[1] https://sfist.com/2021/03/04/insanely-it-is-costing-san-fran...
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-has-an-unpre...
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).
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
https://www.kqed.org/news/11209729/did-the-emptying-of-menta...