Homeless Oaklanders were tired of the housing crisis. So they built a village
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Like a story about a kid working to earn money to pay off lunch debt of even younger kids.
There are homeless people sleeping under bridges in Germany too, they're just expelled from the cities. Prague is full of homeless people - I see 5 from my window right now, and there are several slums too. Visit rural Slovakia or Romania and you'll see that the EU is just full of propaganda.
I wouldn't be surprised if the relative number of homeless people was actually larger than in the USA, the EU just doesn't bother to count properly and allocates a very minor amount of money to hide the problem.
Some systems fail everywhere. In some places more than others.
As for the vagrants in these encampments - my experience has been that most are not locals, despite what surveys say, because the surveys always rely on volunteered answers about origins, rather than proven identity. Regardless, everyone must show personal responsibility and people need to realize they are not entitled to a life in the most attractive and expensive locations on the planet. There are TONS of open jobs across the country and lots of places that are great to live in and affordable. They don't have the same 'brand' as the Bay Area or other West Coast locations, but as the saying goes, beggars can't be choosers. What I do think we can band together to provide is a service that matches those in need with jobs in other locations, along with bridge funding to move locations and get settled in.
It's worth considering why people are more sympathetic to:
A) Restaurant owners who, under San Francisco's 'Shared Spaces' scheme, have been given the right to construct outdoor dining spaces on public land (i) without any payment for use of the land, and (ii) with the right to exclude/eject members of the public from that land, unless they pay the restaurant.
Than:
B) People who would otherwise be homeless living on public land.
1. The scheme would be open to all affected businesses (including offices) and not just restaurants.
2. There SF govt would not be trying to make the scheme permanent.
The result is that you get buildings that somehow cost 4-5x more to build than they would elsewhere (even adjusting for seismic costs) and you get dangerous squatter villages, but you get nothing in between.
I'm curious what that matters for? States don't have borders no? So it's not like being born in a particular state grants you anything special, I don't think you can deport people from one state to another on grounds of not being born in the state no?
> What I do think we can band together to provide is a service that matches those in need with jobs in other locations, along with bridge funding to move locations and get settled in
That's a good idea, but are there employees willing to participate in such program? And are all homeless really able too? Lots of them have mental illness or addiction issues that might prevent them from keeping a job or make them unattractive to employers.
> The West Coast cities need to enforce the law and protect the interests of actual residents, who legally reside in those cities and pay their fair share of taxes
I think this is where the "ideal" breaks appart. Enforcing the law in those case seems to be a dead end. It costs 80k per inmate on average to jail someone in California, which seems like a stupidly high cost solution, and jail doesn't seem to work to deter homelessness. So what else can be done? And that's the million dollar question right here, and nobody has found the sure fire solution yet.
This is exactly how I feel seeing the homeless camps in Austin. Primarily, the first question I had was: what happens when one homeless person wants to spot of another? Neither has a legal right to it; are we not encouraging interpersonal violence by refusing to enforce the property laws that separate us from the state of nature?
>my experience has been that most are not locals, despite what surveys say, because the surveys always rely on volunteered answers about origins, rather than proven identity
Right. Why would anyone tell a volunteer they're from out of town? Seems like the first rule of being homeless: get a story that appeals to people. "Born here and down on my luck" is much more compelling than "Where I came from is worse than this place so I hopped a ride here."
Basically, we can spend all the money in the world and build all the housing that people need, but the personal liberty that this country espouses -- personal liberty I agree with! -- means that no one is obligated to take it. There is already a myriad of excuses I hear in these threads for why the homeless don't go to the shelters, participate in the programs, etc. "They don't allow my dog." "They would make be get sober", etc. Until we accept that there is a significant population of unhoused that prefer it that way, and then decided what we want to do about that, all the little villages and things won't scratch the surface of the problem.
The tradeoff is that we definitely have to use violence to evict people from these spaces and force them back onto the streets or into other open spaces. And with fewer places to camp, they'll likely be exposed to more physical disputes than before. It's not as if the residents of these camps will go "well, time to buy a condo". They'll still need somewhere to live.
> Basically, we can spend all the money in the world and build all the housing that people need, but the personal liberty that this country espouses -- personal liberty I agree with! -- means that no one is obligated to take it.
The east bay has hundreds of people on a waiting list just for shelter space. There aren't enough beds for the night, let alone supportive housing, so we haven't even come close to trying the "build all the houses that these people need" (and make they available) strategy.
EDIT: FWIW I learned about the waitlist problem while listening to this podcast: https://99percentinvisible.org/need/
That's because people come from all over the country, since the bay area is homeless friendly. The best solution is to make project room key permanent.
>EDIT: FWIW I learned about the waitlist problem while listening to this podcast: https://99percentinvisible.org/need/
I listened to that too, and in the final episode, you hear exactly what I'm talking about. In the interview with K.C., the narrator mentions that she had been in a shelter, but they didn't allow dogs and she didn't like the lack of privacy. Some people won't take the help you give them, and not preferring the solutions offered doesn't give you an absolute right to public land.
It's past ridiculous that this behaviour is applauded and endorsed by elected officials.
These motels will be slums. There will be prostitutes, and drug dealers, and crime. But it will also be a central location for service outreach without the prerequisites of other places.
- Roll back the changes that gutted mental health care in California.
- Modify the planning process, codes and zoning so people can build houses.
sounds like a refugee camp to me.
I think it’s a fools errand to jail homeless people. It seems like a waste of money to me but I don’t have a better solution or idea on how to spend my tax dollars so am really interested in hearing more on the positive side of jailing them.
It's not a perfect solution, or even a good one. We can and should develop a more compassionate alternative.
I'm guessing you don't see providing cheap shelter in empty areas that have no other good use (like a highway underpass) as a more compassionate alternative then?
Jail costs 80k a year per prisoner in California on average. That's a hell of a lot of money, and it clearly doesn't work to keep people from being homeless.
I think a more compassionate alternative really just is a cheaper shelter for homeless than what Jail costs us, and programs that actually show some level of success at reentrance into society.
I'd be willing to change my tune if good data showed that Jails were both cost effective, and actually acted as a deterrent for homelessness, and was a good pathway to reentrance, but everything I looked at seems to indicate it's terrible at all of these, and ends up just being a very expensive shelter.
disincentivizing them and/or others from doing the same? As GP argued they're basically annexing public land for their own use.
Similarly, any fine will not get paid because, how would it?
I think we might disincentivize the “hippies” that are choosing to be homeless and care about these things. For sure that is possible. Do we think that the % of people that are choosing that lifestyle is high enough that it will be cost effective to tax payers? I don’t think so but it’s definitely something to look into more closely.
Are you sure this is the case? Any lawyer out here?
Is building on public land a criminal offence? What kind of penalty can you be looking at for doing so?
I assume this must often happen where one building potentially extends slightly beyond it's lot lines, so could you get criminally charged in those cases?
Technically it's illegal, certainly. But the "insane environment" needs more attention and things like this wouldn't get built.
except, that the big open spaces were used for something (eg. parks/greenspace/recreation), so letting homeless people camp there denies other residents from using that space for those purposes. it also ignores the externalities associated with such encampments. finally, it's not really a solution and more of a band-aid. the amount of parks we have is finite, so eventually we're going to run out of space.
> allowing people to settle in big open spaces that would be empty otherwise, and just offering basic, cheap shelter
It has to be something that isn't a huge fire or safety hazard, to avoid another Ghost Ship warehouse fire.
What would be interesting however are much smaller 'regular' housing units made available in more urban environments.
One of the problems in the US is that you have to 'go way out there' to get really cheap housing ... but you cant walk to anything ... you need a car. Which is a pain.
Smaller, denser towns would be nice.
That said - nothing works at all unless people have some kind of access to reasonable employment.
Couldn't agree more. I also think this is the root of many problems in American culture. Everyone has social pressure to own a car and live that lifestyle, but it just raises the bar for poor people needlessly when towns and cities could be structured differently.