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I live in Oakland. Something I've noticed in a lot of the "THE CITY IS GOING TO HELL" commentary is that often people are pointing at visual symptoms - a homeless encampment, graffiti - as a proxy for "things are bad," and it doesn't take a lot of pulling on that thread before you get to "well just look at them," and it's real hard to cast that one in a "race-neutral" way. I've heard people complaining about hot dog vendors on the street as some kind of public nuisance, I've heard people point to wall murals as a sign of moral decay. Fine, that's your jam, that's what the suburbs are for, but if you don't like seeing poor people, make a society that doesn't create so goddamn many of them.

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You need some kind of proof that a homeless encampment is bad for the city or that someone might not like to be near one for reasons that might not include racism?

I've lived in east coast cities (NYC, Boston, and Philadelphia) for the majority of my adult life and while homelessness is less of a problem in the northeast because of the climate there is still a good amount of it in the major cities. I think it becomes way too easy to tune out those commentaries and avoid the parts of the city that they apply to.

In Philadelphia, I lived a few blocks away from the Girard stop on the L train. I would just avoid walking by the station because it was a hang out for homeless people and drug users in the area. Pretty much everywhere within a 10 block radius of the station is built up, there's always people out, and it feels like all of the local businesses in the area are thriving (more recently there's been too many chains opening up which sucks but I digress), there's barely any homelessness or crime with the exception of package thieves (I just bought a $20 box off amazon to put in front of my house and never had a problem) and the occasional car window being smashed.

In NYC, especially Manhattan although the same applies to the outer boroughs, unless you live around a more touristy area then you don't even think about it. In Boston even less so besides downtown.

I don't think trying to contain people to specific areas is a good solution. There's obviously a greater social issue across the US and other developed nations and it's a very hard problem to start solving, but I would guess that most cities continue to ignore it as long as its easy for the majority of the population to ignore it.

> I don't think trying to contain people to specific areas is a good solution.

Hamsterdam

The author is complaining about people defecating in public spaces, not about graffiti.

I guess that could be a type of art.

and where should the homeless go when there's no access to public bathrooms and every business is hostile to anyone that can't pay

https://visitorservice.kk.dk/en/explore-copenhagen/public-to...

Did you miss the “no public restrooms” part?

The author is dehumanizing an entire ethnic group by calling them wolves that need to be controlled.

Homelessness is pretty race neutral tho? Especially in Oakland, which is incredibly race-balanced.

absolutely not, especially in the bay – people of color are way more likely to be homeless

The way you've stated this implies a structurally-enforced causality with regards to vagrancy in such a way that, wittingly or otherwise, wholly denies the possibility of individual agency in the very people you're ostensibly trying to defend.

I'm curious where you see the levers of individual agency here, and to what degree you think the affected people have tried to pull them. What's _your_ underlying thesis?

That is beyond my proverbial pay grade. But it's not beyond my proverbial pay grade to state that believing that, systemically, “[x demographic in y location] are way more likely to be [in undesirable situation]” is completely denying agency to the individuals in question by pretending that [x demographic in y location] ending up [in undesirable situation] is something of a weighted dice roll made by unseen forces, completely outside of individual agentic influence.

So you don’t believe in, like, history? Or what’s the argument here?

Either you're willfully ignoring the American citizen's right to free movement between States, or you're actually saying that any given black person who moves to Oakland has—regardless of any life circumstances or decisions they've made, simply as a fact of their ethnicity—some arbitrary-percentage chance of ending up homeless, as some immutable localized nth-order structural outcome, regardless of any choices they make.

Oh, I see the confusion - in America, we use the word “free” to mean both “allowed to” and “doesn’t cost money,” which leads to the kinds of odd circumstances where one is “free” to do something, but that thing isn’t “free,” so if they lack the money or resources to do so, they’re not actually able to do it. It’s a confusing part of our language and our system.

Similarly, we’ve got a bunch of cases where the law says X, but actually conforming with the law, or proving what you’re doing is legal, also costs money, and is therefore not “free” either. That one catches a bunch of people.

Does anyone else here know what this guy is talking about? I think he completely misread my post. I was asking if a black American citizen moving to Oakland had some arbitrary percent chance of becoming homeless after living there for awhile, based on his ethnicity and whatever structural factors Oakland has going for it alone (as implied by the rhetoric elsewhere in the thread). He then turned it into some kind of tirade about the ambiguity of the English language, or something, rather than answering my question?

Pretty sure they’re just a verbose troll.

They're calling you out on asking why the homeless don't just move, ignoring that (a) even the homeless have roots and social networks in the areas they live in, (b) long-distance travel is not trivial for those without financial means, (c) they may not have a reason to move away (what good is it to still be homeless in another town that you don't know?) and possibly other points.

Clearly, there are systemic reasons for certain ethnicities to be at higher risk of becoming homeless (not just in the U.S.). There are also clear reasons why people who share an ethnicity like living near each other, regardless of financial means. I think you're looking for a causation between two phenomena that may be entirely independent from each other.

Edit: I think this may have started with a misinterpretation of the initial post here (which was by a user who hasn't replied any further). You may have interpreted it as "in the Bay area, PoC are more likely to be homeless" while the original wording also allows for the interpretation of "PoC are more likely to be homeless, which e.g. is noticeable in the Bay area" that doesn't imply causation and is how I read the comment.

> They're calling you out on asking why the homeless don't just move

Please try reading my posts again very carefully rather than assuming my intent. Thank you!

If multiple people are confused on what you're saying, you should probably clarify with better wording.

If someone reads “black American moving to Oakland” as “homeless person moving out of Oakland”, that is not my fault…!

No, I read your post, it was just asinine. There's nothing intrinsic about Oakland - the homeless racial makeup stats roughly persist across urban areas - but there is something intrinsic about the entire rest of the system we have, which is related to my post, and what seems to be your blind spot about the relative levers of action that various people have about how to effect change in their lives, how and when those might fail, and why they may wind up in worse situations despite the system ostensibly seeming to be "colorblind."

If people are systematically more likely to be in area X, that may be because they are systematically more likely to make the relevant choices - for example because they are under different constraints or have different preferences. Choice is part of social science.

To put actual numbers to "way more likely". Using https://www.bayareaequityatlas.org/indicators/experiencing-h... and the census.

The rate is 42/10k for non-Hispanic White and 56/10k for all others - a common definition for people of color. So about a third more likely.

To provide some intuition if the numbers aren't clear that increased risk is about the same as:

* driving while having slept 6-7 hours rather than 7+ hours[0] 1.3x

* being a teen driver with a teen friend in the car rather than alone[1] 1.49x

* the increased cardiovascular risk from being highly sedentary vs. being active[2] 1.3x

As a whole, though, 'person of color' seems to be a bad grouping unit here because Asian people are 'people of color' and have a 7/10k rate, while Black people are also 'people of color' and have a 214/10k rate. Therefore, if I were trying to understand if there are subpopulation differences this is not the aggregation unit I would use.

0: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/bulletin/2017/national-police-week...

1: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10735394/

2: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38081421/

So let's say hypothetically we kept the number of homeless people stable in Oakland, but made them all white. You think all (most? many?) of the people currently complaining about homelessness would shut up?

No, Appalachia's sufficient to negate that hypothesis, but it doesn't mean the people currently complaining about homelessness aren't also making judgements on racial grounds. A large part of the illegibility of Oakland to outsiders is mistaking other people's cultures for urban decay.

comments like these really grind my gears. are those really the only things you can imagine people don't like about "homeless encampments"? graffiti??

What is presented is a very short list of separate issues. It could easily have said "widespread shoplifting, potholes"; it is not insinuating that one causes the others, just like shoplifting clearly does not cause potholes.

I dunno have you been to Vesterbro (he is talking about Copenhagen afterall)? Especially around H17? It's pretty gross. It's also spitting distance from Tivoli Gardens where you might want to take your kids out for the day.

The most objectionable thing about his post is that he's calling out gypsies specifically, but also Denmark relatively recently passed sweeping anti-begging laws kind of specifically targeting Roma people...

So they passed anti-begging laws and you say they target Roma people. Now who's making here racial assumptions?

No assumptions being made here. Denmark, like most of Europe, has a long history of Roma discrimination. It's been well-written about, discussed by the media, by members of the Folketing, and even in the European Court of Human Rights.

I'm not a Dane but have spent significant time there and well understand the spectrum of views Danes hold on immigration and Danish politics in general.

I wasn't even passing any kind of judgment, but bringing this up because DHH was discussing a topic that comes up locally (even though he doesn't even live there anymore) but sounds crazy if you don't have the context.

The question would be how exactly the laws target Roma people.

What I see in the streets of another European city in a country with a long history of discrimination against Roma people is a lot of Roma beggars. But these are very clearly not local people. They seem to be Romanian and working for an organised ring. If the situation in Denmark is similar and if the laws are targeted against exploitation of disadvantaged people for begging then that would be acceptable (and if not ECHR will have the last word on that).

> and if not ECHR will have the last word on that

They actually already did. Dian v Denmark. Ruling that the ban wasn't illegal.

Thank you for that. tldr: the court ruled that Dian was not in a precarious position but was using begging in Denmark as an additional source of income to support his family in Romania (and, reading between the lines, probably to buy drugs) and so Denmark was ok putting him in prison for a few days (after he insulted a police officer too).

Danish police are super tolerant and professional btw.

I had my passport lifted by a pickpocket while at a restaurant in Vesterbro and had to report it to the police and then go to my embassy to get a replacement. Both the Danish police and the US state department employees were amazing.

Visual disorder is real harm, not a proxy or suburban preference.

Encampments produce fires, needles, waste, blocked sidewalks, and local crime spikes. Surveys show high mental illness and substance use rates among the homeless. Mild climate plus weak enforcement concentrates the problem beyond local poverty levels. Treating every complaint as coded racism blocks diagnosis.

Unpermitted vendors create safety and fairness issues for taxed businesses. Illegal graffiti is vandalism that costs owners. Oakland fines them. Murals are different.

Pure tolerance by the left produced tent cities. Enforcement and treatment shows recent drops in both homelessness and crime.

People who want orderly streets are not required to absorb the costs. Working neighborhoods take most of the hit.

> Encampments produce fires, needles, waste, blocked sidewalks, and local crime spikes

Are you saying that if it weren't for such an encampment, homeless people wouldn't be keeping warm, shooting up, and relieving themselves? I don't see how that can be the case. It seems to me that what you are pointing out is that encampments make these events more visible by containing them in one place, rather than them being diffused throughout the city.

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