Screw that, clean the homeless up. Can’t believe we have let the problem get so bad.
One of the points of the justice system is to ensure that people are sufficiently disincentivized from doing things that society has decided shouldnt be done. We shouldnt consider it a good investment to enable bad behavior.
It has been shown multiple time over in experimental settings that punishment is a pretty poor means of modifying behavior. The deterrence of punishment is marginal at best. For punishment to work consistently you need to apply it consistently and immediately, law enforcement does neither.
There are other means of modifying behavior that are both scientifically proven and have shown results in the real world. This includes accommodating the desired behavior while disincentivizing the undesired ones.
If you want the unhoused to leave their surroundings cleaner, give them trash cans, public kitchens, safe use shelters, regular street cleaners, etc. If you don’t want them to pitch a tent on 17th and Mission, designate an area where they can.
No the point of the justice system is to give victims of crimes some solace that justice has been served. It has nothing to with the behavior of criminals.
That's much more reasonable of a point than other peer comments. To which I mostly would suggest that rehabilitation is definitely an important part (and I'd agree with you if you claimed the USA is bad at rehabilitation... but lets improve that than bandaid something else)
No false notions required -- all living people have a risk of loss of freedoms, which is why prison works.
> why can't there be more public garbage cans
I suppose this mostly makes sense until we start to have local businesses using them for free trash disposal. Why would I be more in favor of public trash cans you ask? (so you dont have to continue presuming...) Because it's enabling and encouraging an ideal behavior -- people dispose of their trash in an orderly manner.
you realize that the justice system doesn't equally impact everyone, right? people with more wealth, more access are demonstrably treated better and have better outcomes with regard to the justice system, so no, all living people do not have the same risk of losing freedoms.
> ... which is why prison works
ah, there it is
i'm glad you agree with more access to public trash cans; however, i think it should be called out
> local businesses using them for free trash disposal
is already done in homeless encampments. i can find some, but there are many reports of businesses dumping in encampments because there's little risk of getting caught and no one bats an eye at trash-ridden encampments.
I agree with you that this is an injustice and should be fixed, that doesnt mean we shouldnt work towards using the tool (it's not a either/or scenario, we can do both) .
> is already done in homeless encampments. ...
Only furthers my point as to why we should not be enabling bad behaviors
idk. the amount the police harasses the unhoused, I think we all would be living in a police state if the same brutality was employed equally across citizens.
If you really cared about this, then you would simply impose a simple tax on local businesses and give them garbage service in return. Or you’d enforce proper garbage disposal on the businesses not the unhoused. It is a lot easier to monitor and enforce the garbage disposal of businesses then that of the unhoused.
My belief is that homelessness / 'unsheltered' is a catchall result of all the gaps in society's integration of individuals; and it's also a national level problem since the individuals can also be shipped around like those migrants that made the news recently. At least in America, but I've also heard that one of the emotionally motivating factors of Brexit were migrants from outside of the EU, we refuse to even provide a path and set of requirements for those who do want to participate in the system that's setup (instead in the US it's "build the wall" or "war at the border" extremes). Closing gaps in social safety nets and providing pathways for those who are troubled to integrate into society in mutually useful ways, or perhaps even caring for those who are incapable of such self care when provided help getting out of that hole, logically seems like a far harder challenge than any single city can face in a vacuum when we can't even handle easier issues on a national level.
I'm curious - what do you imagine that looks like?
so let's continue to spend more on incarcerating them as a bandage rather than fixing the issues :)
> incidents of... pooping...
i'm sure they just do this outside for preference rather than utter lack of access to public facilities. why couldn't they be like me during my trip to SF where i could just patronize a business to use their bathroom when i needed to go?
> menace to public health and safety
love to see the intentional split between "public" and whatever group you'd put houseless people in (those "menaces"!)
Alternatively start up workhouses and sanitariums again. Government work in exchange for a safe, clean place to sleep and food for the day. Mental sanitariums for those people that are too far gone. That should provide enough of a disincentive over time to camp on the streets.
One part of the problem is that the sheer cost of housing in San Francisco (and the surrounding) area is out of control. Some homeless people are simply priced out of the market. That generally is caused by a general lack of new construction in San Francisco and the Bay Area. But, I doubt that magically increasing the housing stock overnight will "solve" homelessness. (Because there are many reasons for homelessness.)
When I lived in the S.F. Bay area for almost a decade, I was shocked that the homeless problem was so bad. Where I'm from, the weather does put a sense of urgency on homelessness, because it's much more difficult to camp unsheltered in the winter. The Bay Area doesn't have the late October-November urgency to get people into shelters; nor do the homeless have the urgency to follow someone else's rules for a bit or risk freezing to death.
What I would suggest is to try to avoid seeing homeless as "others." Many people are homeless for different reasons; and it's important to empathize with the person who doesn't want the tent on their front door as much as it's important to empathize with the person in the tent.
An observation: most of the "simple answer" approaches to this seem to have failed badly in practice when/where they are attempted. There has to be some complexity, no?
What is it about the shelters (other than lack of spaces) that is making people opt not to use them?
I'll wait.