Hacker News Reader

Comment by deepdriver | Hacker News Reader

>On one hand, I understand the "what right do we have to kick homeless people off busses" argument.

Every right, take them to shelters or drug abuse centers, living like this a choice you made

I think there are a lot of people who would have trouble with that knowing that person could be their own child, an ex, a parent, a friend, or themself. Even if you personally believe retribution or comeuppance, I there are good faith arguments that can be made. My dad smells like he's rotting due to a degenerative condition and can no longer drive, does he not deserve the ability to get to the hospital or bank on public transportation despite an offensive odor, occasional incontinence, and a somewhat homeless look? Should family be responsible? What if the rest of the family died in a car crash?

The opiod epidemic alone showed significant numbers of people trusting a corrupted system being over prescribed addictive medications leading to the destruction of their lives so some billionaire can make a few extra dollars. Situations like that mean I don't find the people in bad situations deserve their fate argument very compelling.

I personally don't want them on public transportation myself, I'm even ok with banning them, but I do think society owes the unfortunate transportation, even if it is comped uber. I think good faith people can disagree on that and respect arguments otherwise.

This isn’t about unfortunate people’s access to transportation, it’s about unsanitary and unsafe abuse of the public transportation system, including public substance abuse and sleeping on the bus overnight.

>I think there are a lot of people who would have trouble with that knowing that person could be their own child, an ex, a parent, a friend, or themself

Every downward-spiraling addict has had parents, friends, and maybe children. How would they feel watching their loved one rot away on the street (or a bus) in the grip of addiction? It is inhumane to watch people shoot up heroin and drink themselves to death day after day in public spaces without intervention.

FWIW, the standard argument is that once we can hide people from our view, we forget about them and fail to invest resources in them, resulting in de facto prison sentences or abusive situations with under resourced institutions. The direct implication of intervention is taxation, and most people don't want homeless people around AND they don't want to be taxed, which creates a pretty hazardous set of incentives.

I agree that non intervention is inhumane, but also worry about how humane the intervention is.

It sounds like we're more or less both pro intervention, but arrive at that conclusion in different ways and likely with different caveats.

@hayst4ck we lost a family member to opioids in early 2019. He died in a Richmond bay area airbnb with his girlfriend, they were found by the owner several days after they died. He alternated living on the street and staying in airbnbs - he had to be narcan'd in homedepot (ironically while boosting power tools), and on the streets before finally dying.

Many addicts prefer to be on the street and not behind a door so they can be seen and revived when they OD. This is a fundamental flaw in governor Newsom's project homekey 'housing first' logic. What we are desperately short of are paths to sobriety as Shellenberger and others have pointed out. what we are not short of are 'non profit' bay area homeless industrial complex operations that facilitate street living. There are rumors the cartels donate massively to keep freshman clientele flowing. It is a very grim situation. In most european countries a junkie self harming in public will be given a choice of prison or some form of rehab. We do not have those options in a lot of north America, just open air drug scenes openly operating 24 hours a day. Obviously addicts steal to get their fixes...this is not viable on multiple societal levels.

That's why group housing a la "wet houses" makes sense.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com