These cities seem to have a lot of fundamental societal problems and they have no idea whatsoever how to solve them.
Seattle had aggressive people on the street. This didn't worry me so much, though they had many of them. Again, more than a few mentally ill.
I recall SF from the late 90s/mid 2000s. It was nice then. As was Seattle. Something happened.
Similar things happened in NYC, after Bloomburg left.
Its not hard to find the policy proximate causes that rendered these once great cities into steaming sh!tholes with rampant crime. My question is, when will people move beyond their political tribalism and virtue signalling and start addressing the core issues?
FWIW, I live near Detroit MI USA. It is on a long slow recovery from decades of terrible policy, horrible and criminal politicians. It is showing signs of growth and recovery. Cost of living is low. Crime is falling.
All it took was jailing some pols, electing competent (non-ideologue) management, and forming public-private partnerships. It may take another 20 years or so before its really showing what it could be. But its changing.
And as someone who has lived in the area for 30+ years, you kinda root for Detroit. It was destroyed by grifters and ideologues, by bad and corrupt management, and many other things. But it has character. It has a presence. And you like to go to the Science Museum (my wife used to be director of education there), and the programs at the universities. And the parks (yes, really). And the restaurants.
I hope, one day, that SF, Seattle, NYC, and others can elect competent non-ideologue management, sweep out the grifters, implementing good policy, and help hasten the rebuilding of these once great cities. But then again, this also requires doing the same at the state level. Here in Michigan we had a pro-growth governor and traded down to an ideologue. That person doesn't look likely to remain in office, so here's hoping we don't get yet another grifter.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-11/amazon-sh...
It does seem counterintuitive, but when your local economy is shit (i.e. panhandling in ghettos), you're going to emigrate somewhere with more opportunity.
>> 70% of people homeless in San Francisco in 2019 reported becoming homeless while living in San Francisco: 22% came from another county within California, and 8% came from another state.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_San_Fran...
Seriously though, I can't imagine what point you're trying to make here, other than to share a deep insensitivity to other people's suffering.
I lived in Hoboken, NJ for nearly five years and had some friends who volunteered at the homeless shelter through church that entire time. The homeless there had pretty good access to food, water, shelter, and drugs (mostly cigarettes and alcohol but I'm sure others). At some point there was talk of a program to move some of the chronically homeless into government housing; when asked if they wanted to participate nearly all of them said no.
Think about that. In a city with very little housing where students and young families are clamoring to make rent payments, and the temperature in the winter gets below zero, they were offered free housing (on taxpayer dime) and turned it down. They actively preferred to be homeless.
Why? Maybe there were too many carrots being given out, and not enough threatening with sticks. (Mind you, the sticks do not have to be cops and jail, although those are pretty big sticks. Forced rehab sounds pretty good.)
0: https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/v74y3j/this-is-why-homel...
1.5. Full disclosure, "shelter" was probably the wrong word because I don't think anyone was sleeping at the church. There were definitely some people eating multiple meals a day there, though. So I don't know if you would call that temporary housing. That makes it even wierder (to me) that they would refuse permanent housing.
2. "Punished" might not quite be the right word here. I remember there was a guy - I think his name was Don - who was very mentally ill and very scary. Well over 6 feet tall and looking absolutely wild, he would roam the streets shouting incoherently at people, usually women. He interacted with one of my friends at the shelter so often they were on a first name basis and several times he would just approach our group screaming at him. He had little sense of his surroundings and would often wander right into oncoming traffic, it was a miracle he live through my time at college.
Whether you think scooping Don up and sticking him in a mental hospital is "saving" him or "punishing him" depends on your worldview, but I lean towards thinking that Don's situation wasn't good for him or anyone else and that someone should have done something. And give his nature, I would expect that to require force...
I assume you're referring to the former church at 3rd + Bloomfield? AFAIK it's legitimately a shelter with 50 beds. The building was still an active church until 5-10 years ago so maybe it wasn't fully a shelter before then, not sure.
> he would roam the streets shouting incoherently at people, usually women
Sadly there are multiple people here who fit this description! My guess would be either Nicky or Chuey, as these guys are well-known in town -- they've been doing this for over a decade. But especially since the pandemic, a few additional unhinged shouty guys have appeared.
I don't know what the solution is. Clearly the local government doesn't know either, because I've personally seen them arrest one of these guys quite a few times, usually when he gets particularly riled up or violent. He's always back though, sometimes in just a few days.
So instead, poor systems are put in place, forcing the police to deal with these situations using the few tools they have at hand, including arrest, sweeps, etc.
Concretely, what ethical solution do you propose in the situation of a violent schizophrenic who refuses to take their medication, or a violent meth addict who won't stay clean? These people want to remain in their local community, but their community isn't large enough to have specialized facilities for their problems. And even if such facilities were local and taxpayer-funded, these people repeatedly refuse to remain in any voluntary treatment facility anyway. So what do you do, even if you had unlimited funding?
As for an ethical solution, I can’t say concretely in either of the cases you’ve listed because they are hypotheticals with no actual human details. Therein lies one of the biggest issues: social services do not scale easily. The only solution I’ve seen work is to get more professionals out and solving each case, one by one, according to their specific needs. This costs a fortune, but I guess we agree money isn’t a problem.
Also the link you provided is about why they don't want to move to shelters. GP is talking about people who are in shelters but do not want to move to permanent housing.
0: https://cdn.monarchhousing.org/wp-content/uploads/njcounts20...
Occasionally, it seemed maybe once per year, they would actually get a task force to go sweep it out. But that was mostly only in response to outrage from residents of the adjacent Beacon Hill neighborhood. And then they would go back to ignoring it. And a month later the whole camp was back.
This is just one anecdotal example of Seattle's long history of indifference, even tolerance, of "shanty towns" and homeless camps. I don't know how it is now, but King County in general used to be littered with these things and people just seemed to think it was normal.
It is absolutely _not_ normal.
The Seattle Police Department is woefully understaffed and has given up on responding to many quality of life and public order calls. In addition to drug use, car prowls, etc there is a thriving shoplifting-fencing business going on in spots throughout downtown. Enforcement has been very limited, so the problem has gotten out of hand. I have no clue why the Target near Pike Place remains open - they must be locked in their lease.
The National Parks system knows this, but cities like SF and Seattle do not.
> The National Parks system knows this, but cities like SF and Seattle do not.
It should be noted that homeless people are people, not animals.
Also, don't park systems kill "problem bears" (e.g. https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/waterton-lakes-national-park-staf...)?
It should be noted that people are animals too.
I think you knew what I meant.