Comment by solardev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by solardev | Hacker News Reader

This isn't a problem Seattle can solve on its own -- whether resident, business owner, police, mayor, or otherwise. Hyperfocusing on RV vs concrete blocks is missing the forest for the trees. This is the new face of urban America, where rampant wealth inequality makes it so that many people have no viable alternative to living on the streets. Instead of depression-era tenements, we have luxury apartments next to tent cities. There is a lot more money these days, but it's so concentrated in the hands of so few that everyone else is left fighting over scraps. Seattle is dying. San Francisco is dying. Portland is dying. All victims of their own successes, that perfect storm of a gilded, top-heavy society crushing those beneath them, combined with public policy that has turned a blind eye to decreasing real purchasing power for decades, all veneered over by a thin layer of new money and bravado.

Blame drugs, blame political opponents, blame the government, blame developers, blame tech bros, blame whatever or whoever you want... but at the end of the day, still no solution is in sight. There is no widespread push for affordable housing or a pathway out of poverty, no real long-term care for people fighting addictions or mental illness. There is only the relentless push for profit for a few as society crumbles around them and more and more Americans get displaced.

It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. We're circling the drain with no end in sight.

San Francisco spends $61k/year/tent [1] on homeless tents, which is more than median income in the US. The problem is not funding. The problem is that the local population would rather spin performative activism instead of taking real action (i.e. institutionalizing mentally ill people and forcing people off the streets and to stop using heroin and meth).

[1] https://sfist.com/2021/03/04/insanely-it-is-costing-san-fran...

Forced institutionalization is plainly unconstitutional, and there's no particular evidence that you can disappear whichever group of undesirables you see fit and guarantee that more won't appear. The homeless don't spontaneously generate from other homeless; they come from the same households that you and I do.

The solution is what it's always been: a universal housing mandate, and adequate social services (including harm reduction). The things stopping that aren't "performative activism"; it's Seattle's pathological disdain for housing and a polite-society liberal ethos that values property values over human lives.

> Forced institutionalization is plainly unconstitutional

It is not illegal to arrest someone for stealing/drug use/etc. and then have a psychiatrist examine them to determine whether they should go to jail or be institutionalized. Courts regularly examine criminals for mental fitness to stand trial already.

> no particular evidence that you can disappear whichever group of undesirables you see fit and guarantee that more won't appear

Funny, because that's exactly what lots of cities do and it works pretty well. Take a look at any wealthy SoCal city and you'll find no homeless.

> a universal housing mandate, and adequate social services (including harm reduction)

So, spending more than the median American makes per year on tents? Or allowing crazy drug addicts to trash temporary housing and hotels? Because that's what happens in SF. From the SF Chronicle, which is a super left leaning publication: "Residents have threatened to kill staff members, chased them with metal pipes and lit fires inside rooms, incident reports show. At the Henry Hotel on Sixth Street, a tenant was hospitalized after a neighbor, for a second time, streamed bug spray into their eyes, public records show. Last May, less than a mile away at the Winton Hotel, a resident slashed another tenant’s face with a knife, leaving a trail of blood out of the building" [1]

And from the director running one of these programs: "“We throw all these people into our hotels who have no demonstrated ability to live independently, who have severe problems and need to be elsewhere,” Shaw said"

Clearly the problem is not housing, it's the lack of support around getting mentally ill people the treatment (i.e. institutionalization) they need. And obviously, a crazy person is not going to consent to treatment for their craziness, so you need to force them into institutionalization.

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/san-francisco-sros...

I'm all for forced institutionalization, as long as we start with our politicians.

> It is not illegal to arrest someone for stealing/drug use/etc. and then have a psychiatrist examine them to determine whether they should go to jail or be institutionalized. Courts regularly examine criminals for mental fitness to stand trial already.

It is if the arrest is pretextual; that’s functionally no different from rounding up whichever group you think is bad and working backwards to disappear them.

In any case, nobody who lives in a van, tent, or even on the street meets the standard for forced institutionalization by those conditions alone. See the other thread.

> Funny, because that's exactly what lots of cities do and it works pretty well. Take a look at any wealthy SoCal city and you'll find no homeless.

I was under the impression that Los Angeles is both extremely wealthy and has lots of homeless. I’ve only visited once, however.

Either way: you surely understand that “move them somewhere else” is not a sustainable solution. You can’t sweep human lives under the rug in a country that has due process, as threadbare as ours might be.

The rest of the comment ignores what “housing mandate” really means: it means a combination of shelters, supported living (including mental institutions), and independent living based on the needs and capabilities of the individual.

LA itself is not extremely wealthy with the median household income less than national according to a quick search. There are rich cities that people consider "LA" but actually separate cities with own government: Santa Monica,Malibu, Beverly Hills, Calabasas etc.

> It is if the arrest is pretextual

I wasn't aware that arresting someone for stealing or illegal drug use was pretextual. Oh wait, it isn't. People committed a legitimate crime.

> nobody who lives in a van, tent, or even on the street meets the standard for forced institutionalization by those conditions alone

Then you give them a choice: go to treatment or go to jail. It is a strictly better outcome than only giving them the choice to go to jail.

> “move them somewhere else” is not a sustainable solution

It's a fully sustainable solution for many cities in SoCal, like I've said. Go to Newport Beach some time and you'll see. If you want your city to spend billions supporting people who don't want to be supported, you can do that with your own money and vote.

> due process

You're not entitled to violate local laws without consequences. Notice I never said to specifically go after people for being homeless, but to go after people for violating actual laws. Illegal drug use, illegal trash dumping, stealing, etc. Just because those actions are associated with homeless people does not make them any less illegal.

> supported living (including mental institutions)

The entire point is that the political will does not exist to force people who should be in mental institutions but don't want to be, into those institutions. If you steam bug spray into someone's eyes or chase them with a metal pipe, you are a danger to others around you.

> Forced institutionalization is plainly unconstitutional

False. If you are a danger to yourself or others, then you can be involuntarily committed after a hearing with a judge, and it's completely constitutional.

https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/civil-commitment-...

When you start with an immediate falsehood, why read further? The italics don't help your argument either.

The context here is homeless or parking encampments. The standard for institutionalization is established in Donaldson, which requires that the state demonstrate that you’re either incapable of surviving on your own or are a danger to yourself or others (like you said).

“Danger,” in turn, has been narrowly interpreted by the courts to steer clear of obvious due process concerns: the state generally needs to show than danger is imminent and unavoidable, rather than merely plausible or even likely.

In other words: people living in RVs or tents do not prima facie meet either condition for forced institutionalization. People living on the street don’t even meet the conditions necessarily, since there’s no test for “quality of life.” And that’s the way it should be, unless you think that your civil liberties evaporate as soon as you cease to own property.

It's weird to see this sort of legal analysis in this day and age. It feels like a relic of the 90s, when the supreme court was still considered somewhat legitimate, vs the political puppets they are today.

The Constitution itself is pretty worthless when it's subject to the whims of a bunch of corrupt asshats. It doesn't really matter what is or isn't constitutional anymore. If any appeal makes it to the court, it's just gonna be a red blue split anyway, and largely ignored or maliciously complied with by agencies leaning the other way. You might as well make it a system based on Facebook likes. That would at least be more democratic and just than what we have today, lol.

Did the Emptying of Mental Hospitals Contribute to Homelessness?

https://www.kqed.org/news/11209729/did-the-emptying-of-menta...

So did it? Couldn't find a transcript on that page.

The huge expense per homeless to little effect has been dubbed the “Homeless Industrial Complex”:

A lot of money goes to politicians, their supporters, and bourgeois — while only a small percentage goes to fixing homelessness.

This is essentially looting the public by corrupt actors under the false guise of moral action.

It might sound like some intentional conspiracy but it's mostly just a natural consequence of the stalemate. As long as new home development is crippled by zoning, NIMBYism, and the endless related issues it's only natural for those who care to become cynical and team up with those who don't to find ways to feed the never-ending demand for performative action (backed by millions of dollars) with a supply of expensive temporary solutions.

i urge you to talk to ppl who have run low income housing. from the people i know who done it they quit bc it cost more to maintain it with all the damage and crime then a modest blue collar unit. "building more housing" dont fix nothing if the ppl who live there treat it like shit attract crime and don't reliably pay.

Why do you avoid proper capitalization and spelling out words in full? Have you intentionally modified your auto-correct so that it does not do this?

What you just described sounds like an intentional conspiracy:

> team up […] to find ways to feed the never-ending demand for performative action (backed by [billions] of dollars) with a supply of expensive temporary solutions [that enrich themselves]

If you’re spending most of the money on politicians, their friends, and bourgeois — for the purpose of virtue signaling rather than fixing the problem — you’re a second problem.

Government looting the public.

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/homeless-shelters-found...

> relative, Laurence Belinsky, who is married to one of Cuomo's cousins, was the group's CEO. Belinsky had to step down in 2011 after his $500,000 salary became public at a time when a Cuomo-appointed task force was looking at excessive compensation at charities.

https://twitter.com/thebl0w/status/1418642879111745541

>This is a shelter on Ward’s island. NYC pays $3500 - $4000 per person a month to sleep in a room with 30 ppl.

Yep, those would be the people who don't care, who get teamed up with people who do, which I mentioned. Still not a conspiracy.

A lot of the funds go to bureaucrats running various targeted problems--so they spend like 80% of the funds on salaries of employees instead of it going to directly to the people who need it. We have too many programs--we just need one comprehensive program that gives them housing vouchers and assigns a social worker. And if you use drugs in public or steal--you get put in a halfway house or something. We need to do what Europe does... they have compassion but they enforce the law. US is the worst of all outcomes--expensive and getting nothing out of it.

> US is the worst of all outcomes--expensive and getting nothing out of it.

Seattle in particular has turned to abusive gaslighting:

Per capita, Seattle citizens pay nearly the most in the country — only for politicians to prey on that, by pocketing the money and heaping abuse (“yOu’Re nOt cOmPaSsIoNaTe!”) on the public to exploit their good nature.

I’m at the point I hope a Republican administration drops the RICO hammer on the racketeering — these people need jail for a decade for their treachery.

Well said.

Clarifying that's $61k per year per tent space. Crazy.

So this is not a figure for the cost of the tent itself, but to lease the space the tent occupies? That would make more sense, but not much. For $5000/month I would expect to be able to rent an actual apartment there, you know, with an actual kitchen, den, bathroom and bedroom.

> San Francisco spends $61k/year on homeless tents, which is more than median income in the US. The problem is not funding.

The city has 815,201 residents as of 2021. I think they can spend more than 13¢ per resident per year on this. Maybe there are other details that compound the problem, but the math insists that funding is obviously a massive part of the problem. They should be spending $20M a year at the very least, just to start, and increase from there. $20M/yr is $25 per resident per year. Even a homeless person could probably afford $25/yr, while the median household income in San Francisco is $120K/yr. If they want the problem fixed, paying for it to be fixed is really the only option.

To be clear, it's 61k/year/tent. Not 61k/year overall. Overall spending is in the billions [1].

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-has-an-unpre...

What the hell kind of a tent costs $61K every year?! I think maybe this is the problem. A $500 tent is about the best you can buy, so spend $1000 per tent for an extremely luxurious tent, and save $60K per year per tent.

Told ya housing was expensive in San Francisco.

Its a special tent managed by special people.

That number is total spending divided by number of tents, not the price of just the tent.

the vast majority of the people are not mentally ill, that will do nothing for this. It could possibly help tent cities and homeless. A lot better scheme would be to end crazy restrictive building and zoning laws and letting the market fix it and stop letting NIMBYs keep prices artificially high

>the vast majority of the people are not mentally ill

The vast majority of homeless people are drug users AND mentally ill. If you are living on the street when we have 3.6% unemployment--it's most likely drugs and mental illness (yes, there are rare exceptions).

You are completely wrong. Look up statistics. -Chronically- homeless people are likely drug users. That's the only part where you are partially correct.

These go against every statistic I've seen regarding American homelessness. If you truly believe this, could you please provide a cite?

no end in sight

Rest assured, other parts of the world have this all figured out. My favorite term is Favela which Wikipedia assures me is "also known as community". Eventually the ruling class throws up their hands. You can't put people in poor houses, jails, mental hospitals, subsidized housing--all too expensive/illegal/impractical. So you let them live in an ill-maintained "community" like the rest of the world does. It's coming.

we used to have those in a lot of cities in america, ghettos and tenements. at least they were cheap ig. the problem is we still don't know what else we can do with those people. a lot of them just don't give a shit so we got 0 leverage to make them do anything.

Maybe stop trying to coerce people and offer a little incentive to participate in society? Maybe offer some incentive for the wealthy to create jobs and offer gainful employment? Maybe get rid of zoning laws and force rich NIMBY landowners out of manipulating housing markets for their own gain? If people don't give a shit about their society, that's a problem with the society, not the people.

> we used to have those in a lot of cities in america, ghettos and tenements.

Hate to break it to you, but there are still plenty of ghettos and tenements, and replacing some of these with tent cities is not an improvement.

> rampant wealth inequality makes it so that many people have no viable alternative to living on the streets.

This is repeated often, but doesn't seem based in reality. Most of the people living on the streets are addicted to meth or heroin or mentally ill or some combination of the those. If you're on meth or heroin, you'll never be able to afford an apartment regardless of what they cost.

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