[ChuckMcM]

I recall a time at a community meeting I advocated finding a way of providing a facility that could house and treat the addicted and mentally ill, I was accused of wanting to "sweep the homeless under the rug and forget about them." I knew it was a difficult problem I just didn't realize that the problem wasn't the homeless, the problem has roots in our collective understanding of what is a 'better' versus 'not better' quality of life.

I have always held that it is one of the main purposes of government to maximize the quality of life for the governed. Whether they are rich, poor, sane, or insane. What I always find challenging is when someone chooses to define 'better' in a way that I cannot comprehend.

I strongly recommend that anyone who wants to help here start by looking at what we had, in terms of laws and institutions, which gave the state the ability to hold someone and treat their illness, and restrict their movements, and why those institutions were abolished and laws changed.

As a community we changed our position from it is 'better' to house these people and give them treatment, to it is 'better' that they live without constraints and someone trying to provide help they don't want.

When a person says they would rather sleep on a bench than be given drugs that make them feel "bad" and be forced to live with other people who are similarly afflicted, which is better? Homelessness or being institutionalized? Why?

[robbrown451]

You make interesting points.

I do, however, think that it is the right of the governed to make rules against sleeping on benches, that they paid for with their tax dollars. Same goes for sidewalks, doorways, etc. I suppose you could say such rules are "restricting of movements" (in the broadest sense), but they seem reasonable restrictions to me.

That said, I also think it is society's responsibility to provide another option.

[ChuckMcM]

That is a well understood argument for the common good. Which is that the vast majority of the citizens are served by available benches, not by occupied benches, (or other publicly supplied services) and so excluding people from sleeping on them makes sense in the context of the entire constituency.

   > That said, I also think it is society's responsibility
   > to provide another option.

I don't think many would disagree, the challenge comes with deciding what exactly is that option? I am an engineer so I find I tend to come up with practical but socially inept solutions.

At the time there was a discussion about how "we" (where we is the city of Sunnyvale) might use the Onizuka Air Force base facility (aka the 'Blue Cube') which was being decommissioned and turned over to the public sector for re-use. I was trying to figure out if there was a way we could convert part of that facility into what would essentially be caves, self heated concrete structures that were impervious to fire, contained internal pipes with a heat transfer fluid to maintain a livable temperature (cooling or warming), a dedicated latrine system that would periodically flush out all waste, and that were nominally "open" but could be enclosed with available materials. Something that people who were otherwise unwilling to live in a more traditional shelter/section 8 housing, might be able to survive in. This wasn't even a basic income kind of problem, these were people who are mentally non-functional adults. Was there any sort of place we could create that would make their lives better than it was today. They are an at risk group for whom it is very difficult these days to provide services for.

It was wildly derided as putting these people on a 'reservation' or 'in pens' or any number of things. Like I said earlier, socially inept. I don't know have any good solutions.