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My impression after being around homeless for many years, is that the key point that must always be understood is that chronically homeless are incapable of managing their own affairs, and therefore need someone else to manage those affairs for them. That could be institutionalization. It could be family or church. In the worst case it could be prison. But all of the above is better than leaving them on the street.

Now everything else follows. We can ask -- why can't they managing their own affairs? If it's mental illness, then is it possible to treat that illness, and get them to a situation where they can manage their affairs? Same for drugs/alcohol, and other things. But this has to be the cornerstone: they lose autonomy and some civil rights until they can demonstrate that they are able to function as independent responsible adults that do not perform antisocial behavior in urban environments. The urban environment must be protected, and the homeless should not be left alone in the streets.

The problem is that we don't have either a legal system or a care system setup (think halfway houses) for that kind of clientele. And some of those halfway houses will require bars on the windows, because for some of the hardcore population, they will refuse the care process. But it must be mandatory, until they demonstrate that they can provide for their own needs and manage their life in a harmonious way with the rest of the urban population.

When I was last in SF, I was having a coffee on Columbus in North beach and saw a homeless man with no pants but a dirty blanket run into the middle of Columbus avenue and take a big dump on the street. Then he started waving his arms and screaming at the cars that were trying to get by him. As long as San Francisco tolerates that behavior and gives that person an option to refuse treatment, then things will just continue to get worse. And high rental prices have nothing to do with it -- there is simply no rent that a person like that could afford to pay, nor would there be any apartment that would accept them.

I mean, San Francisco has always taken a more principled position on defining the boundaries of freedom and civil rights. It wasn’t so long ago that homosexuality was considered antisocial, could be “treated” in an institution, and was considered offensive to see in public.

I'm not sure what you mean by "more principled". Everyone has to have some principles. SF is neither more nor less principled now than before. It just cares about different things.

Go defecate on a Black Lives Matter street sign and you can be sure to be hauled away and arrested. Chesa Boudin will even prosecute you.

Defecate in a public park in front of schoolchildren and people just look away and keep walking. SF has not gotten less principled, it just stopped being willing to defend public parks and city streets and instead chose to defend other things.

And the same people who insist we must allow millions of used needles in our parks are the ones claiming that "speech is violence". They are willing to fight to make sure that an offensive thing isn't said on twitter, but they're not willing to fight to make sure that children can play in the park without stepping on a used needle.

But in order to have civil society, you do need to defend it from antisocial people. There are always going to be antisocial people. And there are always going to be red lines that the community does not allow to be crossed. That red line could be wearing a MAGA hat in the SF community college, or it could be dying on the streets of the Tenderloin. The principles are enforced with the same strictness as 100 years ago, except that the principles themselves changed. SF tolerates one but not the other, and gets the streets and parks that it deserves.

It’s defending the civil and human rights of mentally disabled and addicted people.

I agree that it’s a messy, unstated process, and I understand that some may prioritize clean parks over human rights.

Oh come on. The person defecating on the Black Lives Matter sign also has human rights, and San Francisco does not prioritize them at all. If someone were to wear a MAGA hat in SF Community College, how many seconds before they would be assaulted by private violence. And nothing would happen to the perpetrator -- instead the person wearing the hat would be charged. Stop pretending that this is about respecting human rights. It's about enforcing social norms. Which is OK. Except that you have to choose those social norms carefully, because they will determine the type of community you have.

The fact is that dying on the streets of the tenderloin no longer violates social norms in the same way as, say, saying the N word in public. So again, you get the city you deserve -- one in which no one wears a MAGA hat, but homeless people screaming at strangers are a part of daily life.

At least have the integrity to admit that these are choices as to which norms you will enforce, and stop pretending that you just allow anyone to do whatever they want because of some fundamentalist adherence to free speech or free association.

It can be both, no? A deep, long-term cultural commitment to anti-violence and tolerance, but succumb to violence and intolerance oneself when threatened. Unfortunately the threats have been coming hard and fast lately, making it a bit of a social norm, as you say. But the principles of tolerance are still there, the whole thing just hasn’t been reconciled yet.

Defending the civil and human rights of mentally disabled and addicted people does not require that you permit them to defecate in public, take drugs in public, harangue and harass passersby, aggressively panhandle, and engage in theft.

In fact, I would argue that creating an environment in which this is permitted does a disservice to not just the local community, but to these people as well.

I disagree with your opinion, and I’m proud that SF is performing the experiment, even if unintentionally.

Yes, there is a line, but my opinion is that it’s closer to physical violence against another person’s body.

A possibly more interesting question: In what ways has the line been shifting over time, in what places, and why? What benefits have been reaped from increasing permissiveness, and why? What areas of the world are low-permissiveness, and what problems do they see as a result?

Is all of this coincident or causal to innovation, and why?

Why does this topic impassion people? Is clear thinking hindered by passion, and why?

> Go defecate on a Black Lives Matter street sign and you can be sure to be hauled away and arrested. Chesa Boudin will even prosecute you.

This sounds like you're referencing something very specific, but I haven't been able to find anything credible about such an event. Got a link?

> Without things like mental hospitals

Are there really no mental hospitals in the US? I live near one in Germany and the ones on day-leave are just harmless crazy persons living in their own world, totally unable to care for themselves. They do stuff like collect small sticks in the park, wander around yelling something or talking to themselves. They sometimes do weird movements that look like an esoteric workout or "kung-fu". Or sometimes you see two of them talking to each other, in parallel without listing to the other. I think most have an alcohol problem and interestingly they learned to follow covid-rules to be able to buy some beers. But I think they would just be homeless, die or harass people when left to their own.

What do the politicians expect to happen without mental hospitals?

There are inpatient mental hospitals in the US, but they are intended for short-term recovery, not long-term institutionalization. Couple that with health care usually being tied to employment (and not being that great to begin with), it is not a good situation. There are social workers (who are massively underpaid and overworked) that attempt to work with patients to ensure housing and outpatient care, but if the patient doesn't have a support system, they are essentially screwed.

Politicians don't care because the mentally ill are a small and unreliable voting bloc. Shame on the rest of us for allowing this to go on...

“ I think about the book "One Flew Over a Cuckoos Nest" which documents the horrors of an asylum. I believe this was the moment in US society when we started getting rid of those types of hospitals, and people that relied on them, both families and the people suffering from the illness themselves, were dumped into society to fend for themselves”

There were a number of exposés and scandals during this period that led to a general backlash against putting people in institutions, yes.

For example, Geraldo Rivera established himself as a young reporter by exposing the terrible conditions at Staten Island's Willowbrook State School.

The vast majority of homeless people are men.[1]

[1] https://endhomelessness.org/demographic-data-project-gender-...