[ciguy]

The headline as written should surprise no-one. Anyone receiving free money would probably have their life improved along some dimension, even if it just means they're not doing as many dangerous things to get money to buy more drugs. The implicit assumption seems to be that giving homeless people money to improve their lives is inherently a moral good.

Unlike many homeless advocates, I don't think it is a given that taking money by force from productive hardworking people and giving it to mentally ill drug addicts is inherently moral or good for long term societal stability.

[advael]

I think a lot of productive hardworking people's money has been spent on propaganda whose sole intention is to ensure that people equate homeless people to "mentally ill drug addicts" rather than, say, "private equity real estate buyup refugees"

[ciguy]

How many homeless people do you interact with daily? Because I'm forced to interact with many of them on a daily basis to simply go about my life in the Bay Area. And almost all of them, with very very few exceptions are both mentally ill and drug addicts. I used to think like you, but being forced to deal with them in real life on a daily basis has a way of killing preconceived convenient notions.

[bscphil]

A large percentage of the homeless population is just living on the margins, waiting and hoping for their prospects to improve. They may be living in a car, on half on the street and half on someone's couch, waiting for job applications that could give them a livable wage to come back, and so on. About half [1] of the homeless adult population of working age is employed for at least part of the year!

Like you, I have lived in areas experiencing a lot of homelessness. I've stepped over sleeping people and drug needles because there was no other way to get to work or where I needed to go. On the other hand, I think that combining this with the statistical facts gives us a picture of the true size of the problem. The mentally ill and addicts are the visible part of an iceberg of Americans slowly being priced out of affordable housing and access to healthcare.

[1] https://news.uchicago.edu/story/employment-alone-isnt-enough...

[advael]

I would say more than one on average daily, and these are just the ten percent of homeless people I see that will say hello and interact with me rather than simply go about their own business

[ska]

Selection bias is a strong effect here.

[eli]

I'm confused. Are you interested in evidence-backed policies that get people off the street? Or not?

[mrguyorama]

The reality is that you don't actually KNOW most homeless people or even know they are homeless, because they are living out of their car and still have a job. The majority of homeless people are simply priced out of homes, not having their entire lives fall apart in a crisis. They are people who were barely making ends meet for a decade, but as rent inexorably rises a couple percent every year and their basic job's hourly rate doesn't, they eventually just run out of options.

[amanaplanacanal]

The people you are interacting with are not typical. The study I’ve seen shows about one third with untreated mental health issues, and one third with drug problems. I would assume a large overlap in those two groups.

The folks without those two problems just aren’t the ones in your face every day.

[mjamesaustin]

They're not homeless because they were mentally ill drug addicts. They're mentally ill drug addicts because they're homeless.

People without a stable living condition experience severe stress and mental illness as a result. People without necessities to live turn to drugs to alleviate the pain and suffering they experience.

This study is one example of how giving money to people to alleviate their conditions can improve their lives and enable them to further engage in self improvement.

[altruios]

The tone and energy you are sending is kinda sus.

You are arguing you would rather treat them worse. Cruelty for the sake of it... because anything else would be 'undeserving burdens' on the 'honest working class folk'. If helping one group hurts another (in your mind), of course that's how you would think. Powers that be conditioned you to think (falsely) it's a zero sum game.

People that have mental health issues need help they are not getting on the streets, there just isn't enough to go around.

Addiction is a weird one for me. people call it a disease, your brain undergoes physical changes. disease is a loosy-goosy word I've come to learn (psychological disorders count as diseases apparently?). Addiction doesn't have to start with 'a choice (on the user's part)', but commonly does - which is why I comprehend that some people blame the user for their addiction.

But the core reason people turn to stuff on the streets is: the streets suck. Get people off the streets... suddenly their outlook improves. Funny that!

And yes, the reduced crime/asset rate probably is worth $X coming from taxes spend on this. That's an easy calculation - human live /comfort should be priced fairly high.

[hehhehaha]

the people who say this never live in areas with homeless people

[advael]

Weird, I do. I live within a minute's walk of three separate encampments of homeless people, most of whom seem reasonably sane when I talk to them, and if they have drug problems they certainly aren't more apparent than those of my coworkers on average

[hehhehaha]

I don't believe you for a second because you dont need to sniff out if homeless people are sane. You can just see them shooting up in broad daylight. You can just look on the ground and see syringes ontop of the mountain of trash.

[advael]

I think you're doing more to illustrate the degree to which your perspective is more a product of bias and emotion than mine through your focus and prose than I possibly could through argumentation

[pavel_lishin]

What does that have to do with sanity?

[renewiltord]

Can you state the location of one of these encampments? If it is within a short distance of San Francisco, I will have someone visit it in the new year and provide someone there with $500 (picked randomly as the kth person met, k generated by random.org) if they meet this criterion of being reasonably sane.

I'm waiting for a direct action org organized by a friend to receive 501c3 status, so it'll have to be after that. But I am curious to see where these people who are sane are on the streets. The objective is to identify those who can be self-sustaining in time. For the moment, I want to see if that is feasible.

From my experience here in San Francisco, many people have more money and resources than I have had at various times in my life. $500 would have sustained me in North Carolina a long time. I will see what decisions they make and see how feasible this operation is.

[advael]

Just to be clear: You would like me to give you relatively precise geographic information about where I live in a thread full of people who are spouting angry dehumanizing language for the vague promise of giving a random person money based on an ill-conceived lottery system that also permits a single subjective judgment by you to disqualify them from receiving it?

[renewiltord]

It's all right if you don't want to. I can also remove the random system if you'd like. Happy to just go have a look and report back here if it's in SF.

[advael]

Is there a feature that lets you disable replies to your comment? I find it hilarious that the person arguing that their egregiously dehumanizing stereotypes of the homeless are simply objective reality rather than biased and that I must be lying has done so if so

[kbelder]

It would be really, really harmful to allow people to make posts and disable replies. Insulation from disagreement is a mindkiller and will destroy the health of a community.

[advael]

I agree, which is why I thought it strange that I couldn't reply. That said, the explanation I already got makes sense

[steveklabnik]

> Is there a feature that lets you disable replies to your comment?

No, but Hacker News will not show the reply button to a comment made extremely recently, to discourage quick back-and-forths.

Looking at the timestamps I suspect that's what you're seeing.

[advael]

Thanks, good to know

[mrguyorama]

I can see their favorite hangout from my window right now. My girlfriend stands next to them at the bus stop she uses to get to her job working for the state helping homeless people.

How about GTFO of here with your presumptive bullshit.

[meowtimemania]

I think there’s a few different groups:

* homeless because of their severe drug addiction * homeless because they can’t afford rent

Each group needs different solutions.

[SV_BubbleTime]

What would the point of a propaganda campaign like that be?

What evil organization is paying on the backend to make sure homeless people do not receive money?

Argue in good faith. People are skeptical that their money should go to people that have not earned it. That is the reality of the argument. It isn’t a conspiracy that many people equate homeless to drug addiction, it’s fact. It is also fact that homelessness isn’t always the guy sleeping in the street, but the single mom sleeping on a friend’s couch for as long as possible.

This is just another “it’s really easy to spend other people’s money” issue.

[advael]

First of all, we don't have to propose an imaginary conspiracy to acknowledge the reality of how we came to think about drugs the way we do: it is documented that the intent of the controlled substances act was to justify criminalizing the political opponents of the Nixon administration. But the downstream effects of this, aside from making medical care much more difficult to access, has been a large amount of money funneled into propaganda that blames drugs for a wide swath of society's ills while also needing to claim that the act of using the drugs was a personal moral failing, in order to justify the carceral approach we have taken to violations of this law. The "evil organization" that puts out a lot of this stuff is only loosely affiliated, usually local law enforcement orgs, though usually federally funded to some degree, the motivations for scaremongering in this way are obvious enough that no conspiracy is necessary there either: they benefit from the fear of the poor, the homeless, and the drug-addicted in a direct, financial way. By now many of them are staffed entirely by people who have grown up in this propaganda-filled environment.

Scapegoating the poor as depraved criminals is a time-honored way of muddying the waters about economic issues that need resolving, and while doing so openly has fallen out of fashion, most people alive today have consumed enough fearmongering and misinformation about drugs that tying drug usage to issues of poverty is an easy way to launder that kind of messaging, and so that kind of messaging is pervasive. So pervasive that you don't even believe that it comes from anywhere, just that it's the obvious truth. In reality, there are tons of high-functioning drug addicts, and the high-functioning part has far more to do with affluence than what drugs they use, just like homelessness, in turn, has more to do with the housing market than it does with drugs. This would seem obvious to me, but what is "obvious" is not a function of some objective universal reality, and only really comments on the subjective context of any given person claiming "obviousness", including both what they've experienced, and what they've been told

When the incentives are strong enough, no conspiracy is necessary, especially when the tricks being used are old and battle-tested ones.

Also, as far as spending other people's money goes, I'd much rather governments be spending mine on mitigating the housing crisis and its downstream effects on individuals than funding law enforcement to harass and make life difficult for society's most downtrodden. Police receive outsized budgets to "clean up" homeless encampments and endlessly violate people's privacy, autonomy, and often bodily integrity in the name of an endless draconian crackdown on the contraband that you would have me suppose is responsible for the existence of the homeless. Even an inefficient approach like funneling some of that money directly to individuals stuck in poverty traps seems a lot more likely to actually make a dent in the problem, rather than constantly exacerbating it. I bet it would be cheaper, too

[SV_BubbleTime]

No one read that.

[advael]

Actually this reply makes it seem a lot more like someone did than no reply would have

[mbgerring]

Read the article, or read the recent UCSF study on homelessness[0]. The data suggest that mental illness and drug addiction are both symptoms of, or exacerbated by, homelessness, not causes of it.

Please don’t argue with me about this here without citing the available data.

0. https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/our-impact/our-studies/califor...

[rahimnathwani]

The article is not based on a random sample of homeless people. If you read the article, and ideally the article linked within, you'll notice that both the control and treatment groups are from a set of people who have been able to maintain ongoing relationships with 'buddies', in person or on the phone.

The linked study claims to be based on a representative sample of homeless people, but the sampling approaches detailed on page 14 don't give me confidence that this is true. This part is particularly problematic: "This process continued with participants referring us to members of their communities who then referred us to others."

The final weighted sample might be representative based on some demographic criteria (e.g. ethnicity, age) but weighting it to achieve that doesn't magically make it representative of the overall homeless population in other respects.

[cwillu]

“It may not be earth-shattering that providing money is going to help meet basic needs, but I do think it dispels this myth that people will use money for illicit purposes,” Henwood said. “We weren’t finding that in the study.”

[tgv]

> taking money by force from productive hardworking people and giving it to mentally ill drug addicts

Taxing is not immoral, and it's not just given to mentally ill drug addicts. That's a bad and wrong frame. You almost make it sound like you would cheer when it is given to the mentally ill non-users, or to mentally healthy addicts.

But that's not really your point, is it? Just say: "I don't want to pay taxes." The implication of course is: you don't care about the state, and the help it offers others. Usually that principle lasts until you get in trouble, or can do a profit from government funds.

[rahimnathwani]

You're attacking a straw man. GP didn't say they didn't want to pay taxes.

[thinkingtoilet]

The fact that you call all homeless people "mentally ill drug addicts" is very telling. Do some basic research. I hope you find some empathy in your heart.

[ciguy]

I don't need to research, I deal with them on a daily basis just to go about my day because in my town they are everywhere. The fact that you are ready to simply dismiss someones lived experience based on a few flawed studies tells me everything I need to know about your agenda.

[monktastic1]

What do you suppose their "agenda" is, other than encouraging you not to be condescendingly dismissive of a whole group based on your limited sample size?

[duwease]

But why is it OK if you dismiss someone's lived experience AND a few studies in favor of what is only your lived experience?

Given the demographics of the site and people's explicitly stated experiences, it seems plenty of the people disagreeing have had experiences similar to yours.

[mrguyorama]

Thankfully, your limited life experience is not a total and accurate picture of reality, and we can collect actual, rigorous statistics on this kind of thing that don't depend on people without empathy judging from afar.

[thinkingtoilet]

Surely you know the difference between anecdotal data and actual research?

[everfree]

Cash is sometimes the most efficient way to distribute aid to ill people.

Unless - do you believe we shouldn’t aid ill people at all?

[ryuhhnn]

Why would you even ask a question like this? It’s clear that our society has issues that stem from people’s inability to navigate our complicated modern world. Your “why not just let them suffer” provocation adds nothing productive to this discussion.

[everfree]

The other reply to my comment proves that my question wasn't a provocation, but a successful intuition of some people's beliefs in this thread.

Further, the US' lack of universal healthcare shows that it's a societally acceptable stance to not give aid to ill people just because they are ill. I'm not trying to provoke anyone, I'm trying to clarify their belief within a set of beliefs that are socially acceptable.

[monktastic1]

The other reply mentions that cash is not a good way to help such people, not that they shouldn't be helped. Are you sure you're not reading things into people's replies?

[everfree]

A politically tenable portion of the USA seems to be of the opinion that tax funds should not be used to help ill people just because they are ill, cash or not. This is not an extreme political opinion, nor something that is unreasonable to ask someone whether they believe.

[monktastic1]

I'm asking specifically about the "other reply" you mentioned.

[ryuhhnn]

> This is not an extreme political opinion, nor something that is unreasonable to ask someone whether they believe.

Why are you asking if this is something they believe if by your own admission it’s a position that is widely held? Again, how is your question not a provocation? And why am I still entertaining it?

[everfree]

The opposite belief is also held relatively widely.

[ejb999]

cash is a great way to aid ill people, if you want to produce a steady stream of new 'ill' people to line up for it.