But I know HN isn't a great forum for emotional topics like that.
Any suggestions for where I can have that kind of discussion online?
But instead follow people who are involved in policy decisions, social workers, psychologists, housing advocates etc. As you will get a more nuanced look at some of the issues.
Drug use and homelessness are two of the most complex problems in society to solve and usually require multi-faceted approaches across a wide array of disciplines to solve.
Homelessness is not a complex problem to substantially ameliorate: https://seliger.com/2022/06/29/homelessness-is-a-housing-pro.... Northern California has tried absolutely everything to reduce homelessness except building more housing: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-en....
Places in London that built large scale apartment complexes for social housing saw them turned into slums with rampant drug use, violence and criminal activity.
And it can be harder to get smaller-medium density housing to work because you're constantly fighting against local governments and NIMBY types.
...some places were just badly designed and encouraged the slum aspect (and associated problems).
If building slums eliminates homelessness, that's a net win. No need to let "perfect" get in the way of "better".
Maybe write something up in substack and push it on twitter. @mention Shellenberger and others?
> Any forum which is against diverse but calmly-presented views backed with data is not a good forum.
but I do think it over-simplifies things.
For example, I find HN to be a good forum for back-and-forth discussions about technical topics. But IMHO discussions involving ideology are far more likely to go off the rails.
Hn is a great forum for it though, all things considered.
This place has some pretty frustrating opinions.
Speak your mind.
Heck, even my question, above is currently rated (at most) -2, for reasons I can't fathom.