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Comment by danschumann | Hacker News Reader

You could actually enforce the laws and put people in safe jails with better living conditions than they have now, outside the city limits. It seems like being more and more lenient is not a solution to a problem getting worse and worse.

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Lets have compassion for the innocent people doing nothing wrong, who are confronted with injustices imposed upon them by people who are doing drugs and other criminal acts with impunity, while they're just going to work.

Compassion for homeless sure, but what about people who are victimized by the homeless, who have done nothing wrong?

Put homeless people in jails? For being homeless?

There are plenty of things that are bad for the public health that have been decriminalized... drug use, public defecation, etc. If they simple enforced the laws, they'd have reason to have people stop living on the streets (where they have no reason to be), and start living in places set up to handle them ( asylums, jails, shelters, whatever you want to call it ).

Yes, most cites and states have laws against vagrancy. Just because something is "public property" doesn't mean you get to live or camp there.

That's what the coasts have come to, I guess.

Reminds me of Belarus. You have to pay fines for being homeless.

Honestly, I hope some homeless people shit in the mailbox of people suggesting such "solutions".

What if the homeless can't afford fines?

It will be put on a tab that makes sure you will never find a way out of homelessness again.

Jails is not the answer to the poop problem. Maybe more toilets?

I know you think this seems very logical, sane - but you have a tell "outside city limits" - you want these people rounded up and bused out. it's not a solution.

Sane policing, treatment programs, and massive development is the solution.

Out of curiosity why is that not a solution? Why is it inherently better for them to live on the streets of SF than someplace with running water and electricity? It's also obviously better for the citizens of SF to not have to deal with human feces, dirty needles and massive amounts of property crime (at the least).

There's tons of empty space in the US, it seems reasonable to move people who are breaking the law, causing chaos and public health hazards out of highly populated areas.

As an outsider I feel SF (and CA, HI) have this hyper-tolerance for identity and personal freedom that makes any discourse in opinion just unacceptable...

well focus on the identity of the innocent person trying to go to their job without being harassed by people on the streets.

You can't keep humans in place, who don't want to stay in place. If you paid some benighted town in the Great Plains $500/head to accept your homeless, that town would just buy each transplanted San Francisco resident a sandwich and a bus ticket, pocketing the rest. It would soon become a joke on SF streets, "yeah I just got back from Nebraska!"

The suggestion was to put them in jails for defecating on the street, property damage, hard drug use and harassment. I'm not sure if you've been to SF lately or not but it's out of control. It's definitely not just innocent people sitting around, there's a large segment of the homeless population there harassing people, fighting with each other and damaging things. That's definitely breaking the law.

Sure, throw them in a local jail, if you've got any room there. What piqued my interest was this idea that "USA is really big". True, but beside the point. You can't imprison people 2,000 miles away for nuisance crimes.

Lots of people would be really happy for SF to set aside some land in the city for new jails. Still, that seems less practical than just opening some public restrooms...

You can't tread on the citizens of San Fran who are doing nothing wrong, but must put up with the problems caused by other people who have no reason to be there, who are doing illegal acts without punishment like drug use and public defecation.

The ideal is to solve the problem with carrot and stick.

Give them free housing of a sort, so that it’s an improvement over living on the street, but not so that currently-housed people would feel tempted to downgrade their status to homeless in order to get the free house.

The ideal free housing camp is (a) away from major population centres, (b) fairly basic, and (c) compulsory for those who wind up homeless in major cities.

Carrot and stick doesn’t work with someone who is mentally ill.

Yes it does - just not every time.

I stopped replying because it's just classic entitled NIMBY-ism happening here. You're not going to get through to them.

It's more like "why are they downtown?" they have no good reason to be there, and many bad things they're doing which are already illegal. It's not really nimby if i live in the midwest and am just scratching my head like.. "that dude is doing drugs in front of a cop in that video, why isn't the copy arresting him?" Is that compassion? Lol

I think it's entirely reasonable to not want human feces and strung out addicts IMBY.

Is it reasonable to ship them to someone else's "BY"?

if you "shipped" them somewhere, they'd be in an asylum/shelter/jail facility which is set up to handle them, not in a back yard, not downtown, not IN THE STREETS.

Sure, I suggested local jails upthread. You as thread parent suggested "outside the city limits". SF is a "city and county", so it's not possible to have a local jail outside city limits. You're going to have to bribe some other county to take care of the homeless you've charged with crimes. That's not going to be cheap!

It's not cheap even if you manage to get all your jails built in Sunset or some other backwater. Jail is expensive, and the homeless have no official salaries to garnish so you can't use the Ferguson method. Besides which, there's no way the state is going to take any convicted public poopers off your hands to house in their expensive prisons, so you're going to have to keep these criminals jailed for their entire sentence.

Wouldn't it be easier to open some public restrooms?

Some people "just want to watch the world burn" and will mess up anything you try to give them, and those people need law enforcement to stop them, because they won't stop themselves. It's unrealistic to think you can solve the problem with only the carrot.

Shitting is not a voluntary activity. Public restrooms could only be considered "carrots" if they included additional amenities beyond the most basic requirements of elimination and hygiene. Is anyone suggesting that?

There are public restrooms in every Starbucks (and please don't tell me there are not enough Starbucks in SF), it's their policy to let homeless and everyone else to use their restrooms without purchase. Not to mention actual public restrooms, restrooms in shops, parks, porta-potties etc. If there had been long lines of people trying to use those we could agree that there is not enough and we should open more. But it is not the case, is it?

You would probably have to build a wall around SF though. Personally, I am totally fine with that. It may keep some people out and it may keep some people in.

Putting criminals in jail is most definitely a solution. The problem is instantly solved when offenders are no longer present.

"Outside city limits" would be because of the prohibitively high cost of real estate and regulations in San Francisco.

Allowing people to commit crimes with impunity is not a solution. It is effectively punishing law-abiding people.

"massive development" underestimates the mentally ill. "Some just want to watch the world burn", and they will do everything to mess up the world around them. It's best to simply enforce laws and ensure they cannot do that, or at least not downtown. Let them mess up the desert.

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