[stevecalifornia]

There are broadly two kinds of homeless: those who lost their job and are discreetly trying to get back on track... and those who choose this lifestyle and shit all over the place, make enormous amounts of trash, smoke meth in bookstore bathrooms, steal from stores and assault people.

All day long I see the second group all over town destroying stuff and causing mayhem that ends up hurting innocent bystanders.

Yet when the media talks about homelessness they only speak as if all homeless are in the first group-- down on their luck and needing a helping hand and if you feel anything other than deep guilt you are less than human.

The ruse is up: everyone has too many anecdotes of being assaulted, having to walk out into the street to go around heaps of garbage, watching people openly inject drugs on sidewalks in front of unwilling witnesses.

There are clearly two distinct things going on and they likely have two totally different solutions. If media and politicians keep communicating as if there is only one problem, despite what our ears and eyes tell us every single day, then this will continue to get worse and the outcome will likely be the same as the 'defund the police' movement-- a voter referendum that says 'enough of this nonsense'.

[pjs_]

If you grow up in a shitty environment there is an increased probability that you will get into drugs. Once you start doing strong drugs all day, there is a considerably increased chance of shitting all over the place and causing havoc.

I don't know if you grew up in a shitty environment or not but please consider that even if you did, the fact that you are not smoking meth in bookstore bathrooms cannot be purely a product of your own stout moral fiber, it is also due to luck, and the people that you see running riot in the city are the other side of that coin.

Speaking for myself, I am a post-graduate educated rich white guy who does my recycling and helps old ladies cross the road, and I am absolutely certain that if I got deep enough into serious drugs I would be shitting and yelling with the best of them, and I fuckin pray that if I ever get into that state, that educated people would have the sophistication to view me as something other than the unforgivably evil cartoon villain that you describe.

[lapetitejort]

Everything I've heard and read from current and former unhoused people points to the fact that mental health drops rapidly upon losing a home. Not being able to sleep a whole night without waking up and being fearful of people invading your space is sufficient. Add in food insecurity, nearby drug use, violence, etc and your brain gets fried. Just like a physical injury, this wound could take months or years to heal.

[Hermitian909]

I've worked with the homeless, this is absolutely the case. Being assaulted or stolen from while homeless is a matter of when not if once you've also lost your car. Sexual assault is also not uncommon.

Drugs drown out the non-stop pain of existence.

[gilleain]

I think of the problems that the homeless face as being like an evil roundabout. Although you enter with one of mental illness, addiction, or despair (or several, the analogy is imperfect) the roundabout mixes these up until you have them all.

Ultimately, we are all responsible in some sense for our own behaviour. However the freedom of people to choose to do the right thing is often severely limited by circumstance and previous choices.

[BobbyJo]

I don't see how you can consider it 'painting a cartoon villain' when it's acknowledging a shitty reality through the lens if objectivity. There really are people doing those things. Commonly. I'd visit SF maybe once a month when I lived out there, and seeing people do all of those things on any given visit was a coin flip.

Also, you are right, people are very often victims of their environment. A component of that environment is the ease of doing bad things. If you treat people who do bad things as victims, that makes doing bad things easier. You have to balance compassion with consequences. One without will fail.

[adminscoffee]

i think people lose hope, when they get a little further in life or make a step towards progress and tell people. a lot of west coast people (i live in seattle) have a hard time celebrating peoples small gains. it's all about posturing for them, they care because it makes them fit in but when it comes to actually treating people like they are human, they don't, a lot of people in these big tech cities are using each other to get ahead and if you cannot offer someone some type of nugget for them to get ahead, then you might as well be useless or homeless to them. i've witnessed it in my own career, a lot of people fear people who are struggling, even if that person never ask them for anything, they will ghost you or belittle you.

it's only a matter of time before the judgement comes for those people. like you can't treat people like they are trash because when you are down on your luck, karma or your consciousness will prevent you from getting the help you need. it's important to remember that not all these people are on drugs, some are broken, like sad broken, or a ton of mental illness. but yeah there are people on drugs, most people don't turn to drugs for fun, they turn to drugs because they are miserable and want to feel something. just like alcohol. people use drugs to avoid their situation, also why change when everyone thinks you'll never change? it's like the world has issues with forgiveness, mercy, empathy, kindness and are judgmental because they fear that poverty is contagious.

[coding123]

This. You hit the nail on the head - posturing of tech people. These people talk about racism and poverty as if they are solved issues. The policy has become - here's an olive branch, now it's your fault for being homeless.

The old way this stuff was handled was a social safety net - not one based in economic policy, but one that was churches and just people that cared. I think both still exist, but the current state of things is seeing a massive shift from selflessness to selfishness is actually having an effect.

The selfishness comes from a place of - it's not my problem it's now handled by policy X so I don't need to bother personally.

[BobbyJo]

The reality is: Poverty is contagious. Very very contagious. I know this firsthand.

I'm totally ok with people only taking care of themselves. If you have time/energy/money to spare, sure, use to help someone in need, someone that help will actually help. But if you don't, that's totally fine too.

None of that really changes the need to arrest people who rob stores, and the need to disincentize living in tents and shooting up in the streets like you own them.

[jaywalk]

I disagree that the parent described an "unforgivably evil cartoon villain" but how does your comment help? It's clear that particular type of homelessness is a massive problem in SF, and how they managed to get to that state isn't particularly relevant in solving the crisis. It's still important in helping prevent people from getting to that point, but that's not what we're talking about here.

[nverno]

A shitty environment certainly contributes, but drug abuse has risen in every demographic, and genetic predisposition is a huge factor (40-60% cited here[1]).

[1] https://americanaddictioncenters.org/rehab-guide/addiction-s...

[s1artibartfast]

Not genetics. From the source:

>Scientists estimate that genes, including the effects environmental factors have on a person's gene expression, called epigenetics, account for between 40 and 60 percent of a person's risk of addiction

[nverno]

That's why I phrased it as "genetic predisposition". As I understand, environment is of a major factor in gene expression, but the underlying genetics also vary between individuals, eg. Native Americans and other ethnic groups have a genetic predisposition towards alchoholism, or others that are bad with lactose, etc.

[s1artibartfast]

I agree with your example, but the number cited is not for innate genetic predisposition. It includes including the effects environmental factors have on a person's gene expression.

Some of these may be relatively uniform through the population, but manifest due to different environmental factors.

e.g. Child abuse could cause epigenetic changes to gene expression associated with a drug predisposition. This may be conserved between individuals.

[s1artibartfast]

>I fuckin pray that if I ever get into that state, that educated people would have the sophistication to view me as something other than the unforgivably evil cartoon villain that you describe.

Why should they if you act like a cartoon villain? Should they pretend you are helping an old lady when they are acting like a villain and robbing her?

At some point the causality doesn't matter. IF something is broken, it doesn't matter how it got that way. You can fix it, throw it away, or mitigate the damage it causes.

Some people can't be helped. Some can with significant effort. Some need to be locked away so that they don't hurt people. Sometimes the best you can do is mitigate their suffering.

[kooshball]

by this logic, anything anyone ever does is due to their "shitty environment". what an insane way to absolve people of all personal responsibility.

[standardUser]

Many homeless people suffer from physical and mental disabilities that make them incapable of living independently. They aren't volunteering to live in grotesque poverty, nor are they in-between jobs, so they don't fit into your overly-neat dichotomy. I'd argue that any serious steps towards addressing homelessness should start with a realistic assessment of the issue, not axe grinding.

[gotoeleven]

Somehow we've collectively decided that the best way to deal with people who can't take care of themselves is to ... let them take care of themselves and also give them free needles.

We clearly need to bring back insane asylums and institutionalization. Why can't we just try this again and try to make them less abusive?

[heavyset_go]

> We clearly need to bring back insane asylums and institutionalization. Why can't we just try this again and try to make them less abusive?

We can't even make the ones that exist today "less abusive"[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28857567

[standardUser]

I think we have to go back to some institutionalization, but only as part of the solution. We need to decriminalize drugs to remove the biggest barrier to treatment, and then fund treatment programs to remove the second biggest barrier. And we need to expand mental health services to be available to everyone regardless of insurance or ability to pay.

Each one of those things is super crazy expensive (except for decriminalizing drugs, which could save a lot of wasted funds).

[jdavis703]

I’ve posted links before, but SF publishes a regular homeless census. It includes information about mental health, substance abuse and what locale the person became homeless in. This data clearly shows that most homeless people in SF are not choosing to engage in extreme anti-social behavior. Rather what’s happening is you’re noticing the worst cases, and extrapolating that to people such as a single mother working as security guard at night living in an RV.

[s1artibartfast]

Doesn't this just reinforce the point of the parent post, that there are two types of homelessness?

They are explicitly separating the worst cases from those like the working mother in the RV?

Looking at the 2019 report[1], the chronically homeless better fit the negative stereotype.

Sixty-three percent 63% of chronically homeless survey respondents reported alcohol or substance use. 53% reported living with a psychiatric or emotional condition, 52% with post-traumatic stress disorder, 48% with a chronic health problem, and 21% suffered from a traumatic brain injury

This is from self reported survey data, so the actual numbers could be more grim (e.g. problems not acknowledged or diagnosed).

https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/FINAL-PIT-R...

[jdavis703]

If you check page 28 it shows the overall rate at 42% for substance abuse, 39% for mental health and 37% for PTSD. Your summary is from only the chronically homeless. That skews the data towards the people who are by definition the hardest to help.

[s1artibartfast]

Correct, This was my explicit intent. I posit that the chronically homeless are more disruptive, destructive, and harder to treat.

>Doesn't this just reinforce the point of the parent post, that there are two types of homelessness?

>They are explicitly separating the worst cases from those like the working mother in the RV?

>Looking at the 2019 report[1], the chronically homeless better fit the negative stereotype.

[crooked-v]

> shit all over the place

This is some very convenient blame-shifting to avoid noticing SF's distinct shortage of 24-hour public bathrooms[1].

[1]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/local-politics/article/San-Franc...

[mtalantikite]

> Breed’s proposed program budget was $4.6 million annually for 25 toilets, none 24/7.

Meanwhile Paris has about 400 of them, 150 of which are 24 hours, costing €6 million per year.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanisette

[2] https://en.parisinfo.com/practical-paris/useful-info/public-...

[jaywalk]

Talk about addressing a symptom instead of the problem.

[RC_ITR]

I think one of the truest empathy tests is asking someone whether they think an unhoused person WANTS to shit on the street or not.

[Apes]

You mean 24-hour private meth dens?

San Francisco built a bunch of 24-hour public restrooms in the early 2000s downtown, and today they're horrendous. The problem is cyclical: people shit on the streets because there's no public restrooms -- but there's no public restrooms because San Francisco is filled with psychopaths who have no problem dropping their pants and shitting in the middle of a street. Give them a public restroom and they'll destroy it.

The people causing these problems aren't normal people who think like you and just happen to be homeless. You can't relate to them by trying to project yourself into their position. They're completely different mentally. They do not think rationally, and they do not have any empathy for others around them.

[Gigachad]

Your comment is downvoted but it's something that has to be considered. Yes people shit on the streets because there are no toilets, but there are no toilets because it's extremely difficult to provide them due to abuse. It all links back to drug abuse again.

[s1artibartfast]

I think part of it is a refusal to give them utilitarian toilets that can't be destroyed for aesthetic reasons.

e.g. toilets with no privacy and pressure washable steel

[Gigachad]

This would require some significant trial, design, study. My first question is are people who are willing to use a toilet publicly exposed actually likely to use it vs just some quiet street. And there are still plenty of ways to ruin a utilitarian toilet like shoving trash in and blocking the drain. At the very least most people can admit that the problem is more complex than simply dropping in some public toilet blocks.

You have to consider these things because there are more than enough people willing to destroy things simply for the purpose of destroying them.

[s1artibartfast]

I'm not saying it a complete solution, but do think it can alleviate some concerns.

>My first question is are people who are willing to use a toilet publicly exposed actually likely to use it vs just some quiet street.

I believe the person willing to take a shit on the sidewalk on busy street, would also be willing to do so in a metal receptacle with TP provided.

I think there are engineering solutions that might not make it unpluggable, but give it a pretty high up time.

You're right that it might take some trial design and study. But that is an argument for trying it!

[Flatcircle]

We're living through an opioid epidemic and people are reframing it as a housing problem, SMH

[anon9001]

We should just go a step further and hand out oxy or percs to addicts for free.

The pills are incredibly cheap to manufacture.

A few things would happen if we started handing out opiods for free:

* petty crime would decrease -- it's not the drug that causes the crime, it's trying to pay for the drug

* organized crime would decrease -- moving opiods is a lucrative operation, and our addicts are bankrolling very bad people by doing business with them

* users would get clean product -- opiods laced with fentanyl are a huge problem and responsible for the majority of hospitalizations and overdose deaths

* more users could hold stable employment and rehabilitate themselves -- i've known plenty of opiods addicts, but you'd never know they had a problem, because they were all rich tech workers that were not stealing to satisfy their addiction

* most injection users would be pill users if it wasn't so expensive -- giving them free pills would encourage a less risky route of administration and decrease sepsis cases

If we still have a homeless problem after that, communal housing outside of the city with free drugs might be enough to get them to relocate to where they're not a problem and in considerably less danger.

But then I remember that we live in a god-fearing christian nation, where drugs are bad and addicts should be shunned, so my plan probably won't work.

[futhey]

I don't know whether this is a brilliant solution or a dystopian nightmare.

You'd re-invent the 19th century opium den, but it's public housing with free Oxy just outside the city limits, where you can choose to forego any meaningful integration into society, and (I assume) cut your life a bit shorter and escape into an unending, but more socially-acceptable, opium high.

[anon9001]

It sounds bad when you say it like that, but also a huge upgrade over the current situation.

I think the idea would be to keep everyone safe and ideally give them pathways back to normal society, not create a permanent underclass.

If a significant percentage of the population wants to take advantage of such a program, that probably means society is doing something else wrong unrelated to drug or housing policy.

[UseStrict]

Pretty much yes, can't force people to get mental health help, can't force people to quit opioids. People who think housing and access to mental health and counselling programs will solve the entire homeless crisis are incredibly short-sighted.

Anecdotal for sure, but a couple of my friends have had parents who were addicts, even when they had the love and support and housing options of being with family they chose to stay on the streets, unless they decided they needed to rob a family member for some more spending money. Spreading subsidized housing out doesn't work, addicts will just hang out closer to their dealers/sources on the streets. Putting up highly concentrated housing programs just make this problem even more dense, creating a radius of exceptionally high crime.

Even in the most idyllic scenario of creating perpetually well-maintained and totally free housing, many will end up choosing the streets anyways, out of convenience, mistrust, or mental health issues.

[Flatcircle]

This x 1000

[nverno]

It blows my mind how out of touch people have to be to reframe the problem in this manner. Better housing is always a good thing to strive for, but clearly not the driving factor for the vast majority of homeless.

[Flatcircle]

The “build more housing” coalition has been winning this argument for at least 7 years. Are you under the impression that mayors haven’t been green lighting more housing and small housing pop ups? Do you think government officials have yet to implement your plan? They are building more affordable housing and yet the problem is getting worse. I drive my kids to school on the LA freeways and have seen countless people under freeway on ramps and in tent cities next to freeways shoot up drugs or stumble around, obviously high on drugs. The scope of the problem has become shocking recently. Huge trash encampments bedside every freeway. It’s not rocket science. Drive through LA, drive through San Fran. Even the main image on the linked article shows a guy who clearly shows the effects of drug abuse. If it were a drug crisis, what would the solutions be? At least try to implement those and see where it gets us instead of deny the scope of the drug abuse effect because it has a moral component.

[nverno]

I see the same things you do, I was actually agreeing with you that we are in a drug crisis more than anything else. It's not an easy situation to "solve" because at the end of the day people make there own choices for the most part, and it's especially hard to offer assistance when people are unpredictable or dangerous.

[m0llusk]

This is a really shallow take on the situation. Like any big problem there are multiple factors involved.

Every time there is a crisis or economic hard times it shakes the tree and we get a new crop of homeless. Those who work with organizations trying to help have long noted this cyclic nature that mirrors business cycles. For long timers this crop of homeless are notable as being by far the oldest and sickest yet.

The primary question isn't their character, but how best to manage the situation. Opining that they brought it on themselves does not get them off the street or reduce expensive calls to responders.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Opining that they brought it on themselves does not get them off the street or reduce expensive calls to responders

OP's point, charitably, is that advocates to San Francisco's homeless may need to stomach a harsher response to the most-extreme cases, e.g. assaults and repeated public defecation, to avoid voters turning on the issue as a whole.

Empathy is needed. But human nature is human nature, and when people feel their safety and security is threatened their empathy modulates down. That's what you're seeing in OP's comment. That's happening in San Francisco.

(Oxytocin is critically involved in empathy and social behaviors. It has also been linked to toxin-elicited and socially-mediated disgust [1].)

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/gbb.12... § 7.1

[umvi]

Isn't it sort of like the dead sea effect? People that are mentally stable, hard working, but down on their luck will eventually get out. People that are mentally unstable get trapped in drug cycles and stay homeless forever. So type 1 would be more temporary homelessness while type 2 more permanent homelessness.

[thereisnospork]

>There are clearly two distinct things going on and they likely have two totally different solutions. If media and politicians keep communicating as if there is only one problem, despite what our ears and eyes tell us every single day, then this will continue to get worse and the outcome will likely be the same as the 'defund the police' movement-- a voter referendum that says 'enough of this nonsense'.

The establishment's failure to humanely deal with the problem is making a non-humane solution inevitable. I'm not sure anyone wants that, but sooner or later a plurality will be willing and eager to look the other way.

[matthewmacleod]

those who choose this lifestyle

Approximately nobody chooses this lifestyle, dude. You’re not going to make much progress on this issue if you start from what seems a very skewed perception of it.

In reality the problem is quite large and complex, and is exacerbated by the intersection of many different factors. Boiling it down to “those who deserve a helping hand” and “those who chose this lifestyle” is worryingly reminiscent of the idea of “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. There are way more than “two distinct things going on”.

[Hokusai]

Why do Americans do drugs and have more bad behavior than other parts of the world if it's just a personal choice?

Blaming the poor for being poor does not help. Other countries does not depend so much inn police but on other social services, that 'non sense' actually makes a lot of sense and works. Police cannot solved social problems.

So, I agree that voters do not back up these policies. And that is why you get the problems and human suffering that you get.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Why do Americans do drugs and have more bad behavior than other parts of the world if it's just a personal choice?

Do we? (Genuine question.)

[Intermernet]

It looks like the US is definitely up there for drug use. I'm not sure about bad behaviour, but it's a bit of an international reputation. Personally, most US citizens I've met have been, on average, equally as nice as people from anywhere else.

https://ourworldindata.org/drug-use

[fhood]

I'm definitely not agreeing with the parent comment in fact it really rubs me the wrong way, and I'm probably not even entirely disagreeing with yours, but ffs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_... Sort per capita, and yes I know this is probably a flawed list whatever it's good enough. We are not talking about "America" we are primarily talking about SF or more broadly coastal California.

[jjulius]

>... and those who choose this lifestyle...

I don't think that "choice" is the right word for a large portion of that second category.

[riffic]

the second group speaks to societal failure. If anyone wants to address this in a serious manner, you have to address people's humanity, needs (we're talking Maslow's Hierarchy here), and do so in a way that preserves dignity.

I'd look towards FDR who came closest in the last century to addressing this with the model of the second (economic) bill of rights.

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