Hacker News Reader

Comment by Workaccount2 | Hacker News Reader

>That just makes the problem worse.

The core problem is that there are a large contingent of homeless drug users who just want to be left alone so that they can continue to be homeless drug users. Any services given to them will just be redirected by them towards enabling continued drug use. It's like an inbuilt self-sabotage that is totally alien to regular folks, but the choice way of living for those with it.

This isn't talk about much at all, because the story book tale is that homeless people are just regular people who are down on the luck, and if we could just show them some respect, compassion, and spare a few resources, they'd be right back on their feet again. But that story is just a fairy tale used to sell a feel good idea, reality is way more fucked up than that.

View on HN

Regular people who are down on their luck are at severe risk of becoming the drug-addict permanent homeless. Living on the street is real hard in an environment like SF, and subjects you to all sorts of wildly stressful circumstances that must be coped with somehow. Taking drugs then becomes a vicious cycle.

The vast majority of people who are simply down on their luck have friends and family that will help them. It’s not like you lose your job and go straight to living under a bridge. Not everyone, but most.

The people who end up in truly dire circumstances have backstabbed everyone who ever trusted or helped them. They have burned every bridge, and nobody they know wants anything to do with them. All to feed a ravenous addiction.

Well yes, but keep in mind the homeless population is still a minority. Apparently SF has a homeless population of 10k out of 900k people. This is your minority.

>The people who end up in truly dire circumstances have backstabbed everyone who ever trusted or helped them.

Or their family backstabbed them, if they ever had one (this article has a case study on someone raised out of an orphanage). Or this continually individualistic society has loosened support networks so you never truly got "friends". Or you simply got priced out because rent became 3k and you're not a silicon valley engineer.

Not all homeless people are drug users. Just the ones you remember most.

I'm sorry, but there is no-one who wants to be a homeless drug user.

They're refusing treatment because they're addicted. They're refusing shelter because the shelters have policies (like not using drugs, or from the article; no pets) that they can't meet.

A lot of them have been abused by the institutions that were supposed to help them in the past, so understandably don't trust that they will be helped by similar institutions now.

Any of us, put in the same situation, would find it impossibly hard to deal with. I was lucky; I had friends who could help and I got lucky with some work that allowed me to get out of that situation. If I'd not had that luck, I could easily have gone down the same road.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com