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Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

I was at a law enforcement armorer class with some police officers from various agencies in the Northeast recently.

The most impactful thing I heard "People who get narcanned multiple times should just be killed" -- maybe not his literal belief, but the problem seems to be out of control. He had stories of "frequent customers" who kept coming to hospitals/police stations/fire departments to shoot up in the bathrooms, knowing they'd get narcaned if they OD'd.

As a King County resident, though, I want this facility nowhere near me. As long as it stays in Seattle or near SeaTac, I'm ok with it. Yes, this is NIMBYism.

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> As a King County resident, though, I want this facility nowhere near me. As long as it stays in Seattle or near SeaTac, I'm ok with it. Yes, this is NIMBYism.

At the risk of being flagged into oblivion, this is why I f-king hate the Eastside. I live and own property in Seattle (so I pay King County taxes just like the rest of you lot) and I'm sick and damn tired of Seattle being the dumping ground for whatever crappy problems Bellevue, Redmond, Shoreline, Kirkland, Sammamish, Issaquah, Duvall, and Fall City don't feel like dealing with.

This is on top of the city then getting a reputation as being "dirty" and "crime infested" so that those exact same cities in a "regional partnership" can troll bait in front of the people and businesses of Seattle to induce them to move out of the city, thus taking away the tax base to deal with those dumped problems.

I guarantee that there are heroin users near you and those people would greatly benefit from this kind of service. Oh, and there are also homeless, unemployed, and special needs people around you, too. Seattle--and SeaTac--isn't the receptacle for the entire region's problems, especially if we're going to get looked down by you lot from high atop your long noses for receiving them.

If Seattle doesn't want so many addicts maybe we should stop paying for them?

Source: Resident of the city of Seattle

You're paying one way or another. If not this, you're going to see increased hospital and law enforcement costs.

I don't think that's true at all. Seattle has a disproportionately large homeless population when compared to other cities. We have the 3rd highest homeless population but are only the 18th largest city. And we're far from the only city experiencing a housing crisis.

So it's a lot more complicated than "you're gonna pay for it one way or another".

Are you suggesting those homeless people will move to a new city if they can't get safe syringes or injections in Seattle?

I'm suggesting they first moved to Seattle because of the services offered here.

Certainly not impossible, but do you have any evidence to support that?

Hard evidence? Nope. Maybe it's only 1%. Or maybe it's 20%. No one knows!

My #1 frustration with the homeless crisis in Seattle is that we have almost zero data. In fact almost all of our numbers on how many homeless are in the area come from the annual January one night count! It's absurd.

How long have the homeless been homeless? When was their last home? Where was that home? How many times have they bounced into and out of homelessness? When was their last job? What was their job? Why did they become homeless?

We honestly have no idea. Solving a problem is particularly different when you don't even know what they underlying source of the problem is!

Now gathering this data is actually pretty difficult. Many homeless don't have formal id. And many others have a justifiable distrust of the government and organizations which make them not want to use their real names.

In Seattle it gets even more complicated. Different groups don't like to share their numbers as to how many homeless they shelter or how many services they provide. Because if they all start sharing their numbers some of them are bound to start losing their funding. And we wouldn't dollars to be spent more efficiently by another organization now would we?

So why is Seattle's homeless population so wildly disproportionate to our city size? <shrug> No one knows and we're just guessing.

Yes -- getting better data and then creating policy based on that data makes a lot of sense. I think the safe injection site is actually supported by data from other cities as a way to reduce junkie fatalities, but it has a lot of other negative externalities.

(Fortunately for me, unincorporated King County is actually a completely illogical place to put such a center; no transit, no proximity to anything, etc. It will probably go in Pioneer Square.)

I know some junkies in Bellevue, unfortunately, but I can guarantee there are currently no homeless/unemployed/special needs/etc. within ~183' in any direction (and I don't believe my neighbors have suddenly become junkies, either). I agree things are different in higher population density areas. And yes, the Eastside gets a far better deal here.

Every day I commute through Seattle greenbelts absolutely littered with needles. You say 'nowhere near me', but it's occurring throughout the city, in the shadows.

I don't think some kid is going to get into heroin so they can hang out at the injection point, but if they do get hooked then I hope this buys them some time to escape.

As a resident of Capitol Hill, I want this right near me. And I want to see another one in Belltown. And another near the waterfront. And another on Aurora. And then another twenty throughout the city.

There are junkies shooting up around me every day. They deserve safety and dignity, just like everyone else.

As an adult, you have to make tradeoffs. Given that the supply of money is finite (unless you're Bernie Sanders who believes that money grows on trees), you have to decide whether to spend the money on this, or on, perhaps, kindergartens, schools, public transportation, and the like. TBH, I'd rather the junkies got a different kind of help: forced rehab. Got caught with heroin in your blood? Off to rehab you go. That'd be a good way to spend this money. Facilitating their addiction and making their death spiral "dignified" is a weird take on "help" in my opinion.

Except homeless people dying of aids in county hospitals is expensive.

Sure would help if they went through rehab to kick the addiction, and not get AIDS then.

Which is why programs like this are important. Keep them alive and healthy long enough to seek help...

Seek help from _where_?

I'm deeply curious about where you expect a city to find the money for "forced rehab" when you're belittling me about making "adult...tradeoffs."

Also, where do you think the money for emergency response to drug overdoses comes from, exactly? Do you expect that having a trained professional on hand to administer Naloxone in event of an OD would be more or less expensive than a 911 response?

Here's a great editorial from the Seattle Times's op-ed page, which isn't exactly known for being liberal: http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/bring-heroin-...

And a great quote:

    The [safe injection] model has worked in Vancouver, B.C.
    One study estimated the Insite facility in Vancouver’s
    Downtown Eastside prevented 83 HIV infections, saving
    the government at least $17 million. Others document a
    reduction in overdoses.

Lastly, the people who use the site need to be given the chance to get into treatment if they want it. Forced rehab, as you describe it, doesn't seem to have the effect that you'd like it to. I found this study from UCLA which indicates that the evidence in favor of legally mandated rehab programs is murky at best: https://www.ncjrs.gov/ondcppubs/treat/consensus/anglin.pdf

Check out the Conclusions and Recommendations section for more. Here's a quote: "There is strong support for the role of internal motivation as a predictor of program retention and positive treatment outcomes."

I didn't say it'd necessarily be less expensive (although it might end up being that once you factor in the costs of crime needed to obtain expensive drugs in the first place). I said it'd be better for the addicts, which to me seems pretty certain. I know if I had something that was slowly killing me and I couldn't afford treatment, I'd want help at some point. And by help, I mean forced rehab, preferably without a felony charge which will make it impossible for me to find decent work afterwards.

I think safe injection sites are a short term solution. What you're proposing is a more long-term fix that addresses the root cause. I suspect (though I haven't spent much time thinking about this) that safe injection sites are cheaper to implement and test, before we go off and build rehab centers.

are you also suggesting we shouldn't set up prison for so called criminals? As they also deserve dignity?

Are you suggesting that non-violent drug offenders should continue clogging our prisons at the cost of billions of dollars every year from state and local governments? http://cepr.net/documents/publications/incarceration-2010-06...

there is so called drug rehabilitation center, not prison.

So you'd rather someone die on the street in King County then? Garuantee you this facility is not enough to support the needs of the entire area.

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