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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

> Without wishing to return to the Elizabethan Poor Laws, we ought to consider what was lost when the courts discouraged Americans from thinking of “homelessness” in light of the old laws against vagrancy.

Ah, so we're back to imprisoning the homeless (at huge expense) rather than providing, say, public toilets or shelter facilities. Not only is the WSJ not learning from history, they don't want to learn from history.

That's because the article is written by this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Kesler

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There are public toilets in some of these cities. San Francisco has had self-cleaning public toilets for a long time, but probably has the worst feces problem of any first world country. On Google maps, it appears there are at least 20 public bathrooms in SF within a few miles radius. That's way more than I see when searching for the same thing in Santa Monica, another homeless mecca that doesn't have anywhere near the same problem with defecation. I'm skeptical that these toilets have much of an effect. Don't get me wrong, I do think there should be public toilets, and perhaps more of them. But if the homeless were that easy to reason with, perhaps we wouldn't have so many on the streets in the first place.

Our public bathroom facilities are pretty sparse compared to some in other countries. Taiwan for instance has fantastic public restrooms in every subway stop.

there are toilets in the BART stations, but they’ve been closed for “security reasons” for the last 18 years

There should be at least one clean and safe public toilet per block that has a "defecation crisis".

Instead, SF has maybe one public toilet per 20 or 30 blocks in the most concentrated downtown areas, if that. I personally know of only maybe 3 or 4 public toilets in all of SF.

Toilet use at private businesses is also sometimes an option, but often in neighborhoods with large homeless populations those businesses either restrict toilet use to customers or only let the staff use their toilets. Of course, homeless people can rarely afford to keep spending money to purchase things from these businesses multiple times per day just to use their toilets, not to mention that virtually all these businesses close for the night in SF, making it impossible to find a toilet in some areas at night.

Bingo. SF has had a big homeless population for some time unfortunately, but the poop on the streets is fairly new. What changed?

1. ADA private right of action spawned a class of professional plaintiffs that sue businesses over (in many cases) minor technical ADA violations like not having a coat hook at the right height in the bathroom. Many, many businesses closed their bathrooms to the public because of this.

2. Less intervention by police. In SF, the police won't arrest you for shooting heroin in a bathroom or trashing it. If the business owner calls about someone doing this, the police won't respond. The simple solution is to close the bathroom to the public.

3. Street defication effectively legalized. Similar to #2, the police won't arrest you if you poop on the street. This is different than most cities, and different than what was historically true in SF.

"1. ADA private right of action spawned a class of professional plaintiffs that sue businesses over (in many cases) minor technical ADA violations like not having a coat hook at the right height in the bathroom. Many, many businesses closed their bathrooms to the public because of this."

I'd like to see the stats on the number of frivolous ADA lawsuits that caused businesses to close their bathrooms.

In my personal experience, few businesses have no bathrooms whatsoever and the businesses that make their bathrooms off-limits to the public or require you be a customer to use the bathroom tend to be in areas with high homeless populations. In areas where there are few homeless the businesses almost never have a problem with a non-customer using their bathroom.

This tells me that these businesses primarily have a problem with homeless people using their bathrooms, not any kind of fear over being sued over ADA violations.

"3. Street defication effectively legalized. Similar to #2, the police won't arrest you if you poop on the street. This is different than most cities, and different than what was historically true in SF."

Do we really want to fill our already overcrowded, mortally dangerous prisons with more homeless people? Why not just build more bathrooms, shelters, and affordable housing?

The ADA thing is relatively new. If you go anywhere in California, not just areas with a large homeless population, you'll find most businesses do not have a public restroom. This is different than every other state I've been to. This is because California has the Unruh Civil Rights Act, which makes each ADA violation subject to $4000 statutory damages, regardless of the actual damages. Thousands of these cases are filed every year in California. California businesses don't want to be exposed to this liability, so most of them have closed their public restrooms.

This lack of bathrooms creates a sort of death spiral. In high homeless areas, the few remaining ones have to serve more homeless people. Dealing with a parade of homeless people using public bathrooms as a shower or shooting up causes the remaining businesses to close their bathrooms. It becomes more difficult for homeless people to use the bathroom, so rather than go to the trouble of finding one, many use the street.

On the enforcement side, I'm not really trying to be proscriptive, just descriptive. Jail is not a nice place. The threat of being arrested though is a deterrent to crime. If there is no deterrent to pooping on the street, and the alternative is difficult, people are going to poop on the street.

"If there is no deterrent to pooping on the street, and the alternative is difficult, people are going to poop on the street."

So what is the alternative when there are no public bathrooms around?

To me it doesn't sound like there is one. So why arrest people when they have no choice?

As I said, I was being descriptive, not proscriptive. Obviously in a civilized society, everyone has access to a bathroom. Also obviously in a civilized society, people use the facilities provided and clean up after themselves.

Those that are incapable or unwilling to do this either go into drug treatment, get mental healthcare, or if they are unwilling to do either of these and insist on being a public nuisance, they go to jail.

SF is failing to accomplish any of these things despite a gigantic budget.

"As I said, I was being descriptive, not proscriptive. Obviously in a civilized society, everyone has access to a bathroom."

I don't know which civilized society you were describing, but it's not San Francisco.

I would agree that that would be ideal, though.

"Also obviously in a civilized society, people use the facilities provided and clean up after themselves. Those that are incapable or unwilling to do this either go into drug treatment, get mental healthcare, or if they are unwilling to do either of these and insist on being a public nuisance, they go to jail."

Except society's problems are not solved by sending people to jail. Quite often they just get worse.

First, the punishment of sending someone who shits on a sidewalk to a jail where they are likely to be raped, beaten, or killed is far out of proportion to the crime they've committed. Few would agree that rape or death was an appropriate punishment for shitting on a sidewalk, yet that's precisely what many people send to US jails face. Hopefully you'd agree that in the very civilized society you speak of, spending time in jail for shitting on a sidewalk would have little probability of bodily harm, rape, or death to the perpetrator. But we don't live in that society.

Second, many people who are sent to jail get out worse than they came in. They are more likely to commit crimes, and are often denied job opportunities or places to live because they've been convicted of crimes. Now, that might not matter as much for homeless people, except that if they're ever to have a hope of being integrated back in to society they shouldn't have the extra stigma of having been incarcerated (especially not for something they couldn't help, like simply going to the bathroom when there were no bathrooms around).

Third, it costs a great deal of money to keep someone in jail, the money would be better spent on bathrooms, housing, and mental health care.

"SF is failing to accomplish any of these things despite a gigantic budget."

If there really is plenty of money, it's clearly being misspent. At least we can agree on that, though I have a feeling that if we looked at the details there'd be plenty to disagree about over which money is being misspent, how to spend it, which programs to cut, and which to fund.

My intent is not coming through correctly here. What I'm saying is that to the extent that we have a bunch of people that don't have anywhere to use the bathroom, SF is not civilized. Now it's also not true that there is literally nowhere to use the bathroom, but various policies have made it more difficult to find a place and many homeless people who may also be high, drunk, or crazy, don't make the effort.

As for jail, jail is a nasty place. It is certainly a destructive form of punishment. We don't have many other forms of punishment though in our legal system. In SF, it has been decided that because jail is a bad punishment, that not punishing at all is superior. This gets you rampant car break-ins, shoplifting, and people being assaulted on the street. The purpose of jail is not to put people in jail, it's to convince people to not commit crimes because they fear it. For drug addicts, a stint in jail often is what forces them to kick the habit. Unfortunately the SF city jail is full of drugs.

I'd be all for alternate methods of punishment that are less destructive. Make the street pooper clean up the street for a couple of days, say.

Budget-wise, SF spends almost $300 million a year on the homeless. I can't tell you where it all goes, but that is a lot of money to spend for the result SF is getting.

When I lived in San Francisco and brought family and friends to enjoy walking the streets of the city, one logistical problem was finding toilets they could use. There are, for all intents and purposes, no public toilets in the city (e.g. we went to an underground public transit station and they worker there told us there was no bathroom available); one time my mother had to use a porta potty put in front of someone’s house for construction workers doing home improvements because there just was no other restroom around.

SF does not have ample public toilets. 20 bathrooms in one of the largest cities in the world is nothing. Many of them are single stalls. We need one per block.

>Ah, so we're back to imprisoning the homeless (at huge expense) rather than providing, say, public toilets or shelter facilities.

It's weird to frame it as a "rather" when in fact you need both. You need to have public bathrooms and come down hard on shitting on the street.

That framing is likely based on the assumption that people would rather use a toilet than defecate on the streets, so if there are adequate facilities for them to do so, no further action is needed to encourage that behavior.

We need better mental health care, and cheaper housing.

Dr. Drew was on Scott Adam's podcast recently talking about this. Apparently even free housing is insufficient because most of the people relevant to this discussion will not accept even free housing. Nor will they accept mental healthcare even when provided for free. The only way to get them into the mental healthcare situations is to compel them by force, and that is not something people are interested in.

Correction: Scott Adams, not Rogan

Dr. Drew hasn't been on Rogan

> Dr. Drew was on Rogan recently talking about this.

I'm trying to find that episode on YouTube, but no luck. Google searches show that they don't like each other much. Got a link?

Sorry, I had the wrong podcast. A youtube search for Dr Drew plague has several interviews with him, but I was thinking about his appearance on Scott Adam's podcast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72x2LfvSfE4

People aren’t interested in compelling the allegedly mentally ill by force, unless they pose a threat to themselves or others, because it is unconstitutional and contrary to the values of a free society.

A given citizen disregarding the norms of society does not give society permission to use force against that citizen, or to subject them to forced medical treatments.

Again, if the person poses an active threat that is a different scenario. But there’s a good reason most Americans don’t want to start rounding up the seemingly mentally ill.

This is a tragedy of the commons problem. A few people living or even defecating on the streets isn't a serious public health problem. But there is a legitimate and reasonable concern that the situation in California right now is going to result in the return of the plague.

> ... allegedly mentally ill ... ... disregarding the norms of society ... seemingly mentally ill

I think you are giving yourself too much leeway with your weasel words here. I lived in San Francisco and saw first hand the homeless problem. These are not a group of free-spirits, bucking the norms of society and living an honest drifter lifestyle. Maybe you would like to call to mind the counter-culture described by beat poets like Jack Kerouac. Or maybe you want to warn against the kind of authoritarian cruelty fictionalized in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

However, it is my experience that the people living on the streets in the Tenderloin aren't down on their luck Woody Guthrie types, pining for a pre-technology, more social friendly USA that valued simple folk.

I think we need to avoid painting ourselves into corners with false dichotomies. It isn't like the only options are to round them up and lock them away in a mental hospital or to leave them completely free on the streets. And like it or not, the middle ground may require some intervention that is forceful.

Mental healthcare may be relevant to this issue. But the cost of housing is not.

These people cannot hold jobs because they are mentally ill. They need state provided institutional care, otherwise they will remain on the streets.

That's a caricature. In fact there are a near infinite variety of reasons for being homeless, and many homeless folks not only can hold jobs, but work them already. Yet they're on the streets anyway because of financial pressure, look like the "these people" you want to lock up, and would probably get picked up under the same ordinance.

Shitting on the street and being homeless are two issues here.

The proposal in the linked opinion piece is literally to lock up all homeless because some of them shit on the street.

You can't treat them as two issues while insisting on a remedy that doesn't.

Yes I agree. We should use the term street shitters to differentiate. I see a huge issue when talking about homeless is that people have different ideas what we are talking about and get easily offended.

"In fact there are a near infinite variety of reasons for being homeless"

Near infinite in the sense that there are near infinite ways of dying. You could be hit by an asteroid. You could fall off a cliff. But that obscures the fact that most people die from some sickness or disease.

I've done volunteer work with the homeless. There are 2 major causes of homelessness: mental illness and drug addiction. Everything else is insignificant in comparison.

It sounds like you've only done volunteer work with specific types of people.

The homeless people who simply can't afford housing and thus live in vehicles, and have jobs, want to stay under the radar. It's unlikely you'd make contact with them during volunteering unless you specifically sought them out. You're not going to find them at soup kitchens, homeless shelters, skid row, etc. They're normal people like you and me who just can't afford to live in a building, and are taking the next best option.

The group that stays under the radar... is likely not the same set that shits on the street?

I kid you not, there are some seriously crazy people in SOMA who have a schedule. Morning, mission and 5th. Evening, mission and 6th.

This kind of people doesn’t contribute to defecation crisis, and they tend to not stay homeless for very long anyway (unless they start doing drugs).

They likely are not, but I wasn't saying they were. I was responding to someone who was claiming that these types of homeless people don't even exist, which is far from true.

About 20% of the population has a mental illness issue. Almost 10% of the population have an addiction. Obviously the vast majority of these people aren't homeless.

Being homeless is a good way to turn a minor mental illness or addiction into a major one.

That’s also a caricature. Some of the homeless are indeed able to hold job, and pay bills, etc., and just need a little extra help.

They are not usually the ones defecating in the streets.

Others need serious mental help.

The line between the two is not the subtle “infinite variety” you make it out to be.

Dude. Most of the time people complain about homeless it is the crazy people that shit on the streets. Don’t change the subject by saying people that sleep in cars or on friends couch’s shouldn’t be criticized too. They aren’t.

That is why I propose a new term for the people most of us complain about. I use the term crazies or untouchables.

Huh? I’m not sure who you’re replying to.

There are a number of people who are mentally ill, are unhoused, and need professional mental health help on an ongoing basis. They also need compassion, not a loaded stigmatizing label.

The other folks down on their luck need shelter beds and housing they can afford.

>there are a near infinite variety of reasons for being homeless

Ah, the old "flatten that distribution graph and treat every point as equally probable" argument. Arguments like these are so intentionally misleading that it's easy to construe them as malicious. You'd rather make an asinine point than use language that addresses the true distribution of the problem set, because it doesn't capture every single fringe case you can think of.

Nah, the core of this are problem homeless who can't hold jobs or are even coherent much. Someone who is just down on their luck and could recover if they had a job is not someone who drops their trousers n the middle of the street to shit there.

This may only apply in New York, but last I heard, most homeless people have jobs.

by doing that too much you drag down a city to rat's hole, more homeless coming, working people move out, economy slows down, less money left to help those in need, similar to what socialism does: great on paper, horrible in practice. should we not care for those homeless? NO, should we always put them first? NO. it's a balance of arts, going in any direction a little too far will break it.

> should we not care for those homeless? NO, should we always put them first? NO. it's a balance of arts, going in any direction a little too far will break it.

Bay Area is currently doing very little except complain about homeless folks.

NYC has more homelessness per capita, but they've both built shelters and had a strong policy of sheltering homeless folks. As a result, ~95% of NYC homeless people (>63000 people) sleep in shelters, versus ~33% in Bay Area and ~25% in LA. And it's no surprise given Bay Area has lost shelter beds in the last decade. Which is compounded by the overall lack of housing.

The west coast is singularly bad at it: Chicago is at 74% sheltering, Denver is at 84, DC is at 95.

can you provide source for the percentages? thanks.

CA is leading the path towards socialism, i'm surprised it's lagging behind to take care of the homeless there, which should be a core action item for that ideology. Maybe they're just good at talk the talk, as always.

Seattle seems no better as far as homeless is concerned. Austin is becoming a favorite destination city for homeless nowadays too, tents up everywhere in hot summer.

> can you provide source for the percentages? thanks.

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-homeless-uns...

Where do you poop during the year you’re pulling your mental health out of the gutter though?

Maybe in a Utopia the homeless would use shelters but many refuse to for very reasons.

How many exactly? Do you have concrete data?

My understanding is that the vast majority of the homeless in NYC do sleep in shelters because... well, NYC has plenty of shelters.

That's also what a comment above notes, quoting an SFBay article[0]: 67% of Bay Area homeless are unsheltered, 5% in NYC.

So there might be a small number of homeless folks who can't / won't live in shelters, but that's what it is: a small minority.

[0] https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-homeless-uns...

Hundreds of shelter beds go empty every night in LA because many of the homeless would rather stay high/drunk than be sooner for a night. They used to be a small portion of the population but now comprise the bulk of LAs skid row population.

Could criminalize sleeping on the streets if beds are available at a local shelter.

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