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Comment by jvanderbot | Hacker News Reader

These arguments make logical sense, but fall flat to me, after spending a few years watching severely mentally ill people take over neighborhoods, rob, break in, and assault the people living there. Near my home, a large man lived nearby that began attempting to sexually assault women walking to the gym or nearby shops. It became a running joke, as nobody would do anything about it. I was regularly accosted by clearly mentally ill people who would defecate anywhere and yell at anything.

That experience made decide that we're too sympathetic.

For an extreme example, look up the echo park protests. Echo park was a great place to take my kids until it was overrun by homeless and bodies started appearing. And in the name of sympathy and such, protestors attempted to prevent the clearing of the park.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-protesters-clash-sweep-echo...

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You see I feel like I'm some bizarre moderate where I can understand both the people who want Echo park cleared and also the people who are protesting the clearing of Echo park. It's not safe for the rest of the community for them to be there, but neither has the community provided any reasonable other option for them! I've heard of stories where people have tried to get housing only to be told they wouldn't be allowed unless they got rid of their PTSD-specific service animal or some other nonsense that is most definitely illegal but they're fucking homeless dude, where are they going to get any legal rep or otherwise to fight it? But at the same time they literally shouldn't be allowed to collectively endanger the community by accosting others or anything like that. It's a bad situation all around and I think I'm living some kind of crazy town where I sympathize with everyone and think there should be a solution that benefits all parties.

That's not being moderate, that's being idealistic. You're saying, quite correctly, that there should be a better way, but in reality, people are dying in the streets next to a bus stop that kids use. The immediate problem (chaos) is absolutely a symptom of a larger systemic issue, but allowing that fact to impede solutions to the the very real immediate problem is not productive. You can do both. But to do so we have to do something.

"We have to do something, and this is something, so we have to do this". :/

Clearing doesn't work! We do sweeps all the time in SF and Seattle etc and it doesn't get rid of the homelessness problem, it just deepens the problem by throwing out the few possessions those homeless people have and removing any remaining stability they have. They will still be homeless.

What you said is true globally, but not locally. To those who live near the affected area, clearing is one of the best immediate options.

But what you said is also wrong: We can do both. We can evict unlawful camps where they infringe on the rights of others, and we can prepare better solutions. We don't need to stop one to wait for the other, no matter which one you do first.

Just doing clearing without solving the other side of the issue is an example of the classic "tragedy of the commons" where people make decisions that benefit a few people greatly while having a larger negative impact that is distributed among a much larger group of people.

While we can do both, we need to start with preparing better solutions FIRST, because if we do clearing first we make the problems we need to solve with the better solutions worse.

> we need to start with preparing better solutions FIRST

Disagree. Keep the peace first. That's basically where we'll not agree, I think. and that's ok. No sense arguing without further depth.

FWIW, I'll claim without evidence that if your daughters couldn't leave their house for fear of the man under the bridge raping them, then you might change your answer. It absolutely changed my answer.

> if your daughters couldn't leave their house for fear of the man under the bridge raping them, then you might change your answer. It absolutely changed my answer.

Quite possibly as I don't pretend to be a saint who always puts society ahead of myself. (Edit: this is the heart of the tragedy of the commons, everyone is making rational choices we can be sympathetic with but the end result is that things end up getting worse for everyone over the long term.)

However, I would do it with a heavy heart since I know that while I am protecting my (hypothetical) daughters, I am doing so at the cost of putting someone else's daughters at risk instead while also making the overall situation worse.

I respect your (hypothetical) altruism.

This isn't tragedy of the commons, because the whole of humanity does not end up worse with these actions. I'm not convinced that clearing an encampment makes the average wellbeing across humanity go down. These arguments turn a blind eye to the harms to surrounding people and the homeless involved.

> This isn't tragedy of the commons, because the whole of humanity does not end up worse with these actions.

Nothing about "tragedy of the commons" implies that the "commons" must be of global scope. The name derives from the classic example of unregulated grazing on common land in the UK.

> These arguments turn a blind eye to the harms to surrounding people and the homeless involved.

Not at all, the whole point is to reduce those harms. When you clear an encampment, the homeless person doesn't just disappear. You don't fix the problem, you just move it elsewhere and make it worse and harder to fix.

But I never agreed with impeding the forceful solution. I merely said I find it sympathetic and understandable to do so. You're misunderstanding me in the exact way where I think I'm in some crazy land where I think everyone is acting sympathetically but no one else seems to be capable of believing this. I firmly understand the absolute need for the community to try and protect its housed people, but I also acknowledge the very same community is doing so because it has no protection for its unhoused people.

> after spending a few years watching severely mentally ill people take over neighborhoods, rob, break in, and assault the people living there.

I've been thinking lately that the modern zombie genre might be influenced by this. Sort of a metaphor for what's happening in a lot of cities.

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