[inigyou]

I think GP means "masking" instead of "mashing"? And then:

Conservative: "homelessness is a problem! make homelessness illegal and people will get homes because they are homeless by choice!" ("is there any evidence that people are homeless by choice?" *crickets*)

Liberal: "defund the police!" ("but who would deter petty crime?" *crickets*)

[QuantumGood]

Finishing the conservative sentence but not the liberal sentence? "Fewer armed police responsibilities for nonviolent issues such as homelessness" is more clearly the liberal position.

A person in my family started one of the first rape crises centers in the U.S. She always said "Police need to be social workers, and social workers need to be police" summarizing the issues each faced most that they were poorly prepared for all those generations ago.

[conorcleary]

Nope, often it is mashing their feelings into balls of hatred and vitrole at groups of people instead of situations. There is a lack of nuance and a disdain for it.

[consensus1]

I think you have made up a strawman here. Nobody actually thinks people just decide one day "I want to be homeless." The conservative position is they are homeless due to their own bad choices, which is absolutely true in a lot of cases. Their error comes from assuming that they can just reverse the situation by not making those bad choices anymore, but in reality it can be a one way door.

If you want dumb conservative positions on homelessness I would suggest "just lock them all up", "just make them get jobs", "just get them out of MY neighborhood."

[x3qt]

I grew up in Minsk (2M people) and seen obviously homeless person just once in my entire life. It's not illegal to be factually homeless, but illegal to do everything homeless people usually do, unlike in Berlin, where I live nowadays, like sleeping outdoors, camping (insane!), being intoxicated etc. In Minsk such people instantly removed into correction facilities, thus cities are clean and more importantly safe.

[rixed]

Does not sound particularly safe to be deported to a correction facility.

[inigyou]

So that's a great example of conservatives preferring to punish people instead of actually solving the problem. Minsk people must live in fear of losing their homes, knowing that if they do, they will be disappeared.

[inglor_cz]

The picture is more complex. It is possible that Minsk has some shelters, rehabs and psychiatric wards that can house many of the homeless anyway, and policies that incentivize them to use one of such options instead just building a camp. (IDK)

American homelessness problem is massively fueled by lack of inpatient psychiatric healthcare. People who are clearly out of their mind are allowed to live like wild animals, so that no one violates their rights not to be institutionalized.

While the asylums of yesterday were quite often bad, this is no better and a balance should be reached. Instead the pendulum just swung wildly from extreme A to extreme B.

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Edit: I must come back to your statement:

"Minsk people must live in fear of losing their homes, knowing that if they do, they will be disappeared."

There is a hidden assumption in there, namely, the expectation that if someone loses their home, their inevitable fate is to camp in the street, start fires etc. It might be so in your jurisdiction, but that is not really true worldwide. Many places in the world will try to help you somehow, at least up to a point.

Of course, if you have such help available and still refuse to make use of it and instead start living in an encampment and bother/harass other people, you aren't an innocent victim anymore, but a general nuisance. In that case, why shouldn't you be punished for your anti-social behavior? Unless you are insane, of course. In that case, a hospital should it be.

Ultimately it is about which level of antisocial behavior under which conditions is tolerated by which society. I noticed that the American left is really into glorification of antisocial behaviour, which it re-interprets as a creative rebellion against the capitalist society that should never be corrected by anyone. This worldview is much less widespread in Europe and almost absent in Asia.

Outside the US, you will often get at least some help, but if you turn it down, the law will prefer peace of the commons to your right of doing whatever you feel like. E.g. most countries will at least try kick smelly people out of libraries and public transport, because it is an expensive, subsidized commons that shouldn't be repulsive for median customers, who are quite often poor-ish themselves.

[x3qt]

Such people always have a choice of taking a job at a state factory and a room at its dorm plus enough salary to stay poor but fed and housed. If they refuse such option and willingly deny social norms, they're detained, sent to a labor camp, and forced to work there without right to leave, basically a prison. The good ol' socialist way of solving a problem.

[LorenPechtel]

Implicit in this is the assumption that the person is capable of being a productive worker. An awful lot of the homeless are psychiatric cases.

[x3qt]

If after sobering up during detention or camp they're not able to work for mental reasons and a court agrees with medical picture then they're placed into asylum, often permanently. Either way, people are not afraid letting kids play unsupervised, travel to school on public transit and taking shortcuts through a park during a night.

[inigyou]

Americans have this assumption that homeless people are violent. American homeless people respond by being violent, as it's required to defend themselves from the psychotic non-homeless people. For some reason, homeless people in other places aren't violent.