to different people. In that case you can't vote on defund + fund at the same time. But also, some people just don't like taxes, so if you put the defund one first they'll take it but not use it to fund anything new.

[ceejayoz]

It turns out housing isn't actually that expensive to provide (SF's unusual housing market aside, for a moment), and solves an enormous number of these problems on its own. https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chroni...

[astrange]

Yes, I agree. Putting homeless people in houses is the most effective thing you can do for them. (sometimes this means forcing them, unfortunately, but it works)

And many people think homeless people ended up there by doing too many drugs or other moral failures, but it's more like being homeless is really bad for your mental health and there's nothing else to do.