Important note, these kind of "only the bums use public transit" problems will go away if and only if non-bums start using public transit.
You can take the bums off the street (and put them in shelters) and your city will get a lot better. It's just very unpopular with progressives, who happen to be the voting base in big cities.
Eventually, things will get bad enough that the progressives leave, and then the streets can get cleaned up again.
NYC houses something like 95% of its homeless as well, which is why we have a lot less people on the streets than in places like LA or SF.
But shelter conditions are pretty miserable as I understand it so you can sort of understand the hold outs.
And we may just not have enough space. But yea, NYC's a big city, there's definitely some homeless, but I'm not sure my lived experience here is as dire as you make it sound.
That being said, some areas are certainly worse than others, and there's definitely some aggressive mentally ill people you'll see here and there.
This is true, and is the most clear example of how immoral the "housing first" policies in California are. It is a pipe dream that creates a horror show of homeless misery on the streets in LA and SF.
The vast majority of the city’s approximately 50,000 homeless people live in shelters — about 30,000 in family shelters, and about 18,000 in shelters for single adults.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/30/nyregion/nyc-homeless-eri...
There's your problem, I think. In the US, at least, the elements of our polity that favor "taking the bums off the street" are mostly unwilling to pay for things like shelters and mental hospitals.
Now - we certainly aren’t having a very productive public conversations about the obvious negative outcomes of that policy shift.
I don't see how anyone can claim that austerity and a deep cynicism toward the very idea of mental treatment didn't play major roles.
> You can take the bums off the street (and put them in shelters) and your city will get a lot better. It's just very unpopular with progressives,
Progressives are absolutely for building more low income housing, and making it available to street bums.
It's conservatives who fight 1/ building low income/subsidized housing, 2/ putting that housing in any neighbourhood where they might be in.
I don't know what happened in the 80s, or where the bums went. Maybe they all were shipped off to California, where it's warm, and now HN posters complain about IT'S progressive policies.
Maybe they all died and nobody in the 80s cared but now they do.
Either way, the economic forces that led to them being created in the first place never were fixed, so there is a steady supply of new bums throughout America. Why? What is Europe able to do to keep those people at bay that America isn't?
That’s why, I presume, cities that are thoroughly controlled by Democrats, like San Francisco or Seattle, have no trouble building low income housing and putting it all around the city, right? I mean, conservatives have no government representation in those cities whatsoever, so the Democrat politicians are simply listening to the wishes of their constituents, and as a result, low income housing projects sail through, and housing prices are low, correct?
More generally, the idea that Democrats cannot be conservative is incorrect, and not just in the leftist "Democrats are right wing" sort of sense. In an effective one-party state you see a lot of people who are ideologically much more aligned with the Republican party running as Democrats, and vice-versa in Republican-dominated states.
I can't speak to the opposite phenomenon, where places controlled by Republicans tend to have quite a few "liberal" Republicans, but it seems plausible that would be the case as well.
It’s also possible that SF tried more progressive policies, but found they didn’t work in certain cases (for example, the recent DA recall). Note that I’m not trying to litigate whether conservative policies would work better than progressive policies or any such thing.
Frankly, I find blaming “conservatives” for inability of coastal liberal cities to build anything to be rather ludicrous. It can only be true if you define “conservative” as someone who blocks construction in order to conserve status quo, but that only makes it a vacuous tautology. Truth is, there are plenty people in SF who are as progressive as it gets when it comes to both social and economical concerns, but are also not blind or stupid, and know that low income housing project in their neighborhood means dirt, decay, and constant petty crime. Instead of blaming people for trying to live in clean and peaceful places, try to figure out why low income housing projects in Vienna or Amsterdam don’t decay into dens of crime and despair in a way those same places in US do.
This right here. How have we constructed a system in which we can pour thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars into a neighborhood and make it a worse place? That's the big question, and until it's answered I can't blame people for voting in their own best interests.
Look at Calle 24 in SF for a good example - in order to preserve diversity, a progressive organization has blocked a lot of projects that would add low-income housing to their neighborhoods. In addition, progressive mayors and city governments make it comparatively pleasant to be a bum in these areas - you can do whatever you want, including committing petty crimes, and you will get generous amounts of money for it. Economics 101 tells you that when you subsidize something, you get more of it. It's true for solar panels, and it's true for homelessness.
By the way, what happened in the 80's in NYC is that the professional class had enough and started electing conservatives. Those are the people who actually cleaned up the city by forcing homeless people to take shelter beds (they often don't want to end up in shelters because shelters have strict rules), and making it unpleasant to be homeless. At the same time, they invested in things like brighter lights, subway cleanups, and other nonsense that improves quality of life (but is not "fair" according to progressives). They also empowered police to enforce criminal laws on petty criminals.
So yes, this is a problem with politicians who claim to be progressive. I used to call myself "progressive" until I learned that this is where "progressive" politicians lead things. As a progressive yourself, it's up to you to call this behavior out if you want people to think that your ideology actually helps people.
California has high street homeless because housing is expensive not only in cities but everywhere in their exurbs as well. Most homeless people in California are locals who just can't afford their rent; they're not "bussed in" and didn't move for the weather.
Being mean to homeless people has very little effect compared to giving them homes. California governments are good at being mean to them; the police constantly raid them and steal all their possessions. It of course doesn't do anything.
Note, it's not related to drugs because the parts of the country with the worst drug problems (like West Virginia) don't really have big homeless populations, since they can still afford somewhere to live.
Also spent about 3 hours outside smoking until 4 am and only had a single person approach me to bum some change and left with no issue when I told him I didn't carry cash. I have no doubt there are rough parts of the city, but its not all lawlessness and mentally unwell in the streets everywhere.
It's somehow more important to give someone the right to sleep on a street corner at noon (something I witnessed just today, in an area where there usually aren't many/any homeless people), than it is to help get them on their feet, plus allow the rest of us to feel safe and not have to deal with garbage, human shit, and needles all over.
[0] That's the other thing, though: I doubt we have enough shelter beds to cover all the homeless people here. Yet another thing that needs to be fixed. I hear NYC is able to house around 95% of their homeless, and we're a much smaller city.
On top of this, if you are addicted to drugs, you might be unable to safely detox. Cutting cold turkey in a shelter sounds like a nightmare and I wouldn’t be surprised if a bum would prefer remaining addicted on the street than vomiting/sweating/sick in a shelter full of strangers where you’re too vulnerable to fight back if anything goes wrong.
More realistically, I’ve known folks who refuse to go to shelters because the shelters demand them to give up their pets, aka their family and what’s getting them through the traumatizing experience of homelessness. Or they’re told to give up their possessions for being too bulky or much, even though there’s no guarantee they might not need all that gear back if they’re later kicked out or age out or housing falls through.
Literally incarcerating people just for being too poor to afford decent housing is also ethically abhorrent, of course, but it's also not the most effective way to reduce the problems that are bothering you.
These are societal problems. More people using transport doesn't make people with issues simply poof into thin air or suddenly en masse take up private transport to go places to free up public transport for the sane. More asylums would certainly improve the situation getting unwell people into care and safety, along with better drug treatment programs for the addicted, but these aren't transit department problems to solve. Even if security got harsh on the train platforms and meth users were readily kicked out of the train, it would just amount to kicking the can down the road without having a mechanism to institutionalize more people or force people who don't want to change their lifestyle into care.
People actually smoke in the train cars? I'm curious is this a common occurrence then?
https://old.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/uu6gki/metro_in...
Its one thing if you need to leave this sort of situation with a train being able to step into another car, but with a bus it could be as long as a half hour before the next one shows if its off peak hours.
You don't make eye contact and keep to yourself, and nothing happens to you. If something does happen, every single train car has an intercom tied to EMS, and every single bus has a driver who is trained on how to deal with these situations when they do inevitably come up (pull over and call EMS). If you got beat up I'm sure you'd have a case against the city and the city attorney would probably be happy to settle and pay you versus deal with a lawsuit and potentially more seriously have to address something. The odds of you getting killed are just too low to even seriously consider, you are probably a lot more likely to die crossing the street to get to the bus stop than you are to die on the bus involved in some situation.
>You don't make eye contact and keep to yourself, and nothing happens to you.
This sounds like you are living your life in fear.
No, it's not great, and I wish our elected representatives would actually do things to fix these situations, but the idea of "I need to carry a gun" to solve this "problem" is just bonkers.
You don't even _know_ who you're driving next to on a freeway. The driver next to you may be driving home dead tired, "microsleep"ing along the way. They could be very drunk, trying desperately to get home and crawl into bed. Maybe they got fired at their workplace cause they were on meth. Someone driving might have a seizure and lose control of their vehicle. You can just look at traffic crash statistics; the US is the worst developed country for traffic incidents by far. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean their conditions don't actually exist.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see America pay actual attention to the folks with these physical and medical conditions, and the fact that we don't is terrible. But stuffing them into cars or forcing them to an underclass where they can't drive isn't the answer. And it's not particularly unsafe to take transit.
See Lozito v. New York City.
https://okhovatlawfirm.com/train-accidents/whos-liable-if-yo...
https://hhjtrialattorneys.com/domestic-violence-in-californi...
https://trellis.law/rulings/%22LOS-ANGELES-COUNTY-METROPOLIT...
In another city I have even called 911 and been put on hold for 5 minutes. In the nation's capital after being attacked unprovoked while running at dusk in a large central park but managed to barely slip out of his grip and book it. Thinking back it would have been very easy to make a body disappear there without a trace. Zero follow up or news about attacks occurring there. The 911 dispatcher was annoyed that she had to be bothered by me. I should have known better I guess after seeing a car laying in the middle of Missouri Ave with all four wheels sheared off after a police chase. Thankfully it's easy to protect yourself with a concealed handgun. Just kidding, it's illegal to possess or use weapons in Washington D.C.
/this was in Dallas Texas about a month ago
Totally innocent student shot dead on a trip to a very busy store in a very "nice" (expensive) area.
I pay attention to the get-away situation of areas now to assess risk of criminal activity spawning.
I suspect you’re making a couple of errant assumptions:
1. Looking at the sheer number of homicides in the US without accounting for the US’s very large population (our rates are still high for a 1st world country, but not as much as they seem without the population adjustment)
2. Assuming that crime is evenly distributed across our country. Most of the violent crime in the US happens in so-called “inner cities”. Most of the country is very safe, but a few places are very unsafe.
Basically the US is a biiiigggg and diverse country by 1st world standards.
Those people on the streets that you're 'swimming in' - the homeless, the untreated mental health cases, the drug addicts, the ex cons, the unemployed, the slum dwellers - they are not criminals. Except where catch-22 laws make their existence criminal.
They are the marginalized, and made so by the day-to-day actions and inactions of their fellow citizens who look down on them, block them from participating in society at every opportunity.
There are well known solutions to these problems: economic, social, and humane. But as long as the voting public can keep coming up with reasons these people do not deserve a proper solution to their problems, you're all going to have to live with the consequences.
Why is that? It's not like they don't have their share of unemployment, mental health or drug addiction.
In most cases nothing surprising - just well funded and unhobbled versions of things most North Americans already know about but vote against. Just listen to your local Social Workers and Nurses, they usually have a very good idea of what's missing or critically underfunded. Here are some examples:
Homelessness and unemployment: Various social safety nets, affordable housing, back to work and education programs, well funded social work programs
Mental health: Treatment, accessibility, in- and outpatient programs, well funded social work programs
Drug addiction: Decriminalization, access to safe use, needle exchanges and treatment programs, well funded social work programs
Ex cons: Stop giving people lifelong records for drug offenses. Re-entry education and training programs. etc. etc.
Maybe you live in a war zone, and a glock really is necessary for you to make it from your condo to your armored car. But until you start looking beyond just helping yourself, things are just going to get worse.
Then the people who care about it (read: not poor) will pay to ride the bum-free version, and then more people will use it, and it will begin to improve.
Of course, that cannot be done because then it's called "making the poor version crappy" and so everyone is forced to use the crappy version and it remains crappy forever.
Enforcement is also nearly nonexistent, and I expect it's even more nonexistent since COVID started. In 12 years of riding transit in SF, I've only once witnessed a group of transit employees board a bus to check that everyone had paid. Anyone who rides transit frequently (and doesn't pay) is likely saving money even if they have to pay the vanishingly rare fine if they're caught.
I've often suspected that metro fares are basically an excuse for the cops to kick bums/undesirables off the train.