Hacker News Reader

Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

Seattle has always been a socially liberal, bend-over-backwards for business town. It's how it can legalize marijuana and magic mushrooms, while having 11,000 people living in tents and homeless shelters.

Unsurprisingly, since nobody likes seeing tents in city parks, and by the I-5 on-ramps, the city voted for a slate of politicians that will... Maintain the status quo. There's no plan for getting ~5,500 people housed.

Four years from now, we'll be exactly where we are today.

View on HN

I don't want status quo, but I also don't want them housed. I want the ones that steal, rape, squat in parks, do drugs, sell drugs, defecate in public, and litter to all be thrown in jail.

So you want the government to house them at taxpayer cost!

Three squares, a roof, and jobs for all the police, judges, guards, and lawyers involved. Oh, and a criminal record to ensure that future employment will be even harder upon their eventual release. And another jail with at least 5,000 beds. Taxes gotta go somewhere, I guess...

Housed and punished for that vs housed and rewarded for that? I know which I’d pick.

Are you signing up to pay for that personally?

The thirst for punishment over improvement ultimately keeps the problem going. Any chance you'd prefer to break the cycle rather than continue it?

Are you suggesting that jail (aka expensive housing funded by the public) is the most effective solution to these crimes/behaviors? For example, do you think the population of people who defecate in public are going to be deterred due to the threat of imprisonment?

Either deterred or jailed, either way you end up with less shit on the street.

Is jail appropriate for litterers? Seems extreme, but I might be able to get behind it. Let's start with the folks who throw fast food wrappers out on the interstate though, not the homeless we wish to criminalize.

Throwing them in jail seems like the worst of both worlds... it burns my tax dollars and does nothing to rehabilitate anyone.

That's up to the police to decide. If they don't like a law, they don't enforce it.

The police don't sentence people to jail.

No, but they do pick who they want to pull over, and for what reason.

That's their job?

They de facto do. A police officer can arrest you for basically any reason and send you to jail. How long that jail stint lasts depends on what happens after you are arraigned, but you can easily spend a few days in a county jail before the judge shows up after the 3 day weekend to decide if what you were arrested for was legit.

Selective enforcement is not a good outcome. Any police officer who doesn't enforce a law because they don't like it should be fired.

Not saying it's a good outcome, but in my lifetime, that's what I've learned to expect. If the chief doesn't like the law either, who is going to fire the officer?

You should watch last weekend's episode of Last Week Tonight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liptMbjF3EE

No thank you. He is the tucker carlson of the left. I try to stay away from talking heads that remove all nuance from the debate.

> He is the tucker carlson of the left

That is quite an interesting claim. Do you mean because they are leading voices on their supposed political side, or they are equivalent in factual accuracy, or something else?

My favorite factoid about Tucker Carson, the leading voice of news analysis in the USA:

> Now comes the claim that you can't expect to literally believe the words that come out of Carlson's mouth. And that assertion is not coming from Carlson's critics. It's being made by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York and by Fox News's own lawyers in defending Carlson against accusations of slander. It worked, by the way. [0]

I am up to this point unaware of anything clearly nonfactual presented by Oliver. If anything from Oliver exists along the lines of Carlson's extraordinary list of lies [1] I would genuinely be interested to learn about it.

I wrote a lot there, but my main question is, how exactly do you see Carlson and Oliver as equivalent?

[0] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-...

[1] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/list/?speaker=tucker-c...

I’d be interested in you responding to my sibling comment. How are you possibly equating Tucker Carlson and Oliver.

I mean, alright, you do you, but the common misconception you're echoing here he very specifically refuted with data and cited sources. One point in particular, it costs a city around $30k/yr per homeless person in emergency medical care and jail facilities, but only ~$10k/yr to give them the proper support and a place to live.

And what happens when they refuse that support? Or turn it into a drug den? I've lived in SF, and in Seattle for a combined 22 years. I've seen what the ravaging horde of homeless due to the cities there. They turn away housing, and they won't go to shelters. Not because the shelters are degrading, but because they won't let them do drugs there.

These people are mentally insane, and unfit for society.

Would giving them housing stop them from raping? or defecating inside cars they broke into?

It's time to stop pandering to the 0.1% and focus on the 99.9% of us that do participate in society.

That would probably cost taxpayers more (both in the short and long term) than just housing them and getting them mental health services.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com