[legitster]

I want this person off of the streets for completely selfish reasons to myself.

Recovery program or not, they are going to have to live somewhere. If it's not a publicly funded home then it's going to be a tent in a public park that I am paying taxes for.

[drcode]

Without a recovery program, some people will still just spend their day smashing car windows to get money for drugs, then go home to their free apartment

It might still be worth it regardless, but keep that in mind

[philwelch]

There is a way around this dilemma that solves everyone’s problems. People who go around smashing windows etc. are arrested and thrown in jail. If they repeatedly offend, they receive longer and longer sentences, perhaps at some state penitentiary in a more cost effective location. If they are addicted to drugs, they are enrolled in mandatory treatment programs while in prison. This person is hence housed and separated from civil society, with much less incentive to cheat the system.

This even solves the other problem that you haven’t brought up: the person who sleeps on the street smashing windows all day is likely to wreck the free apartment you end up giving them, too.

[drcode]

I mean, there's more complexities here insofar as it seems the prisons need to be run a lot better than they currently seem to be run, and we need to get better about prosecuting petty crimes.

Since we currently aren't doing those things, people are searching for alternate solutions, but there don't seem to be any that show much promise (though I'm sure people can cite a study that "proves" I'm wrong and can explain why the $17B spent by California doesn't count as counterevidence, even though a lot of that money was spent on "housing first" friendly policies)

[philwelch]

> we need to get better about prosecuting petty crimes

Yes, that is exactly my proposed solution.

[kodah]

We've done that for a long time and it doesn't change the outcome. You either pay exorbitant rates for them to sit in jail or you pay exhorbitant collective insurance rates. Worse off cities will usually incentivize those people to stay out of certain areas and in other areas, which also causes equity issues.

We're better off actually helping people. Getting to the root of what's wrong and what threshold we declare someone needs help and of what type is what we're trying to figure out.

[philwelch]

> We've done that for a long time

Have we? For every 1000 broken car windows in SF or LA, how many convictions (or even arrests) are there?

[fzeroracer]

I mean SF or LA aren't the only cities with homeless problems. My home city Seattle has them, New York has them, Austin has them. For decades leading up to the 2010s we were convicting and throwing every homeless person we could in jail, but the problem is that it just becomes a revolving door. Either you accept that an entire class of people need to be jailed for life for the crime of being homeless, or you try and fix the revolving door.

Some cities have tried and failed, others haven't tried and also failed. Trying to solve a national problem on a state level is almost always bound to be a failure because the problem has to do with things that occurred 10-20 years ago with Purdue Pharma starting off the whole opioid epidemic. We're just now seeing the height of the problem they kicked off.

The other 'unspoken truth' about this issue is that people in the rust belt and such have just as many problems with drugs and crime. The difference is that they have homes and these issues aren't visible until someone dies from suicide or an OD.

[philwelch]

> I mean SF or LA aren't the only cities with homeless problems. My home city Seattle has them…

I mentioned SF and LA because TFA is about California. You can ask my question about any city though: for every 1000 broken car windows, how many convictions (or even arrests) are there? I know that number is extremely low in Seattle as well.

> Either you accept that an entire class of people need to be jailed for life for the crime of being homeless, or you try and fix the revolving door.

It’s not for the crime of being homeless, it’s for the actual crimes they’re committing. What you’re doing here is you’re setting up the homeless as some sort of protected class that’s allowed to victimize the rest of us with impunity. That’s been the cornerstone of policy in cities like Seattle for years and that’s why those cities have the biggest problem.

> Trying to solve a national problem on a state level is almost always bound to be a failure

It’s definitely going to be a failure if you make your city one of the best places in the country to be homeless and commit crimes.

[bombcar]

I suspect that when a city gets too dense or too expensive to have really cheap trailer parks is when it starts having homeless issues.

[singpolyma3]

Literally the Scrooge solution "are there no prisons?"

[bee_rider]

This hypothetical person will either smash windows and go to an apartment, or smash windows and go sleep somewhere in public. If they are already at the point of smashing windows, then there’s some element of desperation or misanthropy that makes me prefer that they spend their night somewhere private.

Anyway if we’re designing hypothetical people, we can come up with sympathetic ones too, so it seems like a wash policy-wise.

[ehvatum]

Don’t be a tool. A heroin addict’s motivation to acquire heroin is infinitely greater than a heroin addict’s motivation for anything else in the world.

[bee_rider]

What is the link between “make sure they sleep on the street” and “prevent them from breaking windows?”

It isn’t a matter of whether or not I’m a tool. The proposed solution is just unrelated to the problem.

As you say, if someone really wants heroin, they’ll get heroin. So, making their life miserable won’t stop them from getting it. What do we gain as a society from making sure they shoot up and sleep in public?

[seanmcdirmid]

Isn’t it a moral hazard? The nice thing about living in Ballard is I can point out to my kid what happens when you do fent, at least. If there are no consequences for behavior, what’s the disincentive for not doing it? “We will coddle you while you OD on fent” doesn’t sound appealing to me.

[bee_rider]

I had to do some reordering hopefully it is OK. I think all I’ve done is group your ideas together, rather than change anything you said.

> Isn’t it a moral hazard? […] If there are no consequences for behavior, what’s the disincentive for not doing it?

There are still lots of downsides to becoming a heroin addict so I think letting them get out of the public eye is fine.

> The nice thing about living in Ballard is I can point out to my kid what happens when you do fent, at least.

It is your responsibility to parent your kid I guess, but I’d be wary of this sort of thing. What if you accidentally show off a corpse to your kid? That could be pretty traumatic, right? Also, is it really a good lesson, that it is OK to talk about people like that? They are people, not objects of derision.

> “We will coddle you while you OD on fent” doesn’t sound appealing to me.

This is one of those things, right? It is often the case that the right policy decisions don’t fit in with our personal moral inner monologue. It is what it is.

[i_am_jl]

If that person is currently living on the street, spending their day smashing car windows to get drugs, it's absolutely still worth it.

[oh_sigh]

It's not selfish to want the public to be able to enjoy public spaces.

[adamrezich]

for some reason many people have stopped caring about the notion of societal trust and cohesion—even the idea of valuing it as something to be desired and strived for. it's an odd kind of defeatist nihilism, and I've seen it spread year after year.

these are the same people who will scoff when you suggest that stealing from Walmarts or Targets or whatever is wrong. they'll tell you, "dude, shrinkage is a thing, they build the cost of stolen or damaged goods into their budgets. and, anyway, why do you care so much about massive corporations' bottom lines, anyway?" obviously I don't, but I sure do care about living in a place where brazen broad-daylight theft is rare, and not something you see every time you go to the store!

[unethical_ban]

I think you're on the same page with the person you're responding to.

@shepardrtc said people who get free housing should work for it, and @legitster is saying that it is in the taxpayer's self-interest to spend some taxes housing the unhoused. I took that to mean that a work requirement is secondary to getting them off the street in the first place.

I agree that we should be providing drug recovery mechanisms and promoting a work ethic in people who are long-term houseless, but our options seem to be (leave them on the streets, parks and front lawns of our cities), (put them in prison), or (put them in publicly funded housing ala halfway houses).

First one seems like none of us want it (unless you live in the suburbs and have fled the problem). Second one is too far, and even with good healthcare services, involuntary commitment should only happen for the severely ill. That leaves the third.

[8f2ab37a-ed6c]

It’s a luxury belief as well, people of wealth don’t need to care about public spaces as much, they have plenty of other options. It hurts the poor the most.