Comment by Tiktaalik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tiktaalik | Hacker News Reader

> He blames San Francisco’s woes on a culture of permissive lawlessness and a mistaken view of what constitutes moral policymaking.

A frequent critique of those that want to solve the homeless problem by sending in the police to crack heads and send everyone to prison. The main goal here of course being to ensure that the homeless "go away" somewhere out of view.

In reality most of the "crimes" that people are wringing their hands about are things like petty theft, drug use (a medical issue) and loitering which are so incredibly and hilariously minor that any judge will laugh in your face at the notion of sending one to prison for such abuses as this would obviously be a cruel and unusual punishment and not at all reasonable. The legal system will never send such offenders to prison.

It never occurs to those venturing mass imprisonment of the homeless that um, simply building housing for the homeless is a dramatically more affordable solution.

Therein lies the answer to the posed question:

> How can a place brimming with resources and good intentions fail so flagrantly to meet the basic needs of the population?

Despite our incredible wealth we simply do not provide in any way reasonable incomes and housing for those that are (for many reasons) unable to work, and so of course the problem festers. Why would we expect any change to magically happen?

In my home town of Vancouver BC, which has very similar chronic homelessness problems as SF, our minimum income assistance is $935 a month. Of this sum, the shelter allowance is $375. There is of course virtually nowhere in Vancouver where one can rent anything for $375 a month, thus ensuring systemic, state sponsored homelessness, poverty and misery and people camping outside in parks.

Why is there such poverty and homelessness? Well with $375 a month for housing good grief why wouldn't there be?

Ah, clearly petty theft is no bother and correcting the injustices of oppressive society!

I hope you experience your things being stolen one day and not being able to afford to replace them and change your mind.

Nobody said that. They said incarceration for petty theft is unreasonable.

Refusing to put thieves in jail leads to thieves not caring if they get caught. Which leads us back to modern day SF.

There is a big difference between petty theft as you'd think petty would mean (<$30 of small stuff) and what the law defines it as (<$950 of stuff).

You're also making the implicit assumption here that people who commit petty theft would actually care about the marginally higher chance of suffering consequences from it in a context where there isn't anything to mitigate the reasons they're committing petty theft in the first place.

And I think you're making the implicit assumption here that people who are the victims of petty theft just had their stuff stolen, and weren't assaulted, brutalized, terrified, or otherwise demeaned in a way that will change how they function or view their lives in society. There's a larger "cost" to petty theft than just the stuff that gets stolen.

The reason we have laws, and punishment associated with breaking those laws, around petty theft isn't just about incentivizing would-be thieves to not do it.

> isn't just about incentivizing would-be thieves to not do it

If the law around petty theft doesn't actually reduce the number of petty thefts that happen, then all it's doing on a societal level is wasting money.

Would love to have your privilege of considering petty theft to be harmless. For the majority of vulnerable people, it causes extreme emotional and financial distress. Try talking to actual people who are not privileged and see what they think about being victims of petty theft.

I never said it was harmless

The reviewed author does not advocate for imprisonment. He advocates for treatment and housing programs that require the addicts to follow the program and make progress. A "carrot and stick" approach, which has worked in other countries.

Obvious solutions like "just give them houses" are discussed in the book, and previous attempts are evaluated. As you might expect, stuffing severely ill people into apartments without addressing the illness results in poor outcomes.

And you can't just diagnose them then go visit them? Help them with meds etc?

I'd encourage you to develop some first-hand experience working with this population of resistant addicts.

I have it. My brother is a paranoid schizophrenic who lived in public housing and got care. He was and is an addict and many of the people around him were addicts, but not all of them. I visited quite a bit. Anyway, he stayed alive and was ok because of the care he got, he left everyone alone and didn't ever hurt anyone but himself.

I'm glad for you and your brother. There are a lot of people who don't want help and won't take housing, or other assistance, if it's contingent on getting clean.

Because i know how addicts think, i know that will never work. I used to get all ragey about the way they think and they constantly trying to get stuff through social tricks from whoever is around (usually are very bad at it), but i've gotten over it. The contingency is not a good plan. They crave what they want and it is the most important thing in the world, it gets like hardwired into the brain, but they are still people and they can still get over it or get somewhat normal. Cages don't help the psyche. Street doesn't help the psyche. It's like punishment and the negative reinforcement is not helpful. Housing gives a base and yes, there is gonna be plenty of abuse of the system by them. They will continue to try to get drugs and do them, etc. I am imagining there's tons of corruption and wasted money that goes on in the organizations that handle things right now, and that needs to be handled. But the bills being proposed by the Republicans in the state governments across the country have teeth on them that go too far, because it's all really centered around using policing and punishment to enforce something that can be helped with assistance.

The 'left' solution is gonna continue to annoy republicans, who don't want their country to be seen as having a huge poverty problem next to China who is researching it and actively alleviating it. But their fixes are gonna cause a lot of human suffering that is out of sight, out of mind. When Joe Biden was talking about the border patrol's mistreatment of Haitians, everything he said was really just about perception. He wants the effect of the enforcement, he just doesn't want it to be seen in the light of what it truly is. The homeless thing and the release of this propaganda book we are discussing is a coordinated effort to "solve" the problem. The people passing these bills don't research poverty and they don't have a real plan besides violence.

In China, they actively discourage (to put it mildly) drug abuse. They may be housing the addicted but they are certainly not permitting them to remain addicts. On the other hand, there is no agreement in US society that we should stop addicts from getting their fix -- if anything, the current progressive regime believes in housing addicts and facilitating continued access to drugs.

Housing with on site supports is very common.

I listened to the Joe Rogan’s podcast and the solution seemed to be housing and treatment first, punishment later.

Coming to conclusions about solutions via Joe Rogan's podcast is only contributing to the problem, friend.

Wouldn't it be better to argue why what was heard on Rogan's podcast is wrong, rather than implicitly arguing that all solutions heard on Rogan's podcast are wrong. To me, your response seems like the bigger problem.

Information (including dis- and mis-) is all around us. Arguing that information from sources you dislike is wrong because you dislike the source is illogical. Respectfully, you should address exactly why what was heard on Joe Rogan's podcast is wrong.

Information being all around us is precisely why your request is just as wrong. To ask experts to take time to evaluate all the questionable sources out there is unreasonable. And yes, this is a questionable source regardless of the interviewee or your feelings about Rogan. Obviously any podcast cannot be a rigorous or thorough treatment of the topic. The format makes that impossible.

The flip side of information being ubiquitous is that quality information has never been more accessible. Research papers and studies are clicks away. The answer is to not form conclusions so quickly, to seek reputable sources, and to seek a lot of them.

Why should so many people need public assistance at all? When most people can't afford to live somewhere...they move somewhere else.

There's countless reasons why someone may be unable to work and accordingly they'll need income assistance. Disability and Age are significant ones. Mental illness, drug addiction are others.

"Move somewhere else" assumes that there is actually somewhere more affordable to live, (and one has the funds to relocate) which is not necessarily obviously the case. Further flung places with arguably cheaper housing costs add increased living costs in lack of public transportation services and support services.

In the BC context, it doesn't matter how far one gets from Vancouver, there is really no where where $375 satisfies market rents.

In regard to San Francisco, though, there are many, many more affordable places to live. I was going to say, that literally any other place in the USA is more affordable; but NYC finally surpassed San Francisco as most expensive rental market in August of this year:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/24/new-york-surpasses-san-franc...

housing costs are elastic. constrain supply and only the rich can afford it. economics 101.

Live in Vancouver and don't we spend around 360 million a year on the DTES?

Is [big sounding number] supposed to mean anything?

Either we're spending enough money that people can afford to live indoors or not.

$375/month is obviously not enough money for anyone to afford to rent anything anywhere.

Accordingly, the real cost of solving homelessness is more.

That's not a sound argument though. It applies no matter how much you spend. The "real cost" of solving homelessness could be much less, and that could just be a particularly expensive and ineffective solution. Structural, endemic problems likely require structural, foundational solutions.

>petty theft

That doesn't happen in most of the rest of the country. Sure you can load up the circuit court sites and find it but effectively you don't even need to lock anything

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