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Comment by andirk | Hacker News Reader

My unpopular opinion: If someone continuously refuses services that offer a _life of decency_ (private room/bath, food, etc, not just a shelter but of comfort), then they become a ward of the state and given the rights and amenities of a child, because, regardless of their age, they simply cannot take care of themself. We have many laws and protections for minors for this exact reason.

I don't care how much it costs. Our current strategy costs a lot and solves nothing.

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In my mind there are three solutions to deal with the homelessness crisis.

1. You beat, intimidate, and throw people in jail for doing drugs or living on the street. (The old way)

2. You let these people live untouched and degrade public order, decency, and safety. (The current way)

3. You force people with mental health and drug addiction problems into healthcare and rehab facilities. (What you are suggesting)

Out of these three options I do agree that the third one sounds the best for society, and for those who have these addictions and illnesses.

#3 was done in Alberta until Austerity decided it was too expensive. Then we saw our streets get worse, and our EMTs answering more homeless calls than before, taxing the whole system (which itself is also very expensive).

I prefer 3, and I think after a certain amount of stubbornness it should result in prison too. If the prisons are well guarded then the person can sober up in there, hopefully add some value to their life through GED or whatever.

It actually expensive to bring someone back from a bad fent addiction, with high failure rate to boot. So few million dollars to maybe bring back someone who will probably never be a net contributor to society even if treatment is successful, from a hard cold numbers perspective it isn’t worth it. Morally speaking it’s a completely different story, but prevention is very very very important these days. We really need to educate our kids that even trying drugs these days is too risky.

> that even trying drugs these days is too risky.

And yet the rat park studies and heritability of addiction suggest it's actually a predisposition to addiction (via environmental factors like poverty or emotionally disconnected "support" system in your childhood or life) that truly indicate the risk.

Healthy kids, in a healthy family, in a healthy society, with opportunities, and a non-cynical media etc. are less/un-likely to become addicted to anything, and the "addictive" elements seem to not lay in the drug/behavior of choice.

Ya so let’s focusing on helping kids be in the best environments possible. The pay off and effectiveness will be a magnitude better than wasting money on addicts later. We can’t exactly make healthy families, but preschool and summer camp opportunities, free healthcare, after school programs are all low hanging fruit.

> Ya so let’s focusing on helping kids be in the best environments possible

+ 1000

4. Provide free housing and attempt outreach.

It’s cheaper than jail or forced rehab.

Free housing doesn’t address the root cause of the mental illnesses and homelessness. In my very expensive city they do offer free housing but the occupants remain drug addicts and petty criminals.

If there is free housing and you continue to break the social contract you either need to go to jail or you need to go to rehab.

No, it addresses the sidewalks. People who steal things should be put in jail for stealing things, not for living in the streets.

Free housing where? In one of the most expensive cities in the world? If you provide free housing, it has to be accompanied by a compulsion to accept it, even if it's not in the place you prefer to live. And lots of homeless prefer SF because they have easy access to drugs, can panhandle, etc.

But if there's free housing on offer, it has to be accompanied by a stipulation that setting up a tent and being a societal menace in a major metro does not entitle you to free housing in that metro.

There is no solution in which society does not carry these people besides offing them. They are our burden.

Anywhere you would hold homeless people by force will be more expensive to staff and maintain in the long run than just giving them a shoebox with a bed and a hotplate.

I don’t think it’s ever going to be feasible for SF to provide free housing to anyone who just shows up. It simply wont work no matter how much of the city budget they throw at it.

I agree, SF’s homeless are from all over the country, they can’t afford to house everyone. I would imagine the tide could be stemmed to some small degree if colder states had free housing with heat.

You need to keep the house from being burned down, I heard the ratio in Finland for residents to social workers in 4-1.

I assume that’s still cheaper than jail though right? Not to mention more humane.

No, not really. It costs around $2-3k month to house them in jail, the cost starts at $10k/resident to house them in a tiny home or RV community without many social services. None of this cheap, although jail costs keep shooting up so who knows.

3 > 1 > 2

> My unpopular opinion: If someone continuously refuses services that offer a _life of decency_ (private room/bath, food, etc, not just a shelter but of comfort), then they become a ward of the state and given the rights and amenities of a child, because, regardless of their age, they simply cannot take care of themself. We have many laws and protections for minors for this exact reason.

> I don't care how much it costs. Our current strategy costs a lot and solves nothing.

Perhaps it would be good to start by making those services (including a private room/bath, etc.) to homeless people and seeing how it affects the numbers before worrying about whether we need to take people's rights away? Currently, I don't think most homeless people have access to anything close to that in most places.

Homeless shelters have tons of limitations that make them difficult to use and are by reputation not very safe or comfortable, so improving that situation could do a lot to eliminate homelessness before you even need to start worrying about whether to compel people.

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