We don’t want to violently oppress people over bourgeois norms of behavior but we do want to live in communities that adhere to such norms. That is the real social function of car dependent geography.
Yes exactly. So we segregate them, creating a non-bourgeois underclass that plagues our cities and suburbs. Then we create more elaborate car centric human geography that causes us to pollute more and generate all sorts of externalities such as huge traffic jams and high house prices. Then because the above underclass is disregarded, they become a larger, more present part of our urban fabric who we've consigned to a segregated life of misery.
It's a lose-lose race to the bottom. All because we can't do the right thing, spending money on mental health care and assistance out of poverty. Eventually the (monetary but also human, social, and environmental) costs of maintaining the hacks ends up being higher than fixing the problem in the first place. That's what happens when you try to paper over problems without fixing them.
People in between “cannot manage own life” and “imminent danger to self and others” are a tricky proposition for the mental health system. It only takes a handful of such people wandering around your city center continuously (seriously, it’s the same dozen faces over and over in SF) to completely change the kind of place it is.
I didn't say kidnap and torture them like we did in the 70s. I said give them mental healthcare and housing.
People don't become junkies overnight, and a building full of single bed sized lockable (from the inside) rooms available to anyone without stable housing (without fear of the salvation army taking them off of HRT or abusing them) with a few social workers and mediators to teach those skills, a doctor, a vocational educator, and a therapist on staff 24/7 is both cheaper than policing and jail, and would go a long, long, long way towards preventing these problems in the first place.
There's absolutely no reason not to do this. It's cheaper up front than policing. It saves the same amount again on cleanup and maintenance of public spaces. It saves many times the amount of money again on reduction of crime and insurance. And it provides a portion again in people that become productive tax payers
For the ones that have already fallen to the bottom of the hole you need something more, but surely if it's doing so much damage to the entire city that out of the 300 billion gdp, the inhabitants can afford four dozen social workers and an apartment block to do nothing but try to find a way to help them.
The idea that this is even a question in the wealthiest place on earth is mindbogglingly callous and evil, and a sign of a very very sick and antisocial society that has nothing to do with the people that fell through the cracks.
Then don't manage. Serve and support. Start by bringing a sandwich, a coffee and a smoke and listening for an hour every day, not by shoving them in a cell.
Yes, it's expensive, but if it is -- as people here and elsewhere say over and over again -- making an entire area of a city uninhabitable and causing millions in damage and enforcement costs then surely it's worth the cost? Why do people seem to constantly favour being callous and cruel over even being selfish, let alone humane?