I live in Australia, and I think our "trick" is just not to have American levels of political dysfunction. The wokies have started to infiltrate, but so far they are under control, and minus a few corporations asking staff to include their pronouns in their email signature, stuff is not too different than it was 10 - 15 years ago. We certainly don't have a lot of people insisting on the "rights" of mentally ill homeless people to assault passerby or die of exposure; they just get taken to prison or the ED.
Housing is very expensive here too, so our experience would suggest that's not the only factor at play and "build more homes" is not going to take your homeless problem away overnight.
The one natural blessing we do have is low levels of illegal immigration, thanks to our country being surrounded by a moat. Though, if you don't have moat access, a wall is good too.
Honestly, fentanyl costs literally pennies, and if legal issues weren't an issue and it was produced in bulk for the market, you could keep essentially any addict completely high / happy on $1 a day.
I'm a fan of the "wet houses" proposals. All the drugs you can take, for free, far away from city centers. You're going to average $500 a year vs the 100k a year, and some tiny percentage of them (roughly 10% going by AA figures) will actually get out of their addictions and go on to be productive citizens, whereas a large portion of those 10% people die today due to supply chain contamination and illegible dosing due to it being illegal.
You might think pipelines are a great way to transport oil, right? Wrong. Pipelines have to cross tons of state and county lines, and if the permits get blocked in a single jurisdiction, the whole project is caput. Good luck getting the environmentalists to agree to building your pipeline through their back yard 100% of the time. Now you have to transport oil in tanker trucks, but tanker trucks burn gasoline to transport oil so you can make gasoline. This is a classic tyranny of logistics problem; the more oil you try to transport, the more gasoline you need, so the more oil you need, etc.
Then you have to build a refinery, but no one wants a refinery built next to them. And you have to spend a decade in an adversarial review process just to get the permits to start building. If that wasn't bad enough, the refinery costs billions of dollars. Investors don't want to fork over that kind of money when the Saudis could go on another oil glut or the president could flood the market with cheap petrol from the strategic reserve in an election year. Even if you finally get through all that, you can't sell to the biggest market in the country, California, without building your refinery in the state and complying with onerous regulations. And if you do build in California, the cost of complying with those regulations means your gasoline is too expensive to sell anywhere else. That's why I think the prospect of getting gas for your car is just not realistic.
Some commenters might say, what if I can walk or bike to the grocery store? Sure, that might help a few people on the margins get a sandwich. For the vast majority of people who don't live next to a grocery store, this isn't an option. At this point, you sigh and exclaim "Just make your own bread, damn it!"
Ok, have you ever made bread from scratch before? You need a lot of acres of tiled farmland to grow wheat, which most people can't afford. Then the soil has to be tilled, and the wheat planted, and then harvested, and whatever other things farmers have figured out over thousands of years but you probably don't know. By the way you have to do all of this by hand, because again access to gasoline is impractical in our system. Do you know how to separate wheat seeds from the husk and chaff so it can be milled into flour? Actually milling flour manually is such back breaking labor that it was often used as a punishment for rebellious slaves.
For the sake of argument, say you do all this and make your own bread (somehow you also conveniently have yeast so the bread isn't just a flat blob.) Are you going to eat a bread sandwich? You could farm some lettuce or tomatoes, but then you need more acreage of farmland and more labor to farm it all. You could raise a few animals for some meat, but then you need even more grain to feed the animals (tyranny of logistics again!) and have to butcher them yourself.
I hope this has made it clear why "Go to the store and buy a sandwich" isn't practical, and making your own sandwich is so difficult it isn't a serious solution for 99.9% of the population.
I'm glad you liked it. Although I didn't mean that kind of tiling; in agriculture, tiling refers to building a buried pipe network that drains excess moisture from the soil. So that part wasn't a clever joke or anything.
The vast, vast, vast majority of people planning to make a sandwich for lunch already have bread, and if they don't have bread they already have a car with gas in it, and if there's no gas in the car they can go to the gas station and get some because the massive cross-country gas delivery and oil pipeline network already exists, and the refineries were built decades ago, and the oil is already being gotten (much of it from North America these days btw). How on earth is any of this analogous to solving a problem that would require doing a very large amount of large-scale stuff that *******isn't already done******?
The point is a lot of this stuff has been done in many if not most cities across the world. I live in Australia, and we have minimal problems here with mentally ill homeless drug addicts. Why? Simple: we have clear laws and people follow them. If they don't, they end up in an institution (prison, mental hospital) where treatment can be forced upon them until they get better. Then they go to the least restrictive place where they will continue to be safe and not put any members of the community at risk. Sometimes this is supported living with social workers, other times it is with family members, in the worst cases they stay in prison or forensic mental institutions for life.
San Francisco could have clear laws that people follow, but its people and political class, in their wisdom, have chosen not to do this, and in some cases appear to be convinced that it's impossible. It's really not, but it involves getting rid of the Gavin Newsoms and George Soroses of the world, for a start.
Dang, I should go back and finish watching DS9 sometime.
From your link, it sounds like one of the steps along the way is to screen out the criminal element from the Sanctuary Districts, so maybe we can get there via some bizarre hybrid of GET TOUGH and bleeding hearts?
Even that last point doesn't work, because (as Scott pointed out), America was actually worse at building rail than Africa.
I don't think our overregulation is "a form of corruption". A lot of bad ideas sound nice to uninformed voters, so they approve of awful regulations. Nobody needed to get bribed.
Cynically, the kinds of environmental and historical studies (like for protected parking lots) infamous in California are an indirect bribe.
If you can just grease the old boy's palms and get on with your work, that's bad but functional.
If you're *required* to grease the old boy's palms because "environmental and historical studies sound nice," then he still delays your work 5 years writing his report, then blocks it entirely because a rare species of variegated sand flea only lives in this one parking lot or some protected group with additional rights imagines their ancestors worshiped there a thousand years ago, that's worse.
If the system operated on bribes, it would be more functional. People who wanted to build things could just spend money to build them. But instead there's a political process for which there is no actual price tag, and instead an "anti-growth" movement who genuinely believe it's a good thing to stymy development. https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/local/san_francisco.html
> I don't think our overregulation is "a form of corruption".
Hm, that makes me wonder if we could model some of the dysfunction as a non-central form of corruption? Maybe, instead of destroying public resources for private financial gain, it's destroying public resources for private ethical gain? That is, instead of extracting money, they extract self-righteousness? If there were a way to measure self-righteousness, we could come up with a conversion rate, and maybe find a more efficient and effective way of supplying it to the poor people of California who would otherwise languish in sin and unrighteousness.
Regarding point 1: I live in San Francisco and emotional reactions like you've gotten, instead of even considering any rational solutions, have lead the city into the hell scape of what you see on our streets now.
Is it a hellscape, though? If you avoid the 'Loin and 6th and Market and 6th and Mission areas, maybe a bit of Civic Center, then most of the homeless are practically invisible. There's still plenty of city left to enjoy. It's similar to how most of the shenanigans in LA are contained to Skid Row and maybe parts of Venice.
Sure, but the problem is sufficiently contained that the rest of the city doesn't have to care about what happens to the residents there. If you can afford it, you move out, if you cannot, you're out of luck, but nobody in Noe Valley will be spending time worrying about it. Same as with Skid Row.
I think this is mainly a housing supply problem and lots of it goes away with Lvt and public housing and then lots of social care on top of that. . Can do the centre for public enterprise plan for multi income housing, slash the people's policy project thing. Build tall and dense, with public parks for shared greenery. . And do the yglesias thing where u bring back single occupant shared amenities living. That plus social services.
I don't think that'd be any harder than the political problems of every other solution. You just keep lobbying politicians, running ads, campaigning for candidates who agree with you, etc. until enough housing gets built.
The YIMBY folks are doing that right now. Biggest successes happen when you go at it at the state level - some progress does happen at the local level, but it's also much more vulnerable to "Make It Somebody Else's Problem (MISEP)" dynamics among city residents opposed to development.
Same way we implement all the other proposed solutions: we don't.
We're chatting in the comment section of a blog post here. We have very little power. And looking at the people who do have power, I don't actually expect any grand effort to fix things.
But for someone living in SF, moving to eg Singapore or Norway would immediately solve pretty much virtually all the homelessness problems they experience in their local community. It's an extremely powerful tool.
(Yes, by changing which community is their local community. Not by improving anything in SF.)
But that's good!
(And if you care about people in (now) faraway places, have a look at whatever GiveWell suggests. There's probably more good to be done in a cheap country than by donating to efforts in SF.)
Expatriates and world travelers are gonna steelman their life choices like anyone else, but I think that, assuming you are gainfully employed in a developed, modern nation, moving is a vastly overrated solution. It usually just replaces one problem with another.
I think this is crucial, especially given TorontoLLB's point cited towards the end of section 3 - once people are living on the street, they can go from "basically sane but are poor and/or have little to no support from friends/family and/or have some issues" to "severely addicted and mentally ill, potentially for years or the rest of their life" very quickly.
The best way to prevent people from having to live on the street is ensuring an ample supply of affordable housing (naturally occurring through the market not having a housing supply shortage), and ensuring the few people who still would fall through the cracks get state-supported housing (housing-first - much cheaper when most people already can afford housing on their own).
Essentially, this stops the crazy-homeless-person problem on the supply side - stop making them.
I think it definitely thins out if you have a lot of ultra-cheap housing like single room rentals and so forth. Anyone down on their luck can get a "bed and a hot meal" sort of thing, even if they're just scraping together cash from panhandling, recycling cans, and the odd benefit. Fewer people slide into it.
On that point, I think the really minimal housing (basically a shutbed with a lock) should be free, but not claimable. I.e., you can find a bed, but you can't reserve it. Perhaps a week reservation should be allowed. And you can't store things in it, as it gets hosed out every day.
Everyone who's seriously looked at the problem has noted that there is a hardcore subset of the population that *wants* to be unhoused. That will actively reject any housing that comes with any kind of restrictions...or just any housing at all.
The severely mentally ill people will trash any non-confinement-based housing they're put in and be an active threat to the other inhabitants. So that's a no-go.
The people whose situation can be fixed with fixing the housing supply are generally not the people that we really have to worry about. They're in and out of it in short order.
My son just got a small apartment in a college town, and they ran a criminal background check on him to ensure he wasn't a known felon before letting him rent there. This is for a really small crappy little apartment, but I guess they *really* don't want someone selling drugs or turning tricks or whatever on their property.
There's a persistent meme that homeless people will immediately destroy any housing they are in. Even though I'm pretty sure the vast majority of evictions are due to nonpayment of rent, not destruction of property. Furthermore, you can build housing that is virtually indestructible.
I can't speak for everyone, but for my grandmother the problem was anti-discrimination laws and eviction laws. Basically, if a prospective tenants identity ticks certain boxes, you have to be really careful about turning them down or you will get sued into oblivion, even if it's really obvious that the prospective tenant is totally going to trash the residence. Next, sometimes the problem isn't the tenant, it's the tenants abusive alcoholic boyfriend, or the 3 dogs they bought 4 months after moving in and didn't bother to train that are ripping everything apart and crapping everywhere.
Ok, you accidentally rented out to a destructive lunatic, or someone who routinely admits destructive lunatics into the property. What do you do? Evict them takes a lot of time and effort, in the meantime they will continue to destroy the property and will be even more motivated to destroy it out of revenge. If they tick any of those protected boxes, you have to be extra careful or you'll get sued into oblivion. When it's all done, well, you eat the loss: you can't sue them, they don't have any money, you'll just eat more legal fees for an unenforceable judgement. Sometimes, it's cheaper to let them be if they are still paying at least some rent, and remodel the home when they finally move on: but now you have a story about a $10k repair problem.
I mean, that's the tractable part of the problem, so we should definitely solve that one if it's not already being solved. But then you still have the people for whom this isn't a solution, because they're crazy or addicted or both. For that, you need something else.
Plus, if the most-sympathetic subset of the current homeless population is taken care of, there should be more political will to make the hard decisions about how to address the remainder.
Honestly, I expect that just increasing the supply of housing a LOT would do much of the work, without needing special programs to give the housing to homeless people.
I don't actually know the stats, but I think there aren't that many homeless people with no relatives or friends who live indoors. It may be a lot more palatable to have your schizophrenic uncle live with you so you can make sure he's taking his meds if he can have his own room in your family's 1600sqft house, than if your family is crammed in a 600sqft studio apartment and he'd have to sleep on the floor in the middle of everything.
It might take a generation for housing stock alone to solve the problem (it may not get current homeless people into homes at a high rate, but I'd expect it to stop a lot of marginal people ending up on the street in the first place). But frankly at this point I don't expect other solutions to solve it faster than that, so.
Yes! Homelessness is a symptom of the housing crisis. You can't fix homelessness without fixing the housing crisis. Even if you helped all the homeless people you have right now, you would just get new ones.
Solving the housing crisis won't solve homelessness, but you need to solve it first.
100% the housing shortage is the underlying driver. It's in theory pretty easy to fix, but in practice the politics remain incredibly thorny. The last comment Scott addressed, from the Toronto mental health worker, is exactly on point -- the lack of housing means that when people have economic bad luck and get evicted from an apartment or house, instead of downsizing into cheap, not-very-pleasant housing like an SRO, they go onto the streets. And the streets turn them into long-term basketcases.
It's a housing *cost* problem, not necessarily a housing supply problem.
Dense public housing historically has suffered from--among other things--the inevitable problems that come when people who are dysfunctional in some way are clustered (less charitably, "warehoused") together without the moderating (more paternalistically, "civilizing") influence of more socially well-adjusted people in the community. In some cases, they have in a few short decades become intolerably plagued by crime, violence, and neglect and ended up being torn down.
Those public housing projects have typically housed people who, though poor and sometimes ill-socialized, are not violently mentally ill. How do we ensure that dense, Cabrini-Green-like public housing projects for mentally ill homeless people do not decline in a similar way?
Housing supply problems and housing costs are two sides of the same coin.
Yes, public housing is harder to get right than private housing. On top of that, it costs the fisc money to set up. Instead just allowing more private housing is approximately free for the government, and also increases supply and decreases costs of housing.
I am shocked that apparently(?) no one mentioned that the city of San Francisco SUBSIDIZES ILLEGAL DRUG USE BY HOMELESS PEOPLE. People respond to incentives. Solving 80% of the homelessness problem in SF is actually easy and requires what 90% of people would call "common sense" changes.
Here's a specific set of policy changes that would solve 80% of the homelessness problem in SF:
1. Stop subsidizing illegal drug use. SF LITERALLY gives cash handouts to homeless people who immediately turn around to spend them on drugs. Stop doing this.
2. Actually arrest and imprison drug dealers.
3. Remove ALL residential zoning restrictions. (80% of homeless people are homeless for under a week. Cheap housing would solve this problem.)
4. Mandate that homeless people who test as psychotic be on long acting injectable anti-psychotics.
None of these would require us to be a "different kind of country" except 3. 1+2 are actually done in other states!
This brings to mind the notion that people are much more dissuaded from committing crimes by their likelihood of getting caught than they are by the severity of the punishment.
Likelihood and also speed of punishment, yes. It's tempting to try and save money on enforcement by cheaply increasing severity of consequences, but there is a persistent mismatch between rational incentives and behavioral psychology.
My usual quip is that the dynamic is very familiar to either an excellent criminal justice researcher, an average middle school teacher, or an amateur dog trainer.
I have a really unusual "get tough" idea. If someone is addicted to a drug, allow them access to the pure form of it. As much as they want (at a standardized strength). For free.
This WILL result in many deaths, but they will be effectively suicide, which I am not really opposed to. (Actually, I'm in favor of people being able to kill themselves painlessly, because they feel that's their best choice...I'm just not in favor of that being their best choice.)
The main reason for this attitude is that I want to take the money out of drug dealing, but I feel it would have many other advantages.
The free market would certainly help, if it were truly free. We will always suffer these problems so long as substances are prohibited needlessly. It is an infringement on our personal freedoms and rights, and creates a black market which leads to a dirty, poisoned drug supply, and unfortunately is the only reason why substances are outlawed in the first place - it is very convenient for the rich and powerful, and makes them a lot of money.
They do not care about "safey" or "addicts," or your fellow friends and family who suffer from addiction and the consequences of overly potent and dirty drugs. If they did, prohibition would be abolished, safe supplies given freely, and treatment offered to those who need it and are personally ready. This is the only humane solution, and until people see the truth, it will only ever get worse and worse, my friends.
We can agree to disagree, but I am most certainly correct about this one. As a long-time researcher, expert on pharmacology, and the societal problems associated with drug use, if substances were outlawed because they are morally wrong, or actually dangerous, we would not freely have alcohol or tobacco available, we would not have guns freely available, and the facts and statistics are on the side of reality, and substances here. We have over 50 years of failed policy, prohibition, and suffering to show that not only is prohibition wrong, and inhumane, but it has made the problem worse and worse.
Nicotine and alcohol are not extremely dangerous, and do not cost society anything on their own. Nicotine is no more harmful when pure than caffeine, and alcohol is so easy to make that thinking prohibition of them is a good idea is as foolish as thinking we can solve climate change by polluting. Unfortunately, the societal costs associated with substances, including alcohol and nicotine are only made worse by prohibition - this is why when alcohol was banned, the end result was death, suffering, and the emergence of the mafia, and why modern substance prohibition results in only death, suffering, and the modern drug cartels and gangs we see today - far worse problems than simply allowing people to use what they desire, safely and reducing harm. This is my only point, my friend, when I bring up alcohol and tobacco as examples; it must be up to the individual to decide what they want for themselves, just as we do not allow the government to control who we have sex with, what we eat, and what we drink. Substances should be age restricted, to 21+, that is certainly true, but not for consenting and educated adults. Firearms are far more dangerous, and until we see complete restrictions on firearms, we should not be considering restrictions on something far less harmful and inert than deadly and dangerous weapons, no?
I agree however, that we should not allow this topic to get us sidetracked, and that we have far more important issues to deal with at the present moment.
Nicotine isn't dangerous and doesn't have horrific social costs. It's not even addictive.
Cigarettes are bad and addictive. Nicotine itself isn't all that bad. In fact it's probably about the only thing inside of cigarette smoke that's actually good for you.
I would encourage you to keep an open mind, and although I do not condone substance use for those under the age of 18, it is one of the many gifts the Earth and God give us, and to restrict and throw out such powerful medicines for no good reason, is foolish.
> The free market would certainly help, if it were truly free. We will always suffer these problems so long as substances are prohibited needlessly.
I have lots of sympathy for your positions, but it's wrong.
Freedom in markets is not binary (like 'truly free' implies) but a gradual affair. More freedom in markets helps more.
Ask anyone running a beer brewery about all the restriction and regulation around that. But: nevertheless the market in alcohol is sufficiently free that we generally don't have to worry (too much) about a black market with a poisoned supply.
I'm generally in favour of a light touch in regulation, but markets can work and work well (enough) even when operating under the handicap of severe regulations.
I would not state it as strongly as you, but I do agree that Scott seems to downplay the weaknesses that SF has in regards to issues with crime. Though, like he mentions, there's not enough of a good police force to enforce normal laws... but SF is home to a lot of people who dislike the police and restrict them, so is that surprising?
> There's a reason so many young Somali men turn to desperate acts like piracy.
Because they can. Liberia has just 60% of Somalia's child mortality (where I'm looking at WHO data for 2021 on mortality in the age range 5-9), but seems to be similarly problematic in terms of generating pirates.
The mortality data doesn't really suggest that anarchy is the problem (as far as child mortality goes) in Somalia, or that child mortality is the problem as far as piracy goes. Here's every country, from worst to best, with mortality (5-9) above 1%: Niger (2%), Somalia (1.5%), Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Nigeria, Mali, Chad, Guinea, Madagascar, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo ("Zaire", 1.1%).
The data _does_ strongly suggest that high child mortality is caused by either of (1) being in Africa, or (2) being an island. Somalia is on the high end of Africa, but somebody has to be there.
> The more I think about Scott's position, the more frustrated I get. This is exactly the kind of bullshit he's usually so good at sniffing out and lampooning. "You guys keep saying we need to be tough, but how is that a solution? I mean, SF turned into a hellhole after we stopped enforcing laws -- and aggressively discouraged enforcement of social norms -- against vagrancy, drug use, drug trafficking, sleeping in parks, public defecation, prostitution, shoplifting, assault, and robbery. How is being tough going to help? Be more specific! We've made zero efforts to restore public order; what more can you possibly expect us to do than absolutely nothing?"
Steve Yegge wrote an incredibly shoddy essay on the same theme of weird all-in-your-own-mind helplessness arguing that it was impossible to legalize marijuana because doing so would raise too many ancillary questions, as if the same systems that apply to everything by default would somehow fail to apply to marijuana: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legalized-marijuana.html
To be concrete: littering is a crime. A tent left out on the street is litter. Removing litter, after reduction to smaller pieces for ease of transport, is a prosocial act. Repeat for bare sleeping bags.
Sleeping on the street outside any litter is a crime. It is only fair for the ongoing criminal activity to be interrupted with cold water. This fixes the "california's weather is very mild, you can have no possessions and basically be fine" part.
I am not suggesting the police do this, indeed sluggish police response may help, but I am suggesting a hundred men in a couple dozen lightly modified pickup trucks would be sufficient. Wear masks to conceal identities, come out in force on 5 random days each month.
"Provide specific alternatives to those affected" is a commendable impulse, but is the EA failure mode of your circle of concern growing bigger than your competence to improve the world. Solve the actual problem.
Regarding 1, yeah, that's a problem with drug addiction. Any form of cash transfer will get used for drugs. Any card system will have the things the card can buy be traded for drugs. I intuitively like libertarian solutions, but they often rely on assumptions that don't hold true for drug addicts. *sigh*
Regarding 3, that 80% of the homeless probably causes less than 5% of the problems for other people (in my limited experience, the big one is car camping). It's probably worth helping them more than we do, and definitely worth helping them enough that they won't transition into the type of homeless who cause the problems. But it's not going to solve all the problems - a number of people get addicted first, or go crazy first, and then that eventually leads to them becoming homeless.
I have known extremely few addicts that became homeless due solely to addiction, and similarly few homeless people who weren't definitely a bit "throwed off", as we say down here, totally apart from drugs.
I also have known very few who turned to serious crime because of addiction — the usual route is simply to go ahead and start selling too, which... well, 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 it's a crime, yeah; but 'snot really an issue 𝘣𝘺 𝘪𝘵𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧.
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(On one hand, I'm a good source for this stuff, 'cause I sold a lot of drugs and met a lot of addicts... but on the other hand, I'm clearly biased: 'sstupid, to me, to tell a goddamn adult "lol u can't eat teh bad thing!!"...
(...and I am always surprised people think this is a practical lever to wedge in there. It is almost never — never at all, that I've seen — the best use of resources: a crime for which nearly all negative societal repercussions obtain due to that very criminality, as impossible to stem as the flow of water from (through) a sieve, and — for all that difficulty and ambiguous justification! — a just symptom rather than a root cause.
(That is, it's both a mere symptom of the real issue[s] & also — in my experience and belief, anyway — a big waste of time to try effecting change upon.
(For one, everyone likes to get high—won't reduce that population much, and where there's money to be made...
(For two, as said, the problems we're wanting to address are not inherent to "consumed a substance": we all know it's possible, and usually not even difficult, to use drugs without issue—but the more "black-market" an industry, the greater the negative externalities for consumer and society both.
(And, for three... come on, y'all!—surely one must've lived a charmed life, to have never been placed in a situation to see or experience the all-consuming NEED for escape which the homeless [–or–otherwise–down-&-out] individual feels.
(Get rid of all the regular dealers, and they'll just turn to alcohol — worse than almost anything else, in terms of "crazy accelerant"; somehow prevent them from obtaining alcohol [good luck!], and I guaran-fuckin'-tee you, eventually everyone will be complaining about the violently insane and odorous jenkem-junkies.
(tl;dr, you won't be able to stop the trade, nor the desire; and, failing these—nor the junkies. But I guess this is possibly the wrong place to debate the philosophical and empirical merit of fighting yet another battle in the Great Drug War, heh... oops. Sorry!—)
Not actually sure whether this is a holdover policy/feature from SSC, but I think there is/was an hour cutoff for edits, which is/was an attempt to balance the ability to fix typos spotted immediately afterwards, with preventing the removal of context to make yourself look better after someone had replied to you.
(I just did a test edit of my grandparent comment, and it worked fine? Sometimes with long comments like yours, after I edit, Substack hides my comments or truncates them, but that's a display problem that can usually be solved by reloading the page.)
I have a family member that is on the verge of being homeless (they only aren't due to the kindness of other family members, which is being severely tried and may run out at any moment) and while I guess in some sense their indigence isn't due "solely" to addiction, but instead due to their inability/unwillingness to hold down a job and their tendency to steal from and otherwise alienate their friends and family members, it's hard not see these latter traits as basically downstream from the addiction.
Yes my friend, you are correct. The War on Drugs is the entire cause of our societal ills and problems when it comes to addiction and substance use. If people had access to safe supplies, and treatment for when they are personally ready for it, we would see massive improvements in all the problems people associate with substance use. Unfortunately, it makes a small group of certain people a lot of money to keep medicines restricted and illegal for most.
Indeed, and guess what? They still managed to survive, create functioning societies, and take care of one another, despite insanely high rates of alcoholism and drug use and abuse. Prohibition unfortunately is the tool of government control, and an infringement on one of our most essential basic freedoms and rights - if we are not free to choose our partners, our food, our drinks, and what we consume, think, and say, then we cannot call ourselves free, and we most certainly are not brave. If we want to live up to our title as Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, then prohibition has no place in our society. Substances should certainly not be freely available for those under the age of 21 without necessity, but otherwise, they are no worse than having free access to dangerous reading material, guns, or tools.
I don't think there's any world wherein prohibition is a permanent solution.
Even in a state like Texas, where you still cannot obtain cannabis (nor, of course, psychedelics) legally, the head shops are chock-full of both — and the business was booming long before now, just in the more usual ways. (i.e., first dealers & black-market; then grey-market online sellers; then "deep web" black-markets; then head shops; and now all four co-exist & the market still isn't saturated!)
...and that's for stuff that is much harder to acquire outside of the nation than alcohol would be / was, and mostly harder to manufacture as a clandestine "Say No To Nanny-States!" freedom-fighter (as I think bootleggers, drug smugglers, clandestine chemists, etc. ought to be termed) than alcohol is.
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You may say "yeah okay we can't stop it but we can make it a damn sight harder", and this is true, but I think the evidence is essentially undeniable that the /greater part/ of ills from nearly any illegal drug come from the fact of illegality first and foremost.
It reminds me of the "abuse deterrent" APAP in many opioid analgesics — yes, yes, it helps with the pain relief! that's totally why the ungodly amount of acetaminophen was included! it's been subject to blanket reduction or elimination twice now, because for some reason it was just killing people instead of helping them... but it was still a valiant effort, you might say–
...–reninds me of that, I say, in that it's a cure that is either worse than the illness—or, at the very least, _incontestably_ /almost as bad/ as the illness (it's definitely the former, IMO, of course; but so as to avoid argument over exact numbers & the commensurability of this or that outcome)—and, for all the cost levied in both dollars and human suffering, it's ultimately done in aid of a cause that is itself ethnically objectionable...
...or at least questionable. Say we were trying to prevent orphans from starving, or stop the nationwide epidemic of Ginger Murders, and okay—fine—even if the efforts backfire, well, can't blame us for trying our damnedest.
But to levy such costs upon a populace /because you think you ought to be able to tell me—a grown-ass adult! apparently!—what sort of plants and powders I can eat?/
Nah. Go straight to Hell with that, Nanny Sam! Go home; you're all hopped up on Puritinism or something... take a Summer of Love and call me in the new millennium!
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Of course, alcohol IS pretty far to the bad side on the "Harm/Benefit" scale; I've seen more lives ruined by alcohol than anything else (except maybe benzo abuse), /even per-capita/.
Say what you will about my belov–... my, uh, totally-conquered ex-lover, the opioid analgesic—they're certainly playing with fire, for many—but they don't create the same societal ills and lapses of judgment that alcohol does.
People with little first-hand psychopharmacological experience often seem to picture other drugs as Super-Alcohols: "you can't make a decision like that right now; you just took 10mg hydrocodone!" — but in my own experience, one's judgment is left largely intact with almost every drug-of-abuse...
...except alcohol, benzos, and a few little-known side-notes (e.g. datura). With these it's a qualitatively different sort of mental alteration, not at all comparable to—and much, much worse than—other drugs.
I could tell some stories, maaaan! (...but I've already indulgently meandered my way across this comment at far too great a length, heh... sorry, oops–)
As someone who has drifted into being a teetotaler... NO!!!
I don't want to give the Mafia another boost, nor to empower a 21st century version of Al Capone. We tried that already, thank you very much. If you can somehow magically confine ethanol to use in organic chemistry and rocket fuel, fine. Another go at Prohibition - NO!
Beer was safer than city water before clean tap water technology; the ready availability of clean water cut alcohol consumption enormously. I say that as a lifelong teetotaler.
I agree prohibition isn't a great policy, but we do still see a lot of people wrecking their lives via alcoholism. The traditional image of a bum is a guy begging for money with which to buy a cheap bottle of wine.
I wouldn't say "solely", and it sounds like you have more direct experience than I. But my impression is that addiction is a thing that eats more and more of life, and makes it fragile. So when something else goes wrong, there aren't resources or willpower or habits left to help solve the problem, and then it all collapses.
That's true, actually. It's like a house of cards: you can make it work — until you need one of those cards elsewhere, or an errant breeze strikes a load-bearing flush...
That was my experience and I saw it many times also, so you're definitely correct. On the other hand, I'm currently on opioids 24/7 and it imposes no costs upon me (except $50/mo. for the prescription) — because it's legal, and I've an adequate supply for cheap, and I'm not dealing with sketchy people or driving for hours only to get stood up by a flaky dealer (why they always so flaky? the very few that treated it like a real business were precious as gold to us back then!).
It's like putting gas in the car, or remembering to brush your teeth: impinges dimly upon your consciousness, occasionally, but demands almost nothing.
(Of course, were I to somehow lose my prescription access, we would quickly revert to crawling on the floor vomiting and sobbing that I wished I were dead... [shivers] opioid withdrawal: never again. never again. I'd almost truly rather die... almost. God, THOSE days are just as vivid as the good ol' Morphine Windfall Days that summer of 20whatever... I should remember the former every time the latter tempts me to supplement my "official" prescription...)
...I can't remember if this is relevant at all. Well, I already wrote it, soooo–
Seems relevant to me? :-) I'm sort of in a "there but for the grace of God go I" situation, except as an atheist. Posting comments on other people's blogs is a scary enough addiction for me.
Exactly. No matter the substance, even in the case of opioids, as long as safe supplies are provided, along with education, there is a minimal impact to the life of users and even so-called "abusers"(not a real thing but I digress.) This is precisely why the only solution is to offer safe pharmaceutical quality substances and drugs to any adults above age 21, tax them, and offer treatment and medical help to those who are ready to get clean. As your experience has shown you, and mine, along with most medicine-using Americans, it is not the substances that is the problem, but the problems caused by prohibition. Worst of all, prohibition also makes it nearly impossible for medical patients to access important life-saving meds, and it is not the business of other people, or the government to define who needs what medicine. That is between the patient, their own bodies, and their doctors, if they choose to obtain them by prescription.
Yeah, it is always shocking to me that we — as a society, and for some insane and ungodly (if God there be, then for once this word "ungodly" must here surely be only the stark truth) reason — have decided that, between the choices of...:
• people in agonizing pain get relief, and a few people in agonizing pain who cannot navigate the medical system or to whom a bad doctor was assigned get relief too, and a few people who just like opioids get high; or
• many people in agonizing pain /don't/ get relief /even within the system/, and those /outside/ the system who try can add "broke and in legal trouble" to their list of "things making me regret being born", and a few fewer people who just like opioids manage to get high...
...we have decided that, as I was saying, /the latter is somehow definitely the preferable choice./
There's less debate on this topic than upon questions like "avocado toast: delicious, or degenerate?", for cryin' out loud. I shall never understand.
This might be something that homeless-people-experts know all about, but for me as a layperson, the "short-term homelessness" thing hopelessly confuses all quantitative analysis of the issue. The people who are homeless for less than a week are obviously not the people my father-in-law rants about needing to GET TOUGH on; he's talking about the chronic homeless. He's one of those who thinks lots of homeless people move to California from other states because we're too nice, and who knows, maybe he's right? I could give him statistics about what percentage of our homeless are from California, but it's not clear to me if those numbers just reflect e.g. middle-class friends of mine who were homeless for two weeks one time in their twenties, as opposed to the raving scary homeless people my father-in-law complains about. If we're just going by overall numbers, the former are going to make the latter statistically invisible.
There's also the people who move to CA, spend one night in a sheltered place, and thereafter count as being "from CA". And the people who are homeless in CA for long enough that they count as being "from CA" (in my state it's 6 months, last I heard).
Drug abuse and homeless spiral is a symptom of our ill and sick society - to be more "tough" would only make the problems worse, my friend. It is not the correct way to go.
Weird how some places are "tough" and also have nice safe streets and parks and libraries and stuff. It's a real pity that San Francisco got the tragic dirt and Singapore got the magic dirt.
A large problem that I see, when it comes to the homeless problem, is that people are way too focused on drug use. So what, if people choose to use substances to get through? You would too if you were homeless, or mentally ill, or anything like that. Judge not what other consenting adults do to themselves - so long as they do not cause harm, there is no harm in allowing them to do as they wish. Alcohol is the most harmful substance one could put in their body, and most harmful substance societally, and yet we allow it to be freely sold and consumed. If people focused on helping their fellow neighbors, who are suffering and ill, rather than judging for no good reason, we would all be better off. Illicit substances are not illegal because they are dangerous, or for any reason, other than to control the population, and to control your minds, my friends. We have been freely allowed to consume that which we desire, for all of history, until the GOP decided to enforce prohibition of substances, because they realised a population that does not have access to mind-opening substances is easier to control, dumber, and an excellent excuse to prosecute and arrest "undesirables."
I ask you all to focus on what truly matters, and on yourselves and helping those in need, and not judging them for their private, consentual choices of vice and substance. The overdose problem has become so terrible BECAUSE of prohibition and a lack of safe supplies and clean substances - our friends, families, and fellow beings will continue to die and suffer until we get our heads out of our asses and stop focusing on petty matters used to divide and distract us, and work together and help each other with acceptance, love, and empathy. This is the truth, as somebody who had undergone addiction issues, saved myself, and now regularly helps addicts, and as somebody who had worked with addicts and watched countless friends die because of fentanyl and overly potent and dirty drugs.
It will never end, or ever get better, until prohibition is ended and abolished. Harm reduction, education, and safe supplies are the solution, not what you propose here. All that I see you proposing is a terrible loss of freedoms and an increased police state; it would be a terrible mistake to do as you say, my friend. Do not fall for the propaganda of the government - they do not have your best interests at heart when it comes to this matter. To force peaceful people onto anti-psychotics without their consent is just as psychotic as offering to just line them up and shoot them, to solve the problem. Drug dealer should be arrested, but only if they willingly and knowingly sell and distribute substances that are not what they are advertised as. Drug users and addicts should be left alone unless they are causing harm - to cause harm and public distruption is already illegal, and there is no need to maintain prohibition of substances. It is an infringement on our basic rights and freedoms as a people. Alcohol required an amendment, but no other chemicals or natural herbs and medicines do? It is absurd and does not work or help ANYONE, let alone society.
Portugal decriminalised, and offered rehab and treatment to those who were willing to partake. Crime rates dropped, drug use rates dropped, and believe it or not, much got better. Drug use is not wrong - what is wrong is judging consenting adults for using substances if they so choose. When addicts are offered clean and safe supplies, and safer alternatives, they actually become productive and healthy members of society. Further prohibition and enforement of laws which are morally wrong will only make things worse; the whole problem is a symptom of our sick systems and society, NOT a cause.
I actually have been following along, and only pointed it out as an example. The fact of the matter remains that for the vast majority of human history, prohibition was never required, and is a great infringement on our rights and freedoms. If we are truly the land of the free and home of the brave, then substances cannot be more restricted and regulated than guns, alcohol, ideas, or choice of food, drink, or home; otherwise, how can we call ourselves free, let alone brave?
No worries, my friend, and I certainly do not condone needless substance use, but my comments come from a life-time of struggling personally with addiction, watching countless people die and suffer, and an expertise on the specific medical and societal issues which are related, to the average person, with addiction and drug use and misuse. I would encourage you to keep an open mind, because prohibition has been a valiant effort, stemming from good intentions, but a massive failure in all aspects. It, similar to the DARE programs, has harmed society far more than the substances ever would, increased rates of use and overdose, and is not at all based in good science or reality.
Because it is wrong, and is not humane, good for society, for the individual, and quite frankly, yes, not brave or free. To be truly brave means to do what is right - this means providing people with SAFE and CLEAN medicine, substances, food, and water, and taking care of each other. Just because you bought the propaganda does not mean you are right. You are very wrong - there is no narcotic more brain-rottinn alcohol and sugar, yet they are freely available. I expect once I hear you arguing that we should ban sugar, porn, free speech, and guns, that I will believe you to be truly of your word; otherwise, I kindly implore you to defer to expert and professional medical opinion, since this is a medical issue. And the facts and science state that the only way to help addicts and society are to provide harm reduction practices, safe and regulated substances, while educating people on safe use and real facts, and providing help to those who choose to avail themselves of it and are ready to get better.
That is the only way to help the problems associated with drug and substance use, backed by facts, science, research, and the medical community. Just because YOU don't like it doesn't mean others need to avoid it, it only means that YOU should not do it, and should avoid it. However, other consenting adults must be left alone, otherwise you are no better than those who wish to restrict free speech or any of the other tools that we valuable to humanity. Medicines are a tool like any other, and none are worse than others; the dose makes the poison, not the substance. Water is deadly too in excessive amounts, as is literally anything else in the world.
> We have been freely allowed to consume that which we desire, for all of history, until the GOP decided to enforce prohibition of substances, [...]
Huh, what? Please check your history. Eg the famous prohibition on alcohol in the US is a good example that's well documented. But see also the International Opium Convention of 1912 and 1925.
In any case, it's a false dichotomy to claim you either need complete freedom to consume what you like, or you need a complete ban.
You can get pretty far by legalising (most) drugs but slapping a (high) tax on them. You can even have lots of arbitrary restrictions, see eg the ban on Sunday drinking in some parts of the world etc, and still not have a black market.
Talk with anyone running a beer brewery for the amount regulations they have to follow. Yet, there's not much of a black market in beer.
You could argue that we need higher taxes on alcohol. I don't know if that's true, but you can have a productive discussion about it.
The way tobacco, alcohol and these days marijuana are regulated can be a good framework to see how other substances should be regulated.
You also don't need to legalise absolutely everything. If people have a decent range of options to choose from, you get most of the benefits of complete legalisation of everything.
Ah yes, we do not disagree in this case; I responded to another one of your comments friend as well. Taxation while treating substances the same way we treat alcohol, tobacco, and recreational cannabis is the way to go, while using those funds for education and treatment programs. I apologise for the slightly inaccurate history claims, as yes, alcohol prohibition, and prohibition of some few substances was attempted before the 70's, but prohibition really only ramped up to modern scales and levels of criminalisation and propaganda in recent times, which is what I mostly meant; but regardless I should have been more accurate.
I don't think there's any relation between the amount of tax take you make from a specific drug and the optimal amount of public spending on education and treatment programs. Eg cannabis can probably raise quite a lot of revenue, but as long as you aren't smoking it, there's not too much of a health risk that needs addressing. Conversely, I can imagine there are drugs that need a lot of preventing, that don't raise much revenue.
Money made from taxing drugs can just go into general revenue. And drug related health programs can also be financed from general revenue.
Btw, taxation can be tantamount to prohibition. If a joint costs you a million dollars, it might as well be banned. (And high enough taxation also gives you exactly the same black market and organised crime problems as outright prohibition.)
"if you bussed people to shelters in a cheap town somewhere else what would stop them just getting a bus back" - I'm sure some would, but a lot of people probably wouldn't put in the effort to move back from a mediocre quality shelter in the central valley to a tent encampment in SF (especially if SF didn't give them subsidies). The city itself might want to bus them back, but could probably be stopped with a mix of subsidies from the state for having the homeless shelter and sticks if they tried to bus them back out too blatantly.
The tent cities have easy access to drug markets. If you're not willing to open a drug markey in the valley, I do think most of the psychotic homeless will be willing to work pretty hard at getting back to the tent cities.
Makes sense, part of this really does need to involve actual policing of drug markets (although even getting rid of the fraction that won't or can't put in the effort to move back from a shelter to a tent city to be near drugs is a nontrivial improvement).
My city and I suppose some other European high housing cost cities adopt a solution from DZ above. I.e. forcing the homeless people encampments via systematic police harassment into marginal, liminal spaces. Like under the literal bridges, around railway tracks, out-of -the-way forests, brownfields, wherever; those areas in fact I think form a majority of physical space in almost any country.
It is not very humane to homeless people but it basically successfully addressees the problem of them being annoying and possibly dangerous to normies.
The problem with this is "out of sight out of mind". The encampments degenerate fast, into wretched hives of drugs and theft and rape and murder, spilling out into surrounding areas. But there's less incentive to improve the rest of the system, so the political will is even less available than at present. And then some reporter will show up and film the encampment and it becomes an instant scandal, and we go right back to the current situation. (My city has been through the cycle at least once already.) And the people in the encampment continue to suffer.
I mean I agree that people in encampments continue to suffer, but at least here their suffering is successfully ignored and does not spill over very much; certainly homelessness is way down on political concerns than in California and crime is much lower (for other reasons; it just show that our policy does not lead to some uncontrollable increase in criminal activity).
Likewise, I agree that this solves a number of the problems that the homeless cause for non-homeless people, and minimizes some of the others. But I'd prefer a solution that also helped salvage whatever is salvageable in the lives of the homeless, you know? This is a bit too much like putting them all in a box and waiting until they die.
I'm not sure if this belief is strictly consistent with other beliefs of mine, but I do think an advantage of the SF way is that the rest of us notice what's going on, enough that we're actually talking about it. I suppose one could call it "raising awareness"; the show "Kimmy Schmidt" lampooned the alternative as "Febreze" (or a legally convenient reskin of that product).
Slow, hard, boring work doesn't seem to get a lot of traction in online pundit communities. Possibly with one visible exception, but I don't follow Matt Yglesias, so I don't know how well his approach approximates my ideal.
I take issue with your characterization of drugs and substances are wretched - there is nothing wrong or immoral with substance use, and as an expert on the subject matter, compared to all drugs and substances and medicines out there, alcohol is the number one worst substance in term of personal, societal, and mental harm. Aside from that, I have nothing more to note, my friend.
That only occurs in a minority of cases, for any and all substances. It is just as correct to say that being poor is immoral, being mentally ill is immoral, or being homeless is immoral, or not working 80 hours a week is immoral. These are all obviously wrong statements, inhumane, and cruel ideas. And the same goes for substance use; I would encourage you to educate yourself and critically think about the facts and reality of substance use, addiction, and society, and not fall for the government propaganda that only prohibits substances because it makes a lot of money for the rich and powerful, and makes people easier to control, and gives police a convenient excuse to arrest people they do not like.
If drugs were illegal because they were harmful or immoral, guns would be far more criminalised, sugar would be as well, as would alcohol and tobacco, and we would not be allowed to purchase knives or hammers, my friend.
> I take issue with your characterization of drugs and substances are wretched
I'm not actually saying that! But I do think the widespread use of drugs as emotional anesthesia is a problem, especially when they are addictive, and consume people's lives (more problems require more anesthesia), and especially when they cause people to cannibalize everything around them (from their interpersonal relationships, to power lines) to get money to buy the drugs.
I will slightly defend alcohol in that I suspect your "number one worst" is related to its popularity, and if, say, PCP were as widely used as alcohol is, PCP would win.
Ah, well on that you won't find any arguments from me. They are a tool, and like any tool, a miracle in the right hands, and deadly when misused. This is why truthful and factual education about substances is so important, rather than fear and abstinence based propaganda.
Speaking as somebody who doesn't drink, I will defend our right to drink with my very life, even though I don't; PCP surprisingly in my experience is not as physically harmful, but certainly requires as much care as alcohol or any other potent drug.
The thing is, at least here in germany these homeless people absolutely have the option to find shelter, food and even some marginal employment. There is lots of supportive infrastructure for them. At that point, if they refuse all of the support society is offering and/or are constantly are violent towards others, telling them to at least please stay away from the rest of society seems less like inhumane harassment and more like a reasonable compromise - if you really want to be on your own, then *be on your own*. Don't bite the hand that feeds you and then complain you get no food.
I cannot disagree with you, except in the case of drug use and mental illness. Drug users should not be placed in the same box, until they become violent or dangerous; same goes for the mentally ill and poor. We are all human, after all.
Once somebody has proven to be violent, and unwilling to at least try rehabilitation, then prison or being allowed to live in the wild or more rural areas seem to be about equally humane to me.
This approach seems to work better than any alternative I’ve seen. I live in Philadelphia, where for years most of the homeless encampments used to be concentrated around the disused Conrail tracks, conveniently located next to the city’s major drug market in Kensington. Then the city “discovered” the “problem” of these unsafe and unsanitary encampments, and sued Conrail to make them evict the homeless people and seal and patrol the area, claiming they would offer shelter to everyone there. Conrail did this, and all the homeless people just moved onto Kensington Ave and/or vacant lots in that neighborhood, where they present far more of a nuisance to normies trying to live their lives, and have rendered sections of an already marginal neighborhood completely unusable to everyone but themselves, with bodegas and dollar stores closing down so that now it is block after block of shuttered storefronts with homeless people camped in front of them shooting themselves up in the neck and making campfires on the sidewalk. The previous situation was preferable to pretty much everyone.
> There’s already more or less a single-payer healthcare system for homeless schizophrenics. Poor people get Medicaid, and I am not a legal expert but I think schizophrenia is enough of a disability to qualify people for Medicare too. None of these people pay for their medical care and this isn’t an issue.
Emphasis on the "less."
One major benefit of single-payer for the mentally ill is the lack of bureaucracy.
Applying for and renewing Medicaid involves a considerably amount of wherewithal. Not having a fixed address, phone number, or email address makes it more difficult, as does having a mental illness. And you need to hold onto your Medicare card after receiving it. Yes, there's help available for applying for those sorts of things, but some mentally ill people reject that help. I think you underestimate how much better it is to just to be able to give your name at a hospital or doctor's office and nothing else and not have to apply for anything.
Plus these "free" health insurance in the US also include co-pays, deductibles, and so forth. They are not fully free. In the UK there is a flat co-pay (£9.90) for certain prescriptions but no other fees for any GP or hospital treatments.
As an American living in the UK, it was unexpectedly really great to not have to fill out forms! Worth it for that alone.
This cuts both ways however. Lower barriers to use means that repeat visitors, individuals who essentially live in A&E or this GP or another are common. Waiting times are extremely high. And it also doesn't appear to have had significant benefits to our own class of mentally ill drug dependent long term homeless population, which appears to go from strength to strength, especially in London.
For anyone interested in this I would highly highly recommend the Louis Theroux documentary "Drinking to Oblivion" from 2015. Whilst it doesn't directly cover homeless people, it does cover extreme alcoholics who are in and out of sheltered housing and some who practically seem to live at the King's College Hospital (free of course). Being able to check in, have your life saved, detox, and go over and over again on the tax payer presumably saves some lives. But trade offs do exist.
IME wait times for routine care are shorter in the UK. I can easily get same day appointments with my GP, for instance. Wait times do tend to be quite long for things that aren't urgent, i.e. autism diagnosis, however. I understand that frustrates people but to me it seems more equitable.
>One major benefit of single-payer for the mentally ill is the lack of bureaucracy
Scott actually mentioned the bureaucratic issues in the original article.
>They lose their prescription and don’t know how to get another one. Or they call their insurance, insurance whines “these drugs cost $500 and you lost your last prescription too, we’re not paying”, and they don’t know what to do.
>The pharmacy/insurance demands the doctor make some trivial irrelevant change to the prescription before they’ll accept it. The patient doesn’t know how to call their doctor, or doesn’t own a phone, or they contact their doctor but the doctor is sick of pharmacies/insurances demanding trivial things. In any case, nothing gets done.
>The patient messed up their appointment with the welfare bureaucracy that was supposed to give them a free subway pass, so they didn’t get one, so now they can’t make it to their doctor’s appointment.
>The patient went to their appointment with the welfare bureaucracy that was supposed to give them a free subway pass, but the welfare bureaucracy was inexplicably running three hours late and closed before seeing them, and the bureaucrats didn’t apologize or make an alternative appointment, so the patient didn’t get a subway pass and couldn’t make the appointment.
>The patient went to their appointment with the welfare bureaucracy that was supposed to give them a free subway pass, but in the waiting room they spotted a drug dealer who had a grudge against them, so they left because they worried they’d get beaten up.
I don't see how "be tough" isn't a viable answer here, so long as we step one meta-level out. Looking at SF, it seems fair to say that it's gotten itself into this situation by systematically following "be soft" every time it got time to choose a policy. So "be tough" *is* a plan:
- Instead of using, as a guide, "be soft" to decide which policy to pick, use "be tough".
- relitigate every decision made in the past, say, decade, going backwards, regarding homeless policy
- when a conflict arises with a prior policy, either carve out an exemption or flip that one as well.
I don't know what sort of plan this actually cashes out in policy, but it seems viable as an electoral movement. Like, you could write down what sort of policy this would actually result in but it doesn't even seem *necessary.* Like the classic saying about ASI, you don't know what moves it will make, but you know what the outcome will be. And a bunch of your objections sound like "well we can't decide to be tough here, because it won't work due to this other policy where we've already decided to be soft". Yes, the plan would be to reverse that also.
Am I missing something? I mean, it's not like anyone proposed a concrete plan for the current state of affairs. Right? We didn't get here as an explicit, coherent plan, we got here as a side effect of vague feelings used as a guide to make policy. If that's what got SF into the mess, it seems completely fair to say "okay, let's take off the part of the decisionmaking apparatus where we pick the decision based on soft feelings, and then back up ten years and go again based on hard feelings this time." It's not very wonkish, but it seems completely realistic.
The point being that, much like a chess match between an Elo 500 player and an Elo 3000 player, the outcomes of a contest between a human and a superhuman intelligence is one in which you may not be able to predict what the moves will be in advance, but you know who’s going to win. This is often used as a rebuttal to the superficial argument that those concerned about AI safety are less focused on the “how” than on the intelligence disparity *per se.* The fact that Dodos had no understanding of the principles of sailing ships made them no less extinct.
Technically not quite the same thing, although there's widespread belief that AGI will be able to bootstrap into ASI with extremely short times and it's tough to imagine an AGI that won't dramatically outperform humans various problem domains. AGI generally refers to human-level general intelligence rather than things that will be able to outthink humans in every problem domain.
...great! That's an understandable position and also a fun bit of rhetoric to shout.
Except, thing is, we're not just about the rhetoric here. What we now want is the actual answers to some questions like "so what plan, exactly, do we end up with when we do this? Does everyone who does this end up with the same plan, and if not, can we work out what the differences are so we can think about them?"; and, well, everyone keeps looking down shiftily, taking a step back and muttering "not it!" whenever the call for volunteers to actually do that work comes, because it sounds like it's /a lot/ of work, the work doesn't sound like much fun, and actually proposing concrete things gives people talking points they can argue with and complain about.
I think the fellow you responded to—or, well, someone 'round here—provided a decent semi-rebuttal to that:
• "SF /got here/ without clear-cut policy objectives & steps (+ sub-steps & prelim. steps) & action plans, and all that stuff; it seems fine to say, therefore, 'I propose we /get back out/ of the pit we wandered into by again simply wandering—in the opposite direction.¹'"
I phrased it as a joke, in my other comment (above) — though now I see that, as always, my genius knows not a bound, nor any Aries! — yet this actually reminds me of my "joke"-proposal:
• "Everyone—especially the cops—just has to start being pricks to the homeless: cause trouble over small things, get rid of / modify anywhere that seems too long-term–comfy (slope the benches!), release the hounds, etc.
• "They're like flies: if it's too much trouble to spread their shit on your shit, they'll buzz off for easier marks and greener patties."²
It's not an instant process, of course, but I think it is well-known that some cities are "homeless-friendly" in a way much–more-so than others; and—in a counter-intuitive turn—it appears being "homeless-unfriendly" (so to speak) /reduces/ the amount of human feces upon your sidewalks!
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→ notes, footnotes, take off your Sunday... coats 🎶 ←
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¹: (up, presumably)
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²: ("...now, mosquito-type bums, they're trickier... they don't stop comin' even if you wave them away a half-dozen times. Had one of these approach me in the Frankfurt airport, some fucked-up–lookin' old Turkish guy.
("I gave him—rather generously, I thought—a 5€ bill; it wasn't enough, apparently; he kept following me and talking at me—in God-knows-what language, because it sounded neither like Deutsch nor Turkey—and finally, he GRABBED ME as if to stop me from leaving to get my rental car... and I came a bit unglued.
("Proof of efficacy, though!— all he needed was to know he wasn't welcome, spoken in the 💚Universal Language💙³, made it so that I never saw him again... or, at least, he stayed away from ME. 🤷♂️👌")
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³: (as Gandhi said: "if only we could learn to shove one another a little more." 😔✊)
Oh, you and your hyperbolic rhetoric are not a solution, and being touch on those who suffer, are poor, and marginalized will only make things worse. Our society is ill and sick, and "tough" will make things far worse, my friend. Society, which means the average person, and most importantly, the rich and powerful, need to get their heads out of their asses, and focus on doing good, uniting, and helping those who need help. We are ALL humans, not just you. We all deserve a place to live, clean food and water, and comforts. Not just you, not just the rich, and not just the homeless. Being homeless unfriendly does not solve the problem; it is no more of a solution than tossing your trash under your bed cleans your home, because you think it disappears when it is out of sight. You would soon find that although you no longer see the shit and garbage, you will soon start to smell it, my friend
I don't know, man — it sounds a lot more like other people, the "we are all brothers" sort, are smelling the shit, and /my/ city is nice and clean.
But it's true that eventually /someone/ is going to get stuck with the buck, so to speak, and be unable to pass it along to the next city/state. What to do about that, I don't know, but I'm glad it's only an academic concern for me & mine!
...well, I say that; but it isn't, actually — now that I think of it, even we are seeing the effects of a sick society. We /have/ had a concerning influx of violent drifters.
The question is: did we get here by being "tough", or being lax? And then the second question is the one Scott asks (if being tough isn't how we got here, how do we use it to get better? /can/ we?).
I'm not really so hard-hearted as all that — it is only luck that I haven't been homeless myself, at a few points, and the way things are going for me lately it's not so inconceivable you'll not soon be reading my ramblings as they're being sent from public libraries — but if there's a solution, I don't see it.
> cause trouble over small things, get rid of / modify anywhere that seems too long-term–comfy (slope the benches!)
...but we already do all this stuff (as Scott points out!). Beggars downtown are treated with hostility before being told to move along. The hostile street furniture industry is HUGE. So I'm not sure what we're supposed to be changing? Since it clearly hasn't worked, by your logic perhaps we should now be trying the opposite - go super kind, get rid of all the hostile street furniture, create comfortable places where people can exist without having to pay someone for the privilege, etc?
> it seems fine to say, therefore, 'I propose we /get back out/ of the pit we wandered into by again simply wandering—in the opposite direction
Even being super charitable and treating our current situation as the result of a simple strategy that can be reversed rather than a random walk through uncorrelated ad hoc decisions, it remains the case that reversed stupidity is not intelligence!
In general, the problem with common sense is that it isn't common. The devil is in the details, and people always find ways to disagree on those; hence the call to pin down the details.
/Do/ you already do all of that stuff? That's the first I hear of it; I've read lots of articles about how e.g. San Francisco is super lax re: homelessness & crime — more like your "super kind" proposal, actually — whereas my homeless-folks-free city in Texas is notorious for being cruel to them.
But I've no personal experience of the famous coastal hellhole, myself, so maybe it's done a 180 recently.
To be tough is not going to help - the homeless problem and all the problems associated with it is a symptom of a sick and ill society. It is not drugs that are the problem, the mentally ill, or the homeless, and to believe that being "tough" on our poor, marginalised, and suffering members of society will help anything is foolish.
??? No, our society is sick because the average person, and our leaders, care more about themselves, money, and material comforts over love and their fellow human beings. This extends equally to those who view addicts or drug users as being immoral, for doing nothing more than choosing consentually for themselves what to do in their free time.
The majority of addicts, drug users, and mentally ill people are functional and help society far more than the average wealthy person, for example. They should be separated from society no more than YOU should, for saying such judgemental nonsense. Those who are addicted to hate, judgment, and fear or money are far more destructive than ANY drug addict out there, my friend. Please engage more critically, not only for your own sake, but for the world's sake.
Then let us thank God and praise the Lord for not allowing you to write our laws, and for your own sake I implore you to reconsider your opinions and ideas, because they are far more judgemental and destructive than any addict I have ever met, even the worst so called 'fentanyl zombie'
I think his opinions are pretty reasonable and shared by a lot of people. The "fentanyl zombie" who steals and assaults people to fuel their habit is way worse than someone who says right wing things on the Internet (I know this is controversial!)
I'm going to unwisely dare to summarize Scott here, but he basically says, or we implies, that the reason you can't just "increase toughness as necessary" until the problem is solved, is that that would require rolling back Supreme Court rulings that we would not be willing to live without. There's no way to target the rights of homeless people without targeting everyone's rights.
A perfect example vagrancy. The Supreme Court didn't strike down vagrancy laws to "help the homeless." The laws were used to harass and demean all kinds of innocent travellers and strangers, including well-compensated traveling workers.
IIRC you asked for responses from law enforcement last time also and didn't seem to get much in way of response. Are there just no cops subscribed to ACX? Do they all just inhabit their own little bubbles on the Internet?
I would imagine their bubbles aren't little, but minimal overlap with a place like ACX. There used to be a couple that commented on the SSC subreddit, IIRC, but maybe didn't make the jump to commenting here. Possibly also more hesitation than there used to be, not wanting to risk negative attention if they're lazy with opsec.
Peter Moskos crosses over from the cop bubble to the academic bubble. But he's on the east coast, I don't know if he's commented on SF's homeless problem.
Law enforement is unfortunately not equipped to help society and this problem. They are trained, and their jobs are the protection of capital and the elite, rich, and powerful. They are not equipped to fix a problem that has been building up for over fifty years of poor government and law, and will continue to get worse so long as we, the people, continue to elect fools and morons who do not know anything, and do not truly care about anything other than themselves and their own bank-accounts. Corporations and the rich have hijacked our society and structures of government, and we will continue to see problems grow until people start living with love, acceptance, empathy, and mercy; not being "tough" and spewing hateful and fearful rhetoric, which only serves to further divide society and further enrich the already rich, my friends.
I used to prosecute misdemeanors and, yes, lots of what Scott discussed above about the difficulty of proving your case and what feels like a lot of effort for little gain, is true. But there is a lot to be gained from just declaring that you wont engage in prosecutions like NYC did against Daniel Penny. Declare that your office will always side with the employed over the encamper unless there is a clear instigation of the ENTIRE encounter by the regular employed human (something like taking a Molotov cocktail and bombing a homeless guy). Tell people if they are mildly aggressed and respond with pepper spray, they will be totally fine. Often the problem is that the law is actually a stacked deck against capital 'C' Citizens in favor of the lawless.
"Is it possible to become the sort of state/country that can build world-class high speed rail networks, close 80% of prisons, and end visible street homelessness? Yes, obviously, other countries do this, you could become like them somehow. But you don’t do it through ground-level rail policy, prison policy, or homelessness policy directly. You start by becoming a totally different sort of country. I would like for us to be the sort of country that does all of these things, and I hope that my blog posts/donations/votes make this more likely. But I don’t think you can start by planning the gleaming high-tech rail system, before you’ve solved the fundamental problems that make it impossible."
Huh? Could you elaborate on what these "fundamemtal problems" are? It sounds like they're not the same as the concrete problems you discuss elsewhere. Unless I'm misreading this, you just said "the ultimate true answer is to become the right sort of society" without specifying what that means. Isn't this exactly the sort of hand waving you're complaining about but on a more fundamental level?
At the risk of interpreting someone else's vague comment, having traveled a fair amount, I find Americans tend to massively discount how much other countries' ability to solve complex problems is underwritten by the fact those countries are much more ethnically homogenous nation-states where the "nation" aspect (the common ethnic culture of the people themselves) solves the problem rather than the "state" aspect (the government institutions).
So if you want to know how say, the state of Japan (the most ethnically homogenous country in the world, 98% Yamato) solves the problem of homelessness, an unpleasant answer to this is the national culture encourages people who in America otherwise would end up becoming homeless people to simply go and kill themselves (I was told the modal reason for a train delay in Japan is suicide; they have pre-printed cards onboard to issue to riders to explain the otherwise unimaginable failure).
IIRC, efficacy of a nation's welfare system is very closely correlated with its ethnic homogeneity.
I've also watched a video (obviously, I'm an expert on Japan) which said there are sufficiently cheap gaming spaces so that slightly functional homeless people have a place to stay.
I assume he means something like Ezra Klein's Vetocracy. Where there are too many actors who can block things, in this case local nimbys misusing planning and environmental regulations, local governments, etc
There's an asymmetry in ignorance. If you are ignorant about how dysfunctional systems are, that is part of the dysfunction. If you are ignorant of how a solution works, that is a point against the solution.
You are correct that this represents a rhetorical double standard, but that double standard is downstream of entropy, and not social reality.
Our society is ill, because we allow the greedy, the foolish, and the angry, and the fearful to lead us. A better society is one which elects leadership which embody the values which we as a species and as individuals value most - faith, truth, virtue, wisdom, mercy, love, and empathy. So long as we continue to act out of fear, hate, and division, and not out of empathy, kindness, and love, we will continue to be as sick as our leaders, my friends.
That is what it means to become better, and to become the right kind of society. We as a society value material comfort and greed and money more than life, love, and humans, and so we are slowly killing ourselves, our planet, poisoning our foods and waters, and will soon surely perish if we do not act better. To act better means to act with love, acceptance, and empathy!
While this is true, sometimes acting with love and empathy towards an addict who is destroying their life means setting boundaries. Love and empathy don't mean "here's all the fentanyl you want."
Varying amounts of excessive regulation around building houses/rails/anything anywhere, misunderstanding of basic economics (and thus instituting price controls or whatnot), a surprising amount of corruption, the ability for some small party to block a decision (housing being the prototypical example). He's gesturing at various dysfunctions of America, which other countries have as well to different degrees. I agree it is vague in this article, but he's done a large amount of blogposts where he sketches out plans, provides an overview of the area rather than a specific plan, etc.
I think your standards are much higher on this topic then for typical policy discussion. For example, you respond to multiple things with some version of "but you couldnt get that passed". Your gun analogy includes a "the supreme court blocks it" step. You take it as a given that homeless activists can block shelters being built if they dont like the conditions in them. That seems like exactly the sort of thing that would be solved by BEING THOUGH. I mean, if you write an article about how we need to BE THOUGH, the point is that it wouldnt just be you doing it.
On the one hand, I agree that it would be helpful to separate "why I would do if I was King" and "what I would attempt to pass in a democracy". Work out the answer to the first question, and then you can move on to the second. And it's fine to have only the first answer available to have the right to complain about the problem.
On the other hand, "this would never pass" includes a lot more information about your policy than merely its chances of becoming law. It suggests that large parts of the population believe (and will never be disuaded from believing) that your policy is either unworkable or evil. This is rational Bayesian information, right? And also, not being able to convince people of your policy's merits casts doubt on your ability to effectively implement the policy as well, even if you *were* King. Especially if your policy involves some sort of manipulation of human psychology (e.g. incentives and deterrents) not too different from that involved in political campaigning.
Tl; dr electoral plausibility of a policy encodes information about said policy's merits.
Yes, it's odd. It's probably just my imagination, but I almost feel like I'm picking up a vibe of, "are there even 10 righteous men in my comment section?" :-/ Maybe it's "pillar of salt" time for me.
From his suggested plan, it sounds like he's thought about it a fair bit, and from a position where he has some insight.
Michael Watts, above, linked an old post by Steve Yegge, and I think there are echoes of it here. A desire for a solution coupled with frustration that there is no simple solution, and more frustration that people keep suggesting simple solutions that are obviously wrong.
1. First, demand that anyone advocating for any change to existing policies articulate a comprehensive suite of policies that achieves goals which are literally impossible.
2. When that doesn't happen, declare that you don't need to listen to anything else.
There's no concern for what parts of the status quo are good or bad, or for whether any policies that somebody does put forward would make things better or worse. Only the demand to achieve the impossible or stop complaining.
Before we even try draconian policies to arrest people how about a national law declaring access to market rate housing a right and suspending all zoning laws, parking requirements etc for the construction of any purely residential structure in any location where the cost per square foot of residence exceeds a certain function of the average density per square mile. Maybe even suspend local building codes and substitute some national minimum in that situation.
Might work under the whole Wickard v. Fillburn theory of a national housing market.
This would be reasonable policy-wise but a much harder lift politically.
(Also though, why have the requirement of cost per square foot exceeding the density? If we're doing this just do it everywhere and let the market sort it out)
By definition, everyone has access to market rate housing, but maybe you mean 'what the market rate for housing would be if various contributory factors were different from what they actually are'. Gonna be tough to codify that.
Besides, I think that's a perfectly valid usage of the term. I mean do you have access to market rate heroin? Yes, under one notion of the term but under an interpretation that makes it silly. No under the interpretation that means: absent substantial legal barriers to market mechanisms (in some cases it might even be a lack of legal barriers).
Obviously what one means by that depends on context but as I said, I think context did make that clear.
Some of the building code deals with safety. That probably shouldn't be suspended.
I'm more in favor of the government creating a surplus of really durable housing with really low standards and renting it out at a bit less than cost. And also creating a bunch of "sleeping compartments", which are basically a shutbed (think a Pulman sleeper, only designed to be durable and easily cleanable) that are made available for free. Let the "free market" argue about the rest, but safe housing available for everyone.
While I think that housing is beneficial, I also think that it will likely not solve the SF homeless problem.
At the moment, I would guess only a small fraction of the people who would like to rent in SF if not for the exorbitant price are living there. If you lower the price of basic housing (or at least the kind which is compatible with having a job, so even a basic coffin hotel would qualify) substantially, a lot more Americans would move to SF.
From my understanding, a lot of people already live in SF with an oil rig mentality, where they pay a high rent for minimal accommodations to earn a high wage which they plan to spend in some other place less hostile. Half of them would probably move to free coffin hotels in an instant as it would mean not spending a significant fraction of their income on housing.
I'll push back on the "below cost" part. If the cost and the price are decoupled, world-wide experience with subsidies suggests that the gap will grow and it will become politically difficult to fix. Plus, "at cost" allows the private sector to participate through competition.
This is much more reasonable than further restrictions, draconian policies, and giving up our rights and freedoms for no good reason. All of these problems are symptoms of a rot and illness that has built up in our society, and it all started in the 70's and 80's when our previous generations sold their souls to the GOP, to hatred and fear, and to their own temporary material comforts rather than acting with wisdom and love.
Million Dollar Murray. The absolute number of hardcore homeless who are mentally ill and unable to care for themselves is tiny. Housing 600,000 asylum patients is impossible but it's also not needed.
The most common period of homelessness is one day. The second most common period is two days. All of those people can be ignored because they will very quickly remove themselves from the streets. Focus on people who have been homeless for years/decades. Use that criteria to filter on who is going to be involuntarily committed. The few thousand who qualify should get free housing plus intensive therapy, for life if need be. The savings in prison stays and ER visits would allow these programs to lay for themselves.
I had to look him up, but that's normal! At least for my area, which spends about $100,000 per homeless person per year. Although inflation means that $1M in 2003 is $1.7M in 2024, so I suppose he's still an outlier.
I've volunteered in drug rehab in a devastated rust-belt city for the last two decades. Something that is obvious from the inside but I've not ever seen mentioned here is that a lot of the people exhibiting the most antisocial behaviors that irritate the productive members of society aren't actually homeless, at least in my city. Many of them live with relatives, have section 8 housing, live in a project, or have some other arrangement where they can reliably sleep indoors, have access to hygiene facilities, and aren't in anything I'd describe as a "shelter". I've worked with hundreds of them over the last 20 years. What they lack are are money for drugs, and to a lesser extent somewhere that will tolerate their drug use when they do obtain money from drugs. In my area we've a problem with accidental arson too; they break into abandoned residential buildings (of which there are a great number) as somewhere they can get high in relative safety, then nod off with candles burning. The candles are used for both light and to cook the heroin. Stray cigarettes contribute as well to the fires. Very few of the addicts actually sleep overnight in these buildings unless its accidentally. They generally go home to sleep, to their homes, which they have, because they aren't homeless. They just need money and space to get high in peace. I don't know much about the situation in the Bay Area though.
Correct. Addicts are not the problem, and substance use is not a problem, or morally wrong in the first place. Alcohol is far more damaging societally and physically and spiritually than any illicit substance - if people truly cared about the addicts, the sick, and the marginalised, we would offer treatment, safe supplies, and education, in order to reduce harm until the addict realised for themselves that they could get better.
People only want to feel better than somebody, and so they demonise and criminalise addiction and drug users, even though our society, and the average person, is just as much of an addict as the worst addicts I have met and seen in my life, and in rehabs. Everyone has their drug and vice of choice, and to judge and demonise consenting adults enjoying themselves is the worst drug of choice out there. Anger, fear, and being mean and judgmental are far more poisonous than even alcohol or fentanyl, and will kill all of humanity and our planet if we do not wean ourselved from these terrible addictions and behaviors, my friends and followers.
While I love thst public defenders are taking the cases of commitment seriously and so diligently following the law I wonder how well such a system can possibly work given it's an adversarial system which -- in the case of commitment (or of treatment given) -- is tasked with deciding what is essentially a scientific question (diagnosis...cashed out in terms of dangerousness etc) without the ability to hire a competing expert.
For any system with extensive long term involuntary commitments I suspect you would need to hire independent medical experts to meet even the standards we have in the rest of the system. I expect that for such a system to even sorta work you probably need to be willing to commit people who seem totally fine at the moment and that means trusting the expert and that should require an independent expert.
Currently cameras mostly have video, and not sound, I think this could cause issues because often a good part of disturbing peace is screaming and stuff like that.
1) Adding sound recording should be cheap. The storage costs are orders of magnitude less than for video, and microphones are even cheaper than cameras.
2) Maybe something like a "3 strikes" rule to selectively lock up the small (5%? 1%?) of the population that causes the bulk of the problem, as per power-law-distributions, "Million Dollar Murray" etc.
3) We have so much surveillance now that I suspect a modest increase would saturate most public areas, so I suspect that a modest increase rather than a massive one, would suffice.
I don't want to weaken standards of proof of criminal acts (including disturbing the peace). I think that _satisfying_ those standards, given cameras, should be very straightforward.
It would be nice to live in a society where zero (0) people are pushed on to subway tracks!
> It would be nice to live in a society where zero (0) people are pushed on to subway tracks!
This is easy and well within reach for many societies. Some may have already achieved it.
Shanghai isn't quite there (in terms of foreclosing the possibility - I have no idea how often the event occurs), but you can easily observe that old stations have no barrier between the station and the track, while newer stations have a big glass wall that makes it impossible for anyone to be pushed onto the track. The doors in the wall only open when there's a train on the other side.
Build every station that way, and the incidence of people getting pushed onto the tracks will automatically fall to zero.
>while newer stations have a big glass wall that makes it impossible for anyone to be pushed onto the track. The doors in the wall only open when there's a train on the other side.
Neat! Many Thanks! I hadn't known about that. I'm all in favor of technical solutions. And there isn't a 2nd amendment right to push people on to subway tracks.
Yeah, Bender is the first who comes to mind (he mutters it in his sleep), but I'm sure it predates Futurama.
Mostly it comes from hanging out around AI safety people too much. When someone expresses a desire which could easily be fulfilled by killing all humans, I sometimes get the urge to respond thusly. :-)
Increased surveillance sounds nice, until you have it. It will not help or improve anything, unfortunately, and is only yet another right to privacy and freedom you are proposing we so quickly get rid of, for no good reason, other than temporary material comforts?! Homeless people, poor people, mentally ill people, and addicts are not the problem. Our problem is the rampant greed, hate, and fear we allow to rule us and our society, and until we deal with that true problem, our true enemy, we will never see improvements, and things will only get worse, my friend.
Having lived in highly surveilled societies (London, Singapore), it's a trade I'd take in a rule of law society (obv very different calculus in autocratic states). High probability repercussions for anti-social / illegal behavior makes a huge difference to quality of life. Describing the experience of living in say tenderloin district in SF as lacking "temporary material comforts" is pretty absurd.
3b. Before or after the criminal trial that will cost the taxpayers at least fifty thousand dollars if the answer to 3a is more than a long weekend, and an order of magnitude more if you're going to lock them up for a year? Yes, even with everything on video.
If anybody had a way to make criminal trials not cost so much under American rules, they'd have implemented it long before now. So you don't get to handwave "just do that".
As a total outsider with an interest in the societal issues around chronic mental illness, there have been many successes and many missteps during my 50 or so years window on the subject. The USSR and the problems of sanctioned homicide in cultures where possession and witchcraft were normative beliefs were, to my mind, the most egregious.
I was saddened on a visit to the US Capitol though when I observed psychotic deteriorated people shambling past (as in not using or being treated) new community healthcare walk in clinics which had been recently established as a policy initiative.
In the UK there were very roughly a hundred thousand long term beds closed with discharged patients being given a GP (primary physician) appointment, a prescription to take to a pharmacy and a social worker allocated. However, if they failed to attend the doctor or social worker and moved domicile they were effectively lost to the “system”. Scandalously, no figures/stats were collected or kept. So I cannot say what happened to many very debilitated people - no-one knows. I doubt that things worked out well for the majority.
Some of these problems could be solved by technology to create a microscopic long-term deep implant, containing say a stable population of genetically engineered bacteria that would release compounds to remedy or at least amelioriate whatever made the homeless person engage in self-destructive or anti-social behavior.
Examples might include anti-psychotics, testosterone blockers for kiddie fiddlers and other sex pests, or, in response to the detection of a recreational drug, compounds that would make the implant carrier feel as sick as a parrot, with a thumping headache or some other irksome and not rapidly remediable symptom.
No doubt many homeless people recognise and lament their own psychotic impulses, or wish to get off drugs, and would volunteer for this preventative or aversion therapy. Those who did not, and committed serious criminal offences, could be offered it as an alternative to jail.
It seems to me that at the present rate of progress there is little doubt that technology like this will exist sooner or later, perhaps as soon as twenty or thirty years' time.
Ozempic should be a screaming siren red light case study: TECHNOLOGY WILL PROBABLY SOLVE THIS.
Even people who are culturally opposed to transhumanism are now admitting that, yep, GLP-1 agonists are more-or-less miracle drugs for something that we thought was so complex, so deep in the human psyche that it’d never be treatable without horrible side effects (like previous weight loss drugs that were basically meth stimulants).
If, as you said, we could cure psychosis, or even just have some implantable something that makes drug addiction unpleasant, or removes sexual or other urges, then a population of calmer homeless people is much less of an immediate crisis. You’d still have people addicted to hard drugs, living debased like animals etc., and their own life span would remain incredibly short, but we can work on that separately. At least the cities would be livable again.
Further, anti-psychotics take a long time to work and have variable effectiveness. Some people are not helped much at all by current treatments, others are not helped enough to quiet the delusional reasons not to take them, or to outweigh the onerous side effects. A treatment that could reliably bring someone from florid psychosis to sanity in a few days, rather than maybe help them to an unpredictable degree in some number of weeks, would be tremendously beneficial. I don't see one around the corner, though.
Cities are very much livable, and the problem is not so much a lack of solutions or technology, it is that most people are far too egotistical and too addicted to hate, fear, and anger to ever solve these problems humanely. Homelessness, substance use, and mental illness are symptoms of a sick society, not the problems; and so without curing our sick society, no matter what you do, things will continue to get worse and deteriorate, my friends. Electing leaders who are fools, greedy, hateful, fearful, gluttonous, and lustful is precisely the problem. This is why CA, and other progressive states are so much more economically successful than any states run by the GOP; our nation will suffer the same fate as the states run by the GOP if we continue to elect snakes and evildoers to lead us.
The blind cannot lead the blind, the evil will never solve problems for the greater good.
The deaf will not hear those who speak, and those who are mute will not speak.
Elect wise and loving people, for God has given them to use for a reason, my friends and followers. Do not elect the greedy, the hateful or fearful, or the wrathful, for they shall be our undoing, and shall destroy the planet just as quickly as they destroy humanity.
No, I'm sorry, in retrospect that was an obvious typo I ought not to have corrected. In context, I thought you might have meant something with religious connotation, some variant of "playing God" perhaps, that I was missing.
This is not the correct answer, and what you propose is not only draconian, but cruel and inhumane. You are not the judge of what is psychotic, or what is morally wrong or right, and I truly thank God for that. Why don't we implant into you anti-psychotics and cut off your testicles, and see how you like?
For those who are truly heinous, and unable to rehabilitate, that is precisely what prisons and sectioned off zones are meant for. To do what you propose will only make things worse; these problems are the symptoms of a societal sickness, and your ideas and proposals will only make things worse, my friend.
Those who wish to get off drugs, or wish to be rehabilitated, should certainly recieve this as a VOLUNTARY and CONSENTUAL option, but not to be forced on people who only do no harm, choose to use substances recreationally or medicinally, or are homeless. This should only be reserved for the worst of crimes, which I would say are murder and rape. Nothing more, or less.
If you're replying to my post, can I repeat part of it which you must have overlooked:
No doubt many homeless people recognise and lament their own psychotic impulses, or wish to get off drugs, and would VOLUNTEER for this preventative or aversion therapy.
I do understand, however, I felt the need to reiterate that part of it, and add my two-cents, because although the idea comes from good intentions, applying forced procedures and medicines on people when the only thing they do is exist, whether homeless or not, or choose to use drugs, would be very wrong, and quickly devolve into terrible civil right abuses by the government, if we do not put strict restrictions, regulations, and limits in place.
> The last company they hired to run the project gave up in disgust and moved to Africa because it was “less politically dysfunctional” (this is true!)
That isn't just a company, that's *SNCF*. It's been a while since I had connections to the business, but last I heard, they (and their 1-2 peers) basically represent the current pinnacle of human understanding of how to run passenger rail.
> The fifth broad category of responses was people who admitted that they didn’t have a plan, but thought they shouldn’t have to - that wasn’t their job. These people are certainly in good company:
> I mean our job is to demand solution not provide solutions.
Some of us aren't "demanding"? The whole thing is a mess, but there's lots of ways to improve our response at the margin. More housing, more shelters, better policing, more in-patient treatment for mental health, fewer politicians engaging in social experimentation, fewer laws that prevent these things. Which, yes, all involve our society becoming slightly less dysfunctional at the margin. It's not impossible.
I realize this isn't sexy or clever. There's no "one cool trick", no radical revolution that sweeps away all existing solutions, not even a progressive "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" approach. It's slow and boring and conservative, making marginal change in a number of areas and tracking long-term ROI. And as you say, it's downstream of being a civilization that can actually do stuff like this, but isn't that a worthy goal by itself?
> I don’t know if there are really areas like this, but I welcome learning more from people who know cities better.
My city had one. It came to be called "the Jungle".
> I think that maybe the thought is that the institution seems more “humane” than prison
Ideally they'd come out of the institution better than they went in, with better mental health, more connection to functional society, fewer barriers to acquiring a job and a home, and less time spent imprinting on anti-social criminals. That's kind of the opposite of prison, at least the way America does prison?
> that's *SNCF*. It's been a while since I had connections to the business, but last I heard, they (and their 1-2 peers) basically represent the current pinnacle of human understanding of how to run passenger rail.
I don't know about their big projects in the world but here in their home country SNCF is mentally associated with trains that are never on time. It was always kind of a joke but I feel like it's gotten worse in the past 10 years.
Maybe they've gone downhill? Our point of comparison was passenger rail in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Britain, and various other places, all of which were distinctly worse. (Deutsche Bahn was the other big exception.)
I prefer to maintain a bit of plausible geographic anonymity, but I suspect that almost any area of a city that gets dubbed "the Jungle" is going to have similar problems. :-)
Thank you for taking the time to write this. I thought the first article was a bit too defeatist, but with this one they're a very good pair. I'll try to keep in mind that if you don't add a list of well thought solutions in an article, it doesn't mean you don't have any.
It's also interesting to me how I don't think we've heard much from law enforcement in your comments. I'm used to the internet being the place when an expert will pop out at a moment's notice, but thinking back, I don't think I've ever read "Hey, cop here, here's how it goes".
I think that you do Freddie a disservice by pointing out that he shouts GET TOUGH without proposing any particular solutions that we should implement. In a world where everybody agrees that we should GET TOUGH already but nobody can figure out the right policy proposals to solve the problem, someone who keeps shouting GET TOUGH is totally useless. But that's not the world we live in. We live in a world where half the time people are shouting BE SOFT, which creates major practical obstacles to any actual solutions to the problem. Freddie deBoer is not in the business of crafting municipal homeless policy proposals, he's in the business of the culture war - which is in some ways important to fight! Society cannot even begin to work on a solution to a problem until enough people in important places agree on what the goal actually is.
Let's say for starters that your first, second, and third proposals are great ideas and imagine a future in which they actually get implemented. Suppose the City Council of San Francisco convenes a blue-ribbon homeless panel that make recommendations on what to do about homelessness. These recommendations are then brought to the City Council, who like the idea but cannot actually pay for it without funding, and therefore they go to the voters and ask for funding for all this additional enforcement and services and whatever, and eventually use it to pass a bill that solves (makes a small dent in) the homeless problem. Mission accomplished.
Returning from la-la-land, let's see all the reasons this wouldn't happen. At the very outset, said blue-ribbon homeless panel is going to be staffed with "homeless experts" who are made of all the weird homeless activists that Freddie deBoer hates who are definitely on team BE SOFT. Project is dead on arrival: you're not going to get anything useful out of that panel. Let's say you somehow survive that problem and get recommendations. The city council then goes to debate the issue - but since a lot of the city councilors are progressives or politically beholden to progressive activists on team BE SOFT, they successfully spike the issue, arguing the new policies are horribly inhumane and all the resolutions die in committee. Let's say somehow a political miracle happens again and the voters are expected to actually fund this proposal. Team BE SOFT gets a third bite at the apple, lobbies against the new horrible inhumane anti-homeless policies, except this time they get to ally with team "I don't want to pay $100 trillion quadrillion dollars" and nothing ever happens because they're no money for it.
If, somehow, Freddie deBoer could achieve total cultural victory and successfully convince 99.9% of people that actually it's good to GET TOUGH and the remaining 0.1% of BE SOFT people were somehow totally politically and culturally marginalized, we would at the very least avoid these particular problems. Those attempts might still fail for all sorts of practical reasons that figuring out who to institutionalize and actually doing it is extremely hard even when everybody agrees that we should GET TOUGH - but it's simply impossible when they don't, and therefore, it's useful for people like Freddie to keep trying to convince people of it.
No, a place and retain the same politics but update its laws simply because time moves forward and the laws passed in the present just wouldn't have occurred to the same people in the past.
Agree completely. The problem with homelessness is at the root an issue of an underlying GET SOFT ideology. I am not sure if they are intentionally trying to promote the problem (rent seekers) or if it is an unfortunate side effect of an absurd and dysfunctional ideology. Let’s assume the latter. As TGGP replies to you, the solution to California homelessness is indeed for the politicians to be less like themselves. If I wanted to promote homelessness and ruin a city, I would do exactly what San Francisco chooses to do.
I’ve already explained multiple times (in these pages) how easy this problem is to solve by those who want to solve it. In brief, it is use one half of the money (already set aside) to build cheap shelters or parking lots with facilities. Require people to use these shelters. Enforce that people do not camp outside of these facilities. Arrest anyone stealing or using or selling drugs.
Scott’s concerns with how this problem becomes too large is simply wrong. Once the derelicts realize that we are no longer SOFT, most will change their behavior or at least hide it in fields or crackhouses like before. Those unable to comply will go to prison. Problem solved and easily funded by a state as prosperous as California.
One final comment to address the issue that some authorities will always be SOFT. There will always be a San Francisco somewhere. The winning move in this game is to not live in San Francisco. I live in California, and the solution to SOFT locales is to live in a TOUGHER than average locale. I surf in Del Mar, not Ocean Beach. Del Mar does not have a problem and never will, not because housing is more affordable, but because the authorities are TOUGHER. You don’t have to outrun the bear when your fellow campers are coating themselves in bacon grease and begging the bears to eat them.
First, it frees me from risking daily exposure to hepatitis every time I surf in the water downstream from their antics. My foremost concern isn’t in fixing everything in the universe, it is in shaping up my neck of the woods. Let's worry about San Francisco after we clean up our neighborhood and prove what works (or doesn’t).
Second, by concentrating the problem to sanctuary cities, we force those running these areas to come to grips with the ineptitude of their policies which actively reward and promote bad behaviors. My assumption is the SOFTIES can learn and eventually will.
Third, I did not ever say to just kick them out. I said to build safe shelters, and require their use. They are safer in air conditioned/heated shelters with security and facilities than they are selling drugs in a tent on the sidewalk or curled up on the sand at night.
The problem with homelessness is actually not the problem with BE SOFT, but with BE TOUGH. A good society is not one which is tough, or one which harms its own people and citizens. Human life is important and what matters, not money, not corporations, not government. Humans matter, and we are ALL human. To be tougher will only make things worse - our problem is that our society is sick, and it is sick because the average person does not care beyond themselves. The average person living in America does NOT care about human life, or anything beyond their own temporary material wealth and comforts, and do not care about problems that really matter until it personally affects them. To be "tough," means to do the right thing, and the right thing is to actually live and act with love, kindness, empathy, and in harmony and accordance with nature. The idea that being "tougher" is the right way to go is wrong, and purely comes from fear, hate, and anger. As somebody who lived in CA my whole life, and now is temporarily living in a so-called "tougher" state, this is all wrong; CA is economically a superpower, and supports all the other so-called "tough" states. Do you know why CA is so strong and so much nicer, compared to most of the USA? Because what you say here is wrong, and does not actually work that way in reality, my friends.
We must save ourselves, and our planet, before we all perish; that time is quickly approaching, and we will all be dead soon unless we strong buying into false ideologies wrapped in nice-sounding lies. A polished turd is still a turd; a turd wrapped in gift-wrap will still smell just as bad.
Indeed, but there are many strange and remarkable things about life. To act with acceptance, love, and mercy, is precisely what allows civilization to exist in the first place. Being tough, greedy, and acting with fear and hatred is what poisons our earth and waters, and kills the planet, and ourselves.
What good are gold mines and fertile soil, when there are no humans left to enjoy them?
At the risk of ruining my credentials as a flower-power hippy, I must disagree. Caring about people is fine, but I don’t define caring as allowing a fentanyl addict on the edge of the next overdose to sleep unprotected on the sidewalks. I don’t define caring as allowing people to take a dump along public waterways. I don’t define it as allowing dangerous drugs to be sold.
Sometimes we need what my mom calls tough love. This is spending the time and the money to actually interfere with the those in a spiral of self destruction.
I repeat… build safe shelters, require they be used rather than camping anywhere, enforce reasonable laws ensuring public safety and decency. Problem solved. Lives saved.
Ah, I appreciate your response and comments! I cannot disagree and that is what we ought to do; my only argument is being ill, using substances, and being homeless are not morally wrong, and the only and best way to reduce harm when it comes to substance use related harms is to educate, provide safe supplies and substances, and ensure addicts do not die until they are ready to be rehabilitated.
That is unfortunately the best way to care for those who suffer from addiction, no matter how hard it is to see them harm themselves or suffer.
Yes, I made a similar point on the earlier post. In a way it's not really relevant to even discuss practical solutions for involuntary commitment when the dominant faction of decisionmakers is in thrall to the idea that it's immoral to actually try to pursue that avenue.
The dominant faction of western decisionmakers is on the contrary completely dedicated to immoral behavior, and this is the cause of our societal ills in the first place.
Immoral, foolish, and stupid leadership, who care for nothing but themselves and their own wealth and well-being is the problem we have; the blind are leading the blind, and we are quickly heading for a cliff, and we are all stuck in the same boat, my friends. We are all humans here; humans are social creatures and beings, and the whole point of civilization, society, and progress is to make life easier and better for us ALL. Involuntary commitment should never be an option except in the most heinous of circumstances and crimes, and to suggest that the government have the ability to arrest and imprison, or worse, poison, torture, or kill those who choose to live in certain ways, consentually and exercise their freedoms and rights, is a far greater evil than allowing people to harm themselves consentually.
"It is better for a hundred guilty men to go free, than one innocent to be wrongly imprisoned"
Our leaders and policymakers are all bought and paid for by the rich, by the powerful, and most of all, by corporations. They do not care about acting morally, and this reflects the sick nature of our modern society; they are the perfect leaders, in a way, for us, because the average person is just as bad as they are. What is immoral, is not helping and loving your neighbor as you love yourself; what is wrong and evil is to love comfort, material wealth, and money, over the very lives, wellbeing, and comforts of those around you.
There is no greater evil than that, and indeed, it is the root of all lesser evils - we will never solve our societal problems until more people wake up, realise this, and change themselves, and start electing better leaders. If you care about morals, if you care about the world, about society, and about ensuring our children and future generations actually have a decent planet and environment to live on, please consider my words, think critically, and start electing better leaders, who are not so blatantly evil, greedy, fearful, and hateful.
My friend, tell me, do you believe in Angels? In God? In morality and in truth?
I don't think I've ever heard anyone shouting "BE SOFT!".
What I do hear is people saying that yes, we need to be tough but we need to be tough and fair and the specific solution someone is proposing right now is unfair for [not-implausible reason] so we need to find a different way to be tough. Which will then be proclaimed unfair for [not-implausible reason #2], ad infinitum.
It is certainly reasonable to suspect that these people actually want us to BE SOFT, but if they're not actually saying it in those words then BE TOUGH is not going to be an effective response. If they advance not-implausible reasons to refrain from specific policies A, B, and C, then you need defensible new specific policies D, E, and F, or you need better specific arguments in favor of A, B, and C being fair after all.
>But I do worry that if police don’t have the resources to deal with normal crimes, then whoever is charged with enforcing the new extreme law won’t have enough resources to do it well either - and that any society capable of enforcing the new extreme law would also be capable of solving this through normal policing.
But the issue, in the previous portrait of panhandling pyromaniacs, was not lack of police resources but inability to prove identity in a courtroom - unless abundant policing too cheap to meter makes available qualitatively different uses of police resources - make a few guys go undercover as homeless people so they can later testify that it WAS their friends that set stuff afire
But more generally, we do this sort of thing(to target some specific criminal behaviour with direct negative impact, also criminalise a closely-related behaviour that is much easier to catch/prosecute) all the time:
- how much alcohol you have in your blood is no one's business as long as you're alert, have good judgement and reaction speed. But it's just so much easier to catch and prosecute high BAC
- people care about smoke in their faces and cigarette butt littering. But it's hard to prove that A blew smoke in B's face, and also to catch A at the exact moment they drop their butt on the ground. Much easier to catch people smoking in public
- it's hard to prove in court that a certain bunch of homeless people were the same ones who light stuff on fire, and much easier to show that someone is homeless. Also doesn't require abundant policing resources
- easier to prosecute tax evasion on criminal income than the crime itself(famously Al Capone)
Create an app where people rate each other's level of mental illness. Those who fall under a rating threshold will be thrown into the ocean. The app will undoubtedly be abused and eventually direct us to throw our politicians into the ocean. The app must be obeyed.
We had such an approach to dealing with mental illness in Germany, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4 . Unfortunately for you, but fortunately for everyone else, the Allies stopped it when they liberated us.
As for your method of evaluating mental illness by vote, I can not fathom how anyone who has ever seen an online mob in action can think "this is a fine, decent method to enforce norms, but the only problem is lack of power: while a mob can harass its victim to the point of suicide, it would be even better if they could just impose the death penalty through ostracism".
There may be a language barrier, as I do not mean an app that will "direct us to throw our politicians in the ocean. The app must be obeyed" as a serious suggestion. While I meant it humorously, Californian politicians are one of the largest obstructions to solving many problems in California (also true about America in general.. though we may not be exceptional in this regard).
I've worked at some shelters in rural Canada for a couple of summers now. Homelessness is complex; it only becomes harder to deal with the longer someone remains unhoused. Perhaps a "tough solution" would be to allocate more resources towards prevention (e.g., monitoring foster care for abuse, identifying and supporting at-risk youth at school, more attention towards ex-prisoners, etc), trading off with resources for treatment (emergency shelters, etc.).
This would likely be unpopular but more effective at reducing homeless populations long-term.
If they can't sleep outside, where do they sleep? If we don't want the answer to be "jail", we need to make sure that there are shelters (the "social services" in question) with empty beds.
Scott's first post pointed out a problem with "just put all homeless people in jail":
Eventually, they're going to get out of jail. At which point, they will be homeless again, because they can't go apartment hunting from prison and don't have a job. So what do you do then? Re-arrest them the minute their sentence is up?
If the answer is "connect them to social services so they can have a job and housing waiting for them when they leave jail," well, couldn't you just connect the homeless people with those services instead of throwing them in jail first?
There's no problem with them being homeless. The problem is them being a nuisance. They can be as homeless as they want, as long as they stay out of nicer areas.
I just can't believe how people keep avoiding any precision or clarity in their proposals, just endlessly proving Scott's point. You seem to have pivoted from "put them in jail" to "keep them out of nicer areas by threat of jail". Whatever you mean exactly by "nicer areas".
Can you be very clear on what the *actual crime* you are proposing to punish is. Is it:
1. Being homeless is itself a crime
2. Camping in certain public spaces (sidewalks etc) is a crime, camping in other public spaces (fields or forrests) is not
3. Sleeping anywhere other than a private dwelling or a shelter is a crime
4. Doing anti-social and threatening things are crimes, the above are not
5. Something else
?
1 is pure communism, just goodbye to economic freedom. 3 requires those shelters to actually sufficiently exist. 4 I fully support and see no reason other than disturbing depolicing why it can't be done. If you're saying 4, has anyone here actually disagreed with that?
That leaves 2 and if people are advocating that, they should be clear on what the legal spaces and illegal spaces actually are.
These are the "missing details" that are the whole point of these posts.
You don't really seem to have needed my help; you run people out of spaces by policing those spaces. That's option 2, the one you've already identified.
The principle here is that if people complain about you, you have to leave. If you don't want to leave, you're free to spend time in jail until you do want to leave. If you don't want to be expelled, you'll need to either (1) be inoffensive enough that nobody complains, or (2) own some land.
Steelmanning, I think the proposed solution is that whenever an unacceptable equilibrium emerges, GET TOUGH and let homeless people and the rest of the system find another equilibrium. Hopefully, if you do this enough times, one of the emergent equilibria will be at least tolerable for society.
I think some of us are extremely clear on exactly what needs to be done, and yes, it is a version of your number 2. If you want specifics, the rule should be that camping overnight is illegal except where specifically permitted. Every beach in California already has ordinances addressing this and has for as long as I have been alive.
Easiest problem on earth to solve with political will:
1) Build shelters and approved camping facilities/parking lots somewhere in the County.
2) Enforce their use and arrest anyone of a crime.
3) Refund the billions in taxes we pay annually for the homelessness-rent-seeking complex or apply it to the above solutions.
If they are illegally camping again arrest them again this time for a longer sentence. For the people who can never find a way not to camp in public places they will be housed in jail.
If you want to make that jail kind of a halfway jail/shelter then fine, but they can't camp on the streets.
You can make camping on public property a crime if it is not one already. Also you can make public intoxication and begging a crime again if they are not already.
I think "street-camping" is an umbrella term? I mostly encounter people sleeping on sidewalks, not the literal street, and usually parts of the sidewalk under an overhang. Tents in parks are another option, as is just finding a bush or tree, or even a bench if the weather is nice. Underneath highways is also popular. Vacant buildings are ideal, especially because they contain fixtures that can be stripped and sold for cash, and they might have working electricity that you can tap into (or accidentally start a fire with). For those with cars, car-camping seems to be the method of choice, enough so that various places have either strengthened or removed (depending on political orientation) laws about vehicles having to move periodically, and some places just block off curbside parking entirely.
OK, but would you agree that banning street camping would not ban all sleeping outdoors, e.g. normal camping in the wilderness where one does not constitute a nuisance to anyone?
Yes, I think generally that phrase gets used to include private property and urban public spaces (like sidewalks, urban parks, libraries, etc.). I don't usually think of it as encompassing things like National Parks or wilderness areas.
The point of anti-camping laws is to prevent encampments: clusters of bums living together and creating an environment for drug dealing, prostitution, and theft rings. They can sleep outside! But they can't set up a Hooverville on the sidewalk, or in a public park.
Which is why jail is besides the point. Anti-camping laws almost never send someone to jail, because there are so many defenses in court the homeless can legitimately use (such as, "I had nowhere else to go"). The point is to break up the camps, which are a legitimate threat to public safety. Scattered bums are less of a menace than concentrated bums.
Well there’s the crux of it. The task is to solve difficult and complex problems, while remaining more dysfunctional than Africa. With “creativity”. Hate to be a black-piller, but… I dunno man. Good luck with that.
>First, if we could do social services this well, we would have already done it, and we would have much less of a problem. Part of my objection is that people are using “we should be willing to be tough!” as a panacea to cover up the fact that we’re failing even at the non-tough part, as if gaining in toughness would suddenly make us generally more competent.
Depends on sort of toughness. There definitely is a mode of governmental operation in which people who come up with procedural objections or loopholes or whatever get told to fuck off and die (and sometimes literally chucked in jail or a grave). Franklin Roosevelt used this mode with the New Deal; when people got in his way he was willing to pull every single trigger to crush them right up to "SCOTUS objects; pack SCOTUS", and so Shit Got Done. It's also typically dusted off for total wars.
Deploying this mode might actually make things considerably cheaper, insofar as all the expensive procedures wouldn't actually be being followed. It is not costless, of course, but it's a meaningful proposal that can be evaluated (not by me; I'm not American and this is none of my business). And it can be described as "GET TOUGH" (though "move fast and break things" might be a better fit).
Heh heh heh. Not I, though!—because (as usual) we seem to have somehow come out with exactly the same mental toolkits, (objectively-correct) intuitions, and just general ways-of-thinking. It's uncanny, sometimes (IIRC we seem to have found MtCTotB at the same time and had the same reaction; similarly for TMI and some mention of an interest in non-dual/advaita systems; similarly for LessWrong and Big Yud, even, really.)
I remember being frustrated, at first, reading this "Yvain" guy's stuff — dam' it, he's saying what *I* wanted credit for s–... I mean, what I too believe, which is great, ha-ha!
It's a regret I have that I was too lazy to contribute much and so missed out on getting to be a ScottFriend® and get sneered at by Eliezer in person and so forth. Shucks.
Well, as I just finished writing in an (unrelated) e-mail: may as well just call me Kveldred "TLx2" Valjarngandr, 'cause "Too-Little & Too-Late" is, was, and shall forever be all I am. 👊
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Anyway, the obvious (tho' likely only so to a steel-trap sort of mind like mine) solution our esteemed host has missed is simple, yet brilliant:
• Many red states have no issue with the homeless, yet they evidently partake of American Exceptionalism no-less-heartily than Hystericalifornia. (𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘶𝘱 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘰𝘸𝘯; 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦, 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢 𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘧𝘦𝘦)
• Why is this?
• It is because we are not very nice to the homeless. People have little sympathy for maniacs shitting on sidewalks in, say, TX, and the police are not notably amused either.
• Therefore, the solution is: just be generally unpleasant enough to 'em in enough dozens of little niggling ways, and they'll move on to the next state.
The "Not My Problem Any More®" Plan, I call it. I would be glad to begin implementing it, as soon as the funding is available; and do not worry, I have no worrying history of going mad with power at the slightest provocation, haha. Haha!
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Anyway, apropos of nothing haha but does anyone know where to get good blow and classy escorts in West TX
Here's a map of each circuit's jurisdictions for reference, only the 9th circuit jurisdiction (the yellow parts) had a ban on enforcing anti-camping laws.
Right. And the 9th Circuit's ruling (that was overturned) was stupidly absurdly restrictive, to the point that you could have the laws, but enforcing them was a guaranteed loss except in the most narrow of circumstances.
Well, the "narrow circumstances" were simply to provide housing. The original Ninth Circuit holding was described by the Supreme Court in the Grant's Pass case thusly:
>According to the Ninth Circuit, the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause barred Boise from enforcing its public-camping ordinance against homeless individuals who lacked "access to alternative shelter." Id., at 615. That "access" was lacking, the court said, whenever "`there is a greater number of homeless individuals in a jurisdiction than the number of available beds in shelters.'" Id., at 617 (alterations omitted).
No easy task, of course. But perhaps not a "stupidity absurd" holding.
Moreover, since it was based on the Eighth Amendment, it only forbade criminalizing overnight sleeping in public (and in cars). It did not forbid noncriminal measures, such as rousting sleepers.
The "stupidly absurd" part was that the city was required to have enough shelter beds to house *every* bumin the city before they could enforce anti-camping laws on *any* bum in the city. So even if you had 1,000 open beds available, if there are 1,005 bums in the city you can't enforce the rules on any of them.
>The last company they hired to run the project gave up in disgust and moved to Africa because it was “less politically dysfunctional” (this is true!)
One should not uncritically quote headlines. It is true that that was the company's spin. But as the NYT story referenced in the linked article notes, what happened was that "[t]he company’s recommendations for a direct route out of Los Angeles and a focus on moving people between Los Angeles and San Francisco were cast aside" in favor of a longer and slower route that would serve more people. That is a perfectly reasonable choice (what is the point, other than bragging rights, of simply moving people quickly between SF and LA, rather than providing transportation options to the millions of poorly served people in between?). Whether resolution of the various reasonable choices became mired in political dysfunction is possible, but there is not much evidence for that in the article.
>First, enforce existing laws better, such that any homeless person who commits a crime (including public harassment, littering, etc) gets caught and punished.
Enforcing litter laws only against homeless people would be an Equal Protection violation and, possibly an Eighth Amendment violation as a de facto status offense.
Also note that in California, a police officer can make a warrantless arrest for a misdemeanor only if it is committed in his or her presence, or is a domestic violence offense. Penal Code 836
The point of rail is for people to use it, and a longer rail route that never gets built (and thus never used) is pointless. But in the US, transit agencies don't even prioritize ridership: https://www.slowboring.com/p/american-transit-agencies-should
Yes, exactly, the point is for people to use it. Among other things, the company recommended running the line along I-5, where no one lives. As I said, there are tradeoffs, and merely because the state weighed competing interests differently than the company does not mean that the state is "politically dysfunctional."
People live in LA & SF. That company builds railways which people actually use elsewhere, California politicians try to use rail to accomplish every objective other than ridership, then fail to build anything and nobody rides.
Yes, but also elsewhere. Again, that is the point: There is not one answer to the question of how best to serve the state's residents. Do you also support the proposed route which bypasses San Jose and the peninsula?
I'm assuming the "disruptive homeless" people are complaining about are doing a disproportionate amount of littering. If the same person has been, say, captured on camera littering on twenty separate occasions it seems perfectly sensible to arrest them and charge them with twenty counts of littering at once.
But even without that, why *can't* police arrest every litterer they or someone sees litter? If it's a lack of funding, give them more funding. If you're not going to pay people to enforce the laws, why have laws at all?
I'm becoming a broken record but: why is "enforce the laws" a bizarre and radical position around here? Everyone's either "*this group* are allowed to commit crimes" or "throw *this group* in jail, crimes or not".
>But even without that, why *can't* police arrest every litterer they or someone sees litter? If it's a lack of funding, give them more funding. If you're not going to pay people to enforce the laws, why have laws at all?
Would that really be an effective use of all that extra funding?
>I'm becoming a broken record but: why is "enforce the laws" a bizarre and radical position around here? Everyone's either "*this group* are allowed to commit crimes" or "throw *this group* in jail, crimes or not".
You're attacking a strawman. My point is simply that we live in a real world, with real constraints. And that is pretty much Scott's point, isn't it? That any proposed solution must be practical and effective?
I am very skeptical that a homeless person arrested for littering is going to have an attorney successfully make the case that other, non-homeless people, have been getting away with the crime of littering. I mean yes if that homeless guy is secretly a millionaire with lots of resources for a great defense attorney, sure. Or if the police write an Official Memo that says We Are Only Arresting The Homeless For Littering, and then post it online. But failing that, a homeless guy arrested for littering is just that, and the burden of proof for disproportionate impact is pretty unrealistic. How exactly do you think they'd make that argument in court?
99% of the time they'd accept a plea deal, there wouldn't be a trial, and that would be that
You know, instead of doubling down on your prior, if you had simply taken the new information I provided and googled "selective enforcement" and "equal protection," you would have found voluminous evidence that selective enforcement by the police can indeed be an Equal Protection violation.
>The Supreme Court has also ruled that the police have no legal obligation to prevent any crimes.
Police act with discretion. If they were not allowed to use their discretion and were legally required to respond to all calls, you could sue them for failing to respond. A woman tried that after her ex-husband violated a restraining order, kidnapped their children, and killed them. She lost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales
SCOTUS just approved anti-homeless laws. Can you cite SCOTUS decisions showing they would regard selectively enforcing laws against the homeless as unconstitutional?
>Police act with discretion. If they were not allowed to use their discretion
This is a complete strawman. Just because government officials have discretion does not mean that they have carte blanche. "Abuse of discretion" is a thing.
>A woman tried that after her ex-husband violated a restraining order, kidnapped their children, and killed them
The issue in that case is whether the police failure to act was a due process violation. It was not a case about selective enforcement, nor about Equal Protection. Moreover, the seminal case on that issue is actually DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept of Social Services, the key quote from which is:
>The [Due Process]Clause is phrased as a limitation on the State's power to act, not as a guarantee of certain minimal levels of safety and security; while it forbids the State itself to deprive individuals of life, liberty, and property without due process of law, its language cannot fairly be read to impose an affirmative obligation on the State to ensure that those interests do not come to harm through other means."
An arrest of a homeless person is not a failure to act. That whole series of cases is irrelevant to the issue of selective enforcement.
As for the Grant's Pass case, that merely held that anti-sleeping ordinances do not violate the Eighth Amendment. It has nothing to do with selective enforcement.
Finally, your original comment was that you have never heard of the exercise of police discretion being an Equal Protection violation. Well, now you have. And that should be obvious: do you think that if the police only enforced littering laws against black people, that would not be an Equal Protection violation? Again, I would encourage you to take 10 seconds and Google that.
I live safely a very long way from San Francisco, so all of this is hearsay, but smart American conservatives tell me the reason crime is so poorly enforced is because people like George Soros are funding district attorneys who have no interest in enforcing laws (the rationale is roughly: it's racist to enforce laws because doing so disproportionately impacts Black people. This might be what they really believe, or maybe George Soros is just a mega-villain who wants to watch the world burn - Elon Musk certainly thinks so and said this on a podcast once.)
Police can arrest people for committing crimes, but if the city immediately releases them without bail, the police rapidly become jaded. Rinse and repeat, and you end up with essentially no penalty for low level crimes. And criminals know this, so their propensity to commit them goes way up.
Then the fact that crime is not being reported gets exploited by the media, who argue that crime statistics show that crime is falling and any reports to the contrary are just those mean Republicans making up misinformation again.
Scott is very charitable and models other people as operating basically on "mistake theory," where we all want this homeless criminal problem to get better, we just have to figure out the right set of solutions. But maybe a dose of "conflict theory" is needed. Not everyone out there is as nice as Scott.
From these comments it seems like almost *no one* wants to actually enforce laws. They either want to just throw the homeless in jail, no laws or due process necessary, or they want actual crimes to be legal.
Supposedly these are *opposite* positions. To me they look functionally identical: "fuck the idea of being governed by actual laws! Just let me hurt the people I hate!"
Here's my proposal:
1. Homeless people who aren't hurting or harassing anyone have, God forbid, actual rights.
2. Homeless people who harass or vandalise or threaten or assault get arrested and convicted and sent to jail.
3. District attorneys who deliberately don't enforce the laws get tried for treason.
Can anyone tell me *anything* that is wrong with this policy?
"They either want to just throw the homeless in jail, no laws or due process necessary"
No, and this is what I am arguing over with you. I don't want it to be "Aha, you lost your accommodation because the landlord evicted you, straight to jail with you, you vagrant!"
But equally I don't want it to be like that case, which on the face of it is funny, but the details most certainly are not:
"The attacker, identified by police as 38-year-old Zero Triball, is known for his erratic behavior in the Castro, reported by the USA Today. The Standard noted that Triball has a record of causing disturbances, having previously entered the Cliffs Variety store and aggressively confronted employees, and similarly threatening the Castro Country Club, according to their respective managers. Residents and business owners in the area are familiar with his tumultuous presence.
Days after the incident, Chris Watts took to social media to seek further information on an individual who threatened the victim with the blowtorch and vandalized his store."
This guy had a history of such behaviour, and it escalated until he was threatening an ordinary person on the street with a blowtorch. I think scooping him up after the first sixty or so reports of being a "tumultuous person" would *not* be "throwing the homeless in jail, no laws or due process necessary". Put him in a psychiatric ward under involuntary commitment, then if/when he gets let out after "we can't keep him more than X number of days", go with the process of charging him with crimes. "But it'll cost 50 grand to put him in jail for 90 days!" Yes, and? Is it better to let him go until he burns the face off someone and then you have to spend that money putting him in jail (or the mental hospital), plus now you have a victim scarred for life?
The people who should be dealing with that *are* the cops, not a gay nudist in the Castro (more power to the guy, while I may disagree with his lifestyle choices, I cannot deny and must indeed praise his sense of civic responsibility).
1. You *still* haven't answered my direct question on the Open Thread, which I last rephrased to be almost literally "A or not-A?", covering the entire possibility space.
Your persistent refusal to precisely state your *actual proposed law* (not just give examples of the sort of thing you want, or of the sort of thing you don't want, but actually spell it out explicitly with logical rigour) makes your claim here that I'm misrepresenting you hard to take seriously. When I ask you four distinct times "does there or does there not need to be actual proof of illegal activity for someone to be locked up?" and you *never* say "there does" or "there does not" but just respond every time with sarcasm and insults...I don't know what you expect me to conclude. It certainly doesn't look like you're engaging in good faith.
2. Now you're being more civil, and you say
"Put him in a psychiatric ward under involuntary commitment, then if/when he gets let out after "we can't keep him more than X number of days", go with the process of charging him with crimes"
right after saying
"I think scooping him up after the first sixty or so reports of being a "tumultuous person" would *not* be "throwing the homeless in jail, no laws or due process necessary".
You literally said you would involuntarily confine him *before* charging him with any crimes or misdemeanors at all! And *right next to that* you said this wouldn't be rejecting due process!
There's no point in asking again if you would require some kind of proof at the start, because it's clear you're never going to directly answer this question for some reason. I can only speculate that you have a different meaning of due process to the standard one, or something?
As I have said many times, I would absolutely lock up the guy for "causing disturbances" *provided he has been proven to have actually caused disturbances*! This should be very easy in most cases. It *seems like* you don't agree, and think mere "vibes" or vague suspicians should be enough, but fpr some reaaon won't come out and just say that.
I don't think there is any way to answer your question, because you never say what *your* solution is, and you only accept "yes, ascend, you are completely correct" as an answer.
I told you at last in the other Open Thread "yeah, okay, let's do it! let's make homelessness a crime!"
If that's not clear enough for you, nothing I can possibly say would be either.
"As I have said many times, I would absolutely lock up the guy for "causing disturbances" *provided he has been proven to have actually caused disturbances*!"
How do I prove the guy caused disturbances? "He came into my shop and kicked over the displays and threatened to stab a customer" "Ah sorry, not good enough, that's just your word. We have to go to court to have a trial over 'was this a disturbance' and 'did it even happen at all'".
That's how Mr. Triball there got his reputation, and why nothing was done - nobody reported it because they knew the cops wouldn't bother, the cops won't bother because they know the DA won't prosecute, the DA won't prosecute because too expensive and too much court time to send the guy to jail for 90 days and that's even *if* the judge will sentence him, the judge won't sentence him because there are a lot of bleeding-hearts on the bench who give "second chances" to people up before them for the 100th time for the same offence.
And so Mr. Triball goes on his way until he tries to burn a guy's face off with a blowtorch. But you can be happy, ascend, that he was not arrested for no reason before it ever got to that point, because nobody "proved" he was causing disturbances!
"To make as clear as I possibly can what I'm asking for: can you endorse one of the following two statements: ? (1) nobody can be deprived of their liberty without proof that they've actually done something illegal (including minor things like threats or vandalism) (2) some people do not have this right, and *can* be deprived of their liberty with not a shred of evidence they've done anything harmful at all, beyond "vibes"."
You didn't answer, and now you say ""and you only accept "yes, ascend, you are completely correct" as an answer."" Actually, I PROMISE you I would accept either "1" or"2" as an absolutely and perfectly satisfactory answer. Just tell me 1 or 2 and I'll know what your position is.
As it is I *still* don't know which one is your position, because you only ever "answer" indirectly by talking vaguely about what you *don't* want, and never with any precision.
And it's just extremely rude to be explicitly asked "is it A or not-A" and respond "there's nothing I can possibly say to satisfy you".
I'll try one last time. My question is: is it "1" or "2" or neither?
And what if I reject your binary, as some others do when it comes to gender?
Okay, you have a perfect right to throw this open to the court of public opinion, so long as you are aware that I don't care if people agree with me, agree with you, or want to institute the scheme the greys from Delta Omicron told them about the last time they were taken away in the flying saucer.
My choice, should I accept it, is:
"(1) nobody can be deprived of their liberty without proof that they've actually done something illegal (including minor things like threats or vandalism)
(2) some people do not have this right, and *can* be deprived of their liberty with not a shred of evidence they've done anything harmful at all, beyond "vibes"."
Of course I agree with (1), but that's not what we're really arguing over here, is it? I think most everybody, except maybe extreme Libertarians and extreme Anarchists, agrees with option (1).
I reject the framing of option (2). I do not believe anything should be done on "vibes", but I also believe "everyone in the neighbourhood knows about Jimmy-Joe, that's why parents warn their teenage daughters not to be alone with him" is *not* vibes (a case from my own youth, and one borne out the day Jimmy-Joe met me on the street alone and tried exactly what I'd been warned he would try; luckily, in those days, I was still fit and active enough to be able to run away).
Jimmy-Joe (not his real name) was never arrested, that I know of, but his reputation was not unearned, even though it was all only "vibes" as you would have it. Should Jimmy-Joe have been arrested? Well, that's a prickly question. I don't know the law well enough to say if he could have been, but it might have been possible. The other option was leave him alone to continue being a pest, until somebody or a group of somebodies beat the crap out of him - and I don't think you advocate for violent assault as a solution, either.
Your major fear seems to be "someone being deprived of their liberty with not a shred of evidence they've done anything harmful at all" and you don't or won't engage with "There's plenty of evidence Zero Triball was in fact doing harmful stuff long before he tried burning a guy with a blow torch".
So since option (2) seems to be the real bone of contention here, I say that I do not accept it as framed, but do accept that there are limits on liberty, that there are very few absolute rights, and that liberty may be legitimately constrained even in cases where there is not a trial at law with a conviction and sentence handed down. *After* being constrained, there should indeed be a process to investigate the matter, the state of mind of the person locked up, if they are a danger, what is being done to treat them, and if a criminal trial is needed after all.
You seem to be on the wavelength of "people used to be locked up for being gay! I don't want to go back to that! And that's what you are proposing in kind!"
I don't want people locked up for being gay (our friend the gay nudist in the Castro did valuable public service, after all). I do want people locked up - be that in a psychiatric ward until assessed - if they've got a record of being threatening, violent, and trouble-making. If we get trials on the basis of "this guy has committed a public order offence, let's run him in and start the legal process", then that is the way to go. Unhappily, it seems to be that a lot of the problems stem from "this guy has committed a public order offence, but it's not serious enough to warrant bringing him in since the DA won't prosecute/the judge will just give him a suspended sentence" and so nothing is done until it escalates to the point of "yeah this is serious enough to do something".
I think there must be a step at which intervention is possible, before it gets to "yeah now that he's tried to burn a guy's face off, now we can arrest him".
And everything you're talking about--judges being lenient, DAs not prosecuting, cops not bothering--has NOTHING TO DO with whether there is proof of the offence or not!
Those cops, DAs and judges who delberately don't act in the face of evidence should be hanged for treason, I've said this over and over. If there's proof of the offence, the guy should be in jail, and everyone who stops that happening is evil.
All I'm saying is that the proof itself is not negotiable. You can't be locked up on mere vibes.
You accuse me of not being clear, but you yourself are not clear on that. What is this proof you want? To what standard? How is it achieved, obtained, or found?
- Shop owner says Crazy Joe hassled his staff. Will you accept the word alone? Do you want CCTV footage? Seventeen sworn and notarised depositions from reputable citizens, but not the shop staff, they might be biased? The Archangel Gabriel to come down from heaven?
I'm not joking here - what is the standard of proof? Tell me that, and we may (or may not) get out of this tangle.
>Those cops, DAs and judges who delberately don't act in the face of evidence should be hanged for treason, I've said this over and over.
Umm, maybe license revocation / disbarment / impeachment? Hanging seems like a bit of an overkill to me, since the lesser measures would suffice to replace them in office.
You are not going to get a good faith, detail oriented response from Deiseach. Trying to do so is impossible (no doubt she's going to post a sarcastic response here comparing me to <insert bad people here>).
If you are looking for high quality responses, do not engage. If you think that it's important to understand your interlocutor's stance before dismissing them, I think it's also important to note that this behavior has gone on for more than a decade, past at least two bans from Scott himself and that she still posts because she was reinstated due to commenter outcry; they missed the sarcasm and lack of good faith.
She does seem to have finally answered my question more-or-less in this thread, and I speculated on some reasons she may have an aversion to answering hypotheticals (an aversion that I find very annoying but that is *extremely* common among people in debates).
I did explain in the other thread why I thought her endless sarcasm was highly incivil. I won't make any judgement on other events, but I'll say that although I've disagreed with her a number of times this is the first time I've had such an issue.
Perhaps an explicit norm that continued sarcasm is not apprpriate once someone is clearly engaging in good faith would be helpful. People often object to my tone or language in ways I find surprising, and it's not always intentionally aggressive. Which is why explicit norms can help.
And sometimes aggressive language is entirely necessary with some bad-faith people. But I reiterate that the amount of mocking sarcasm in that linked thread was inexcusable.
First, in the American system, prosecutors have broad authority to choose what to prosecute. Your proposal would be a fundamental change in how the legal system works, and I for one can't even pretend to think of all the effects it could have.
Second, the Constitution specifically defines treason, almost certainly to prevent this sort of escalation in rhetoric. (But that's easy to fix, if you just drop the magic word and treat it like an ordinary crime.)
You're operating in good faith here. Not everyone is. Bad faith abounds on the left and right of this issue. Commenters have mentioned the left bad faithers already. The ones who want to abolish the police and maybe the government so that "spontaneous order" will flourish. These people will nitpick any plan to death to support their hidden agenda of anarchism. But let us not forget the RIGHT bad faithers. The ones who hide behind the mantle of public safety but actually want to socially engineer a Stepford Wives style urban theme park. It's not enough to enforce the law because they fundamentally just Don't Want These People Here. Even if the homeless were totally law abiding in every way, the very sight and smell of homeless people engenders all kinds of negative feelings. They want the homeless Gone.
The last SF DA, Chesa Boudin, was accused of being like that, I think accurately (though a friend who follows the legal system better than I do says the accusations were somewhat exaggerated).
Unhappy residents led a recall campaign against Boudin, which succeeded. One of the leaders of the recall campaign was appointed DA in his stead. The new DA whose whole campaign was "I won't be soft on crime like that last guy" has been in charge for two years now. I don't know if that's long enough to expect to see results, but my impression is that nobody is too impressed.
Would you say so? I also don't follow too closely but my sense is that there are large improvements in catalytic converter theft and in scaled/professional shoplifting (see the arrests of the $x0,000 Stonestown Shoplifter, etc)
Interesting. Perhaps part of the problem that lawmakers have been changing what gets defined as a crime? I understand theft up to a certain value (a few hundred dollars) is no longer a prosecutable offence.
Or maybe it's a cultural thing? My impression is that Californians are very progressive and think social ills should be addressed be dealing with social factors, not with the police. Which is fine as far as it goes, but as Thomas Sowell said "the kind of people who talk about the "root causes" of crime never include leniency."
We had a similar City Prosecutor, and they were voted out a few years back, but change is slow. My guess is that there's a multi-year process of swamp-draining necessary, replacing people who quietly keep doing things the old way. If the city consistently elects people who enforce the law, maybe it'll change after a while?
There's also a tremendous backlog, and I think the replacement is simply writing off a lot of the older low-priority cases, in order to be able to prosecute crimes in a timely manner.
I think the "Soros" thing is a right-wing conspiracy theory, similar to left-wing versions starring Peter Thiel or the Koch brothers. He almost certainly funds stuff, but in the big picture I doubt that he's doing more than tossing matches into a bonfire. Maybe think of him as an "effective leftist", kinda? Fingers in a lot of pies, funding stuff that seems likely to advance his agenda, etc.
The prosecutorial abdication is a real thing, but I don't think that they're cackling villains. I think they're either idealists, or are riding an elephant and tell themselves that they always wanted to go in whatever direction the elephant ends up going. It's the tactic of closing off bad solutions until the only way left is the good solution. I think the communists have a good name for it, something like exacerbating the contradictions?
It's also apparently not simply a matter of the elected prosecutors. We kicked ours out, a few years back, but change is slow. Maybe cities are hard to steer, or the departments are filled with people engaging in passive resistance?
“Exacerbating the contradictions” sure sounds cacklingly evil - make capitalist society unliveable to hasten the socialist revolution. (I hope this isn’t the “good solution” you’re referring to!)
I can accept that some of these people don’t see themselves as evil, but One True Path ideologues are very dangerous. Ayatollah Khomeini probably also sees himself as the good guy, or at least someone who does what he has to do.
But to those of us who don’t want to live under socialism in the West, or don’t want Death to Israel and America, we round off to “evil” those who will stop at nothing to achieve goals that we hate.
Ah, I was writing from their direction, so "good" is relative to them. I doubt I'd agree with whatever they want; it's probably some form of warmed-over communism. More later.
> It's also apparently not simply a matter of the elected prosecutors. We kicked ours out, a few years back, but change is slow. Maybe cities are hard to steer, or the departments are filled with people engaging in passive resistance?
The impossibility of firing government employees is a big problem here.
"if we could do X this well, we would have already done it" is fundamentally flawed argument. No we wouldn't. Not necessary. I don't know much about social issues, but I know my trade (software development) and I doubt the situation is really different in any other area. There's always a ton of things to improve that weren't done yet, mainly because of one/few of the following:
- no one thought about it
- someone thought about it but didn't have time/resources to implement
- someone thought about it, had resources but wasn't the responsible person for that area and either didn't want to overstep or feared missing some important context not obvious from the outside.
And in general nothing ever gets done until it is. "If sun was in the center of solar system someone would've already noticed it" was probably an obvious thing to think until Brahe/Kepler/Copernicus.
You can't just assume something already in optimal state unless there's a formal proof that no more improvements are possible.
That only reinforces my argument, that we can assume something is already in an optimal state ( "we would have already done it" ) even less than in software.
The argument isn't some panglossian "best of all possible worlds" take. It's that certain hypothetically-desirable policies predictably will never get implemented because there are sufficiently power or people or interest groups who don't want them to be implemented, and they'll successfully block them.
This way of interpreting is more understandable, but I don't think it survives the Hanlon's razor. In my estimation p(malice) << p(stupidity | lack of resources | will to implement).
I woukd like you, and some of your commenters, to go on YouTube and watch a documentary from the 1960s called Suffer the Little Children. It is ostensibly about the tragedy of state institutions being underfunded. In reality it is video footage of emaciated adults, always called "children", sometimes chained, surrounded by filth
... the *natural first reaction I had* was "that looks like a concentration camp." I do not think our government should be running such places and putting people there for life without due process. It is good that we don't do it any more.
Like many state institutions, it started out as a project to help those in need who were being shuttled into insane asylums or other unsuitable places:
"In 1903, the Pennsylvania Legislature authorized the creation of the Eastern State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic and a commission was organized to take into consideration the number and status of the feeble-minded and epileptic persons in the state and determine a placement for construction to care for these residents. This commission discovered 1,146 feeble-minded persons in insane hospitals and 2,627 in almshouses, county-care hospitals, reformatories, and prisons, who were in immediate need of specialized institutional care."
And again, like many state institutions, it rapidly became underfunded and overcrowded, with pressure on it to take in those for whom there were no other options:
"On November 23, 1908, "Patient number 1" was admitted to the hospital. Within four years of operation, Pennhurst was overcrowded and under pressure to admit immigrants, orphans, and criminals."
Our friends the eugenicists couldn't resist meddling:
"In 1913, the legislature appointed a Commission for the Care of the Feeble-Minded which stated that disabled people were unfit for citizenship and posed a menace to the peace, and thus recommended a program of custodial care. Furthermore, the Commission desired to prevent the intermixing of the genes of those imprisoned with the general population. In the Biennial Report to the Legislature submitted by the Board of Trustees, Pennhurst's Chief Physician quoted Henry H. Goddard, a leading eugenicist, as follows:
Every feeble-minded person is a potential criminal. The general public, although more convinced today than ever before that it is a good thing to segregate the idiot or the distinct imbecile, they have not as yet been convinced as to the proper treatment of the defective delinquent, which is the brighter and more dangerous individual."
So decades of neglect, lack of funding, and using it as a dumping ground ended up with the situation in the documentary.
This is absolutely the danger of plans about involuntary commitment and new institutions,and why we have to be on guard that the same does not ever happen again. But right now we have the worst of all worlds; we don't have the capacity to take people in to what institutions exist, the prisons are by default ending up as dumping grounds for those who should not be in them, and mentally ill and incapable people are living on the streets, at peril to themselves, and a danger to others (like the man who got shot outside the RNC).
I think the issue is that many people have heard the horror of mental asylums, but that people automatically down-weight it in importance because they don't know how representative it is (even if they aren't thinking in quite those terms). It is in the background. They think 'oh we can do better this time' or 'sure, there was very bad outcomes, but we know how to fix it and so we can get closer to the median'.
Which is admittedly a decent objection because most people's only knowledge of asylums is from a hearing a few horror stories; it'd be good for the discussion if there was a balanced post talking about the varying levels of extremes that mental asylums held, what the percentage of those were, and reasons as to why. (Ex: some mental asylum terribleness is obviously obviated because better medication, and just deciding that isn't something we want to do. Others are because of poor funding, not enough employees per person, poor observation, etc.)
>> Second, make a law against camping on the street. Have good social services so that everyone has an option other than camping on the street, then arrest people who don’t use the social services. If people repeatedly violate the terms of the social services, send them to jail or a locked institution.
> I think this is also basically a good idea, but it’s currently tied up in the “have good social services” stage, which - I can’t say this enough - repeating “BE TOUGH BE TOUGH BE TOUGH” won’t help with.
This really seems to miss the point. You don't need good social services, or any social services. Everyone has an option other than camping on the street right now. Let them figure it out.
Repeating "BE TOUGH BE TOUGH BE TOUGH" is exactly the solution this problem calls for. Get over the idea that you need to provide an official alternative. It isn't as good as the unofficial ones that already exist. The goal is to make camping on the street worse than those existing alternatives, not to implement new ones that are better than camping on the street.
(I might also note that your focus on mentally ill homeless is weird. Most homeless-originated problems aren't coming from the mentally ill homeless. They're coming from mentally normal homeless.)
"Everyone has an option other than camping on the street right now."
They do? What is it?
Also, I'm interested in your claim that most problems come from mentally normal homeless. My impression is that wasn't true - there are more of them, but aside from some annoying begging they mostly leave everyone else alone. Do you have a source for this?
Whatever they choose to do. I'd like to think you know better than to believe it would be identical for everyone, or that I am familiar with the details of the lives of everyone in the US.
What would you do, if everything you owned were taken away, and you were legally prohibited from using the internet? Do you think you'd camp on the street?
> Also, I'm interested in your claim that most problems come from mentally normal homeless. My impression is that wasn't true - there are more of them, but aside from some annoying begging they mostly leave everyone else alone. Do you have a source for this?
I can offer you the personal experience of dealing with (1) a clearly psychotic woman who stood outside my home late at night and wanted to talk about various things that made sense only to her, and had to be removed by the police, versus (2) a normal young man who systematically entered homes in the neighborhood during the day and stole things from them. They were both known to the police as local homeless. Would you believe the man didn't bother to show up for his first court date? Some people might have considered a homeless career criminal to be a flight risk, but California is more enlightened than that.
Random stabbings make the news, and are plausibly concentrated among the mentally ill, but what people object to about nearby homeless encampments is the garbage, theft, and rape (...and arson, I guess), which aren't.
> What would you do, if everything you owned were taken away, and you were legally prohibited from using the internet? Do you think you'd camp on the street?
Probably. I mean, *I specifically* might prevail on some close friend or loving relative, but that's assuming I have trustworthy friends and loving relatives, who are willing to put up with me indefinitely and won't emotionally abuse me for the duration; which not everyone does. I don't have the data to hand but there are, I hear, a lot of former foster kids on the streets, not because they did worse than those with actual families, but because the latter have parental couches to crash on, and the foster kids just didn't.
> What would you do, if everything you owned were taken away, and you were legally prohibited from using the internet? Do you think you'd camp on the street?
Yes? What else would I do?
Ok, I happen to have friends and family with money who'd let me live with them. But if I didn't, and didn't have easily marketable skills either, and there were no shelters with space, then what better option would I have?
Well, you're the second person (of two) to respond "no, I'd do something different, but it's important to believe that I wouldn't".
I've complained before that I used to get a lot of remarks saying that I was arrogant because of my tendency to assume that, if I knew something, anyone I was talking to would also know it.
And how I could never see why my assumption that I was the least knowledgeable person in the world on any topic qualified as "arrogance".
In that spirit, where do you get the arrogance to assume that, if you can't imagine what someone in a difficult situation would do, that can only mean that there's nothing they can do, and you need to provide them with an option other than giving up and dying?
What makes you think that central planning is a better solution to the problem of "where do the homeless go if we kick them out of the neighborhood encampment?" than it is to... any other problem?
The failure of communism wasn't a secret and the mechanisms are well known. And several people besides me have made the point elsewhere in the thread:
People will automatically select the best option available to them, and it will always be something that you didn't think of. Delaying the solution until you can imagine something that you'd like better is a pure downward spiral; you're preventing people from improving their circumstances until you can finally come in and make them even worse than they already were.
Because if society can tolerate a partial and ongoing genocide for these types, can't they add to the list others who they would also tolerate a partial and ongoing genocide for?
Yes, anyone as politically powerless as a collection of unorganized, unthinking, insensible blastocysts is vulnerable to this. Cows have been subject to a partial and ongoing genocide since before they were domesticated.
Though in the case of cows, it's only helped them.
That ship has sailed. Abortion is legal everywhere, and it's not going anywhere. Once you abide that, killing the Downs is just a matter of framing the argument 'til the progressives agree.
I'm just wondering what the next group will be. Straight white men seem pretty far over on the "it's OK to abuse" spectrum, so probably them.
Ironically (?), the Jews are also starting to get into the "OK to abuse" area as well. The more things change...
Wow. You're a literal sociopath. I can't believe I made the mistake of engaging with you rationally, like you were a human being with something resembling a conscience.
I take it all back. I fully support involuntary committment asylums specifically designed for people like you. Hopefully with maximal possible suffering inflicted.
I used to think Hell was an inhumane idea, but I've realised it's entirely appropriate for the kind of vicious animal that is actially capable of responding to "innocent people are being killed" with "so?"
Uh, no, the majority position is some sort of post-hoc "it's the most humane thing to do" grasping-at-straws justification, or some kind of waffling "difficult decision, not the business of the state" and so on.
A cold-blooded "so?" at the killing of babies is the norm only among pro-choice activists, and holding yourself to that group's moral bar (one roughly equivalent to that of Hitler's inner circle) says everything about you there is to say.
People with Down's snydrome are overwhelmingly incapable of living on their own. Past societies would largely just abandon them, except a tiny minority of rich families that might be able & willing to take care of a lifelong dependent. Especially traditional tribal societies simply lacked this capacity.
Our society instead takes care of them and gives them a life that is better than the life of most humans that have ever lived. It gives parents the information and the options to choose whether they are capable of taking on this lifelong responsibility, and it accepts whatever decision they make, even if it causes great costs to society at large in the process. You really have to admit society is being incredibly generous to people with Down's syndrome.
I do not, in fact, need to admit that Society is being incredibly generous to people with Down Syndrome when it's socially acceptable to kill them before they are even born.
I'm curious, are you at least against abortion in general, or do you only think abortion is bad if it's about seriously disabled people? If alcoholic woman usually want to abort their fetus, is that fine or do we have to force her to carry the child to term because anything else would be a genocide against people with fetal alcohol syndrome? If we tell people to have children earlier bc the chance for a child to have DS is absolutely tiny before 30, is that genocide against people with DS as well?
DS is almost entirely an artefact of the modern high age of child rearing coupled with modern healthcare; There is no "natural" population of people with DS. You're claiming that the only society in which people with DS have ever existed in noticeable numbers and live to adult age is "engaged in an ongoing genocide" against them.
That's at least consistent, then, even if I may disagree. But again, what about the second question? In a theoretic world in which abortion is illegal but people have the great majority of kids around 20-25, DS would be de facto non-existent. Would that be fine for you because it does not involve abortion?
I don't understand how this is supposed to be some kind of gotcha. Like any other disability, if Down's syndrome could be prevented, that would be great. But killing disabled people is not the same as preventing the disability!
I know one case of a woman whose first child has Down's Syndrome but whose second child is 'normal'. There is no blanket "if you get pregnant at this age, your children will all be retards" measure.
I suppose "now we kill them before they're born" *does* count as "decreasing rates" but how would that go for other diseases/illnesses?
"We have decreased the rate of myopia in 5-10 year old children! By aborting all those who have the genes for poor eyesight! Better prenatal testing means better lives for everyone!"
Life expectancy with Down Syndrome was less than ten years around 1950. And improved medicine allows countless severely disabled children to survive into adulthood. Assume the problem is much worse now than it was back then.
Improved medicine cuts down on the number of severely disabled children being born/birth accidents, even without abortion in the mix. It can also make more survive where they wouldn't have, but adding abortion into the mix, I think the upshot is that the number of severely disabled children is much lower than it was then. It's not just concealed by the children having been moved to home care or private institutions from now-closed public ones.
That seems like an odd place to draw the "consciousness" line. I would expect one to draw it either earlier on in pregnancy or later in brain development. What does being born have to do with becoming conscious?
I'm drawing it with a lot of margin for error (erring on the side of don't-kill-a-conscious-person). I don't remember being 0, but I don't remember being 1 or 2, either.
And you independently came to the conclusion, using your "consciousness" approach, that just so happens to be the exact same moment you're allowed to kill the baby as the typical pro-choice activist. Got it.
Many pro-choice activists I've listened to choose "viable to live outside the body". I could live with that, too, instead of birth. Both are good Schelling Points. Actually, yeah, I'd pick the "viable" one (because otherwise you'd really be killing a baby, rather than not allowing a baby to come to exist).
But, I've just told you that I intuitively suspect the actual cutoff point is probably later, and you want me to reconsider my position?? Whose side are you on!? (Note: I'm tongue-in-cheek here, I really do want err far on the side of not killing a conscious being so I would certainly never support post-birth murder).
Also, how do you resolve the "you're committing dozens of murders by not having 100% of the children you could possibly be having" challenge to your ethical system? Accept the horrible conclusion? Argue that a non-conscious zygote is totally-not-arbitrarily deserving of rights that an egg and sperm alone don't deserve?
"Also, how do you resolve the "you're committing dozens of murders by not having 100% of the children you could possibly be having" challenge to your ethical system? Accept the horrible conclusion? Argue that a non-conscious zygote is totally-not-arbitrarily deserving of rights that an egg and sperm alone don't deserve?"
I don't know about Kevin M., but I resolve it by saying "That is so fucking stupid I'm not going to dignify it with a reply, and the mere fact you asked has me wondering if perhaps your mother should have had one of those prenatal tests where the doctor urged her to schedule a termination".
"Many pro-choice activists I've listened to choose "viable to live outside the body"."
No, in my experience, most pro-choice activists choose "whatever benefits me" and "I demand the right to do whatever the fuck I want". And if told they're killing a baby, do *not* respond with "it's not a baby at this stage" but with "it doesn't matter, my bodily autonomy isn't up for debate". They are literally among the most selfish, the most sadistic, and the most evil people I've ever seen speak.
Maybe you encounter better ones, who possess something resembling a conscience. Most of the pro-choicers on this blog are indeed the latter.
But in their own spaces, the majority are utterly, proudly indifferent to whether they're killing a child, and openly care only about "my rights". Just remembering the way they talk makes me feel sick.
In light of that reality--in light of the real reason most of them support abortion, that many of them are shamelessly honest about--I'm going to treat claims about consciousness and viability as post-hoc rationalisations by the less honest remainder.
"I really do want err far on the side of not killing a conscious being"
Hey, you know how we could do that? Not allow *any* killing of human beings for reasons like "I just don't want a child, but I do want to have a lot of sex".
For point 1, remember that the US has roughly ~10x the amount of serious crime, but only 30% more police than many european countries. The US is *dramatically* underpoliced by most reasonable standards. It's just not realistic to expect them to enforce the kind of low priority crimes that can be enforced in (northwestern) europe. Hell, even europe itself is currently losing this capability under the pressure of increasing crime.
Housing affordability also impacts crime rates, a solution for that captures both issues. There is some overlap between factors driving chronic homelessness and crime.
First, a disclaimer. I'm too close to this issue to think very clearly; my last apartment building had two ex-homeless residents placed there by a housing program. The ones above me got high at all hours of the night and woke me up screaming, and collapsed my ceiling when they left their water on. The man down the hall filled his room with trash and made shooting threats to other residents while running up and down the halls while I locked my door and had to wonder if my tool cabinet would block a bullet coming through the wall. I have opinions, but they are colored by experience that might incline me to be too harsh. My gut reaction on this issue, and this one alone, is probably an undue draconianism--I don't think my neighbors belonged in a housing-first program, I think they belonged in jail.
RE plan II, criminalizing camping causes the problem that it's pretty much criminalizing homelessness itself, which violates some pretty basic intuitions about justice. But in general, it feels reasonable to find a specific law that allows us to differentiate between homelessness which is old-fashioned poor-guy-down-on-his-luck homelessness and homelessness-as-synechdoche-for-a-low-grade-criminal-lifestyle.
We don't want to criminalize homelessness, but unless you believe that criminal justice is punitive all the way down, you have to admit that part of the point of criminal justice is finding people whose previous tendencies to commit crimes imply that they are likely to commit further crimes--and removing these people from society for a reasonable period. It doesn't seem unreasonable to set decent standards of behaviour for homeless people, and suggest that the inability to follow these standards means that you probably won't be able to function in society as a whole.
What would be the downside to a law penalizing having a tent up after some arbitrary time in the morning on fair-weather days, say 7AM, with quickly ramping penalties for each offense? I've spent a lot of time backpacking: it's no great hardship for a person sound-of-mind to pack up a tent in the morning. If you are unable to maintain that kind of schedule, a few violations will put you within the reach of a criminal law system, which can then mandate oversight/incarceration/mental-health-care, etc.
I'm pretty far left, and I want an aggressive, semi-paternalist approach to solving the homeless crisis with well funded state institutions, which clearly works in the real world (i.e. other Western nations). But I live in california, which isn't the real world. Barring an ideal solution--which would be something like "make california politics less like california politics"--the fact is that I would rather spend the night in LA county jail than skid row--and so would most rational agents. If I allow myself a slightly paternalist attitude towards this situation, it is better for the average resident of skid row (and society as a whole) that the average resident of skid row be in LA county jail than on skid row. I think this solution is Rawls-compatible. Now clearly the more work we can do to make prisons humane, less punitive, etc. the better, but the horror people have about placing psychotic drug addicts in prison is telling about how medieval our concept of criminal detention is.
I see ... doing something requires a change, and we're assuming change is impossible (more police, more housing, etc. are all impossible because of "dysfunction"), therefore we can't do anything! What a productive conversation.
Matt Yglesias likes to joke that his solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict starts with both sides adopting more reasonable stances that they can then negotiate over. I suppose the analogy here would be for San Francisco/California residents to adopt better political stances, like other states do.
Actually this is a great analogy to what we've been talking about.
Literally just let Israel win the war, and stop covering for the clearly insane side, and this all end tomorrow.
But, people for some reason are extremely sympathetic to fascist jihadist fanatics, just like how they're extremely sympathetic to violent antisocial junkies.
And somehow they are able to throw enough word salad at you (like Scott is doing) to convince you that, "No, you can't just easily end the problem" - they're not acting in good faith, but as a smokescreen.
That's actually what I'm rejecting. *Why* do I need to explain it? *Who* do I need to explain it to?
To use the Israel example - why does Israel have to come up with a peace plan and a two-state solution and plan for rebuilding Gaza to end the war? Why can't they just unilaterally end it, and if it comes to it, force the Gazans out to just wander the Sinai for 40 years?
Because people like Scott ("the libs") will use their power to help the Gazans and ensure they can't do that. They'll first make you come up with a plan that takes into consideration the needs of the *checks notes* fanatical rapist jihadis - and it better be generous or it will be "inhumane" and they won't allow it.
So IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU DO - The issue is not one of coming up with a plan. They won't accept any plan (at least not one that will work). It's a Fugazi - you are accepting a dishonest frame.
The problem is not the jihadis or the junkies - we know how to deal with them. There are plenty of plans that have worked and will work. The problem is the libs. Until you deal with them and their love affair with the human refuse of the world you'll never get anywhere.
And this, right here, is why I moved out of SF, because this is too correct. The entire SF bay area is full of people who will kill any effective plan to improve... well... almost anything really.
The parents let the (psychotic overactive) children run the household. Good luck talking any sense into the parents until their house falls over and they have to come to you hat in hand.
There is no plan. Nixon was bluffing in 1968, Netanyahu was bluffing, and I have every reason to assume you are bluffing. Prove me wrong! "Put up or shut up."
Right, the real question is - how to develop better viable political stances. It seems entirely intractable, so what happens instead is blind blundering about, eventually setting in some sort of equilibrium, as it always has been.
For all there is to envy about someone like you, I keep stumbling on this basic roadblock:
> Many of you had strong feelings on this one. As usual, you were wrong.
How can you afford to routinely tell people that? It’s so basic it doesn’t belong in “What You Can’t Say” (<https://www.paulgraham.com/say.html>) territory, but if I thought I had something to say to the world worthy of a blog post, and straightforwardly claimed someone is wrong, it’d be easy to predict the following chain of events:
1) Someone confident in their ability to beat the crap out of me replies something along the lines of “C’m’ere tell me how wrong I am to my face”.
2a) If I don’t go there, I’ve just shown the world my true, cowardly colors. Everything I say is hollow and worthless, and I don’t deserve the oxygen I breathe. GAME OVER.
2b) If I go there—probably having to pay myself the full cost of the trip—they beat the crap out of me, perhaps killing me, perhaps not, but at any rate humiliating me for good. I’d better not cry to any authorities about the fight, even if they don’t just laugh me off, or else I’m a snitch and this option is as good as 2a. GAME OVER.
I like those openings, too, but I think at least part of their appeal is precisely that they are a luxury. Like so many other appealing things, they show you are the kind of person who can afford them, though in this case I don’t know how it works.
>If I don’t go there, I’ve just shown the world my true, cowardly colors. Everything I say is hollow and worthless, and I don’t deserve the oxygen I breathe.
You do understand of course that nobody actually believes that? Scott (or anybody else sane) would just ignore that dude and move on, banning him if he becomes too annoying, and everybody else sane would approve that.
I’m not so sure. My example is perhaps a bit exaggerated, but that’s the point: I don’t know the boundaries.
There’s an essentially universal agreement that those who offend others while conveniently hidden behind a screen deserve no sympathy, and should instead talk to their interlocutor’s faces and suffer the consequences. And, yes, the word they’re usually described with is _cowards_.
This used not to bother me much (though the word _coward_ did trouble me a bit, since it implies there’s some risk you _should_ be taking, but are not, and that this makes you contemptible; and it seemed to be used in a pretty inconsistent way), because I naïvely believed people had no “right” to be offended unless you went out of your way to use certain words, gestures or actions which had no purpose but to offend. Naturally, this means I didn’t actually know what offence was. The concept made little sense to me, and it was always a privilege _other people_ could wield to shut me up. I’d learned that when others said things I didn’t like, the first thing to do was to seriously ponder whether they might be right. And if I still thought they were not, the only recourse I knew was to try to debate with them to show them the truth. Yeah, this went about as disastrously as you can imagine. Physically trying to hit them when they hadn’t hit me first was clearly unacceptable, and if they were stronger than me, that was also a good recipe to get beaten to a pulp and for everyone to think I deserved it; and if they were weaker than me, that would be an even more unacceptable and cowardly act of abuse on my part.
Once you reach this stage, approximately a hundred percent (I love this expression stolen from Scott Alexander) of your future life lessons can be summed up as “No, other people are not absolute losers like you”. Unlike you, they don’t feel the need to be logically consistent. Unlike you, they feel entitled to take the law into their own hands, and to bend said law in their favor. Unlike you, they will use their strength to suppress speech they don’t like, with a perfectly clear conscience: this is what being offended means.
So it turns out that people can be offended by _anything_. Therefore, the only way to avoid being a coward who offends people behind a screen is to be willing to meet in person anyone who demands it, under whatever circumstances they see fit, and to suffer whatever consequences for your offending speech they see fit to inflict on you. I wish there were some way around this, but I don’t see it, and I feel cowardly looking for it.
"There’s an essentially universal agreement that those who offend others while conveniently hidden behind a screen deserve no sympathy, and should instead talk to their interlocutor’s faces and suffer the consequences." OK Boomer.
>There’s an essentially universal agreement that those who offend others while conveniently hidden behind a screen deserve no sympathy
No, there isn't, that's what bullies want you to think, and if you let them succeed your life will be miserable, so maybe it's time to reconsider?
There's a superficially similar but in fact different universal agreement that _assholes_ conveniently hidden behind a screen deserve no sympathy, and it would behoove everybody not to be an asshole, but once you pass that low bar anybody being offended by what you say is _their_ problem to deal with.
Fundamentally I think this debate is at the wrong level.
Most people's complaints about San Francisco (and other cities like NYC where I live) is basically, "I pay a lot to live here and I should not have to be hassled by dirty yelling maybe-dangerous crazy or high people on my daily commute. If I moved to a suburb all of this hassle would disappear; why can't my city do whatever affluent suburbs are doing?"
This is not about dealing with homelessness or mental illness. This is about "community policing" and private security; disruptive people should be kicked out of stores, trains, places where they're blocking the road, etc.
We already have a social technology for this: bouncers. Cities need way more people serving a "bouncer" function. I don't care if they're private security or cops, but ideally they would virtually never use violence, they'd just be imposing and give stern looks while telling troublemakers to move along. And you encourage a culture where average bystanders like you and me can go up to Naked Yelling Dude and say "hey, quit it or I'm calling Security." (Since noticing the problem I have tried to be a better bystander in my neighborhood, in the sense of "backing up the worried retail workers who are awkwardly trying to get an obviously crazy person to leave the cafe.") Most "encounters" of this sort don't have to end in an arrest. Mostly, even a *little* more firmness and initiative can be a substantial improvement.
Right now we have everybody just awkwardly avoiding Naked Yelling Dude because the only people trained to do so are cops and there aren't enough cops and calling 911 takes forever and nice liberals like me don't want to escalate such that Naked Yelling Dude might get *shot*. The obvious humane solution is to have way more people, maybe community police or security guards or social workers or regular people in a volunteer group, who take responsibility for enforcing the "rules" of civil behavior in spaces open to the public, and who only escalate to calling the "real" cops if things get seriously dangerous. Probably not bad if more non-cops get self-defense or firearms training as well.
What becomes of Naked Yelling Dude? To be honest, that's not my problem. I don't believe we should deprive him of his civil rights -- being super unpleasant is not a crime. But he *is* unpleasant, people are entitled to some boundaries on behavior in public spaces, and what most people are upset about is that none of those boundaries are being enforced. At this point I think the best way to *preserve* civil liberties is to do a better job at mundane, usually-nobody-goes-to-jail, Officer Friendly type policing, so that people stop clamoring to rebuild massive state institutions where people die at fifty and get all their teeth pulled out and are chained in pools of their own shit. (Seriously, read some memoirs, watch some documentaries, you do not have to be an unusually bleeding-heart liberal to recognize an atrocity once you learn the facts.)
Bouncers kick people out into the street, which is where the homeless already are. The comedian Ron White was kicked out of a bar, thus rendering him "drunk in public", for which he was arrested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neUaSTSKFZc If a homeless person is just being annoying rather than having committed a crime, what are these bouncers-of-the-streets supposed to do? Your answer seems to be "call the cops", but we already have cops, so I don't see what these bouncers add.
what they add is that people *aren't* calling the cops, right now, for stuff like being drunk/high/disruptive in public. cops are a scarce resource. we need a secondary tier that can be used much more broadly and handle the cases where "overt social pressure to knock it off" suffice.
If people aren't willing to call the cops rather than this secondary tier of people to call the cops for them, then it seems to me they just don't care enough about the problem to deserve a solution.
Part of the problem, or the perception of it, is that Naked Yelling Dude can pretty much do what he wants and if by some fluke he does get arrested, there are the bleeding-hearts to make sure he's not going to jail, or at the least destroy the business by a social media campaign about the heartless capitalist pigs hassling the unhomed.
If the retail worker lays a hand on Naked Yelling Dude, on the other hand, they're likely to be charged with assault and get into the meat grinder of the legal system, while the online bleeding-hearts start a campaign to get them fired or else their employer will be destroyed by a campaign about heartless capitalist pigs violently assaulting harmless unhomed person.
yes, agreed that this is part of what would have to be changed.
We do need to promote a culture where it's accepted that the person making a reasonable attempt to enforce normal civil behavior (and store policy, and property rights) is in the right.
My impression is that most concern about homeless people is about their tents, and that police occasionally clear their tents out of wherever they are but they just set them up somewhere else because they have to be somewhere.
As a recent visitor-to-but-not-resident-of downtown SF: it's not the tents, it's the people in the tents, to put it coldly. The behavior - shitting in the street; having racial slurs yelled at you; open hard drug use (I saw/experienced *all three* of these things in four days in SF!) - is the problem. I don't claim to know what the actual situation is, but the impression I get from the short time I was there is that, while these are all technically crimes, enforcement of the statues against them is more or less nonexistent - and therein lies the problem. "A tent being there" is just an eyesore - "whatever", in my eyes, though I get why people might be irritated by them.
In SF, until the recent Supreme Court overturning in Grants Pass, you could not clear the tents unless you had shelter for everyone available.
See this CBS article from earlier this year: "San Francisco's Mayor London Breed blamed Martin v. Boise for worsening the city's crisis. The court order bars San Francisco from clearing sidewalk encampments unless the city can guarantee a place to sleep for everyone it moves – a challenge in a city with more than 8,000 homeless and fewer than 4,000 shelter beds."
Meaning that in SF at least it is not the case that they already clear tents and they just pop back up, they have been unable to clear them systematically for the last few years.
Criminal trials are indeed way too inefficient in the US. I was linking to Robin Hanson's proposal for how to deal with judgment-proof criminals earlier, here's his proposal for speeding up the legal system:
I find your comment difficult to understand. Are you asking why the prison population is so high? To answer that I would recommend reading Mark Kleiman's "When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment" and William Stuntz' "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice".
Because there are a lot of high level criminals. Most people in prison are there for committing a serious malum in se felony offense like murder, rape, battery, burglary, etc.
I'm surprised that nobody really got what "draconian" would be. You said above 25% of homeless are in shelters, 25% waiting for shelters, 25% too crazy to do rational stuff and 25% hate shelters and prefer streets. So on the one hand build more shelters (the second 25% tranche is just low hanging fruit right there) and try to get that formula to 50% in shelters, 25% crazy, 25% actually prefers homelessness.
Have programs to get them jobs, give free bus tickets if they want to leave, affordable social housing and all that people with conscience would suggest. But on the other hand make streets more unpleasant than shelters. Make it a crime to give money to beggars panhandlers etc and just for media prosecute some normal people just helping homeless people. Make people afraid of helping the homeless. Shutdown and criminalize soup kitchens etc. Punish businesses who give free food to the homeless. In this way, you'll get the 25% who actually prefer homelessness to either pull their shit together, move to another city, or begrudgingly move to a shelter.
At this stage you're left with the irrational crazy psychotic tranche. Just involuntarily admit them to your institution of choice where they aren't allowed to go unless they've been sane for at least a couple of months.
Leaving aside the moral questions, it’s going to be impossible to find politicians who are keen to
spend their political capital on “putting operators of soup kitchens and those who give money to beggars in jail”
I am actually open to things more “draconian” than whatever San Francisco is doing, but if you criminalized me for giving money to poor people, you would find me marching in the street for sure.
In other words, what you’re laying out might work if it happened but it wouldn’t happen in the first place.
Yes, nobody would do that. I was just giving an example of what I understand from working draconian measures though. By the way, for example criminalizing marching like that and giving hefty fines combined with making any marcher ineligible for any kind of tax break, subsidy, etc would also work better to keep the populace peaceful.
Then we are probably working with different understandings of what “it would work” mean. If the “working solution” cannot reach implementation stage, I don’t count it as something that “would work”.
would work, with some politicians keen to spend their political capital on solving a problem rather than saving it for reelection or something. I wrote the original comment because in Scott's post, measures really draconian weren't mentioned at all.
> Leaving aside the moral questions, it’s going to be impossible to find politicians who are keen to spend their political capital on “putting operators of soup kitchens and those who give money to beggars in jail”
Public madness, even institutional madness like politics, needs to be acknowledged and addressed, I think. What the homeless, mass shooters, January 6 rioters, George Floyd rioters, Hamas-supporting militants and homophiliacs all have in common is mental malaise.
We don't acknowledge our minds are attached to our bodies.
Employers should be expected to offer as many mental health sick days to employees as sick days for the body. They can keep calling them "personal" if they're embarrassed, but failing to acknowledge that healthy minds are as important as healthy bodies is ridiculous. People should be excited about psychiatric health as physical health. If we simply try to ban guns, we're missing the whole point.
I think sick days are generic and can be used for mental or physical issues. There's "mental health parity laws" which basically enact what you're suggesting.
I do think calling off from work because you're a Hamas supporter would be a novel gambit.
Personnel managers would have to ensure people wouldn't abuse the system, say trying to tack a few psychiatric health days onto a fishing trip, but I think most people probably need more time off for sanity, rather than typical physical health.
But counselors over zoom may not be the answer. As you point out, the whole infrastructure we had to support psychiatric health was dismantled back in the 1980s. Waiting until people end up in prison is no way to treat mental illness. They figure out what kind of meds to give you, and you show up at the medical clinic for "watch swallows" and if you have a rough episode that requires, say, a cell extraction, you end up in lockdown with a rubber blanket: not an ideal treatment plan.
It would be crazy if we finally came up with some kind of system to manage public mental illness because homeless people were having episodes in public, and had become a danger to passers-by.
>I do think calling off from work because you're a Hamas supporter would be a novel gambit.
Although, if one is both gay _and_ a Hamas supporter, calling off from work because one has a sound judgement problem starts to look plausible... ( A slow motion "danger to one's self..." ? )
The logical conclusion about "Gays for Gaza" is that they should be in favour of the IDF, who have after all dramatically reduced the number of rooftops
Yup, Many Thanks! The odds that an Islamicist Gazan chooses to make a gay supporter rapidly downwardly mobile does get reduced along with the available building height... :-)
Per your suggestion I am acknowledging your joke about the IDF reducing the number of rooftops as a form of public madness that made my stomach turn from the high level of dehumanization it exhibited. While you would certainly care if that was your rooftop and your children crushed to death, you clearly don't see the people in Gaza as deserving of life as yourself.
Perhaps you may be suffering from the mental malaise you are so eager to diagnose in the "other". I have to agree with your comment that we have more societal psychosis to grapple with than the coffee shop disturbing homeless.
"These drugs [antipsychotics] have many potentially serious side effects." But on the other hand there is almost zero recreational value or addiction potential in them, which would remove the number one and two reasons e.g. pain meds and anxiolytics are so tightly controlled.
the systems suggested for handling crazy people seem like they could work pretty well, if actually invested in. But all of these systems spend a bunch of time fighting against people who really really want to do drugs, so much so that theyd rather be living in a ditch w heroin than agreeing to go into the system which would prevent them from doing drugs. What if we just, let them have their drugs?
Heroin is pretty cheap-- much cheaper than prison or massive homeless populations. You really really want to spend your life doing drugs? ok. You can go live in the drug house outside of town, it's free. Drugs are provided, but can only be used in the supervised injection room. No parties, no visitors, regular inspections-- it should be very unappealing to everyone except people who are already fully committed to using drugs all day. Drug House is kept clean, safe, boring, and away from the rest of us
Partner this with some kind of rehab program, and various opportunities to move away from the drug house (like a work program? Bus that goes into town also-- idk. you want to give people an easy path to get out of this system). If you refuse Drug House, and keep using drugs anyway, obviously you go to prison
honestly, i love that. like, as crazy as this idea is, i love that he's thinking outside the box, and also proposing ideas that focus more on incentive structures than on forcing everyone to comply or just adding more layers of bureaucracy
That's not a bad solution, but the problem is that junkies want to get high. Just safe drugs that will stave off withdrawal aren't enough for them. So the Drug Home would need to be someplace they couldn't freely leave, and couldn't just pop into the nearest town, score some street drugs, then end up back in Drug Home.
No visitors certainly, because they'll only smuggle in drugs. I wouldn't have it totally boring, you need to give people some options for enjoyment that aren't drug-related, so yeah parties and activities etc. But in agreement on regular inspections, security, and clean, safe, and away from regular people.
oh, right, that makes sense, you dont want to drive them to keep doing drugs out of boredom. So you need to make the actual drug use itself boring (only in designated, well lit supervised rooms, no music or entertainment allowed), but the rest of the house should have lots of drug-free diversions (idk, movies, library, classes, work program like i mentioned.) You do need to balance that with making sure that no one *wants* to move to Drug House, who isn't already on drugs
(as far as getting high, i didn't actually have a problem with that. They get the real drugs, whatever they were planning to use anyway, for free! i didn't care if they're high as long as they do it where it's not bothering everyone else
Yeah, that's the balancing act: you don't want to make it so awful that they'll prefer to do any crime to keep living in squalor rather than go to Drug House, but also you don't want to make it so soft that it's regarded as a cushy number to go there for a short stay, get free drugs, then get out and start back on crime and getting high.
Hard to do the balancing, and I'd rather err a little on the "too soft" than "too hard" side, because the main point is you want to get people off the streets and sorted out for their own sake and the sake of the rest of us.
"The practical reason is that the cost of everything has increased by at least an order of magnitude since 1950."
Actually the cost of most stuff, after inflation, has decreased since 1950. Adjusted for inflation, $13 today = $1 in 1950. So the hardback novel priced at $3.50 in 1950 cost the equivalent of $45.50 today. Food, clothes, and a lot of other basic necessities were significantly more expensive then. Middle class families darned socks and patched clothes, because they were expensive. At the same time, the median family income, adjusted for inflation, has gone from $40,000 to about $95,000, and family size has gotten smaller. Our society, at every level, has gotten a lot richer.
Homelessness, in its modern form (homelessness in the 1930's was different), is a problem of affluence. It is not a coincidence that homelessness is a bigger problem for the most affluent cities in the U.S.
You might be surprised at the complexity of the processes and institutions that produce "simple" consumer goods. I would distinguish not on the basis of complexity but between the goods and services constrained by market forces and those that are not.
Elementary and secondary education is not particularly complex. The service provided hasn't changed much since the 1950's. The cost increase is due to the increase in the number of teachers and administrative staff per student, and much nicer and more spacious facilities. In the case of health care, because of the increase in wealth and the economic incentives that have been created we consume a lot more of it. It would be interesting to look at the change in the cost of over the counter drugs and devices not covered by insurance or other third party payers.
Long time reader, first time posting. Some time ago when NYC was going through a "Tough on homelessness" policy discussion I proposed a *thought experiment* to colleagues, an optional free ticket for homeless people to a mental health villages set up in a lower-income country, where housing and healthcare could be provided cheaply, paid for by the originating city. In New York, I think a shelter bed cost new york around $30k/yr for housing alone, plus the additional costs of homelessness, that money would presumably would fund a nice lifestyle somewhere low-cost, bring money into the local economy there, and support more doctors and nurses getting trained and given well-paying jobs.
I happened to be chatting about this before a seminar w/a Yale economist, and a harvard b-school prof (the guest speaker) turned around and they both agreed "I can't think of anything wrong with it technically, but good luck getting buy-in because it feels morally wrong" (akin to the famous Summers Memo about exporting our waste to poor countries perhaps?)
I happened to later be meeting up with colleagues in one of those open plazas in NYC outside Penn Station with tables and chairs and asking about the morality of the thought experiment compared to our current system (assuming it's all voluntary), and a guy at the next table with a suitcase asked if the ticket to treatment was an option, because he was bipolar and homeless - his family in Kentucky couldn't deal with him and put him on a bus to NYC, and he got in the cycle Scott described: Has a manic episode, gets arrested and sent to Bellevue Hospital, they stabilize him, and discharge but can only give meds for 30 days, they run out, he gets arrested, etc. He was perfectly nice, and very much wanted to get treatment, but had just found he didn't have viable options in Manhattan.
There seems to be some kind of error in understanding at least certain versions of the "be tough" position. "Be tough" doesn't need to be complicated. Arrest people who commit crimes. If they keep committing a lot of crimes, don't release them (and the kind of homeless people who disrupt everything constantly commit crimes!). Whether they are stored in a mental institution or a prison doesn't really matter. This solution worked amazingly well in NYC under Giuliani, and Bloomberg. It is not some hypothetical idea.
Do what already is known to work is a fully developed and viable plan that shouldn't be ignored.
As someone who lived in both NYC and SF it continues to boggle my mind that people in SF have such trouble conceiving of this.
Since reading the first article I had in the back of my head the idea of a new type of institution which could side-step the issue of commitment by being, well, voluntary. And I still think it's an interesting direction, but the kicker is that when trying to imagine how it would look like, I constantly go into two direction: less regulation, and more intentional negentropy.
Let's imagine a town-sized area where you don't have FDA, don't have zoning laws and don't have minimum wage. But you do have people which are hired specifically to facilitate things (the intentional negentropy part). That's my plan.
How would that look like, exactly? I'm less sure of that, not because I don't have ideas but because the final form would probably be the result of several iterations. You could start with literally that - an area where you have as many support personnel and services you can afford, but no enforcement except the bare minimum regarding violence and theft. Somebody wants to build a shack? Go by and ask him if he's got enough nails. Yeah, sure, at some point you'll have somebody building a 3 story shack out of cardboard and you'll have to put the foot down and adopt more regulation than literally zero, but it'll be closer to "imminent danger" than to "zoning regulations".
You get a lot of things out of that, one of them being that those people won't be living outside a functional economy anymore. The administration can be one of the main employers, actually - you will have to pay a number of expensive specialists, but once somebody builds a good shack, you can pay him cheaply to go around and check on other people's shacks. Oh, this would be impossible due to liability, you say? Well, see the original idea of a "regulation free zone".
Because honestly, reading the first article it looked to me like those people simply can't function with the current complexity of the society, or at a sufficiently high efficiency level to be part of it. I'm saying that instead of ejecting them or looking for a place to lock them up - give them a way to live on a lower energy level.
It's not like they're lacking enough calories to live, nor are they in danger to freeze to death in California, and the state is already spending the cash for the medical services. So why exactly would you force them to follow minimum wage laws and live in a house that's built on ridiculously expensive codes, when their current need is a roof and a shower, and their actual earning capacity is actually pretty close to that?
Shantytowns have a history and a culture to back them up, and possibly a higher tolerance for accidents than California is ready to accept. Our experiment would start from scratch, with a population self selected to rather risky habits. I'm proposing less regulation for the sake of end results, I'm definitely not willing to sacrifice the end results just for the sake of ideological no regulation.
To be clear, an 'acceptable' plan is going to be at minimum a thousand pages long single-spaced 12pt, with at minimum an OOM more in references and citations?
It seems it would have to be a detailed description for how to revolutionize society from the ground up: housing, the legal system, bleeding hearts, drug prescription and dispensing, massive economic redistribution, police and social worker responsibilities/staffing/budgets, etc. Establishment of a right to live wherever you want at no cost, assuming you're willing to accept whatever is eventually defined as state-minimum housing (good luck with that one). So on down the list. I look forward to the propaganda section, reminding people that cities can be nice places rather than just tolerable ones, and somehow convincing libertine progressives that letting people rot in the streets and/or victimize the public is not actually kinder than paternalism.
A few comments call this an isolated demand for rigor. I don't disagree and I'll add: "perfect is the enemy of good."
Sorry, but you forgot to include a model for projecting tax revenue in the years 2024-2030, so I'm afraid your thousand-page proposal would pretty much be the same as saying "BUT I WOULD BE TOUGH AND NOT SOFT!".
I'm going to go on a slight tangent and say that I would like for it to be far easier to families to conserve relatives. I know somebody who has been an alcoholic for decades, and has been drinking all day every day for the past ten years. They have severe liver damage and are basically slowly killing themselves. The family tried to get them conserved but failed. It is basically impossible to get a conservatorship over a person who doesn't want it and who has the money to hire somebody to fight it in court. In the US it is not legal to kill yourself... unless you do it with some sort of addictive substance. Then it's totally fine.
Why not make extreme addiction a crime in the same way that attempted suicide is a crime. If you've gotten to the point that you've given yourself cirrhosis, you should be banned from ever drinking any alcohol ever again. And if you are caught drinking, then that's an immediate one year conservatorship for you, either under the family (preferable), or the state.
You could do the same thing for fentanyl. If you're caught in public once doing the fentanyl fold, that's a warning for you. Twice and that's a three day involuntary lockup. Third time and you're conserved for a year as well.
I know that institutions are supposed to be bad, worse even than prison (I don't know if I believe that). But would you rather see a loved one in an institution or dead? I'd rather see them in an institution. As bad as it may be, it gives them a year to clear their head and try to fit their life back together. Many probably won't be able to and will end up right back in the same place again, but it's still better than death, and certainly gives them a better shot than a saline drip, a saltine, and a trip right back out onto the street.
It's not that we don't have the institutions, it's that we don't have enough of them. American prisons are already over-crowded, so using them as dumping grounds for the mentally ill/criminal homeless is not solving any problems (and may indeed be one reason cops won't follow up on reports and prosecutors won't bring such cases to trial):
"Federal prisons are chronically short-staffed, creating dangerous conditions for both the people working there and for those who are incarcerated. The aging buildings are in need of major repairs and maintenance. The bureau estimates its already overcrowded prison population will expand to 10% over capacity in 2024."
Back when I worked in social housing, there were shelters and spaces for the homeless - but not nearly enough. So in an emergency (say a family made homeless due to eviction or someone fleeing domestic violence), they might have to be put up in private accommodation, such as bed-and-breakfast places. Clearly that's not a long-term solution, the accommodation is not intended to be living quarters, and it costs more money in the end.
The homelessness section was always faced with ringing around to see if the shelters had a space available (often not). Sometimes this had a salutary effect; one guy had finally been kicked out of the family home because of his persistent drinking. Before he sobered up, he wasn't one bit inclined to be co-operative, but once he did sober up and realised he had nowhere to stay (not even a shelter bed available) and no money for more alcohol, the very real fact that he was one step away from ending up on the street hit him in the face like a brick and made him a lot more tractable to co-operating with the services trying to help him.
But for those who don't want to, or can't, engage - what then? Maybe there are more shelter spaces and options available today, but that's not a guarantee. I wholeheartedly agree that more housing is needed, and that's a fix for those newly or temporarily homeless; people who want to be helped and can be helped.
For the mentally ill? For those who don't want to change and are happy to be criminals and aggressive beggars? Even jail isn't the solution. We need more of the institutions to be built and staffed and funded, that can and will take those on. Maybe you will need to keep "I hear voices" Billy 'locked up' for life in what is an asylum. That doesn't exist right now, as Scott has pointed out, due to both costs and the tangle of legal issues.
That's what needs to get sorted out, and that's why I suggested prison asylums; there does seem to be the appetite to build prisons and the perception that the disruptive homeless are a threat to others, and if that's the only way to get asylums and places of treatment built, then build a new 'prison', call it that, and get people off the streets and into it for some kind of help.
Yeah, I have to agree there. There are people who are, I won't say "natural criminals", but who don't give a damn about anyone else but themselves, want the easy fast way to make money, won't change because not interested in getting an education and a job like the normies and squares, and who will go on committing crime as long as they get away with it.
So prison for them.
The crazy people? Treatment and, in the cases of those too far gone to help, asylums where they can live but not damage themselves or others any further. The people who fell into crime but can be helped out of it if given support and guidance and supervision? Help them. Drug addicts? Get them sober and help them stay sober, if possible (not always possible, I know; some people will never get off drugs, some people have to nearly die or otherwise burn everything in their lives to the ground before they finally get determined to fight the addiction).
The guys who will lie up to your face about how they've really changed, honest, while laughing up their sleeves about what an idiot you are to believe them? Prison, for as long as that takes, and if that takes life, then so be it.
I'll go further and say that some people should be executed rather than imprisoned. Not legal in the EU, but thankfully still existent in the US despite all the opposition to it.
"Radically alarming problems need radical solutions from radical leaders with radical agency. "
When millions were dying of polio in south asia, the solution wasn't to think of ways to get around the dysfunctional govt systems. It was to correctly point out that this was a monumental crisis, and demand emergency response with the kind of authoritarian powers that are needed for extreme agency. It seemed impossible at the time, but in some 50% of cases, these country's dysfunctional govts. actually managed to alarm themselves into competence. Now, Polio is completely eradicated in these nations. We have more recent examples : Paris's transformation into a cycling city, India's embrace of sanitary bathrooms or Bukele's cleanup of El Salvador.
"We want to strike a happy middle ground between working with the system and solving the problem", is the kind of wishful thinking that helps people sleep at night. However, historic examples thoroughly dismantle such illusions. No situation that's this far gone has been solved with gentle methods.
West coast cities have the first world's highest rates [1] of unsheltered homeless by a country mile. Why is it so wrong to expect 'radical' solutions that work outside the established legal system ?
"California's grid-lock is permanent and I ahve accepted the eternal and degraded state of our beaurocracy. my pessimistic mind does not have the capacity to engage with a solution that demands basic competence from everyone involved."
It's good to be practical. But, if an independently-funded internet substack refuses to articulate unlikely solutions, then what hope is there for anything in the US ? Impracticality has never stopped Georgists, Communists and Libertarians from proposing their radical ideas. What are SF tech people so scared ?
Scott is writing from a place of frustration with the problems he sees, and how there are no easy, quick, cheap answers.
I get that, and I agree. But if we're talking about, say, "do you want to criminalise being homeless?" (which I am fighting over with someone else in a different comment thread) then I ask you this - is that better or worse than "being homeless and crazy gets you an automatic capital punishment sentence?"
"A knife-wielding homeless man who allegedly “heard voices” was shot dead outside the Republican National Convention Tuesday".
So prosecutors (for good reasons) " don’t want to spend $50,000 to have a big trial to put a homeless person in jail for 90 days for disturbing the peace or whatever."
Great, so instead we wait until the guy snaps and gets himself shot to death.
From the account in the story, he was on crack, he was hearing voices, and in the end he got himself killed:
"Watkins told The Post that the suspect was homeless — and there is a large “tent city” in the area.
He identified the dead man as “Sam,” but said he was known to others in the encampment as “Jehovah,” referring to a voice Sam heard in his head.
It was known in the community that Sam “wanted to die,” Watkins said, adding that “Jehovah” made frequent appearances in the past few days.
“He just told me he was having these thoughts in his head. And he said, “Jehovah’s coming down.” And I believed him, because I hear voices, too,” Watkins said.
“So when he ran toward the front with the knives, I knew he was ready to go.”
Watkins claimed Sam wasn’t waving the knives at police or trying to engage with them when he was gunned down.
The grieving man did not know Sam’s last name and said that the two only knew one another for four months. Both lived in the tent city and did crack cocaine together, he said.
“That’s what we love to do. When we’re in Tent City, we feel we’re free,” Watkins said."
So yeah, it's too much trouble and too complicated to get a guy who's delusional, drug-addicted, and psychotic off the streets and put him in jail (for lack of anywhere better). But we can certainly solve the problem permanently by execution without charge, trial and sentencing. Is that much better than "don't make being homeless a crime" when in effect the end result is the same as if we formally made it a law that homelessness invoked capital punishment?
If that's what we're going to do, let's be honest about it. Let's have the Central and South American death squads, and let's not be surprised if thrill killers and vigilantes get in on the act.
Nothing makes me more impatient than gun talk. Even from Scott. That is to say, this pedantry from supposedly red-blooded manly men about their different kinds of guns. Like, we're all supposed to stay current on your asinine hobby. We're supposed to speak with great precision about your millions of guns. Doh, you just misspoke about my gun!! You see, it's not automatic at all, blah blah.
No: all this parsing of gun types and accessories and so on and so forth and scooby dooby doo - is absolutely a sign that we have lost our collective minds, and nothing good will ever happen culturally while this nonsense prevails.
I think there's frustrations on both sides of this discussion. A friend was recently discussing guns with some East Coast anti-gun coworkers who have never fired a gun. Talk turned to, "why do you need so many guns, you're just overcompensating, etc."
They found out my friend's husband owns multiple guns. She talked about how he likes to hunt, and uses different guns for different game. You're not going to take down an elk with a shotgun, or a duck with a 30-06. Meanwhile, neither of these is good for home defense. They understood that there's a reason people have multiple guns, besides just "overcompensation" or whatever. (Do some people overcompensate? Certainly.)
Part of the frustration also comes from gun laws that make people LESS safe because people who don't understand anything about the nuts and bolts of how guns work craft laws about them. Like restrictions on sound suppressors. These things don't work like in the movies, making your gun completely silent. Instead, they take your gun's ear-splitting noise from a level that will damage your hearing down to just below dangerous to everyone involved but still uncomfortably loud. If you're in a home defense situation, you don't want the person with the gun putting on ear protection before she makes a life or death decision. She might hear something at the last second that changes the outcome. Equally, you don't want her ears ringing after the first shot, when everyone needs to make life or death decisions once deadly force has been introduced. Suppressors make all kinds of safety sense, and in a sane world where we could talk about gun policy they'd be recommended for home defense, just like hollow point is recommended for home defense.
Hollow point, too, is an area where ignorance leads to wrong conclusions. For some reason, they sound scary, but they're actually about safety. When people who don't understand anything about ballistics talk about banning something like hollow point bullets because they sound intimidating, it's frustrating because it looks like a purported "gun safety" bill whose practical effect is to make nobody safer, but dramatically endanger bystanders.
People who own guns want gun safety, too. They hate the mass shootings, too. But just as Scott is impatient with people who complain that their ignorance shouldn't count against their uninformed policy proposals, gun owners are often exasperated that bad gun policy is driven by willful ignorance. Nobody is asking anti gun advocates to become aware of every minute detail of gun culture. But if you're planning to pass legislation and you don't understand the difference between a semiautomatic and an automatic, or you're talking nonsense about a 'gun show loophole', you're not ready to propose solutions.
I have noticed *zero* overlap between serious hunters, people interested in wildlife generally - and the gun LARPers.
I grew up in a family about as thoroughly invested in hunting - especially coastal waterfowl, doves, and quail before their numbers became such that it is generally bad form to shoot other people’s quail *even* if invited into their property during quail season - as it is possible for urbanites to be. They even had a shell reloading thing in the garage (!).
My eldest brother as part of his rebellion and exit from the family turned away from hunting, and the rest of their social milieu.
To the hunting others, this trashy gun culture would be as foreign to them as it is to me. Much on the order of a quiet contempt for the sort of people who pay to shoot tired old animals on game reserves.
No bleeding hearts, just - that’s not hunting.
I even remember my father being a little embarrassed about having been invited along with his wealthier kid brother to some fancy schmancy place where they released pheasants. And my father is an unthinking man who tends to be very keen on rich people and their doings. Yet in the matter of hunting, he’s pretty infallibly without BS. Simply from having imbibed a certain code from people long, long dead who had a more mature grasp of both guns and hunting and presumably life itself.
It is actually the non hunting vegetarian brother who now connects politics with gun ownership, boasts about his guns that serve no practical purpose unless in the hands of a lunatic, and has hopes of buying one of those pre-ban guns. And disturbs the peace of his rural home with pointless displays of shooting.
A gun for defense if that is your choice, is a far cry from gun mania.
I agree with most of this, including the sentiments behind it. There are definitely gun nuts out there, and they have some weird ideas, entirely divorced from reality.
This reflects a more general push over the last 10-ish years to push subcultural identifiation with hyperconsumption (a phenomenon I call the Funko Pop Effect: go and look at a comics store and wonder who exactly is buying all those things). Power-law distributed consumption as a form of displaying affiliation with specific niche subcultures are very much A Thing, (cf with people on the other side of the aisle who bought RGB or Fauci candles, for example)
Interesting. I associate intense desire for consumer goods with a period long in my rearview mirror. And I don't know that one starts an utterly de novo oddball "collection" in middle age.
About as niche as I ever got was postcards, which started organically enough with people sending a small child postcards; a little James Dean ephemera; miniature things, first from my dollhouse days which was never much about the dolls, dollhouse dolls being rather ugly or too large for the furnishings; the miniatures later not so much as a collection in themselves but more to sit on bookshelves and relieve the relentless bookishness. My last miniature thing was a tiny llama from a Mexican market that set up in a defunct mall here, which also sells South American things much like the Southwestern Indians sell Mexican/Central American crafts (I don't want to turn it over to see if it's made in China.) (I would still love it though, as I'm captivated by miniature things.) (I once bought a Navajo taco from a South American woman at a roadside stall in AZ which seemed like a bridge too far.) I'll buy a vintage paperback if it's an option, but not if I don't want the book. (This can backfire: I ordered Bertrand Russell's guide to a happy life, and found that a prior owner had circled every sentence. I guess that was the pattern he started - circle what you approve, or circle what you've read - and he faithfully went on with it. Anyway, I am not sure Bertrand Russell had very good ideas on the conduct of life.)
A friend found in her scrapbook a flyer from a concert she once attended as a young teen, at the Love Street Light Circus Feel Good Machine, signed by Roky Erickson. Being a (serious) postcard collector (of a particular time and area) she used eBay quite a bit, so she put her old flyer on there.
She was flabbergasted when hours later it had been bid up to $700.
If the problem is visible homelessness, can’t you go a long way toward solving it by building lots of shelters and having a law that you’re not allowed to sleep on the street? That’s well within CA’s state capacity. Obviously it doesn’t address root causes or even eliminate street panhandling and weirdness in daytime, but it gets you from SF to NYC levels, which is pretty good.
I can never quite escape the sense that the residents of San Francisco are soft whingers when it comes to homelessness. Perhaps there’s something I’m missing.
I live in the highest homelessness areas of Sydney, and possibly Australia generally. Further, as much homelessness as there is Redfern, there are even more severely mentally ill and disruptive people wandering around, which is usually what people actually mean by homelessness. People walking down the street screaming abuse and shouting for heaven to smite us all or screaming late at night about perfidious psychiatrists is a big thing here. Although homelessness in Sydney is lower than San Fran generally, I suspect Redfern- my part of Sydney- would have to be at least comparable to relatively high homelessness areas of San Fran.
To be honest, people who aren’t homeless mostly just… get on with it in Redfern? Homelessness is a human tragedy, and many of us advocate against it, and for housing for all, but we don’t experience it as a terrible, nigh unendurable thing that is happening to us non-homeless people.
There’s no romanticizing any of this- to be clear. Homelessness is awful. Moreover, it is distressing to the observer, and not just the homeless- hopefully for compassionate reasons. Nevertheless, I’m perplexed by just how terrible San Franciscans seem to find it. If I were to look at things from a purely selfish perspective, not considering the welfare of the homeless people themselves (as seems to be true of many of the San Fransciscans in this thread) it wouldn’t even be in my top five issues for Redfern.
One point that I do take about this is that it’s easy enough for me, a 6’3’’ youngish man with a powerful build to be this blase, but the women I know mostly seem pretty calm about Redfern too.
Well, are the crazy screaming people living in tents outside your front door or place of work? Do you routinely have to step over or walk around people passed out from drugs on the street? Does the entire area smell of urine and faeces? Are businesses boarding up or leaving because of the amount of shoplifting and hassling of customers? Are you leaving your car windows open, when you park, so the thieves can just help themselves to anything in the car and won't smash the windows?
"Bipping is the slang term for a specific type of car break-in in San Francisco that shatters vehicle windows with very little noise. Bipping originated as thieves broke off the porcelain pieces of sparkplugs to throw them against the vehicle’s window. Porcelain being far harder than glass, the flung sparkplug pieces would quietly break the window, allowing access to the car’s contents. Today, bipping is more often accomplished using a resqme car escape tool. The practice is rampant in the city and surrounding areas. So many San Francisco car break-ins have led to the nickname “Bip City.” But San Francisco car break-ins are hurting residents and tourists alike. So, let’s see how to prevent car break-ins.
Bipping has become such a nightmare in the Bay Area that some residents leave their car windows down, hoping thieves will be content to steal their belongings while leaving the vehicle windows undamaged. Our tips to prevent San Francisco car break-ins are certainly more effective than that. But please understand that you could follow all our advice and do everything right yet still get bipped. The primary goal is to make your vehicle less enticing to thieves than other cars."
Back in 2021, it seems car owners used to leave the boot open as well:
"People in California are reportedly leaving their vehicles' trunks open to deter thieves from breaking their vehicles' windows.
Vehicle break-ins are reportedly on the rise in San Francisco and Oakland. To keep potential thieves from damaging their property, some people are emptying out everything of value from their vehicle, unlocking their doors, and leaving the trunk open while they go about their business."
From what I gather, and I'm only getting this from online, it's not that all of San Francisco is terrible, it's that the problem is concentrated in specific areas, has become *extremely* visible, and little to nothing seems to be being done about it.
I don't exactly know how this compares, in 2023 it seems Redfern was one of the "five most dangerous suburbs in Sydney" (but that may just be newspaper clickbait):
"Nearby Redfern was another inner city crime hotspot with the 2016 postcode recording 816 serious incidents based on a population of 13,072 people. The crime statistics show the most prevalent serious crimes were assaults (259), thefts from home (119), and incidents of malicious damage to property (179)."
That seems to break down to one serious crime per sixteen people. What about San Francisco? They're saying that it's getting better, but that does seem to be as a result of getting tough on crime:
"Recent examples of enforcement activities that have supported making San Francisco safer include:
SFPD and the SF Sheriff made 54 arrests in one day, including dozens of fugitives, as part of the City’s multi-agency drug market enforcement effort
The District Attorney secured a conviction in an organized retail theft case that targeted multiple locations in San Francisco
The District Attorney’s Office charged two individuals in connection to narcotics trafficking in the Tenderloin in possession of almost two pounds of fentanyl
The US Attorney’s Office secured two separate convictions in federal court for individuals selling drugs in the Tenderloin
San Francisco began installing 400 license plate reader cameras at 100 intersections across the city
SFPD made an arrest in the Richmond District after someone vandalized 20 cars in the area
The District Attorney’s Office secured a conviction of a prolific auto-burglar
"Reported crimes fell in San Francisco over the first quarter of 2024 across all categories, with some offenses dipping to levels last seen before the pandemic — welcome news in a city that has seen its image battered over concerns about public safety.
The trends, documented in city police data, continue the downward trajectory San Francisco saw in 2023, when cities nationwide experienced falling crime.
The figures include double-digit percentage drops in both violent and property crimes, with homicides falling from 11 to 8, rapes by 23%, and burglaries by 15% over the same time last year. Larceny — a type of theft that includes San Francisco’s notoriously high level of car burglaries — fell the most over the previous year, plunging by 35% from 8,389 reported incidents to 5,402, the city’s statistics showed.
Jeff Cretan, a spokesperson for Mayor London Breed, said that for many years public safety agencies in San Francisco were relatively siloed. The local U.S. Attorney’s Office and Drug Enforcement Administration didn’t reliably communicate with local law enforcement, and the two previous district attorneys, George Gascón and Chesa Boudin, were often philosophically at odds with police, Cretan said."
"Philosophically at odds" is a very diplomatic way of putting it. But if Redfern has police who will show up to reports and will take people off the street, even if Redfern is this dangerous Wild West suburb, that makes a difference in perception of safety or danger.
> Porcelain being far harder than glass, the flung sparkplug pieces would quietly break the window, allowing access to the car’s contents.
This doesn't make any sense. Whether the glass breaks is a property of its structure, not of its hardness. If the windows were diamond instead of glass, they'd still be easy to break.
"I think this is cope; not only won’t the institutions be more humane than prisons, but people won’t believe they are and won’t allow the low-friction legal maneuvers."
It seems to me that a lot of these issues have what I'll call step functions. What I mean is housing is either over $1k a month or it's free (if you live in a shelter or on the street), crime either sends you to jail or you're not punished at all, healthcare is either "free" if you have good health insurance or insanely expensive, or free if you're poor. I guess that sounds like systems have raised the bar too high for certain things to occur at effective thresholds.
Theoretically that would mean these issues could benefit from deregulation or more a la carte approaches? As in worse houses, worse jobs, worse medical care, worse punishment systems, etc. I'm wondering to what degree that's worthwhile in practice tho, since we supposedly raised these standards up for a reason. Maybe we overshot?
> I guess that sounds like systems have raised the bar too high for certain things to occur at effective thresholds.
I see this as a major problem of American leftism in general. There's a strong impulse to declare some standard (in whatever context) and then make anything that fails to meet that standard illegal. Accepting lower quality on the grounds that it's cheaper is not an option; you have to take high quality at high prices.
This would work a little better if everyone were infinitely wealthy.
One way this *will* be dealt with is by becoming majority Hispanic, or perhaps I should be more specific and say Mexican. I cannot endorse this for other reasons, but on this one single issue - homelessness - you will find that when you have a majority "minority" - that somehow this absolves you from worshipping at the altar of certain gods. It provides a certain cover, in effect. Thus, San Antonio, though little more than an hour from Austin if the NAFTA trucks or the drag racers don't cause an accident on I35, has a very different homeless population than Austin, in quantity and kind. Plenty, of course, but not so plenty as Austin ... and definitely not enjoying political power, so to speak (at least if you go by how much of the budget is devoted to ensuring a steady stream of homeless people).
Of course, Austin is a boomtown in a sense (though SA is faster-growing). Austin represents affluence, regionally, and obviously the homeless and the affluent go together (in some mysterious way ;-).
But SA police can arrest homeless people. Can move them along. Can choose to bust up their camps without having purchased a home for them. Can certainly keep them from overtaking the areas they don't want them to overtake.
The homeless in SA are much more reminiscent of the homeless in Austin 30 years ago. While they are *perhaps* as readily to be on drugs - and on novel drugs that 30 years ago weren't circulating like water - they in general act in manner suggesting they are trying to keep their heads down. There's a guy who slept for a short time in the alley behind my apartment. I didn't care whether he did or didn't but partly this was because I knew he'd be moving along, as "urban outdoorsmen" used to do; and would not be setting up a cardboard fort with a generator, a bunch of stolen goods, an American flag and a TV and eleven friends and a whole lotta trash piling up.
I, misanthrope, was able to be "tolerant" because the police are not. I would have given him a glass of water had he asked, just as I used to do in Austin in the early 90s.
Laws aren't everything.
And I don't mean to suggest Mexicans are uncaring.
Indeed, if you are sitting at a light that lets just a few through at a time, and then realizing it's green but no one's going because someone has engaged the corner panhandler, and is handing a bill through the window, it will most of the time be a Hispanic lady, presumably Catholic. And yes, you will curse her, because that just made everyone's day a little worse.
"Indeed, if you are sitting at a light that lets just a few through at a time, and then realizing it's green but no one's going because someone has engaged the corner panhandler, and is handing a bill through the window, it will most of the time be a Hispanic lady, presumably Catholic. And yes, you will curse her, because that just made everyone's day a little worse."
"Why should I worry because I do not know whether I am doing good or harm when I give a meal to a beggar? I do not know whether I am doing good or harm when I give a meal to myself. Food such as we eat in civilised times and with civilised digestions, food, in this sense, contains the seed of death almost as much as the seeds of life. Do not tell me that I do not know what happens to the half-crown that I give to that recognised tramp, Weary Willy. I do not know what happens to the ham sandwich that I give to that hungry outcast, G.K. Chesterton. I do not want to know. I know that in one sense we are all pouring gifts into a bottomless universe, a universe that uses the gifts in its own way and in a complexity beyond our control or even our imagination.
Undoubtedly in the matter of beggars and charity I know that I do not know- I do not know what use will ultimately be made of the present in money that I give to a poor man. But no more do I know what use will be made of any other present that I give to any other man. To give any present worthy calling a present is to give power; to give power is to give liberty; to give liberty is to give potential sin. If I give the most decorous and pious present, it passes beyond my power merely because I have given it. If I give a man a Bible, he may read it in order to justify polygamy. Many men have read the Bible (the Mormons, for instance) only to justify polygamy. If I give a man a cup of cocoa (which I feel sure I should never do), he might gain from that cup of cocoa exactly the amount of nourishment and vigour which he needed to commit a murder. Many men, I feel sure (though I have no statistics to hand) have committed murder under the immediate invigoration of cocoa. If I give a man a church he may hold a Black Mass in it. If I give a man an altar (which seems improbable) he may use it for human sacrifice. And if this is the logic even of those cases in which the gift itself is something commonly accounted blameless or correct, the case is overwhelmingly strong as regards the ordinary gifts that people of the world give to each other. If it is possible that money or drink can be misused by our social inferiors, it is quite certain that books and clothes and furniture and works of art can be misused and are misused by our equals."
But it's the religiosity which promotes it; my late mother once stopped the car slap-bang in the middle of the street to get out and help up a guy who had fallen/was lying by the side of the road, and never mind the people behind us.
(If I remember correctly, I think the guy was drunk rather than anything worse, but that made no difference to my mother) 😀
So I can well believe you have Hispanic ladies holding up the traffic giving help to beggars! And not likely to stop because "pfft, traffic? who cares if you're five minutes late? are you in the same hurry to get to your funeral?"
But absolutely agree that religiously-motivated charity is more legitimated by being perfectly “dumb” charity and if it makes the world worse, the more venerated it is.
Latin American here. You're kind of saying "San Antonio police can regularly break the law in little ways to ensure the greater good is achieved." Yes, police corruption is tolerated in Latin America and it's a disaster. This slope is definitely, 100 percent slippery. You might be happy with the results you see right now. But you won't be happy when a cop asks you for a bribe.
This sounded illegal: "Can move them along. Can prevent them from overtaking areas they don't want them to overtake." Not sure what was meant by this, then. Sounds like illegal policing to me. What laws empower the cops to just move people around unless they are suspected of a specific crime, like trespassing?
"In calendar year 2023, NYPD cops made over 13,600 arrests in the subway system.
Of these 13,600 arrests, 124 people were arrested 5 or more times in the subway system in 2023 alone.
When looking further, these 124 people combined, have been arrested over 7,500 times in their lifetimes.
So, in case you’re curious what your cops are doing … well … they’ve arrested these people over 7,500 times!
The better questions are … where is the accountability & consequences for these repeat offenders? How is this happening?"
So I just plain do not believe that the answer to "why hasn't the legal system already sent disruptive homeless people to prison" is that it's hard because "homeless people mostly commit low-level crimes that police mostly don't see and victims mostly don't report." I think that the answer sounds a lot more like "many cities have elected officials who are ideologically opposed to doing things to prevent crime."
In NYC they do arrest people, but then they let out people Jordan Neely under their own supervision, and fail to do anything when Neely doesn't do any of the things he was supposed to do as a condition of his freedom.
My remark about other places being cheaper than SFO was not intended to be, or lead directly to, a policy suggestion. It was meant to point to an apparent assumption in your original article (and others') which clouded and skewed your analysis of policy suggestions in unhelpful ways.
For example, in the original post, you write:
"In San Francisco, the average wait time for a homeless shelter bed is 826 days. So people mostly don’t have the option to go to a homeless shelter. If you criminalize unsheltered homelessness, you’re criminalizing homelessness full stop; if someone can’t afford an apartment or hotel, they go to jail."
But that's false! You're criminalizing being homeless *and remaining in SF*. But if they get tired of being criminalized, they could go somewhere else that has shelter beds. So the policy proposal in this case is just the one you dismissed -- except with your ability to dismiss it so easily taken away.
Or at least -- it's not a proposal, even, exactly. Maybe there are other good reasons not to criminalize homelessness. But it's a request to please not engage in this particular fallacy while analyzing proposals.
Rationalists are supposed to be able to help each other Think Better without being taken to task for not having the full answer, right?
I think Scott did a decent job of steelmanning your comment into specific policies, but I also think those policies would work better than Scott implies. Specifically:
> Give homeless cities free mandatory bus trips to those other cities? What prevents the other cities from giving them free mandatory bus trips back?
Keep up the free mandatory bus trips. Make it clear to the other city that you're San Francisco and you can and will outspend them. If they know their game theory, this means they shouldn't try this in the first place.
> [W]hat if the homeless prefer being homeless in San Francisco to having a better situation in a cheaper city?
Keep up the free mandatory bus trips. Make it clear to the homeless person that you're San Francisco and you can and will outspend them. They may not be very good at game theory, but a $60 bus ticket is still cheap for you and expensive for them.
In practice I think the above would work, but not as well as:
> Maybe some plan like making a deal with a big cheap city in Texas to take SF homeless in exchange for money, and as soon as the homeless get off the bus, they’re met by a Texan social worker who gives them a shelter bed and social services? Might help along the edges, but remember that only about half of homeless people want/will accept shelter beds (depending on how good the shelter beds are).
If half of homeless people will accept shelter beds, then moving them to a big cheap city in Texas saves you (number of homeless people) x 0.5 x (cost of shelter bed in SF - cost of shelter bed in cheap city). That's a lot more than helping along the edges! It also saves you (number of homeless people) x 0.5 x (negative utility of homeless person in SF - negative utility of homeless person in cheap city), which is probably substantially positive since SF is more densely populated.
Moreover ... what fraction of homeless people in SF are from SF originally? If any of them came from elsewhere, the prospect of being deported might have deterred them from coming ... reducing the homeless population in SF without even needing to pay the $60 for a bus ticket.
[Edited to remove an unsuccessful reply to a subthread.]
Scott seems to still be downplaying the extent to which this is a drug/drug psychosis problem and not a homelessness problem *per se*. I commented on the original thread that the drug problem is growing at such a pace that it may require reopening institutions, whatever the political and financial costs, since society's other mechanisms for handling it are getting overwhelmed and not functioning.
>> I think most places' solutions are combination of: 1. Cheaper housing so that more people can afford homes
I think this was discussed adequately either in the San Fransicko review itself or in the comments, but providing affordable housing is orthogonal to the problem of marauding mentally ill colonists of public spaces. It solves _a_ homelessness problem but not _the_ homelessness problem but most people are really bothered by.
If you can cut the average rent in a city from $1,500 to $1,000, you allow low-income people to build up a savings buffer such that they don't lose their apartments immediately upon encountering some bad luck, such as a job loss, a medical emergency, or a relationship breakup so that they're no longer in a two income household. It's bad when that happens but it's not causing psychotic breaks and related stabbings. Those people had their lives together enough to hold down a job to begin with, so they're usually resourceful enough to find a new job, crash on a friend's house, sleep in their car, or find a shelter for a couple days while they get back on their feet.
But if someone's not taking his meds and goes crazy, how is the availability of a cheaper apartment supposed to solve that problem?
I think because the government provides free housing and services to people, and most mentally ill people in a free house with good services will stay there most of the time, but if housing is too expensive, the government can't afford this.
The "good services" is the load bearing part of this, though. If it means "social worker with ninety-nine other clients in their caseload who might, if you're lucky, call in to see you once a month for fifteen minutes", then the person who needs constant support so they won't topple back down into chaos is not going to do well even if you put them in decent housing.
("Decent" doesn't mean "luxurious" or "expensive", it means "room to sleep in, cooking facilities, bathing facilities, no water leaks, mould, or vermin infestations" and most importantly of all "little to no chance of criminality, craziness, or trouble with neighbours").
“Probably many patients will start doing better once they’re on antipsychotics. Do you release them (at which point they will probably get off antipsychotics?) Or do you awkwardly keep sane people around in your mental institution because you don’t trust them?”
You also need step-down institutions (like assisted living) where people can stay as long as they need to. Maybe for the rest of their lives.
"Second, halfway houses let people leave during the day. Because they’re unpleasant places, most people do leave during the day. That means they’ll be hanging out around parks and public libraries, same as now. Will they be less mentally ill? Maybe, if they stay off drugs and the meds work well. But those are big ifs, and you might find that somewhat-less-mentally-ill dysfunctional-poor-people hanging around parks and libraries is less of an improvement than you thought."
I have no problem with " somewhat less mentally ill dysfunctional poor people" sitting in parks looking at the ducks and the pigeons, or sitting in libraries reading books or on the computers. If they're not causing trouble, they have the same rights as other citizens.
I do have a problem with "the library has now become a hangout for the mentally ill and drug addict homeless and we can't do anything because we're not allowed to do anything". If Shoeless Joe was looking up bestiality porn and playing that loudly on the computers, pissing on the floor in between the shelving, doing drugs in the bathroom, and using the library as a crash pad, the staff should be able to kick him out. If Joe goes to one of the halfway houses, gets straightened out, and is stable enough on his meds so he won't be shooting up in the bathroom or having loud arguments with the voices in his head, then Shoes But No Socks Joe has as much right as anyone to hang out in the library looking up conspiracy sites about government UFO cover-ups on the public PCs, the same as any other private person.
It's very amusing, of course, to say that "North Africa is less politically dysfunctional" than California, but my understanding is that Morocco is fairly stable. A lot of the issues in North Africa are, from what I remember, centralized in the eastern half of the region. "North Africa" is huge.
I've been working in homeless services in California (in a non-governmental, volunteer role) for several years, working with a population of fallen-through-the-cracks on-the-streets people. These are some things I've observed that may help to inform this discussion:
1. There are a vast number of ways a complicated mechanism like our brains can go awry, and homeless people exhibit the gamut. I get frustrated when I hear people propose solutions like "why don't they just take [or we just force them to take] their meds" as though it were that easy. There aren't any meds that make someone with advanced dementia functional, that cure a traumatic brain injury, or that undo a developmental disability, for example. Even for straightforward (ha!) psychosis, many patients won't get relief from medical treatment, and others who will won't get enough to lift them into the housed-and-employed category. From what I can tell, only a small subset of people who are homeless are so because they have an "oh, we have a drug that fixes that presto" sort of mental disorder.
2. Everyone in my town wants the government to do something about homelessness. And everyone wants it to be done somewhere where they don't have to see it happening. NIMBY activism crushes or slows to a crawl anything like a shelter, treatment center, etc. Our county supervisors tried to respond to this by slap-dashing together a "safe parking" area for people living out of their vehicles -- way out of town by the dog pound and county jail, maximally distant from services and employment opportunities, because at least in the short term they could claim it got ne'er-d'ye-wells out of the neighborhoods. It was negligibly planned or funded and quickly became a clusterfuck and fodder for a scathing grand jury report. My take-away: from a political economy point of view, short term "quickly fix the problem my constituents are yelling at me about" beats long term "actually take steps to make the problem diminish".
3. It is difficult for homeless people to move to new places for a variety of reasons. There is confusing paperwork involved in changing the county of your Medi-Cal plan, for example, and then you have to find a new doctor, etc. Want to do this while you're trying to maintain the continuity of your attempts to find a working antipsychotic? Want to do it in the midst of cognitive challenges? Want to do this as your paperwork is thrown out in the latest camp sweep? If you finally found a job, or a group of friends who are willing to pool their money together for a motel room when the weather gets terrible, or a doctor who seems to understand what's wrong with you, or an attorney who's willing to take your case, etc. you've got good reasons to stay put. The place you're in may be expensive, hostile to poor people, etc., but it's the devil you know and it'd be a lot of work to introduce yourself to a new devil.
4. Among the hundreds of thousands of homeless people in California, several thousand of them are registered sex offenders. This should be of little surprise, since there are tremendous obstacles in the way of registered sex offenders in California getting employment and housing. What you might not have considered is that such people also are shut out of a lot of homeless services. For example, the homeless shelters (even the emergency stormy-weather back-up shelters) in our county ban registered sex offenders. So some people are on the streets -- probably the very people you'd least like to be desperate, hopeless, exercising poor judgment from sleep deprivation, etc. -- because that's the only place left for them. There's no simple solution here: the offenders are banned because the operators want to keep the shelters non-threatening for everyone else (e.g. families with children) and they don't have enough resources to e.g. keep roaming security guards checking on everyone or to have a walled-off wing of the shelter just for registered sex offenders.
If your proposed solution includes something like forcing everyone off the streets into shelters, institutions, or ghettos, you may need to account for this in your plans, and for the fact that by law, registered sex offenders are legally restricted in terms of where they can exist or with whom they can be in proximity.
5. In my non-methodical survey of the local homeless services scene, it seems to me like institutions work best-to-worst in approximately this order: ① people voluntarily coming together and organizing to try to ameliorate things themselves (maybe in the form of private nonprofit corporations, or maybe more informally), ② corporations and nonprofits who rely entirely on government grants and try to submit the lowest bid for government contracts, ③ fully government-run organizations.
That said, I think there are probably different sorts of tasks that are best handled by groups of different sorts, at least under the system we find ourselves in.
But based on this experience, I encourage the people in this discussion to consider solutions not just of the form "what should the government do about this?" but also of "what can I and my neighbors do about this?" as those solutions may be more efficient, effective, and enduring.
6. In my town there's a lot of political pressure to essentially ban lowest-tier housing, by which I mean poor quality housing. This is done by means of laws that require inspections of rental units between renters and forcing landlords to bring the property up to ever-rising quality specs; or laws that restrict the number of unrelated people who can live in a home, or the number of rooms that can be bedrooms (or that prohibit use of garages, etc. as bedrooms); or things of that nature. These all have their justifications (who wants to stand up for poor quality, overcrowded housing?) but they have the effect of dismantling the lowest rung on the ladder out of homelessness. There doesn't seem to be an awareness of the fact that the people who lived yesterday in the slummy house you just congratulated yourself for condemning are the people whom you will complain about living in the park tomorrow.
There's also some political pressure in the opposite direction (California's recent liberalization of laws regarding Accessory Dwelling Units, for example). So this seems like an area where people might fruitfully work to tilt the scale.
How many cities with homeless problems have unused city land at the periphery where you could have a sanctioned homeless encampment with lockers/bathrooms/showers and a ton of police to keep an eye on things? You could run buses from there into the city proper for folks who have jobs while being homeless encampment dwellers, although I'd rather get them into low income housing.
I ask because Salt Lake City could do that if they wanted to - they have a ton of unused city land out west that's basically scrubland (including where the state government stuck the prison, two miles from the Great Salt Lake). You'd probably have to put a giant mosquito net over the whole thing because of the bugs in summer, but it would be doable.
What are some good books about the (development of the) particular dysfunction of California's political environment? It's taken as a given in these types of discussions but really seems like a story worth explaining.
Fun fact! There is an SF County jail in San Bruno (in San Mateo County), so there is already precedent for building your public services extraterritorially in the Bay Area.
>If a homeless person stabs someone, then I think most places (I don’t know if this includes SF), they get prosecuted under general anti-stabbing laws, which the police mostly have enough resources to investigate.
This is where you lose me. In New York, at least, we have a completely incompetent legal system that plays catch and release with murderers and is incapable of keeping them off the street. This is where I want to be much more cruel and draconian.
You're playing semantic games here. No one is a murderer in the eyes of the law until they are convicted. So no, NYC is not "releasing murderers." They are releasing suspected criminals.
I assume that the "maximally tough" folks are actually advocating for the traditional solution, which is draconian laws combined with selective enforcement in order to keep the homeless away from the politically empowered. One can't simply say so, so the thing to do is to demand just the draconian laws and trust that the selective enforcement will happen spontaneously, as it generally does. Asking how these laws will actually reduce homelessness overall misses the point.
(I say this without criticism - I think that the problem is intractable overall, but it's both possible and reasonable to make it not your own problem.)
From a purely policy level, I do not think it is right now possible to help the homeless, because the vast majority of the homeless problem is actually a mental health problem, and mental health is not solvable at scale at this time.
What is possible is to save our major cities and economic engines from the homeless, and without undue cruelty. Using SF as our example, here is how I would do it.
1. Create a police registry of all homeless people in the city who have ever acted in an anti-social way. You do this by asking the public to send pictures and videos of all incidents and disturbances to this registry.
2. Buy a few square miles of nice land in the countryside, not more than a few hours away from SF. Build public bathrooms and shower facilities, build a large kitchen facility, build a medical clinic, all large enough to service 20,000 people. Clear and level the ground so that it's suitable for camping. Stock tents, sleeping bags, and blankets onsite. This new town is staffed by sanitation workers, medical workers, and social workers. These workers do not venture out into the town proper ever, and the workers and facilities are protected by armed security at all times. State police maintain a presence strictly for the purpose of apprehending residents who commit serious crimes.
3. Make public camping a misdemeanor.
4. Arrest every single homeless person who commits any felony or misdemeanor. If it's not prosecutable for reasons of importance or evidence, and if the person cannot provide evidence that they have somewhere to stay off the streets, they get put on a bus to the new homeless town.
5. On arrival, they are given a tent, a sleeping bag, and assigned a campsite, and they are scanned into a local biometric system that gives them access to the facilities and three meals a day, and they are examined by a medical team.
6. Anyone who ever enters the town is thoroughly searched for drugs.
7. While living in the town, residents have their full civil rights, and can leave whenever they want. A paid bus service will connect them to a non-SF transit hub.
8. If a resident returns to SF, they are immediately scooped up again the moment they commit another felony or misdemeanor and put back on the bus.
This system would be very expensive (though much less expensive than existing systems and most other proposed alternatives), but it would completely rid SF of its homeless problem. It would not make life much better for the homeless people, but it also wouldn't make it worse. This is I think all we can hope for until we get some mental health treatment breakthrough.
So an urban problem, entirely the deliberate creation of the kind of people who have "staffed" San Francisco for decades - should be foisted upon a rural area?
I suggested something similar in Austin though inside the city and without any enforcement of drugs or attempt to keep people healthy or interfere in their lives. I actually thought the nearness of a convenience store was a plus. Convenience stores are like community centers, for the homeless.
After the '08 bust, a former Home Depot with its anvil of a parking lot - some dozen acres as best I recall, or maybe a little less, was purchased by the city. No particular purpose in mind, though some people wanted a community center or such - an actual community center, that is to say, a building that is mostly idle but where occasionally the city can hold a meeting and somebody who's got a grant can hold yoga classes or crafts for seniors, probably about as little return for a dollar as is possible in civic matters, but in an atmosphere of civic deterioration, it's nice to know one building will be maintained and won't become a vape/kratom store - in a city rather littered with community centers. The property had sat vacant for nearly a decade. During the chatter over what to do with the millions the city had gathered to spend on the homelessness industry, I proposed that instead of buying a bunch of hotels to retrofit into apartments and babysit forever, the city could turn the old Home Depot property into a campground. Tear down the Home Depot. Build bathrooms. Rip up some of the asphalt so that it was grassy and as pleasant as possible. Plant trees. Then let people camp.
What were these recently-arrived homeless people good at? Camping! What did they seem to like? Camping and sitting around outdoors and jawing with each other. Why ignore this striking fact?
There's a tiny state park on the edge of Austin, whose campground is nightly full.
But my proposal got nowhere, and Greg Casar didn't want a city homeless encampment in his district.
I don't know what happened with that parking lot. Condos, probably, with an affordability component or lottery that will become increasingly difficult to preserve over time.
I'm with you on the camping though. I think it's funny that people whose hill to die on is "right to camp anywhere, live as see fit in the public domain" would presumably hold at the same time that building a campground versus building them each a house or renovating a hotel, is inhumane, savagely cruel.
In answer to your starting Q, on a purely utilitarian level, absolutely yes. Needs of the many etc. But drifting down from the abstract, in real life such a plan would obviously require the cooperation/bribing of the local rural municipalities, and those could be really really generous while still keeping the project cost-effective from the SF perspective.
And fully agreed on your last point. These are not normal people, and they demonstrate by every action that they do no want to live normal lives. We shouldn't force them to.
But in the very long term, the many of us need rural areas to stay rural and grow food. How much do we need it? I don't know. Will we always be getting more out of land, is that process irreversible? What I do know is that changing a land use away from rural, from ag or from wildland - is as permanent as anything in this world can be.
I don't think there are enough homeless people in the US for this to be a serious concern. You could octuple the the US homeless population and fit them comfortably in less than 1000 square miles ( a very small chunk of the US's 3.5 million square miles of land) under such an arrangement.
I did some very quick math. The US homeless population is around 660,000 at this time. Let's round up to 750,000. Industry standard for camping is apparently 25 campsites per acre. So to give each individual homeless person a nice campsite, we would need 30,000 acres, or 46 square miles of land. Double that to make space for facilities, and we're still talking about a truly tiny slice of US land.
Idaho State University developed a perfect plan to set up a Tiny House community in Boise. They looked at existing safe and secure camps like this. They secured funding without threatening one penny the (local) public budget. A do-gooder donated the land. College students and volunteers built all the homes. They provided hard evidence that other camps like this were safe and didn't cause crime spikes.
No zoning permit given. I can only assume it had something to do with property values and keeping developers happy.
I feel like you’ve sidestepped and didn’t engage with the argument of shutting down shelters in SF and instead building them in the least dense parts of California. After that enforce vagrancy laws and start busing anyone found sleeping on the street to these homeless camps. Yes, they’ll have drugs. Yes, they’ll have some degree of violence. But they’ll be out of sight, out of mind. Some local farmers might complain but I’m sure they could be paid by the government for their troubles.
Not a single piece of homeless infrastructure should exist within a 100 mile range from either LA or SF.
"... many of the “BE TOUGH” plans assume so much state capacity, that the state capacity alone would be enough to solve the problem even without the toughness."
No need to invoke state capacity - the capacity exists and is generally the *cause* of the problem.
Sometimes this blog feels like Opposite Day. Which is not surprising, I guess, as it was probably someone very clever indeed who first came up with the notion of Opposite Day.
I left a comment last time, but should have responded to Eledex. I believe he's told that story before, and this may have come up in earlier discussions, but let's walk through some older ways of responding.
In the 1950s, would these disruptive homeless people starting fires have all been safely housed in insane asylums? Maybe, maybe not. Who cares, though? That's already assuming that the role of state power is to directly solve problems. Were there any other solutions that communities used within living memory?
Well yes, actually -- there's one named after a Quaker, Charles Lynch. The derived term of course has gained racial connotations, but extrajudicial violence isn't inherently racial nor (obviously) does it date to the time of the American Revolution.
We don't need to imagine a state that is able to house or jail everyone, we only need to imagine one that stops interfering with people solving problems. If Eledex and some friends had simply shot a couple of the worst offenders, what would have happened? In our current environment, they'd have gone to jail. Are there negative possible downstream consequences of bringing back lynching? Yes of course. Is turning a blind eye towards hurting or killing the mentally ill homeless people a serious policy suggestion that I endorse? Also no. But pretending that there isn't an entire neglected zone of idea-space isn't helping anyone. What better version of this could someone come up with?
> If Eledex and some friends had simply shot a couple of the worst offenders, what would have happened?
Scott appears to be doing his best to commit to the position that, lacking options, the rest of the encampment would have remained in place, and been shot too.
There's no way to extend any type of charity or generosity to that position; it's ludicrous on its face.
I'm genuinely interested in seeing people explore the rest of the space, not really attacking Scott's position. I'm not sure I fully understand his position, but if I do I think he's right that it's really hard to improve without deep trade-offs.
I suspect that if there were some way to accurately poll people, virtually every member of the electorate would be unwilling to go down and start shooting homeless people in encampment, even if they were credulous-enough to believe a government-announced amnesty. This itself is interesting to me, as is the follow-up question of "what percentage of the electorate would need to be so willing before the political will to actually solve this problem appears?" The government would suddenly be able to fix all this if its monopoly on violence were actually threatened, but as long as it's just people complaining online and perhaps moving one exit further out on the freeway, why should they? People get the policies they deserve, and this seems about on-target.
Like everything, I think this would only help around the edges - the fraction of homeless mentally ill people who drugs can help, who are willing to take the drugs, and who are prevented only by cost and bureaucracy. What percent is that? Low confidence guess 25%."
I'm confused and also somewhat skeptical. I thought that the deinstitutionalization push from around 1960 to around 1980 relied heavily on antipsychotics. If they only work on 5% of patients, why didn't the mass deinstitutionalization immediately produce the full severity of the problems we've been discussing here?
no you missed the point. not that only 5% of people drugs will help. Only 5% in my experience who on their own accord would choose to stay on these drugs
that is one way for sure. in this community many are just resistant to western meds. Many of my manic patients love aspects of the mani (easily understandable). Trust is lacking overall.
Many Thanks! This seems to imply that the subthreads about making it easier for patients to take their meds (e.g. to recover from a lost prescription) are mostly barking up the wrong tree. What do you think?
Here's an idea. Move. Not the homeless people, yourself. Yeah, that's not a solution to homelessness in SF, but it's a solution to being directly confronted with the negative externalities of homelessness in SF. You might still feel bad for the homeless people that you left behind, but it's better than feeling bad *and* living with all the negative externalities, right?
It's costly, but it might have other benefits that make it a net positive. The brain drain from people doing this en masse might make SF even more dystopian, but at least that could spawn a disaster tourism industry and (maybe) serve as a cautionary tale to others. And there is always the off chance that if enough people leave, the ones that remain will get the message and the culture and politics of SF will change.
Why does it seem that halfway houses are always “halfway between jail and general society” and never “halfway from general society to jail”?
That is, has anyone tried taking the disruptive person on the street and forcing them into a halfway house type program FIRST, and only escalating to a more serious involuntary commitment if they continue to be disruptive with halfway house level support?
Having a less severe initial consequence might mitigate the backlash against “be tough” style enforcement against public camping.
I've often thought that one compromise solution to the homeless-up-in-our-grills problem would be for the city to designate marginal land as encampment friendly and then just focus their sweeps on other areas. I'd much rather the encampments be in freeway right-of-ways and along industrial streets than in city parks--basically push them into places where their existence minimizes disruption to others. Ideally you'd combine that with more shelters/cheaper housing/better services but I think even by itself it would improve the lives of the non-homeless significantly and only hurt the homeless somewhat.
Side benefit: Office space near those marginal areas should be cheaper than office space in the core, so homeless services could easily set up shop there?
You can't do this in Idaho because the local government wants/hopes to eventually develop said marginal areas to increase their property tax receipts. I suspect this is a problem nationwide. Not sure what the solution is. Capping local tax property tax receipts and relying on state and feds to fill in the gaps? (Not that state and fed officials are immune to developer wiles but they are certainly less vulnerable)
“do you awkwardly keep sane people around in your mental institution because you don’t trust them?”
If you really don’t trust them, yes. What is the alternative? Prison or the status quo. So the question becomes, how do they get us to trust them?
If “don’t trust them” just means they might go off their meds, is there a way to monitor them and encourage them to take their meds?
If “don’t trust them” means they might go off their meds and become dangerous, mental institutions or prison sound reasonable.
I am not at all confident I know where to take this, though. How do we figure out who to trust?
I guess the not at all compassionate alternative would be a complex of gated communities interspersed with favelas. If homeless persons show up in a gated community somehow, security will deport them to the nearest favela. This seems workable, but has a large “ick” factor and probably many costs that are not immediately apparent.
>Also, other US cities don’t have long-term mental asylums or anti-camping laws, so how can you use “other US cities manage to do this” as support for those programs?
Most US cities do have anti-camping laws. You ever go to a public park and see a sign that says "No unleashed dogs, no fires, no camping"? It's typical. The only problem was that the 9th Circuit kept those laws from being enforced in the West for years and years.
The point of anti-camping laws is not to throw the bums in jail: like the lawyers mentioned in the comments you highlighted, there are a lot of active defenses against those kinds of crimes. You can even say "There weren't any shelter beds, I had nowhere else to sleep" and the Judge will probably let you off. The point is that the cops can physically remove the bums from the park, and then throw away any of their stuff they didn't take with them. If you do that consistently you don't get encampments. The bums find other places to sleep, and they don't cluster together creating drug and prostitution dens.
Before the 9th Circuit cracked down, here is how it worked in my city. If a citizen noticed a tent or shack set up in a public park there was a city website where you could report the encampment, how big it was, and put a pin on a Google map type thing where it was. Then the city would send around a city worker who would put up a sign next to the encampment saying that they had three days to clear out (this person might have been a social worker, who would let people know about resources they could access while they were at it, but I'm not sure). Then three days later the cops show up with a bunch of city workers. The city workers take anything that's still there and throw it away, and the cops make sure anybody that's still there get's cleared out and doesn't cause trouble for the workers. Because the city did that consistently, usually the bums would have cleared out already and taken any of the stuff they value, leaving nothing but garbage behind.
This system worked for years until the 9th circuit mess made it unenforceable. I'm hoping it will work again. It encourages bums to seek out services, and it prevents them from ruining public spaces and creating environments for drug dealing and prostitution.
News say that the Supreme Court just overturned this last month. Saying that it isn't unconstitutional.
"In 2018, a panel of Ninth Circuit judges decided the case of Martin v. Boise, ruling that the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment clause against “cruel and unusual punishments” prevented cities from enforcing laws against street sleeping or camping, if homeless people didn’t have sufficient alternatives."
... ruling in the Johnson v. Grants Pass case that even civil fines against some types of camping and sleeping were unconstitutional."
FWIW, camp sweeps like those you describe as "before the 9th Circuit cracked down" were still going on in my California town after the 9th Circuit ruling and continuing through to today. I think all the 9th Circuit ruling did was say that you couldn't *criminally penalize* someone for sleeping outdoors. Camp sweeps and whack-a-mole shooing people from place to place never were banned.
It did ban camp sweeps *if* you didn't have enough shelter beds to house the entire homeless population of your city. Your city must have met that requirement, mine didn't. See, for instance, this article from the city of Bremerton that says "The decision overturned the...2019 ruling on Martin vs. Boise, which prohibited cities and counties from enforcing their anti-camping laws if no shelter space was available. That precedent had prevented the City of Bremerton from sweeping its growing encampments until November 1, 2023 when the Salvation Army reopened its 75-bed overnight shelter."
We don't have enough shelter beds in our town (shelter beds = roughly 120; homeless in latest PIT count = roughly 512). Still, camp sweeps of the type you describe have been happening all along. They just were not accompanied by fines, arrests, or prosecutions for sleeping-in-public or for possession-of-a-sleeping-bag-in-a-park or anything like that. If your town is saying "we can't play homeless encampment whack-a-mole because the 9th Circuit wouldn't let us" they're not being completely straight with you. What they probably mean is that it's a mostly futile, counterproductive, and inefficient enterprise without the stronger threats of fines and criminal sanctions behind it (and, what they may know or they may learn, is that it's likely no less a futile, counterproductive, and inefficient enterprise when you try to add fines and criminal charges to the mix).
It may just be that your town was flouting the 9th Circuit here. It is my understanding that forcing people to move, and especially confisticating their stuff (and the piles of garbage around encampments count as their stuff) is considered enforcing the anti-camping laws, and you couldn't enforce those laws unless you had enough shelter beds for everybody.
It would help if you could cite something for your interpretation of the 9th Circuit's decision in Martin vs Boise, and then later in Grant's pass? According to this article from CBS, Martin v Boise (before being overturned recently) "bars San Francisco from clearing sidewalk encampments unless the city can guarantee a place to sleep for everyone it moves". This matches everything else I know. Do you have a more in depth legal analysis you could point me to that says otherwise?
My city is working around the rules, downtown, by doing frequent pressure washing on sidewalks. The washing is necessary to remove urine, feces, and other stuff I don't like to think about it, and it really does make downtown smell nicer. But it also has the convenient property of being able to displace any group that appears to be settling down. This is (was?) probably not legal, but I don't think it's been challenged yet.
It's probably legal; the 9th Circuit prevented cities from enforcing anti-camping laws and other laws clearly aimed at making sleeping in public areas illegal, but the washing of sidewalks is completely unrelated to anti-camping laws. I'm sure someone could have sued about it, and maybe the 9th Circuit would have decided that the washing was actually done with the intent of displacing homeless people, but washing sidewalks did not fall under their ruling as it stood. Especially if the sidewalks are dirty, the city has a right and possibly a responsibility to clean them.
This is similar to a method some companies use to remove squatters from homes. Generally the problem with squatters is that you can't get the police to evict them because they claim they have a right to live there, at which point the cops say "This is a civil dispute, take it to court and if the judge gives you an order then we can remove them". However, in many states the law allows landlords to remove tenants temporarily from a property for a safety inspection, provided they notify the tenants with 24 (or more, depending on the state) hour's notice. So the landlords give these squatter removal companies power of attorney to notify residents of a safety inspection, then after the 24 hour notice period they remove the tenants from the property. If the squatters call the cops, the cops say "Looks like he has the right to remove you fine tenants if he gave notice, and his paperwork is clear. We won't stop them." Once the squatters are kicked out by the landlords hired muscle, they change the locks and put bars on the windows and throw all the squatter's stuff into the street, refusing them re-entry.
Now with actual tenants, if the landlord refused to let them back into the property after a safety inspection the tenants could sue the landlord and would likely prevail in court: but these aren't actual tenants, they're squatters. So now they're stuck in the same position the landlord was in, where if they call the cops saying they should be let back in the cops will say "Sounds like a civil dispute, you'll need to take it to court and get an order before we'll do anything."
To defend the Get Toughs for a second, Shellenberger talks a lot about how a carrot and stick approach is necessary to deal with the problem of homelessness because of the behavioral problems these people have that put them in their current circumstances in the first place. Supposing for a second that he's right and knowing what you know about SF and the socio-political culture there, do you suppose the current strategy for dealing with the situation--ineffective as it is--errs too much on the side of carrots or sticks? What does Shellenberger say about this question?
The comment above about industrial areas or run down parks as preferable for homeless encampments was interesting to me. I missed the original post, but this last Sunday I was exploring San Jose on my bike, and it seems they've implemented this solution to an extent. I saw hundreds, possibly as many as a thousand, homeless people in parks, and huge encampments with large structures, tents certainly hundreds of square feet in size at least.
One of the best ways to get through the city on your bike is along the Guadeloupe River, and there is parkland on both sides of the river through much of the city. And of course there are numerous other parks as well. The Guadeloupe River park is well-designed and the intent of the builders is clear, and obviously huge sums of money were spent to build it. It also runs through the downtown core, and just up the stairs are some very nice surface-level parks, tourist and family attractions (such as the Children's Discovery Museum), and swanky high-rises.
Much of it consists of large amphitheater-like steps from surface level down to the riverbank, and clearly ordinary people are intended to gather in these places and have wholesome fun and so on. I saw no such people, only the homeless. Part of the reason for the lack of adoption by regular people is that the river itself isn't very attractive, let alone swimmable or any such thing.
The homeless don't gather in the amphitheater areas; they generally build their encampments on dirt or grass near the riverbank. As a result, the built areas were pretty deserted, if dirty. Most of the surface parks are very nice, or at least acceptable. Most of the river-level (not just the Guadeloupe River, but Coyote Creek and others) parks are homeless encampments. There were very few in-between parks.
One such in-between was the Happy Hollow Park and Zoo. The zoo area (at surface level, and with a very cool pedestrian suspension bridge leading from the parking lot on the east side of Coyote Creek to the zoo on the west side) is very nice, but it is literally just a stone's throw down a dirt ramp to the bank of the creek, where, you guessed it, are homeless encampments. But also down at that level are the Japanese Friendship Garden (very nice), the History Park (absolutely immaculate, if quite creepy actually), and the frolf course (run-down and boring looking, but no homeless). And it was right across the street from the Excite Ballpark, where the Giants were playing that evening, and that was my gateway into downtown proper, which was spotless if a little deserted.
The Emma Prusch Farm Park looked like the Shire with a very cool playground; Lake Cunningham Park was extremely nice if well-used and not gleaming in the slightest; and the Hillview Park was extremely working-class but everyone seemed to be having a lot of regular-people fun like birthday parties and such.
Also saw a lot of pro-south Vietnam war memorials, which was interesting. There was one with a giant statute of an ARVN and US Army soldier standing shoulder-to-shoulder, but unfortunately it was closed and I wasn't able to read the inscription. They were all very well-maintained as well; it seems the hatred of Communism is still strong among the Vietnamese community in San Jose, which gives me hope.
With respect all this is pretty much beside the point. Let's take this as the gospel truth and "There are about 8,000 homeless in San Francisco, but assume that most are ordinary people down on their luck, and we only need to institutionalize 2,000."
So I was just talking about Draconian stuff and social work stuff and legal stuff it's pretty much about 25% of the population of homeless. For the 80% you're basically figuring out what the penalty should be for being unlucky. To me the solution is pretty obvious, make it less likely the people are going to be unlucky. In other words all you have to do just completely restructure our economic system. Fewer monopolies and biopolies. Better antitrust. Politicians who aren't going to knuckle under to rich people seems for becoming more rich. The tax system that makes a tiny bit of sense. Health insurance that makes a tiny bit of sense. And so on. The problem with homelessness is that we have a fucked up social system from the top down. Everything in the two posts you've done is basically what shade of lipstick do we put on that pig.
A large problem that I see, when it comes to the homeless problem, is that people are way too focused on drug use. So what, if people choose to use substances to get through? You would too if you were homeless, or mentally ill, or anything like that. Judge not what other consenting adults do to themselves - so long as they do not cause harm, there is no harm in allowing them to do as they wish. Alcohol is the most harmful substance one could put in their body, and most harmful substance societally, and yet we allow it to be freely sold and consumed. If people focused on helping their fellow neighbors, who are suffering and ill, rather than judging for no good reason, we would all be better off. Illicit substances are not illegal because they are dangerous, or for any reason, other than to control the population, and to control your minds, my friends. We have been freely allowed to consume that which we desire, for all of history, until the GOP decided to enforce prohibition of substances, because they realised a population that does not have access to mind-opening substances is easier to control, dumber, and an excellent excuse to prosecute and arrest "undesirables."
I ask you all to focus on what truly matters, and on yourselves and helping those in need, and not judging them for their private, consentual choices of vice and substance. The overdose problem has become so terrible BECAUSE of prohibition and a lack of safe supplies and clean substances - our friends, families, and fellow beings will continue to die and suffer until we get our heads out of our asses and stop focusing on petty matters used to divide and distract us, and work together and help each other with acceptance, love, and empathy. This is the truth, as somebody who had undergone addiction issues, saved myself, and now regularly helps addicts, and as somebody who had worked with addicts and watched countless friends die because of fentanyl and overly potent and dirty drugs.
It will never end, or ever get better, until prohibition is ended and abolished. Thank you. If you are interested in supporting the search for truth in the face of so much adversity and misinformation, I would kindly like to ask anyone reading to check out my publication as well. This Astral Codex Ten seems to be lovely so far, and I hope we can be something of a nice community!
1. Addicts steal to support their addiction. There used to be no homeless around my place of work, and over the last few years an encampment has grown about a block away. Since then we've been broken into twice. Heroin addicts especially will steal anything that isn't tied down. The bolder ones will start mugging as well. They need cash, desperately and quickly. That harms the whole community.
2. Addicts are more dangerous than non-addicts, especially to themselves. Milage varies on this based on the drug used: opioid addicts are pretty much harmless to others while using, crackheads are very much not so. And even the opioid addicts are at extreme risk of killing themselves, which has a lot of externalities (no man is an island, after all).
If you're an addict, you need rehab. You are harming your community, and are not well served yourself, by living on the streets.
You are correct in the case of a minority of addicts stealing to support their addictions - this is why stealing is already illegal, and not why drugs are illegal. Otherwise, we should force kleptomaniacs into rehab, and anyone else who is mentally ill, which is silly. And although addicts do need treatment, it cannot be forced; the best society can do is keep them alive and safe by providing safe supplies, education, and treatment for when they are individually ready to get better. Alcohol, for example, is far more prone to causing societal harm, and violent behavior than any illicit substance - need I mention the high rates of DUI and car crashed stemming from alcohol use; yet it is not controlled for consenting adults, only kept out of the hands of minors. In fact, the illicit nature of more harmless drugs makes them easier to access for our youth compared to alcohol and tobacco, which I would argue is worse for society than allowing addicts to use their substances of choice in peace, until they act out or commit other crimes.
>But you don’t do it through ground-level rail policy, prison policy, or homelessness policy directly. You start by becoming a totally different sort of country.
Agreed. Step 1 of my proposal to solve homelessness is to adopt Approval voting in all government elections nationwide.
Would you care to write a bit about how this would work? (I'm a fan of approval voting for other reasons, but I'm very weak on my understanding of how it would alter political systems in practice, especially when compared to systems other than winner-take-all FPTP. And maybe you could persuade some other people!)
I always recommend everyone glance at this set of voting simulations for a very intuitive visualization of how different voting systems work, and why our current voting system (and Instant run-off voting) both lead to a two-party system:
-If a FPTP election has three candidates, a moderate and a partisan to each side of them, then the moderate will typically lose even f they are closest to the average of public opinion. This is because the partisan to the left will get the votes of everyone left of themselves, as well as everyone right of them up to halfway to the moderate. And the partisan on the right will get the votes of everyone to the righto f themselves, plus everyone to their left up to halfway to the moderate. So partisans can always place themselves in such a way as to squeeze out the moderate who is closest to the center of public opinion, ensuring a two-party system where each side is more extreme than the average voter would like.
-If there are two parties with similar placement on whatever political axes, they split the votes of people who like that position, tending to make both those parties lose in favor of the party most opposed to that position. Since parties that lose a lot become unstable and less powerful, this creates a long-run equilibrium where third parties destabilize whichever existing party they are nearest while being unable to win themselves, and two parties is the only stable configuration that the system can settle in.
-Since people know about the vote-splitting problem, they will actively dislike and attack third parties which are close to their own preferences (as they might vote-split the people like themselves and cause the hated enemy to win). This causes people to undermine and be reluctant to support third parties in general, as well as causing them to vote strategically for the major party they hate least instead of voting for the third party closest to their preference.
Approval voting is just 'here is a list of all the candidates, put 'yes' next to any you're ok with and 'no' next to any you dislike, most yesses wins.'
It gets around these problems because more parties springing up close to your portfolio doesn't lose you anything (people can just put yes for both of you) and there's no value in strategic voting (failing to honestly fill out your ballot can't get a result you prefer more than just being honest, because you can just say yes to everything you like).
This makes it a lot easier for third parties to exist, it discourages extremism relative to the current system, and elects leaders that are closer to the average of public opinion. It makes it less of a situation where a pendulum is swinging between extremes every election (or between precincts), and more where there's a continuity in which different parties may take power but they're all closer to average public sentiment and less extreme.
> I always recommend everyone glance at this set of voting simulations for a very intuitive visualization of how different voting systems work, and why our current voting system (and Instant run-off voting) both lead to a two-party system:
The message of the page is that instant runoff voting leads to indefensible crazy outcomes, not a two-party system. It's true in the four-candidate scenarios and in the three-candidate scenarios. What do you see that suggests IRV promotes a two-party system?
(For those not curious enough to look at the page, note that I'm not editorializing this. The author's conclusion is, and this is an exact quote: "the Hare method yields extremely strange behaviour. Alarmingly, the Hare method (also known as "IRV" or "RCV") is gaining momentum as the most popular type of election-method reform in the United States". But the point at issue here is that the simulations don't show third parties getting squeezed out of IRV-based elections. They definitely do show that effect in plurality-voting-based elections.)
Look at the second set of graphs, 'Squeezed out'. IRV never elects a third party candidate in that scenario.
This is the set that shows the most common situation with real-world third parties. Most of the later graphs are demonstrating less common scenarios where IRV does weird things, just to show that it can be non-monotonic.
Additionally, note that in both the 'vote splitting' and 'shattered' scenarios the area for third parties ins much smaller under IRV than Approval, and in 'vote splitting' specifically the third party doesn't win when it nails the center of public opinion under IRV. It's true that IRV doesn't make it impossible for a third party to win in these cases, just a lot harder; but having it be a lot harder for third parties to win trends towards a two-party system, given that parties are long-term institutions that need wins to rally support and donors over generations.
It is not in fact the case that "the most common situation with real-world third parties" is that two parties are barely distinguishable along any policy dimension at all, but that's what's going on in 'squeezed out'.
"If a homeless person stabs someone, then I think most places (I don’t know if this includes SF), they get prosecuted under general anti-stabbing laws ..."
I think you underestimate the reach of Soros.
Forget NextDoor, even Reddit, which is extremely pro-disorder in its moderation, allows posts of the "watch out for chain-wielding guy/knife-wielding guy, he's menacing X Square today". The criminal justice system is making no effort to hold onto these people.
> I don’t know if there are really areas like this, but I welcome learning more from people who know cities better.
The run down parks are typically the places you already are more likely to have lots of homeless, because that's what causes them to be run down in the first place. Or the parks are run down because the local neighborhood is not as rich, in which case this is just a repeat of the shitty 1950s "gotta build highways through the poor black parts of NYC, but definitely not the trendy ones."
The thing that causes parks to be overrun by the homeless (at least if you believe Jane Jacobs) is single-use areas A park next to a bunch of offices (and nothing else) will have people walking through it shortly before 9 AM, shortly after 5 PM, and around lunchtime, and no other time. A park in a mixed-use neighborhood, on the other hand, will have people walking through it from early morning to night. This naturally prevents the buildup of homeless encampments, just as a natural incentive gradient: It's more enticing to choose the former park (or somewhere else entirely). It sounds like the idea here is to recreate this incentive gradient with policing, which might have a similar effect but seems like it requires constant input of energy rather than having it happen naturally as a result of factors that are good for cities anyway.
.....
It would not surprise me if part of the difficulty lies in the dynamics of popular opinion and diminishing returns. When things are *really* bad, people are willing to have the police crack down and pay for more services. Once the worst problems are partially resolved, you have less willingness for those things. You get more really difficult cases, or sympathetic ones, which are expensive and lead to sob stories on the news. And since the problem has been partially ameliorated, popular opinion no longer favors really tough crackdowns and high spending. I wonder if there's any evidence on this hypothesis.
OK, look, Jane Jacobs is fine, nothing against Jane Jacobs, but single-use neighborhoods are not what causes parks to be overrun by homeless people, or to be run-down in the first place, and mixed-use neighborhoods absolutely do not prevent either of those things from happening.
Gotta say a lot of the more draconian proposals are draconian enough that living in a society totalitarian enough to implement them would be worse for me than the status quo even though the status quo is pretty bad.
This idea might fall into the second category of objection that Scott mentioned, but maybe not.
Maybe instead of solving homelessness on a city-by-city basis we attempt to solve it by creating a special economic zone for the country focused on homelessness. Take some land somewhere (let's say Wyoming, they have lots of land), and build a city that literally caters to the homeless (Homelesstopia?). Most of the residential buildings are homeless shelters. Almost all of the restaurants are free soup kitchens. Support structures are there to the extent that they help rehab/medicate/treat. Get every homeless person that wants one a free bank account and a low skill job (I am trusting that manufacturing companies can be creative here, but it may have to be that various places have work for the first X number of people that show up).
Cities would need to meet some sort of criteria before they could send their homeless to Homelesstopia, but the homeless can leave whenever they want. Most could probably do so after a day of work, but since food, shelter, and work are easily available any person trying to get back on their feet can stay and have a solid opportunity to do so. It might even be a place for people to go to on their own as they become homeless.
The place can be funded by the cities that send the homeless there proportionate to how many are sent, but with economies of scale the cost of care per person would be dramatically reduced.
*I realize that anything that ends in -topia is going to end badly, so definitely don't use that name. I couldn't think up anything better to convey the general idea though. I think the idea is politically infeasible (nobody is going to want this city in their backyard), but at least it is a pie in the sky idea that might actually solve the problem. And more of those is generally a good thing.
I don't know the current state of homeless care/service. I haven't needed those services in some years. I can't speak to what policy prescriptions are instituted at the macro level, but I can say from experience in other areas of life that it's myopic to assume that, "If it hasn't been done, it can't be done."
It could simply be that the policy(ies) haven't been executed well/vigorously enough. Humans are remarkably adept at squirming through to the laziest option.
The good news is that I have an article with a different journal specifically about solutions and a book under contract with Simon & Schuster on this topic so your cup will soon floweth over
I look forward to that, Freddie, since I often find myself agreeing with you on things even though we probably have about as opposite views as you can get, short of one of us being the reincarnation of Hitler/Stalin 😀
Here's my solution: Bus all the homeless people to Texas. When Texas buses them back, send them again. Now all the homeless people will have 24 hour shelter (on the buses) and you got Texas to pay for half of it.
Alright, I have a proposal that is novel and specific which addresses the issues with 'Being Tough!' in option two. Specifically, I think option 2 does not go far enough in flipping the script on *access to spaces*. My proposal is a compromise between the anarcho-capitalists and the socialists by disentangling a right to housing, food and healthcare, with a right to accessing highly expensive city infrastructure (where your being insane is everyone else's problem). Ultimately, it would solve not just homelessness but crime generally.
My idea is to make glamping a human right while privatizing most public spaces and granting their holders the right of Exile. This solves what I see as the primary factor in all this discussion which is the question of 'who is going to decide who is crazy?' and its twin prong, 'that's too much power and we can't afford mistakes'.
The reality is that you do not need well-trained policemen or judges or psychiatrists to designate a person as undesirable, if the stakes for *getting rid of them* are much, much lower than imprisonment in rapey institutions (as most institutions are for some reason). Forget crazy, if you act disruptive for any reason in Disneyland an underpaid employee will spot you and you'll be hauled outside. Now expand that. Act annoying in the classy clothes store and you're taken outside--act annoying on the street corner *outside the store* and you should be removed too. 99% of people do not feel oppressed or even particularly put out by these standards of behavior, because the market works. Our goal will be to expand the presence of these standards as much as possible using market forces while providing someplace humane to go that qualifies as the aforementioned 'outside'.
Consider the case of a suburb, where Scott says he doesn't want to push the problem off to. For all practical purposes the people in that suburb own the streets of the suburb, and it's absurd that some abstraction would keep them from policing it as they choose. If we just suspend our notions for a moment about public infrastructure it's obvious that human judgment is sufficient to handle this problem. It's easy to handle cases involving a crazy homeless person *the moment they step into somebody's front door* because then suddenly common sense and property rights take over.
So eventually all the completely dysfunctional people get pushed out. They're living on nature preserves with starlink Wi-Fi, solar panels, a tent, a mini-AC, and regular food drops (this food could be made ketogenic, because a ketogenic diet is indicated to be successful in some cases for treating mental disorders). I estimate a maximum budget per year of 10k per person. Sure, they're basically self-governing anarchies where prostitution and horrible things may happen but newsflash: they're happening in the tent cities right now, only in proximity to defenseless women, children, and malnourished tech workers.
This avoids the issues inherent to the other poster's idea of Homelesstopia where they have to explain at-length about which bureaucracies will exist to manage the problem. Let the problem manage itself! The homeless are free to leave the woods any time they want assuming someone will take them, and someone will always take them. It will be the government's job to provide them food-drops and also encourage higher pay for the kinds of jobs these people will do--let's say cattle herding for instance, since we'll need to increase beef production to keep up the keto dieters.
This is part of an overarching set of solutions I believe would work in our current moment, to sort of intensify the dipolar relationship between cities and wilderness. Make cities desirable and highly designed places, as utopians always dream of, but make nature the pristine escape-route as those suspicious of utopia know there needs to be a counterbalance to enforce the market on central planners.
I believe this would also create a renaissance of intentional communities, fwiw. Not just a good idea for the homeless but to let all eccentrics blow off steam and self-govern.
Private homeowners routinely throw people off of their property for petty, stupid and cruel reasons. If we privatized public spaces, how many communities would just drive their poor into the woods so everyone left could get a property value boost?
"For all practical purposes the people in that suburb own the streets of the suburb, and it's absurd that some abstraction would keep them from policing it as they choose."
The whole point is that all the poor people (specifically homeless) get driven into the woods. Homeless people should either put in the work to be integrated into society or they should have their tent cities in isolation. If someone is not homeless than they're not so poor that they would lack for a stake in the decision process. If you're talking about neighborhoods and the like, HOAs already drive out the poorer. Economics does that.
Note, privatized spaces would be owned primarily by corporations, which are less arbitrary than individuals. What I mean by police as they choose is just what I said throughout the whole comment. There is no such thing as a perfectly rational and comprehensive system, as Scott points out at the end of the day it's all just vibes. The best force to determine vibes is NOT bureaucracy or abstractions like some set of principles, but primary stakeholders.
I led with the negative but you're more humane than most extreme libertarians. At least you want to feed the homeless. Still, these were red flags for me:
"Note, privatized spaces would be owned primarily by corporations, which are less arbitrary than individuals."
It's astonishing that you believe this. It just doesn't match what I see.
"If someone is not homeless than they're not so poor that they would lack for a stake in the decision process."
This is less surprising, because it's (classical) liberal dogma. But I still don't buy it.
Corporatized public spaces would be driven primarily by consumer demand, in which case it's obvious that their rules will be less arbitrary than those surrounding someone's personal home--they have to be in order to compete. Unlike an individual, Disneyland will never have a schizophrenic break and accuse you of being an android as a precursor to ejecting you from their premises. How is that astonishing to point out? In a private setting, management is typically functional and rational (if often middling). This of course assumes the market is being well-managed and these are not the corporate towns of the past, which people needed to access for work and thus the towns leadership did not have to compete to be appealing. You're right I'm not an ancap I'm barely even a libertarian. What I am is a mixed market liberal in this context who thinks there should be a market for public spaces at all--after whose establishment we can quibble about regulation.
Unlike an ancap I don't expect this to just govern itself and never devolve into a monopoly. There needs to be a competitive system in place to maximize competition. Minimally that's my Universal Basic Glamping, but probably it should include a voucher system too--whereby those managing spaces get a share of your tax dollars depending on your usage. It would be a multi-trillion-dollar industry overnight and need relatively little intervention.
As for the poor but not destitute stakeholders, you can adjust for that again by the tax voucher, whereas rich people will still have nicer places (as they do already) which they will pay for in excess of the basic voucher sums. Kind of like the way private schools work. It's a lot like school choice now that I think about it. I'm sure that probably doesn't reassure you, lol.
Scott, I love the “how to design and implement laws for mentally ill & homeless people” blog post, plus this follow-up on experiences/ideas from other countries. If possible, proceed with a 3rd and 4th wave of comments from ACT readers & your reflections on their comments. This is really useful.
A comment that as far as I can see has not already been made from other Scandinavian readers: The scope and mandate of child protection services may play a role. Homeless people have children, plus many presently psychotic and/or homeless people have had a rough childhood and adolescence. Scandinavian countries put a lot of effort into child protection services, and also have low tolerance of serious parental drug use plus any type of domestic violence. For example, if a child watches a husband beat his wife this can be regarded as violence also against the child, and may trigger placement in a foster home.
…let me hasten to add that I do not want to give the impression that children are routinely taken very early from parents in Scandinavia if parents do not behave properly , and usually "nice" policies like councelling, free kindergartens and much else is done first. However, “violence” as well as “drug use” among parents are among the so-called trump cards that can lead to foster home placement. Without wanting to disregard the problematic sides of early-intervention & rather tough (from the parents’ perspective) child protection policies, it may have long-term effects on how many that end up on the streets 10-20 years down the line. I would not claim it is a major factor- policies more close-to-the-actual-homelessness (plus non-political stuff like a cold or warm climate) are more important. But the potential importance of general "very early intervention policies" are worth further investigation.
Some additional comments, supplementing those made by other European commenters:
Unlike the US, mentally ill or homeless citizens in EU states cannot migrate to other EU states since “people” are not fully mobile within the European Union – only “labor” is. Meaning, operationally, that non-state residents are not eligible for tax-financed welfare benefits in the new state. (Unlike the US, cf. Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969).) In any case, unlike the US people in Europe speak very different languages which in itself prevents mentally ill & homeless people from crossing state borders. That’s part of the reason we do not see a pile-up of homeless Europeans in Greece, Italy or Spain/Portugal.
> More generally, unlike the US, mentally ill or homeless citizens in EU states cannot migrate to other EU states since “people” are not fully mobile within the European Union – only “labor” is.
> In any case, unlike the US people in Europe speak very different languages which in itself prevents mentally ill & homeless people from crossing state borders. That’s part of the reason we do not see a pile-up of homeless Europeans in Greece, Italy or Spain/Portugal.
I'm somewhat familiar with homelessness in London and Hamburg. Many homeless there are from abroad, with Eastern Europeans being common. They could go home and go on welfare, but it would be meager. The hot countries are poor, but also much less tolerant. Hamburg (a leftist city) apparently manages to attract people from as far away as Italy, where rough sleepers can be beaten by police. London draws them in with charities, public libraries and a police force that takes pride in "policing by consent", i.e. does not hassle them.
Those are good points. How local authorities treat the homeless is likely to matter more than climate, also in Europe. Some homeless travel to Scandinavia for similar reasons. They can get free shelter and sometimes food from voluntary organisations and survive by begging/panhandling. Making it possible to survive without claiming public welfare.
They tend not to be mentally ill, though - the social and cultural barriers to move to other European states (language differences etc.) are probably higher than in the US, which create a stronger selection effect against migration from people with such problems. (Digression: I also notice that up here, the homeless do not travel with children. Since also children of non-citizens come under the juristiction of the child protection agencies.)
There’s one obvious change that would do a lot to fix the problem: End the minimum wage. At the federal, state and local level, just get rid of it. Make it legal to hire people and work for employers at any mutually-agreeable wage.
Sadly, I don’t have a PLAN to end the minimum wage. I don’t think it’s possible to reverse almost any established public policy to the extent that one could get it done given the competency crisis. But if you COULD get it done - if something ever happened to enable us to reconsider dumb old public policies and try something different - that’s the thing to try.
The problem is that every time you increase the minimum wage you make it harder to employ *people with low productivity*. Their jobs become worse, lose benefits, they lose access to training or flexibility or “slack” and are reduced in hours, and ultimately as the minimum wage increases over time the jobs disappear entirely. Then almost by definition the people who were only barely profitable to employ where they already were won’t be able to find anywhere else to hire them; they become unemployable and (once savings and friend/family support runs out) homeless.
California (and San Francisco in particular) has one of the worst homelessness problems because it has the worst labor policies in terms of making it more expensive to employ people. If you want to keep employed people who don’t always show up, if you want to offer flexible hours or training or uniforms and want to offer work to people with cognitive issues or family issues or poor work habits, you can only afford to do that if there’s a buffer between how much those people cost to employ and how much value they provide to the employer. Every minimum wage increase shrinks that buffer until it’s gone. With no buffer, one can only afford to hire the already-reliable; those with any strike against them are literally stuck on the outside; it’s *illegal* to put together the kind of work opportunity that could give them something to do all day and self-respect and a little income. Even a VERY low-wage job could still make a huge difference in people’s lives. It doesn’t have to be a “living wage” to do so. Mandating the minimum be so high as to constitute “a living wage” is in fact extremely cruel to those now excluded and stuck.
I don't know what percentage of the problem it would solve, but I would guess not higher than 99% and the remaining 1% are the cases that are causing most of the public mess.
There are people who don't just have low productivity, but negative productivity. Anyone who damages goods, steals or would otherwise get in the way of other workers subtract productivity, and would not get hired at any price. I agree that eliminating min wage would have some of the benefits you cite, but I don't think it would solve the most pathological parts of the problem, which is where most of the trouble comes from.
I agree that it wouldn’t solve *all* the problem, but if you just reduced the number of homeless by some *large fraction* it becomes a lot easier for existing institutions to handle the remainder.
It also wouldn’t help quite a lot of the *existing* homeless who are too far gone, but I’m thinking of this as a pipeline problem - what we really want is to be shrinking the *future* homeless population, catching people *before* they have a bad drug problem and bad reputation and no private social support.
Some teenager right now is fully capable of doing simple janitorial work like sweeping the sidewalk for $10/hour. They’ve been crashing on a friend’s couch. The fact that they have a job at all means they’re out of the house all day every workday - they’re not spending that time hanging out in a park or library annoying the public or at home annoying their friend whose couch it is. Having an income stream means they can buy their own meals and clothes and some entertainment - they don’t have to mooch so much which again reduces the stress on friends/family. Having a job all day means they’re not getting high all day and having to be somewhere in the morning means they’re not getting super drunk or high each night before. Having a boss and coworkers who are gainfully employed is a source of good advice and connections. Having a daily routine means building soft job skills, maybe eventually growing into a more lucrative role with more responsibility.
If we *also* re-legalized SROs - allowed developers to convert dead office space into windowless apartments with a common bathroom down the hall - then that $10/hour job would be enough to live off of on your own - and we totally should do that too - but even without that change this $10/hour job should be enough to make couch-surfing or sharing with roommates somewhat manageable in a way that *not having a job* does not.
Even if the kid occasionally has to sleep in a car or under a desk at the office, *having a job* means they can probably sneak in early and use the office bathroom to clean up so they don’t *look* or *smell* like someone who sleeps in their car.
If we make that $10/hour job illegal so the kid ends up with nothing to do and nowhere to be with only bad influences and unsafe locations around, we shouldn’t be surprised if they get a drug habit and become poorly socialized and sick and crazy and isolated and *after* that happens it’s unlikely you can save them…but there was a moment when you *could* have saved them by just letting the market work; that’s the part of the problem I’m obsessed with. It seems plausible to me that 90% of the problem is people like that, people who don’t need to become permanent victims but are being pushed into that status by our stupid laws.
Shrink that pipeline so fewer people end up on the streets in the first place and it starts to seem more likely the number of much-less-swamped police and social workers and beds we can afford might start to be enough to address the remainder.
Basically agreed, though I think this addresses a somewhat different problem than psychotic homeless defecating in the streets and screaming threats at passers-by.
I agree that the minimum wage basically cut off the lowest rungs of the employment ladder, and banning SROs basically cut off the lowest rungs of the housing ladder. These were both bad ideas. Both put marginally productive people (whether starting out, or having bad luck, or having some flavor of family or health problems) in a much more tenuous, risky position.
I'm not sure how strong the link is between forcing these people out into the street and the dangerous, psychotic homeless, whether that is, indeed, a "pipeline". Even if the "pipeline" is a minor contributor, it would be a good change to restore those lower rungs of the ladders. They make the difference between economic bad luck being a "soft" failure mode where someone can at least maintain a safe place to sleep and a catastrophe for them.
I do think that the small fraction of the homeless who are dangerous are a different problem, and, if found to be repeat offenders, need to be "warehoused" in _some_ way, where they don't do damage to everyone else.
Yeah, I essentially agree with Jeffrey, it's not clear that the population this would help has great overlap with the homeless person who yells grAaaaaaH at people randomly.
There's a minimum cost of living. If you reduce the minimum wage below that , why would anyone want the job? And if you can't make the rent, you become.homeless as.well.
If - as you believe - nobody wants to work for less than $X then jobs offered at that wage won’t get filled so there’s no need to outlaw their existence. The only reason to *have* a minimum wage is that at some level you believe people would accept less than that.
Which they would, for many reasons.
Reason #1: there is no specific minimum cost of living so people - especially those *on the margin* or *just getting started* or *retiring* - can temporarily cut back on almost any expense. They can crash on a friend’s couch or have multiple roommates rather than paying for a single rental. They can live with parents. They can live off savings or investment from prior work or loans or gifts from a support network. They can eat or buy clothes at subsidized locations. While doing any of those things - just ask a college student or recent immigrant- a job that pays *less* than “living wage” can help bridge any gaps until one gains enough skills and experience and connections to qualify for a *better* job. If you don’t make those kinds of bridges available, people are screwed who don’t have to be. Jobs are rungs on the economic ladder; sometimes people take a while to climb up or have to or choose to step down a rung or two before attaining their desired height.
Reason #2: jobs have *other benefits* than the salary alone, especially if we’re not forcing employers to maximize the salary component of compensation. People don’t just work to get income, they also work to have something to do, somewhere to be, to get a sense of accomplishment or belong to a community. They work for health coverage or to build a pension. They work because they like their coworkers. They work because they like the free snacks in the break room. They work because they enjoy the *flow state* of doing something as zen as washing dishes or sweeping floors. They work for the *artistic satisfaction* of contributing in some small way to a greater project. They work to attain *training* or *knowledge* that might put them in greater stead later in life.
People just plain *like* to work and they’d like it *even more* if we allowed a greater range of work to be available - including jobs that don’t on their own provide all of the salary one would need to, say, support a family of three in their own apartment. The job that doesn’t pay much in cash can afford to pay more in *every other* way that people like to benefit from a job so when we outlaw jobs that don’t pay much we’re not *just* forcing people into homelessness, we’re also making the world a less satisfying place to live with fewer interesting opportunities.
"They can live off savings or investment from prior work or loans or gifts from a support network."
How much savings will they have if all their jobs have been below minimum wage/living wage?
" a job that pays *less* than “living wage” can help bridge any gaps until one gains enough skills and experience and connections to qualify for a *better* job"
Who are not the people you are talking about - the ones who aren't reliable, won't show up on time, " people with cognitive issues or family issues or poor work habits". They'll probably never be able to get it together to get a better job, and the people who can do so are the reliable ones who, you admit, are worth employing at minimum/living wage levels.
I'm not against allowing people to work, but for jobs that pay less than minimum wage, we are going to have to subsidy them with government allowances and payments.
And there are people too far gone for even those kind of jobs, like our friend 'Jehovah' who got himself shot at the RNC:
"“They came into our community and shot down our family right here at a public park,” said Linda Sharpe, a cousin of the man who was killed. “What are you doing in our city, shooting people down?”
Linda Sharpe said her cousin lived in a tent encampment across the street from King Park, where the shooting occurred."
And why the hell was your cousin living in a tent encampment, smoking crack, and hearing voices telling him to grab knives and run at the cops, Linda? Why weren't you taking care of him? The man should never have been in a situation where this was the end result, but the family certainly seem to have failed him.
People with poor work habits can learn better work habits on their first job…or never have the opportunity to do so if that job is made illegal by dumb labor laws.
The job they can get *when* they have poor work habits doesn’t pay much because they’re not worth much then. Things like showing up at a specific arranged time and being presentable and polite and non-hungover, you don’t necessarily need those skills to, say, be a late night janitor. But once you *have* even the lowliest job you’re on a path to potentially greater success.
Re: savings, my paragraph was combining people in a variety of circumstances who all have different need or use for a low-paying job. Some of these people will just be starting out without much savings but others might have previously worked at a higher-paying job or have been working multiple jobs or have an inheritance or who-knows-what. The people you can most easily save from becoming homeless are the ones on the margin, the ones who are *nearly* productive enough to justify a real job with a real salary.
FWIW, in the realm of *acting* jobs my best one so far in terms of getting material for my “reel” - my main goal at the time - was a job that paid literally nothing in salary (besides a few free snacks on set). With a “living” minimum wage you limit the world to jobs that pay a lot per hour OR pay nothing at all and *only* provide non-salary benefits; without one there’d be room for jobs in the middle between those two extremes…and people would take those jobs because doing so made them better off. Just as I took that free job, but with bonus extra cash! (I had savings/investments from a prior career in tech).
Having had an entire prior career in tech/finance, I had sufficient savings and investment income as to not need my acting income to pay the rent. (Also this particular acting job was just a single night's work, a level of time investment that's entirely compatible with being a student or having a regular "day job".)
>If - as you believe - nobody wants to work for less than $X then jobs offered at that wage won’t get filled
Its not a binary, or a bright line. People will prefer the job that allows them to pay both pay rent and eat, but they ll still take the job that only allows them to eat, in preference to starving.
>especially those *on the margin* or *just getting started* or *retiring* - can temporarily cut back on almost any expense.
Including rent , because they can live in their cars or on the sidewalk.
Abolishing the MW will create homelessness, and that's one of the reasons there is one. Without the MW, the state plugs the gaps through benefits, or the community plugs the gaps through the negative externalities of homelessness.
>They can crash on a friend’s couch
That is homelessness.
>They can live off savings or investment
How does someone on the bottom rung of the economic ladder have savings?
You can have a minimum wage for most people, but another arrangement for some other people. For instance, it's common to have an exception for young people, who can be assumed to be living with their parents. You can also have a system where the govt and employer co-,pay a living wage. That has to be carefully controlled so that employer dunt over use it.
> Abolishing the MW will create homelessness, and that's one of the reasons there is one.
Nonsense. the minimum wage prevents jobs from existing that would make both worker and employer better off. Which almost by definition means it makes workers as a class worse off compared to not having it. The jobs that remain legal may have a higher average salary but there are *far fewer* legal jobs and the ones there are tend to be objectively worse jobs in every way *other* than their raw salary.
Before the minimum wage was introduced, the black teenage unemployment rate was the same as the white one. After the minimum wage, black workers (especially teen ones) were about twice as likely to be unemployed as white ones. Minimum wage harms the most those who are nearest the bottom of the economic ladder who are also those most likely to become homeless as a result of not having a job. Denying jobs to black workers (who could potentially undercut the union rate) was the EXPLICIT PURPOSE of the minimum wage at the time it was first enacted, this being a time when unions were white-only - look it up!
>>They can crash on a friend’s couch
>That is homelessness.
No it's not. I've had friends crash on my couch - one did so for over a year. She was never "homeless". Couch-surfing is a perfectly comfortable and civilized way to live for those able to pull it off. It's a way to save money and maintain flexibility. People who are good at it generally have *multiple* friends they can mooch off so when one gets sick of them they can go somewhere else or maybe can stay with family, or even just rent an apartment with all the money they saved by mooching during the non-renting periods.
Couch-surfing is a *lifestyle choice*, one which allows for sleeping in a secure location and taking showers and knowing your stuff will still be there when you come back and generally existing without breaking any laws. Couch-surfing doesn't tend to *stop people from being employable* the way homelessness does.
> >They can live off savings or investment
> How does someone on the bottom rung of the economic ladder have savings?
Sometimes people near the bottom rung are starting over after being on a high rung somewhere else. Maybe they're switching careers. Or semi-retired. People in those situations need "starter jobs" too!
The people saying be tough are afraid to describe what real toughness looks like.
Routinely grab everyone in encampments or creating a nuisance, throw away all their stuff except phone and wallet, arrest and book them, then let them go. This is strike 1. Second offense earns you a public flogging, delivered immediately, with subsequent release. Third offense and you go to a prison/work camp for 1 year. Fourth offense and it's a public hanging. Sentences ineligible for appeal. Eliminate all spending on social services and replace with funding for speedy enforcement and trials. You can have an orderly society. It just wigs most people out to take the steps necessary.
This almost certainly incentivizes the ~75% who are not mentally ill to not become a problem. It also incentivizes families to take responsibility for any members who they don't wish to reach strike four.
It would also incentivize a massive, broad-based revolution against any government so tyrannical as to issue death sentences for illegal camping. I would expect mutinies in the police and the military. I realize we're a quirky bunch here but your proposal really takes the cake, as they say.
The whole point of public punishment is to shame the offenders out of recidivism. I don't think this is a winning strategy against people who are insane/high/willing to defecate in public.
As another commenter pointed out, the "throw away all their stuff" thing is already done quite frequently in large American cities, and, shockingly, has failed to make any of the newly homeless and stuffless people pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become homed.
I think those cities see less homelessness and less refusal to go to shelters. It's about disincentivizing people letting themselves end up in that situation.
Well, you see, no, they very much do not see less homelessness and less refusal to go to shelters. That's precisely why I bring it up. Los Angeles is one of the cities that does this.
I wonder whether attempts to segregate out those that can't comport themselves amongst others because of their mental illness will be stopped by enforcement like this.
That does sound like a lot of problems, but having been on the other side of "we contacted the officials and they didn't respond*", I know there's a whole other side of the story not being told.
Take this snippet:
"“Prisoners have more rights than a person under guardianship has,” said a resident named Angela. “Anything I do or have pleasure in, like smoking, can be taken away (at) the whim of my guardian.”
Do we know anything about Angela's health? Why is she in a nursing home at the age of 50? Maybe her cruel guardian is imposing their whims on not letting Angela smoke tobacco because of medical advice that if she doesn't quit smoking, she's going to get lung cancer?
I think this is the crux of the problem right here:
"The people in Missouri institutions instead need community-based services, according to the report, which allow them to live in their communities in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. All are offered in the Midwestern state but not widely. "
So these people need places, but there aren't enough places for them (and their families can't or won't look after them in the home). What do you do? You put them in state facilities, or you let them become homeless/incapable 'in the community'.
*I have mentioned this before, but one fine day at work in the social housing department, there was a heart-rending story in the local newspaper, followed up by the local radio station, of a poor single mother being strangled by us heartless bureaucrats and our red tape.
Which was an entire pack of lies, if you knew the real facts of the case, but the person in question knew how to game the system for maximum sympathy and to leave out all the pesky awkward little details that didn't fit the narrative and tug at the heartstrtings.
I would not be one bit surprised to find out that Angela is on oxygen for lung problems, for example, but the cruel heartless guardian won't give her permission to smoke and is taking away her last little crumb of pleasure!
I'll just dump this here for the moment, and maybe follow up later.
Part of the fundamental intractability of the problem is that we're not looking at it right. Not only are the homeless not a homogeneous population, the problem isn't even "homelessness". It's a giant multi-dimensional Venn diagram of conditions that can drag a person down into a living hell. There's homelessness, joblessness, mental illness, drug addiction, disability, criminality, anti-social behavior, and just not giving a fuck any more about what civilized society thinks. (That's my guess. I'm not sure how one would do a factor analysis on this stuff.) Catching one of these conditions makes it more likely to catch another, and the more someone has the more they're likely to pick up the rest. Our solutions tend to address one condition at a time, and break down when there's more than one thing going on. Homelessness simply happens to be a condition that dramatically increases the visibility of the person. But people who only have that one condition - homelessness - are not the cause of the problems we see, and are fairly easily helped.
I believe this policy has waxed and waned over the years as various interest groups (ACLU, anti-crime, etc) have had political ascendency. I remember driving to the symphony one night in the late 90s when I took a wrong turn and would up there: imagine ~500 vagrants milling about in a 2-3 block stretch.
> (I once asked a Swiss person how their streets were so clean, and he answered “everyone here is rich”).
Perhaps you should look to Singapore. We cleaned up before we got rich.
(In fact, cleaning was part of our strategy to get rich. Gotta send a message to foreign investors. The road between airport and central business district was kept especially shiny.)
When Singapore started, it wasn't at all clear (at least to most people) that their programme was going to work. The programme of essentially neoliberal economics to make the country rich and successful.
You could perhaps turn around the casualty: a society that has enough capacity to pull of a deliberate project like 'physically clean up the city' is probably also one that can pull off becoming rich?
So taken to Switzerland:the cleanliness explains the prosperity, not the other way round?
I found where the Democratic Party saw the tactic of repeatedly saying "He needs to decide."
Netanyahu has been telling Hamas "You need to decide. Will you return the Israeli hostages, lay down your arms, surrender, and end the war -- or do you insist on fighting."
So far, Hamas's answer has been to keep fighting.
So Netanyahu repeats "You need to decide. Will you return the Israeli hostages, lay down your arms, surrender, and end the war -- or do you insist on fighting."
> Third, realistically everyone will fail their drug tests and go back to prison, so be ready for that.
Perhaps being less Puritan would work? Ie only tests for some drugs that are really badly harmful, and quietly let them know all the drugs that are fun that they can still take.
Eg you want to test for alcohol. But perhaps stimulants are fine? (Just an example, consult with someone with actual knowledge.)
You don't need to explicitly legalise the less harmful drugs, you can just conveniently not test for them.
Have you never met a person who has done too many stimulants for too long? Meet too many of those and you'll be begging to go back to dealing with drunks.
I've volunteered in soup kitchens and shelters for over 15 years and the drunks are definitely a bigger problem. The tweakers steal a bit more but the drunks easily outweigh that through their violence.
I feel like the thing that’s missing from this analysis is that it sure seemed to me like the same people who fought against building shelters because we’re supposed to be focused on permanent house _also_fought against any housing development that wasn’t the absolute perfect 150% low income housing development carved out of purest limestone blocks matching the local neighborhood character by a unionized workforce of racially diverse sylvan elves on a lot without any history of being, say, a historical gas station (“Harvey Mill filled up here once, you can’t tear it down!”). But maybe that’s just my perception.
Vibes are how you become a totally different sort of country.
(Scott says:
> “Be tough” is a vibe, not a plan.
and
> Is it possible to become the sort of state/country that can [fix big problems]? Yes, obviously, other countries do this, you could become like them somehow. But you don’t do it through ground-level [...] policy directly. You start by becoming a totally different sort of country. I would like for us to be the sort of country that does all of these things[...] But I don’t think you can start by planning the gleaming high-tech rail system, before you’ve solved the fundamental problems that make it impossible.)
For example. Imagine if, via media, religion, social pressure, etc, Americans were to all become extremely draconian, cruel, heartless, tough and fastidious. In fact, we all get so draconian and fastidious that we wear Ebeneezer Scrooge suits and carry heavy, ornate walking sticks, and if we see a homeless person, we hit them with our sticks until they run away. The police are even more draconian and tough than normal people are; but in the rare case that normal people catch the police trying to arrest a normal person for hitting homeless people with sticks, they gather in a crowd and verbally abuse the police and throw rocks and bottles at them. Yes, this is illegal; so is whatever the homeless person was doing; so is exceeding the speed limit.
(In ancient cities, it was normal for crowds to gather around people caught breaking the law and throw rocks at them until they died. What I'm describing isn't foreign to the human experience.)
I would hate to live in a country like that! But they wouldn't have a homelessness problem. Or, not for long. And the difference between that country and ours isn't any law anybody could make; it's the moral character of the normal people. And that's vibes.
On the other side, you could imagine that every American suddenly decided to take the Sermon on the Mount very seriously and became extreme practitioners of non-violence, accepting any violation anybody wanted to do to us without resisting, and without recourse to law. Forgiving everybody for everything all the time, even if it kills us. Who knows what that country would look like, but they also wouldn't have a homelessness problem. They might have lots of homelessness ("look at the birds of the air", etc) but it wouldn't be a problem.
I feel like the current American point on the toughness / softness spectrum is pretty good. Or, at least, I don't think we can move it significantly without incurring costs that I don't want to bear; and we'd have to move it significantly to fix homelessness. So, no thanks.
But I'd like to point out a plan that seems to have been overlooked: a vibe shift. An actual vibe shift. Laws aren't people, making laws tougher or nicer isn't a vibe shift. "Politics is downstream of culture," they say.
It could be that the commenters who are failing to propose plans with concrete, implementable policy propositions are actually trying to push the national vibe in the direction they favor. If they win, and our vibe genuinely changes, and we all get tougher, it would probably have a real effect.
> On the other side, you could imagine that every American suddenly decided to take the Sermon on the Mount very seriously and became extreme practitioners of non-violence, accepting any violation anybody wanted to do to us without resisting, and without recourse to law. Forgiving everybody for everything all the time, even if it kills us. Who knows what that country would look like, but they also wouldn't have a homelessness problem. They might have lots of homelessness ("look at the birds of the air", etc) but it wouldn't be a problem.
Are you positing psychopaths and sociopaths don't exist? Or that somehow they'd all get kicked out of this hypothetical "side"? I guess you are.
But those people would be somewhere, and as soon as one sneaks into this "side", it all goes to shit.
Whereas your other hypothetical side, where everyone's a Scrooge, takes care of the psychopath/sociopath problem, so of the two, I'd honestly rather live in the Scrooge one. It's more resilient to reality.
No, psychopaths exist. They just get to do whatever they want and normal people won't try to stop them. Their victims usually think, "This suffering is making me more Christ-like. Hallelujah!" or "By forgiving this person who hurt me, I'm storing up treasure in Heaven." They would give anybody anything they asked for, anything at all.
I would call this something like "extreme naive Christian non-violent anarchy". I don't think there have ever been enough people like this to see what it's like when practiced on a large scale. Maybe medieval monasteries were like this? But they were also strictly authoritarian.
Like, imagine if 95% of people had Mother Teresa levels of self-sacrificing generosity and forgiveness. There might not actually be any homelessness. I'll bet there would be other problems, though, with people's evil impulses unrestrained by anything but shame and empathy. But maybe shame and empathy would become very strong deterrents, if all your victims were extremely saintly.
What I'm trying to describe is a genuine vibe shift. Not a legal policy change. That's why I'm suggesting extreme examples, to try and make it obvious that changing people's moral character (if you could actually do it, not just pass laws about it) would have an effect on the problem.
> On the other side, you could imagine that every American suddenly decided to take the Sermon on the Mount very seriously and became extreme practitioners of non-violence, accepting any violation anybody wanted to do to us without resisting, and without recourse to law. Forgiving everybody for everything all the time, even if it kills us. Who knows what that country would look like, but they also wouldn't have a homelessness problem.
Terry Goodkind wrote a heroic fantasy series in which each book (after the first, which is more generic) specifically lampoons a dysfunctional modern philosophy. The one you mention is lampooned in book 8, 𝘕𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘌𝘮𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘦.
(The titles are generally less on point than that. The anticommunism book is, if I'm remembering correctly, 𝘍𝘢𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘯. One of the earlier books (#3?) is antiwoke, which is impressive given that it was written in the 90s.)
I remember a contest to retitle classic fantasy novels with something more accurate to the contents, in which the first book in this series was given the title 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘯. I still think that was a stroke of genius.
Huh, I didn't know that. I liked Wizard's First Rule, then I was really bored with Stone of Tears, and didn't read any more of his books. Maybe I should give him another try.
I think Native tribes should set up rehab facilities on the reservations. Sweat lodges, work and training for tribal members and keeping the addicts away from their supplies.
It turns out hollowing out the state such that nobody can do anything ever was a bad idea, because corporations and organizations that are not state-like can only do as much as the state they inhabit or parisitize; who knew except for anyone who has ever cracked a history book.
I wonder if we pay homeless people to move to Tent City. Most homeless would probably accept low dollar amounts in exchange for a bus ticket to shelter, food, safety, and warm weather. Weird idea but it lowers the costs of a lot of current solutions while providing similar benefits.
Wow. My impression after reading Scott's objections is that he wants a plan to solve homelessness that would work on the assumption that every single step will be done by incompetent people and on 1/4th of minimal necessary budget. I don't think this one's solvable, chief.
A couple of relevant pieces of context for why shelters are a rough option for homelessness from a study on LA homelessness options I co-wrote:
* marginal shelter beds at least in LA net out to about $100k/person housed per year (we think this is high but those are the numbers the city gave us)
* other government housing programs (section 202, section 8, public housing, subsidized ADUs) cost $20-30k per person housed per year (and this is assuming a marginal construction cost of $0.5 million/unit)
* in a QALY analysis of (a very small sample of) people who had experienced homelessness in shelters, streets, or vehicles near uniformly rated any of these as a life not worth living
Our conclusions were that shelters are not cost effective at the margin and they get underutilized partially because homeless people see them as providing no quality of life.
Lots of limitations to the paper (small sample size, elderly population without mental illness) but worth emphasizing that shelters are an extremely expensive way to house people. You will inevitably have the hard cases you've been discussing that are especially hard to house but you really want to lean towards just housing people even from a pure financial calculation.
“ACT is a model of care for people living with severe and persistent mental illness. First developed in the late 1960s in Madison, Wisconsin, it pairs patients with a multidisciplinary team of professionals to provide wraparound care within their community.”
There is also the cases of viral infections triggering mental health symptoms. Wild. This is why I am of the firm belief that health research should be multiples of what is now. There is still a lot of mystery and room for improvement in medical diagnosis and treatment!
Wishing you all the best in figuring things out as best as you can. Maybe a GLP-1 drug could help. I’m not all kidding. Seems like they’re finding that it does some good in areas other than blood sugar and weight by reducing general inflammation.
Your argument against the third category of response seems like a fully general argument against fixing anything. Should we try to make housing cheaper, education better, college less crazy expensive? Should we try to stop people bashing transwomen? Should we try to make police more accountable and less trigger-happy? Should we try to decrease CO2 emissions to blunt the effects of AGW?
You can answer every one of these with "yeah, it's just American dysfunction, nothing to be done about it." But unless you're going full doomer on everything and expecting continual American decline forever, it seems like the real answer is that we need to repair some of the dysfunction.
For example, making housing cheaper (which won't solve the ranting crazy person homeless problem, but will help some poor people at the margins keep a roof over their heads) requires overcoming some dysfunctional bits of US politics and law--the ability to file blocking lawsuits and use administrative action to delay any building project for a decade and add millions of dollars of cost, the existence of restrictive zoning laws in many places, the entrenched interests of existing property owners who are better off when their most expensive asset stays crazy expensive because competing assets aren't permitted, etc. And yet, it sure seems like making some progress on NIMBY-ism and the death-of-a-thousand-cuts method of preventing development is possible, and in fact, people are working hard on that and seem to be having at least some success. Your argument above seems like it would say the YIMBY people should stop demanding change because hey, the US is just broken and can't be fixed.
I understand that there's not some magic wand we can wave and make all the dysfunction go away, but I honestly don't see why the problems with institutionalizing long-term crazy people are so intractible that we just have to give up on them and leave the crazy ranting people on the street. (Where we must then let them crap on the sidewalk and occasionally assault people, because somehow jailing them for that would be too expensive and would strain police resources too much, even though cities have done just that in recent memory without going broke or giving up on other law enforcement.)
Because seriously, we didn't have this same problem in 1950, when we were a much poorer country with much less effective drugs to treat serious mental illnesses. Have we really become so dysfunctional that it is simply impossible for us to take our massively more resources and more effective drugs now and run better asylums with better treatment, at least for crazy people who keep bouncing between the street, jail, and temporary commitment? If so, it seems like we need to be addressing that dysfunction.
Suppose some state decided to actually go back to the 1950 version of this--vagrancy laws on the books and enforced, panhandling forbidden by law, involuntary commitment for people who keep bouncing between jail and cardboard box and hospital, etc. Don't imagine California doing it, but could Utah or Missouri do it? My impression is that federal laws and court decisions would forbid it, but laws can be changed, and ultimately court decisions can be overturned, or (usually) addressed by a change in the law. One thing I'd like to propose is that we stop forbidding any state or city from solving the problem, before we decide that we're just doomed to massive public dysfunction forever and there's nothing to be done about it.
The part I don't understand is why we need to make San Francisco work as the mecca of homeless rehabilitation, out of all places.
We have a practically infinite supply of cheap space in places like Bakersfield, Lancaster, Fresno. What is a person overcoming addiction and a decade of unemployment going to do in one of the most expensive 7x7 miles of land in the world that caters to machine learning engineers and wealth managers? Already teachers and firefighters cannot afford to live in the city. What exactly is someone who's lived on the streets for years screaming at passerbys going to do in SF once they recover, short of being on government handouts for life pretend-sweeping the streets? Are they suddenly going to spin up cloud infrastructure in AWS? Are they going to learn product management? Are they going to apply to Ycombinator?
IMO they need to be 1. relocated to a geography where they can actually afford housing or housing is more affordable for taxpayers to provide 2. relocated somewhere where there are job opportunities for them, whatever form that takes.
>The practical reason is that the cost of everything has increased by at least an order of magnitude since 1950. Partly this is increasing social and governmental dysfunction.
Is there somewhere to read more about the idea of increase governmental dysfunction over time? If it got worse since the 50s, that is concerning.
People like to blame “dysfunction”, but I think they underestimate how much is caused by people wanting, and understandably demanding, better things.
For example: Regulation and security measures that save lives, regulations to help the environment (flora & fauna in addition to climate), population increase adding pressure on real estate and requiring regulation for being good neighbors, equipment becoming more powerful but heavier + more complex + more expensive to buy and run, livable wages, less corruption and less opportunities to skirt rules, etc.
Many of these things interact in complex ways, and add to the need for bureaucracy and approval, but if we agree we want to (e.g.) require fences along the railroad track to prevent kids, animals and irresponsibles from getting onto the tracks, not least because the new train weighs 10x more than the old one and moves at 10x the speed, and is much harder to stop, I’m not sure it counts as dysfunction to also add a requirement to check the contractor’s work.
The results probably don’t show up in cost or productivity, but in fewer accidents, less noise and emissions (relative to dimensions of things and number of people), slowing local extinction of species, etc., etc.
Not to say there’s no dysfunction, but I don’t believe it has increased as dramatically as people like to suggest, especially not in the same era that so much documentation has become automatic, transparency has become easier and more expected, information retrieval and communication is almost instantaneous, people have become more (better?) educated, etc… I think dysfunction just used to be better hidden and less expensive.
Compare to pulling a tooth ca. 1875, 1955, and 2025… I’m guessing the price has increased dramatically, but so has the comfort level and the chance of living through it without some infection spreading to your brain and killing you. You can argue that dental schools are dysfunctionally priced, big pharma’s supply chain and pricing of antibiotics and anesthetjcs is dysfunctional, and dentist certification schemes are dysfunctional, and they all drive up the prices, and I might agree to some degree, but I wouldn’t primarily blame dysfunction for the price increase. Even if I could find someone to pull my tooth the old way for $50, I think I would opt for the new, dysfunctional version. 😉
You've accidentally reverse engineered corrupt third world policing. This is how they operate in places like Mexico, and once if you allow them this much leeway, they will start thinking, "hey, let's not bother investigating virtually any crime unless we get a bribe."
Not much different than the "developed" US, honestly. Half of all murders go unsolved. Anyone who's lived in downtowns has their cars broken into and everything stolen repeatedly (I average 4x a year), and never bother filing a report because the police will just laugh at you and throw the report into the trash right in front of you.
Honestly, I'd welcome being able to pay a bribe and get whatever crimes I wanted investigated to the front of the queue, it sounds strictly better than what we have today (and I've actually lived in multiple different developing countries, I'm not just being "grass is greener" here).
"I'd welcome being able to pay a bribe and get whatever crimes I wanted investigated to the front of the queue."
Until someone with more money outbids you and you get pushed down the queue. And you'd better never piss off someone affluent or they might pay for you to be falsely arrested.
Mexico has a murder clearance rate in the single digits. Corrupt police don't have much time to investigate crimes, they're busy seeking more bribes.
I'm not saying Mexico is a "bad" country. I'd be happy to live there. I might move there someday. I just think OP (onodera) is an absolute doofus.
True - the worst part about openly corrupt systems is that it revolves even more hugely around "who you know" and guanxi.
Not that "who you know" doesn't help in the US, too. But it definitely seems more existentially important in developing countries, and that can be pretty hard for introverts and the majority of less-connected people in the country.
“ What are the criteria for committing people to this institution? If it’s “convicted of crime”, we get the problem discussed above: police won’t catch most people.”
One of the reasons police don’t crack down on certain types of crime is that they know there won’t be meaningful consequences for people they arrest. If you create a system that keeps the mentally ill off the streets, the police become a lot more incentivized to actually police them.
Here yet again to comment in defense of California HSR (thankless work for sure).
Does anyone remember how much the Japanese bullet trains cost? The Chunnel between Britain and France? Okay, those were other countries. The Hoover Dam? The Golden Gate Bridge? The Interstate Highway System? First BART system? I would be impressed if anyone knew the price of those. Does anyone seriously believe we shouldn’t have built the Golden Gate Bridge or the BART? No. Every project is short term pain for long term/permanent gain. Probably they had cost overruns too that have faded from memory - on Wikipedia it says that the Shinkansen had a cost overrun from 200 billion yen to 380 billion yen and a director resigned over it. The Big Dig was also heavily criticized as a “boondoggle” during construction for going from $3B to $15B, but now if you ask any Bostonian about it I think they would probably be positive about it because it really beautified the downtown spaces. I’m not saying that the price of infrastructure literally doesn’t matter, but even an expensive California HSR could still pay back a net benefit to the public over the 100+ year life of the system.
Also, I assume everyone here is media literate, so they understand that “Government Fucks Up, Wastes All Our Money!” gets more clicks than “Rail Service Works As Proposed, Good Job!”.
California HSR is a first-in-the-nation project that was always going to struggle. Building an electrified rail for 200+ mph trains is similar but not directly comparable to traditional rail. Finding the right track fabricator, rolling stock, engineers to design it, workers to build it, etc. is going to be harder just because it’s a first-in-the-nation project, plus add in all that California NIMBY politics during permitting and land acquisition.... Hopefully if high speed rail is a success we could start growing new industries and break this cycle and the next project will be cheaper. Maybe that’s cope, idk, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that part of “become a country that can build a high speed rail competently” is “build at least one high speed rail”.
Bottom line, if you want to mentally tack on a x3 multiplier on the cost of any construction proposed in the US for the next 20 years, I think that would be reasonable, and it’s what I personally do. But to oppose building new infrastructure that creates economic gains based on initial cost seems… depressing? NIMBY? How a society’s GDP stagnates? It doesn’t feel right to me. And it also threatens my job. So I still support building infrastructure.
If I had a gun to my head and I had to write an objection to California HSR, it probably wouldn’t mention cost at all, or at least not directly, it would be something like: “The Central Valley segment is going to be completed in 2033, and the SF to LA system requires about 30 miles of tunneling, so God knows you’ll complete it in 2050 or 2060 or 2070… that’s too fucking long of a schedule! Maybe it’ll be made obsolete by better air travel, self-driving cars, teleporters, whatever. Or maybe a giant exodus from California makes traveling from SF to LA not a priority anymore. We can’t blow our money now in 2024 on something for 2050, either build it faster or just don’t build it.”
>> Agreed. People don’t want them in the residential areas or suburbs either and for good reason. But my guess is cities can identify certain areas where they would prefer the tents to set up. Something like industrial areas or run down parks. The key is that city officials should be able to use arrests as a strategy to move the tents/homeless concentrations without having to face a million lawsuits.
> I don’t know if there are really areas like this, but I welcome learning more from people who know cities better.
I also hate it when someone's policy plan is just a vibe, but in this case I think "be tough" gets translated into pretty clear policy at the city level. It means the mayor tells the police that they don't want to see homeless people in X part of the city. Police then start harassing homeless people (legally or illegally) to get them to move somewhere else.
There's a liminal space between travelers, temporarily destitute "normies" looking for work and the capital H homeless. There's no way to neatly differentiate between these categories and so during the Bad Old Days, they just used the vagrancy laws to harass all of the above. The right to travel was severely curtailed. But for almost 50 years, we've lived in a world where you can travel wherever you want, by foot or by car, without having to provide proof of employment or income. There's no going back. People are sick of the homeless epidemic but most would go ballistic if cops returned to routinely asking people to prove they had work/income. It's abhorrent.
> We found that gun violence concentrates within social networks. So, a small proportion of individuals are at the center of gun violence within any given community—and by small I mean a couple of hundred people in a community of tens of thousands.
## Repeat offenders
By court order, repeat offenders are required to wear ankle monitors.
Data can be used to
* Track the movements of repeat offenders and to determine if they are in the vicinity of a crime.
> Ankle monitors use GPS technology to provide real-time location data of the wearer. This allows authorities to monitor whether the individual adheres to geographic restrictions, such as staying away from certain areas or remaining within a designated zone
## Help people "re-enter" society
Housing is not sufficient to help people re-enter society. Find and organize things for people to do
They are paid for participating in activities that help them re-enter society.
* Pay $25 to complete a soccer match, softball game, or other local club sports event.
* Pay $50 for busking in a park or on a street corner.
* Pay $25 for picking up trash or weeding a park garden
* Pay $50 for helping repair bicycles
* Pay $25 for helping to sorting trash and recycling
* Pay $50 for helping to paint a mural
* Pay $25 for helping to build a community garden
* Pay $25 to shovel snow, rake leaves or clean up a beach or lakeside
Some of these activities for some of the participants might require wearing a camera or other monitoring device.
## Repurpose old buildings
* Use the underside of elevated highways for housing
* Box cars in old rail yards
* Old warehouses
* Old schools
## Instill a sense of community
* Every neighborhood in the city must accept a certain number of people who are homeless into their midst
* Perhaps two places for every 1000 people in the neighborhood
* Participants have been selected by the city to be suitable candidates
* Participants must be willing to live in the neighborhood for at least 6 months
* Names, photos and background information of the people living in the neighborhood are posted on a bulletin board in the neighborhood or on a website
* The neighborhood must set up places for them to live that has washing facilities, a kitchen, and a place to sleep etc - ways of enabling them to live in the neighborhood with a clean and healthy environment
I think your incorporation of the gun control problem is very smart, if perhaps unintentional. IMO this is because: 1) They are largely the same people; and 2) They cant find the solution because they are, more or less, ideologically blinded to seeing a solution. Gun controllers don't know how guns work. They don't want to, guns are too scary. Oh, and by the way that also have significant overlap with the people who make CA prisons $100k+ a bed and psych wards $300k+ a bed. These costs can and should be reduced 10x minimum if progressive activists were just locked out of policy discussions.
If you can't break down a pistol and a rifle, re-assemble them quickly, then hit targets at 25 yards with the pistol and 100 with the rifle, why are you talking about gun control? Similarly, if you are still talking about beds instead of stockades and outlaw status for the homeless, isn't you bubble just causing you to confuse yourself into an epistemic crises of "not being able" to solve the problem, because you've intentionally broken Chesterton's fence, then got gored by the bull, and are now asking about what is the best cohabitation plan with the horn up your ass. Maybe just re-build the fence?
Because people just having access to pistols and ARs is just kinda stupid? It's obviously dumb?
You don't need to have ever held a gun to understand that you pull the lever and bullets come out; all the bloviating about expertise is intentionally missing the point.
The fact that for 1200$ and a pin drill I can get 85% of the way to an M4 is fucking wild.
I mean, I like mine and will continue to raise it in LARP for the revolution or whatever, but the general gun owning population outside hunters is mainly of fairly low quality I would say; such that the majority of gun owners wouldn't meet your criteria.
The point is people *proposing policy* about an issue need to be knowledgeable and specific about it. Which is what Scott has laboriously been trying to get across with his last two homelessness posts. Knowing that a gun shoots when you pull the trigger is analogous to knowing homeless people don't have homes. That level of expertise doesn't exactly get you to solving the problem.
I object to your specific example only, in that case. The metaphor doesn't work because guns are very simple and social organization is very complicated.
It matters when people create ignorant policy. This either results in the policy being struck down by the courts, as Scott alluded to. The right to bear arms 'shall not be infringed' is the strongest language in the Constitution, right after 'Congress shall make no law' in the 1st Amendment. Or it results in policy that makes it less comfortable for people to use firearms with no impact on public safety, like outlawing pistol grips or suppressors. Or policy that is totally ridiculous, like outlawing bayonet lugs. Guns may be dangerous, but you know what's really dangerous, a gun with a knife on the end!
Specific gun legislation that has no effect on arms control but just makes shit annoying is spurred by people just going for any gun regulation they can even if it does nothing. I personally would love to be able to put a suppressor on my cheapo taurus .22 target pistol and run subsonic just for comfort.
That said I still maintain that people who know nothing about guns can still credibly say "I want there to be less/no guns", even if it is never gonna happen. If sandy hook didn't move the needle, nothing will.
Except the opposite is true. Modern firearms are the result of millennia of technological development. Homeless people occupying premium real estate is a modern innovation caused by incentives of the welfare state and the anti-law and order progressives.
Dude, this is just not true. Firearms are dead simple as machines, anyone who is mildly intelligent can pick one up and have a complete understanding of the mechanics in a couple hours.
A friend of mine has been working with the homeless population for some time in our small city and is convinced the institutional method doesn't work well and wastes tons of money on overhead because it ignores the humanity of the homeless person and the fact that each person needs unique help. So on his own he's been trialing his method of establishing a relationship of trust with a chronic homeless person built on unconditional positive regard. He genuinely likes people. Then he helps them find the resources and solutions they need to not to keep cycling through the system. It often involves helping them find a stable support group and working with their families, engaging community volunteers, churches, helping them stay medicated and find meaningful work. It's being there in a crises before things spiral out of control. It's a deeply personalized work and very effective so far. It's also a far less expensive solution in the long run, but unfortunately hard to get funding for as donors are often looking for quantity over quality.
I don't know how this could work in a big city or scale because the institutional is inherently dehumanizing but I think it's important to keep in mind humans aren't just machines, output the sum of inputs. And if you put them in a rabbit cage called housing they won't automatically self-actualize. Of course you can manipulate human behavior by imposing suffering, but in the long term that isn't going to help anyone heal and it isn't going to create the kind of society that values the unique worth of individuals and their potential contribution to a community of life, that actually everyone would prefer to live in.
On the topic of "crimes committed by mentally ill people are hard to follow up on":
I once saw a woman walking with her husband get slapped across the face for no reason by a crazy presumably-homeless lady who was wandering around muttering to herself.
The slapped woman, her husband, and myself, all just stared in disbelief at what had happened, and then within 30 seconds the crazy lady had disappeared down a side street with basically no hope of being found.
Perhaps I'm missing the humour, or misunderstanding, but as I read it, the intro is weirdly hostile and quite insulting "Many of you had strong feelings on this one. As usual, you were wrong."
Why directly insult your readers and commentors? What aim does this serve?
You have a large audience, and having such an audience (thought well earned!) is also a rare privilege. It is not seamly to insult people who spend time attempting to engage with you (and your community) in good faith.
To ruin the joke: It takes chutzpah to confidently say “nope, you’re all wrong and I’m right about everything!”Having decided to do that *anyway* (at least to the extent of disagreeing with all the takes given), he demonstrated self-awareness by first“calling out the elephant in the room”. You’re not supposed to just SAY “I guess I’m smarter than all you peons” so doing so is funny/transgressive and softens the blow a bit. I read it as *actually* saying “hey, I might be wrong about some of this stuff but you’ll have to try harder to convince me to change my mind.”
Thanks for clarifying, and explaining. It didn't seem like a joke to me!
The joke not landing reminds of the remark “the failure mode of clever is arsehole.”
To reliably land these kinds of jokes (doing the rude thing ironically) i.m.o. requires realtime audience-feedback or at least a richer medium than text.
Further, the tone of the rest of the article comes across (to me) as frustrated and angry, with Scott seaming genuinely annoyed by much of the community response. This pervasive article tone (as I perceive it) makes the initial joke even less legible (e.g., joking about being annoyed while actually being annoyed isn't really a joke).
I read more of the comments on the other piece than I really should have. I am struck by two things: first, that a tremendous number of the commenters are too cowardly to admit that their solution is mass executions. Aside from that one reactionary gadfly who candidly endorsed hunting them for sport, the solutions along the lines of "deploy them to the front line of a war" all really mean just kill them.
Here are my outside the box ideas:
-Actually incentivize cooperation with a relocation program by giving people what they want (instead of what we think they should want) which is ready access to affordable drugs. Build a nice town in the middle of nowhere, somewhere with decent weather, station some administrators and police, and prescribe fentanyl or whatever else people want, for free. Fentanyl is easy to make. Opiates are cheap. Give people prescriptions and let them ruin their bodies and lives, which this cohort are already doing, but remove the stressful middle step of subsistence thievery for funding.
-The drug cohort is responsible for a lot of the intractability (including political resistance) to helping houseless people. Like, if the drug people leave then you are left with the unlucky and the hopelessly insane. The former respond well to help, the latter you can put in It's Not Prison or just prison if they insist on assaulting people. White voters will still get mad that helping the down and out might accidentally help a black or hispanic person, but I think if they felt like it would actually do any good the people would support it --a large part of voter recalcitrance relates to the reasonable belief that money spent on this is wasted.
-One of the worst parts of homeless shelters for people with normal functionality is that violently insane or narcotic-infused criminals are there. These places could be nicer if they people in them were nicer, basically.
-Housing is a huge part of this, obviously. Repeal the federal ban on building housing, re-allow Flophouses (which were removed as a policy choice), crash the housing market even if it sends the economy into recession (it's going to happen anyways). Have a computer running a mysterious algorithm determine the best place to put the shelters, subsidized housing, and flophouses, then have organized crime intimidate the inevitable NIMBY's. I guess you could just change our legal structure dealing with citizen objections and suits to prevent construction or demand environmental review, that's what they do in Sweden, but I would accept a more violent, sub rosa response vis a vis the Karens of Orange County and the like.
Responding to DZ on just forcing homeless people into industrial areas.
This is exactly what Boston does. Most of our homeless population is in the "[Mass & Cass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_and_Cass)" area which is south of the city away from anywhere anyone except hospital workers would want to go.
Though, Boston has mostly accomplished this by centralizing services in that area rather than the suggested approach of just arresting people until they move to less desirable areas.
These aren't my views, but I feel inspired to steelman the "just get tough" plan. To be clear, I think this is morally repugnant, but I do 100% think it could work.
The core premise of the "just get tough" plan is: don't care about outcomes for homeless people. Actually, not quite right. There is an ideal outcome, which is the homeless person dies. Second best outcome is the homeless person leaves for somewhere else. Third best outcome is the homeless person stays in the city but learns to hide where they can't be seen or found easily.
The rule of the game is that you must follow the letter of the law, but not necessarily the spirit of the law. You're allowed to exploit any fuzziness or loopholes you can find to achieve your desired outcomes.
So the basic plan is to try and use every trick available to make it unbearably painful to be a homeless person living in the city. Police go in and intentionally provoke incidents, killing anyone who seems sufficiently scary. Prosecutors refuse to pursue cases of police brutality. Every existing law on the books is enforced as maliciously as possible against the homeless. You don't ever have to actually go to trial: just keep arresting people for a few days and make sure you lose all their stuff every time you bring them in.
The local community can get involved. Police can let local kids know they'll look the other way if they go trash the homeless encampment and steal everything that isn't nailed down. Let business owners know that if they shoot a homeless person in their store, they're not going to face any serious consequences. Get sympathetic journalists to write stories of local heroes who stood up to an evil homeless person.
You're essentially implementing a plan of state-sanctioned stochastic terrorism against the homeless. You can do 90% of this with existing powers, you don't need a bunch of new laws or programs. Just an attitude shift that harassing or killing homeless people is acceptable or even laudable.
The difficult part is preventing political blowback. If you lose elections and a bunch of softies get into office, then the plan falls apart. So you need to build a political constituency for being as mean as possible to homeless people. And you pull every trick you can to keep your guys in charge of aa many institutions as you can. The hope is that your intentional cruelty starts to work well enough that voters come around to it and support you rather than undermining your efforts.
How does this work? Well, first off, the very worst offenders are unlikely to survive at all. They'll get into trouble one way or another and get themselves killed. Others will realize that life on the street is no longer tenable. They'll check into shelters or skip town. The cleverest and most determined will learn to live in ways that don't draw attention. This is a success - the point is not to help them, but to keep them out of the way. If you train the homeless to hide, you've succeeded.
This is the sort of plan that tends to snowball. Once it starts to work and visible homelessness becomes less common, you can focus all your resources on cracking down anytime it starts to reappear. If every city implements similar policies, you'll end up pushing homeless people into the most marginal land around. Many of them will die of various causes. The others will learn how to keep their heads down so as to not bring the hammer down.
Does this solve the homelessness problem? In one sense, no, not at all. The homeless are worse off than ever. But you have solved the problem the typical person actually cares about, which is that they have to interact with homeless people on a regular basis.
This is maximally uncharitable. The reality is that the purpose of a "get tough on bums" strategy is to make less people bums. Contrary to your opinion (and seemingly that of Scott in his op) there is no fixed population of people engaging in public bummery. If there is no open air drug market and no ability to just encamp in high traffic areas, most of these bums wont die, they will just find being a bum unfun. They will then cease to engage in the act of being a bum, as being sober and living under a bridge that is a long way away from good peddling corners (rent free by the way) is not interesting.
If you just eliminate the free food, cheap drugs, and free rent (imagine what a normal person would have to pay to rent a tent on the sidewalk in Central Park or the Tenderloin!) and less people will do that behavior.
I guess this is an interesting example for how you can have different axes of charitable. I agree actually that a lot of people would just make different choices under this regime and not end up homeless at all, or get off the streets and get jobs. But I wanted to make the point that even under extremely cynical assumptions, "just get tough" is probably a viable strategy.
One thing that your analysis totally misses Scott is that we now live in a surveillance state, yet no legislator have ever attempted to weaponize this for a GOOD cause (like catching criminals) rather than a BAD one (like oppressing people with political WrongThink). In any big city, we have hundreds of cameras watching almost anything at any time. It would be very EASY to tie them together into one consolidated network and use that to prosecute homeless criminals based on more than just "vibes." Plus, the advantage (assuming we had PUBLIC oversight of the network rather than government access only) is that it would be the equivalent of having police bodycams everywhere that the police can't turn off, which would also shut up all those ignorant left-wingers who say things like "Defund the Police." This system wouldn't just punish homeless criminals; it would ALSO punish police who overstepped their authority.
It's very difficult to respect either you or your thinking when you fail to account for such obvious technical solutions in your analysis. We don't live in the Stone Age anymore; we live in the Digital Age. Digital Age problems call for Digital Age solutions.
I lived in Japan (Tokyo area) for three years, and almost never encountered a homeless person. In 2019 the official number was fewer than 1000 homeless people in the Tokyo metro area, an area with like 40M people!
Some of this is social stigma: it's considered shameful to be homeless and many retreat away from cities and hide from the census (and yes, some choose to end their lives, a problem in Japan to be sure).
When I asked my Japanese friends why it was, they also pointed to social stigma, but on the *families*: if your son/daughter/sibling/cousin/etc is homeless, that is shameful for you, and this provides incentive for the family to support that person rather than dismissing or disowning them (as sometimes happens in the US).
I haven't gone through all the 786 comments at the time of writing this comment. So apologies if someone's made the point below.
As Harry Deuchar's comment highlighted above shows, building more better homeless shelters is a clear improvement. I mean that seems to be the common thread in the rest of this post as well.
But you can't do this in SF as the housing costs are too high.
So perhaps, homelessness should be considered a problem of Bay Area in whole and there ought to be homeless shelters around the cheaper parts of Bay Area. That'd go a long way in mitigating the problem except I think nobody wants homeless shelters in their neighborhood.
I live in Australia, and I think our "trick" is just not to have American levels of political dysfunction. The wokies have started to infiltrate, but so far they are under control, and minus a few corporations asking staff to include their pronouns in their email signature, stuff is not too different than it was 10 - 15 years ago. We certainly don't have a lot of people insisting on the "rights" of mentally ill homeless people to assault passerby or die of exposure; they just get taken to prison or the ED.
Housing is very expensive here too, so our experience would suggest that's not the only factor at play and "build more homes" is not going to take your homeless problem away overnight.
The one natural blessing we do have is low levels of illegal immigration, thanks to our country being surrounded by a moat. Though, if you don't have moat access, a wall is good too.
Honestly, fentanyl costs literally pennies, and if legal issues weren't an issue and it was produced in bulk for the market, you could keep essentially any addict completely high / happy on $1 a day.
I'm a fan of the "wet houses" proposals. All the drugs you can take, for free, far away from city centers. You're going to average $500 a year vs the 100k a year, and some tiny percentage of them (roughly 10% going by AA figures) will actually get out of their addictions and go on to be productive citizens, whereas a large portion of those 10% people die today due to supply chain contamination and illegible dosing due to it being illegal.
You might think pipelines are a great way to transport oil, right? Wrong. Pipelines have to cross tons of state and county lines, and if the permits get blocked in a single jurisdiction, the whole project is caput. Good luck getting the environmentalists to agree to building your pipeline through their back yard 100% of the time. Now you have to transport oil in tanker trucks, but tanker trucks burn gasoline to transport oil so you can make gasoline. This is a classic tyranny of logistics problem; the more oil you try to transport, the more gasoline you need, so the more oil you need, etc.
Then you have to build a refinery, but no one wants a refinery built next to them. And you have to spend a decade in an adversarial review process just to get the permits to start building. If that wasn't bad enough, the refinery costs billions of dollars. Investors don't want to fork over that kind of money when the Saudis could go on another oil glut or the president could flood the market with cheap petrol from the strategic reserve in an election year. Even if you finally get through all that, you can't sell to the biggest market in the country, California, without building your refinery in the state and complying with onerous regulations. And if you do build in California, the cost of complying with those regulations means your gasoline is too expensive to sell anywhere else. That's why I think the prospect of getting gas for your car is just not realistic.
Some commenters might say, what if I can walk or bike to the grocery store? Sure, that might help a few people on the margins get a sandwich. For the vast majority of people who don't live next to a grocery store, this isn't an option. At this point, you sigh and exclaim "Just make your own bread, damn it!"
Ok, have you ever made bread from scratch before? You need a lot of acres of tiled farmland to grow wheat, which most people can't afford. Then the soil has to be tilled, and the wheat planted, and then harvested, and whatever other things farmers have figured out over thousands of years but you probably don't know. By the way you have to do all of this by hand, because again access to gasoline is impractical in our system. Do you know how to separate wheat seeds from the husk and chaff so it can be milled into flour? Actually milling flour manually is such back breaking labor that it was often used as a punishment for rebellious slaves.
For the sake of argument, say you do all this and make your own bread (somehow you also conveniently have yeast so the bread isn't just a flat blob.) Are you going to eat a bread sandwich? You could farm some lettuce or tomatoes, but then you need more acreage of farmland and more labor to farm it all. You could raise a few animals for some meat, but then you need even more grain to feed the animals (tyranny of logistics again!) and have to butcher them yourself.
I hope this has made it clear why "Go to the store and buy a sandwich" isn't practical, and making your own sandwich is so difficult it isn't a serious solution for 99.9% of the population.
LOL. Well-executed. I was even trying to grok your argument at first.
I was wondering: "so are regulations that prevent more pipelines actually causing more air pollution, global warming, and expense at the pumps?"
Stealth satire is best satire.
I especially liked the mental image of tiled farmland. Maybe a Penrose tiling? It was the icing on the cake.
I'm glad you liked it. Although I didn't mean that kind of tiling; in agriculture, tiling refers to building a buried pipe network that drains excess moisture from the soil. So that part wasn't a clever joke or anything.
The vast, vast, vast majority of people planning to make a sandwich for lunch already have bread, and if they don't have bread they already have a car with gas in it, and if there's no gas in the car they can go to the gas station and get some because the massive cross-country gas delivery and oil pipeline network already exists, and the refineries were built decades ago, and the oil is already being gotten (much of it from North America these days btw). How on earth is any of this analogous to solving a problem that would require doing a very large amount of large-scale stuff that *******isn't already done******?
If I have to explain the joke, it's not funny...
The point is a lot of this stuff has been done in many if not most cities across the world. I live in Australia, and we have minimal problems here with mentally ill homeless drug addicts. Why? Simple: we have clear laws and people follow them. If they don't, they end up in an institution (prison, mental hospital) where treatment can be forced upon them until they get better. Then they go to the least restrictive place where they will continue to be safe and not put any members of the community at risk. Sometimes this is supported living with social workers, other times it is with family members, in the worst cases they stay in prison or forensic mental institutions for life.
San Francisco could have clear laws that people follow, but its people and political class, in their wisdom, have chosen not to do this, and in some cases appear to be convinced that it's impossible. It's really not, but it involves getting rid of the Gavin Newsoms and George Soroses of the world, for a start.
Thank you for clarifying that it's a joke.
Dang, I should go back and finish watching DS9 sometime.
From your link, it sounds like one of the steps along the way is to screen out the criminal element from the Sanctuary Districts, so maybe we can get there via some bizarre hybrid of GET TOUGH and bleeding hearts?
Even that last point doesn't work, because (as Scott pointed out), America was actually worse at building rail than Africa.
I don't think our overregulation is "a form of corruption". A lot of bad ideas sound nice to uninformed voters, so they approve of awful regulations. Nobody needed to get bribed.
Cynically, the kinds of environmental and historical studies (like for protected parking lots) infamous in California are an indirect bribe.
If you can just grease the old boy's palms and get on with your work, that's bad but functional.
If you're *required* to grease the old boy's palms because "environmental and historical studies sound nice," then he still delays your work 5 years writing his report, then blocks it entirely because a rare species of variegated sand flea only lives in this one parking lot or some protected group with additional rights imagines their ancestors worshiped there a thousand years ago, that's worse.
If the system operated on bribes, it would be more functional. People who wanted to build things could just spend money to build them. But instead there's a political process for which there is no actual price tag, and instead an "anti-growth" movement who genuinely believe it's a good thing to stymy development. https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/local/san_francisco.html
> I don't think our overregulation is "a form of corruption".
Hm, that makes me wonder if we could model some of the dysfunction as a non-central form of corruption? Maybe, instead of destroying public resources for private financial gain, it's destroying public resources for private ethical gain? That is, instead of extracting money, they extract self-righteousness? If there were a way to measure self-righteousness, we could come up with a conversion rate, and maybe find a more efficient and effective way of supplying it to the poor people of California who would otherwise languish in sin and unrighteousness.
>OK, but why? Over-regulation? Corruption? Or just getting some fundamental ideas wrong?
Over-regulation seems to be a chunk of it.
Scott had an excellent article on cost disease in https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/
There seem to be a number of plausible contributing factors.
Frankly, if I had a magic wand to make _one_ problem go away, I'd prioritize cost disease even higher than Woke.
Regarding point 1: I live in San Francisco and emotional reactions like you've gotten, instead of even considering any rational solutions, have lead the city into the hell scape of what you see on our streets now.
Is it a hellscape, though? If you avoid the 'Loin and 6th and Market and 6th and Mission areas, maybe a bit of Civic Center, then most of the homeless are practically invisible. There's still plenty of city left to enjoy. It's similar to how most of the shenanigans in LA are contained to Skid Row and maybe parts of Venice.
Don't people live in those areas (as in live in flats/houses, not on the street)? They might want to enjoy the part of the city where they live, too.
Sure, but the problem is sufficiently contained that the rest of the city doesn't have to care about what happens to the residents there. If you can afford it, you move out, if you cannot, you're out of luck, but nobody in Noe Valley will be spending time worrying about it. Same as with Skid Row.
I think this is mainly a housing supply problem and lots of it goes away with Lvt and public housing and then lots of social care on top of that. . Can do the centre for public enterprise plan for multi income housing, slash the people's policy project thing. Build tall and dense, with public parks for shared greenery. . And do the yglesias thing where u bring back single occupant shared amenities living. That plus social services.
So how do you solve the political problem to get LVT passed and/or build more shelters and cheap housing?
I don't think that'd be any harder than the political problems of every other solution. You just keep lobbying politicians, running ads, campaigning for candidates who agree with you, etc. until enough housing gets built.
The YIMBY folks are doing that right now. Biggest successes happen when you go at it at the state level - some progress does happen at the local level, but it's also much more vulnerable to "Make It Somebody Else's Problem (MISEP)" dynamics among city residents opposed to development.
Wait for Ezra Klein's upcoming book about why we can't build things in this political climate, implement it's policy proposals.
That may not be the *best* plan, but it's straightforward and likely to be a huge improvement.
Same way we implement all the other proposed solutions: we don't.
We're chatting in the comment section of a blog post here. We have very little power. And looking at the people who do have power, I don't actually expect any grand effort to fix things.
I suggest voting with your feet, if you want to see real improvements.
Out of curiosity, where do you think I live, and what effect do you think me moving would have?
I don't know where you live.
But for someone living in SF, moving to eg Singapore or Norway would immediately solve pretty much virtually all the homelessness problems they experience in their local community. It's an extremely powerful tool.
(Yes, by changing which community is their local community. Not by improving anything in SF.)
But that's good!
(And if you care about people in (now) faraway places, have a look at whatever GiveWell suggests. There's probably more good to be done in a cheap country than by donating to efforts in SF.)
Expatriates and world travelers are gonna steelman their life choices like anyone else, but I think that, assuming you are gainfully employed in a developed, modern nation, moving is a vastly overrated solution. It usually just replaces one problem with another.
To be fair, this is a very influential blog! You don't get an NYT hit piece by being Small Potatoes.
I think this is crucial, especially given TorontoLLB's point cited towards the end of section 3 - once people are living on the street, they can go from "basically sane but are poor and/or have little to no support from friends/family and/or have some issues" to "severely addicted and mentally ill, potentially for years or the rest of their life" very quickly.
The best way to prevent people from having to live on the street is ensuring an ample supply of affordable housing (naturally occurring through the market not having a housing supply shortage), and ensuring the few people who still would fall through the cracks get state-supported housing (housing-first - much cheaper when most people already can afford housing on their own).
Essentially, this stops the crazy-homeless-person problem on the supply side - stop making them.
I think it definitely thins out if you have a lot of ultra-cheap housing like single room rentals and so forth. Anyone down on their luck can get a "bed and a hot meal" sort of thing, even if they're just scraping together cash from panhandling, recycling cans, and the odd benefit. Fewer people slide into it.
On that point, I think the really minimal housing (basically a shutbed with a lock) should be free, but not claimable. I.e., you can find a bed, but you can't reserve it. Perhaps a week reservation should be allowed. And you can't store things in it, as it gets hosed out every day.
Having a secure place to store things is important, though, for homeless folks.
Everyone who's seriously looked at the problem has noted that there is a hardcore subset of the population that *wants* to be unhoused. That will actively reject any housing that comes with any kind of restrictions...or just any housing at all.
The severely mentally ill people will trash any non-confinement-based housing they're put in and be an active threat to the other inhabitants. So that's a no-go.
The people whose situation can be fixed with fixing the housing supply are generally not the people that we really have to worry about. They're in and out of it in short order.
My son just got a small apartment in a college town, and they ran a criminal background check on him to ensure he wasn't a known felon before letting him rent there. This is for a really small crappy little apartment, but I guess they *really* don't want someone selling drugs or turning tricks or whatever on their property.
There's a persistent meme that homeless people will immediately destroy any housing they are in. Even though I'm pretty sure the vast majority of evictions are due to nonpayment of rent, not destruction of property. Furthermore, you can build housing that is virtually indestructible.
I can't speak for everyone, but for my grandmother the problem was anti-discrimination laws and eviction laws. Basically, if a prospective tenants identity ticks certain boxes, you have to be really careful about turning them down or you will get sued into oblivion, even if it's really obvious that the prospective tenant is totally going to trash the residence. Next, sometimes the problem isn't the tenant, it's the tenants abusive alcoholic boyfriend, or the 3 dogs they bought 4 months after moving in and didn't bother to train that are ripping everything apart and crapping everywhere.
Ok, you accidentally rented out to a destructive lunatic, or someone who routinely admits destructive lunatics into the property. What do you do? Evict them takes a lot of time and effort, in the meantime they will continue to destroy the property and will be even more motivated to destroy it out of revenge. If they tick any of those protected boxes, you have to be extra careful or you'll get sued into oblivion. When it's all done, well, you eat the loss: you can't sue them, they don't have any money, you'll just eat more legal fees for an unenforceable judgement. Sometimes, it's cheaper to let them be if they are still paying at least some rent, and remodel the home when they finally move on: but now you have a story about a $10k repair problem.
"I got the balls and I don't like walls." - 20th century Chicago knife-flipping panhandler who apparently left an impression on me.
I mean, that's the tractable part of the problem, so we should definitely solve that one if it's not already being solved. But then you still have the people for whom this isn't a solution, because they're crazy or addicted or both. For that, you need something else.
Plus, if the most-sympathetic subset of the current homeless population is taken care of, there should be more political will to make the hard decisions about how to address the remainder.
Honestly, I expect that just increasing the supply of housing a LOT would do much of the work, without needing special programs to give the housing to homeless people.
I don't actually know the stats, but I think there aren't that many homeless people with no relatives or friends who live indoors. It may be a lot more palatable to have your schizophrenic uncle live with you so you can make sure he's taking his meds if he can have his own room in your family's 1600sqft house, than if your family is crammed in a 600sqft studio apartment and he'd have to sleep on the floor in the middle of everything.
It might take a generation for housing stock alone to solve the problem (it may not get current homeless people into homes at a high rate, but I'd expect it to stop a lot of marginal people ending up on the street in the first place). But frankly at this point I don't expect other solutions to solve it faster than that, so.
More housing would definitely help give ordinary more resources to do grassroots level assistance.
There's probably something quotable in 'Seeing Like a State' about this situation. These grassroots level initiatives won't be legible at a distance.
Yes! Homelessness is a symptom of the housing crisis. You can't fix homelessness without fixing the housing crisis. Even if you helped all the homeless people you have right now, you would just get new ones.
Solving the housing crisis won't solve homelessness, but you need to solve it first.
https://www.amazon.com/Build-Baby-Science-Housing-Regulation-ebook/dp/B0CW1PT7KK
100% the housing shortage is the underlying driver. It's in theory pretty easy to fix, but in practice the politics remain incredibly thorny. The last comment Scott addressed, from the Toronto mental health worker, is exactly on point -- the lack of housing means that when people have economic bad luck and get evicted from an apartment or house, instead of downsizing into cheap, not-very-pleasant housing like an SRO, they go onto the streets. And the streets turn them into long-term basketcases.
It's a housing *cost* problem, not necessarily a housing supply problem.
Dense public housing historically has suffered from--among other things--the inevitable problems that come when people who are dysfunctional in some way are clustered (less charitably, "warehoused") together without the moderating (more paternalistically, "civilizing") influence of more socially well-adjusted people in the community. In some cases, they have in a few short decades become intolerably plagued by crime, violence, and neglect and ended up being torn down.
Those public housing projects have typically housed people who, though poor and sometimes ill-socialized, are not violently mentally ill. How do we ensure that dense, Cabrini-Green-like public housing projects for mentally ill homeless people do not decline in a similar way?
Housing supply problems and housing costs are two sides of the same coin.
Yes, public housing is harder to get right than private housing. On top of that, it costs the fisc money to set up. Instead just allowing more private housing is approximately free for the government, and also increases supply and decreases costs of housing.
I am shocked that apparently(?) no one mentioned that the city of San Francisco SUBSIDIZES ILLEGAL DRUG USE BY HOMELESS PEOPLE. People respond to incentives. Solving 80% of the homelessness problem in SF is actually easy and requires what 90% of people would call "common sense" changes.
Here's a specific set of policy changes that would solve 80% of the homelessness problem in SF:
1. Stop subsidizing illegal drug use. SF LITERALLY gives cash handouts to homeless people who immediately turn around to spend them on drugs. Stop doing this.
2. Actually arrest and imprison drug dealers.
3. Remove ALL residential zoning restrictions. (80% of homeless people are homeless for under a week. Cheap housing would solve this problem.)
4. Mandate that homeless people who test as psychotic be on long acting injectable anti-psychotics.
None of these would require us to be a "different kind of country" except 3. 1+2 are actually done in other states!
This brings to mind the notion that people are much more dissuaded from committing crimes by their likelihood of getting caught than they are by the severity of the punishment.
Likelihood and also speed of punishment, yes. It's tempting to try and save money on enforcement by cheaply increasing severity of consequences, but there is a persistent mismatch between rational incentives and behavioral psychology.
My usual quip is that the dynamic is very familiar to either an excellent criminal justice researcher, an average middle school teacher, or an amateur dog trainer.
I have a really unusual "get tough" idea. If someone is addicted to a drug, allow them access to the pure form of it. As much as they want (at a standardized strength). For free.
This WILL result in many deaths, but they will be effectively suicide, which I am not really opposed to. (Actually, I'm in favor of people being able to kill themselves painlessly, because they feel that's their best choice...I'm just not in favor of that being their best choice.)
The main reason for this attitude is that I want to take the money out of drug dealing, but I feel it would have many other advantages.
> The main reason for this attitude is that I want to take the money out of drug dealing, but I feel it would have many other advantages.
That might be something worth trying (not sure whether it would be a good idea), but your radical policy suggestion is not necessary.
Just allow a competitive legal market in drugs. No need to give stuff away for free. If the price is free, demand is approximately infinity.
> If the price is free, demand is approximately infinity.
This is obviously untrue; your local dump already offers many things at a price of free. There are many things that people will pay to get rid of.
The free market would certainly help, if it were truly free. We will always suffer these problems so long as substances are prohibited needlessly. It is an infringement on our personal freedoms and rights, and creates a black market which leads to a dirty, poisoned drug supply, and unfortunately is the only reason why substances are outlawed in the first place - it is very convenient for the rich and powerful, and makes them a lot of money.
They do not care about "safey" or "addicts," or your fellow friends and family who suffer from addiction and the consequences of overly potent and dirty drugs. If they did, prohibition would be abolished, safe supplies given freely, and treatment offered to those who need it and are personally ready. This is the only humane solution, and until people see the truth, it will only ever get worse and worse, my friends.
We can agree to disagree, but I am most certainly correct about this one. As a long-time researcher, expert on pharmacology, and the societal problems associated with drug use, if substances were outlawed because they are morally wrong, or actually dangerous, we would not freely have alcohol or tobacco available, we would not have guns freely available, and the facts and statistics are on the side of reality, and substances here. We have over 50 years of failed policy, prohibition, and suffering to show that not only is prohibition wrong, and inhumane, but it has made the problem worse and worse.
Nicotine and alcohol are not extremely dangerous, and do not cost society anything on their own. Nicotine is no more harmful when pure than caffeine, and alcohol is so easy to make that thinking prohibition of them is a good idea is as foolish as thinking we can solve climate change by polluting. Unfortunately, the societal costs associated with substances, including alcohol and nicotine are only made worse by prohibition - this is why when alcohol was banned, the end result was death, suffering, and the emergence of the mafia, and why modern substance prohibition results in only death, suffering, and the modern drug cartels and gangs we see today - far worse problems than simply allowing people to use what they desire, safely and reducing harm. This is my only point, my friend, when I bring up alcohol and tobacco as examples; it must be up to the individual to decide what they want for themselves, just as we do not allow the government to control who we have sex with, what we eat, and what we drink. Substances should be age restricted, to 21+, that is certainly true, but not for consenting and educated adults. Firearms are far more dangerous, and until we see complete restrictions on firearms, we should not be considering restrictions on something far less harmful and inert than deadly and dangerous weapons, no?
I agree however, that we should not allow this topic to get us sidetracked, and that we have far more important issues to deal with at the present moment.
Nicotine isn't dangerous and doesn't have horrific social costs. It's not even addictive.
Cigarettes are bad and addictive. Nicotine itself isn't all that bad. In fact it's probably about the only thing inside of cigarette smoke that's actually good for you.
https://gwern.net/nicotine
In any case, in economic terms social costs can justify (high) taxes on goods, but not bans. In many places, cigarettes are already highly taxed.
I would suggest we also move most other currently prohibited drugs into the same category of 'legal, but highly taxed'.
I would encourage you to keep an open mind, and although I do not condone substance use for those under the age of 18, it is one of the many gifts the Earth and God give us, and to restrict and throw out such powerful medicines for no good reason, is foolish.
> The free market would certainly help, if it were truly free. We will always suffer these problems so long as substances are prohibited needlessly.
I have lots of sympathy for your positions, but it's wrong.
Freedom in markets is not binary (like 'truly free' implies) but a gradual affair. More freedom in markets helps more.
Ask anyone running a beer brewery about all the restriction and regulation around that. But: nevertheless the market in alcohol is sufficiently free that we generally don't have to worry (too much) about a black market with a poisoned supply.
I'm generally in favour of a light touch in regulation, but markets can work and work well (enough) even when operating under the handicap of severe regulations.
I would not state it as strongly as you, but I do agree that Scott seems to downplay the weaknesses that SF has in regards to issues with crime. Though, like he mentions, there's not enough of a good police force to enforce normal laws... but SF is home to a lot of people who dislike the police and restrict them, so is that surprising?
The only person I've ever met who had spent time in Somalia thought it was great and wished he could go back.
> There's a reason so many young Somali men turn to desperate acts like piracy.
Because they can. Liberia has just 60% of Somalia's child mortality (where I'm looking at WHO data for 2021 on mortality in the age range 5-9), but seems to be similarly problematic in terms of generating pirates.
The mortality data doesn't really suggest that anarchy is the problem (as far as child mortality goes) in Somalia, or that child mortality is the problem as far as piracy goes. Here's every country, from worst to best, with mortality (5-9) above 1%: Niger (2%), Somalia (1.5%), Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Nigeria, Mali, Chad, Guinea, Madagascar, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo ("Zaire", 1.1%).
The data _does_ strongly suggest that high child mortality is caused by either of (1) being in Africa, or (2) being an island. Somalia is on the high end of Africa, but somebody has to be there.
Double cheers to this comment. Extremely insightful and very well written.
This is an excellent comment
> The more I think about Scott's position, the more frustrated I get. This is exactly the kind of bullshit he's usually so good at sniffing out and lampooning. "You guys keep saying we need to be tough, but how is that a solution? I mean, SF turned into a hellhole after we stopped enforcing laws -- and aggressively discouraged enforcement of social norms -- against vagrancy, drug use, drug trafficking, sleeping in parks, public defecation, prostitution, shoplifting, assault, and robbery. How is being tough going to help? Be more specific! We've made zero efforts to restore public order; what more can you possibly expect us to do than absolutely nothing?"
It's a common problem in all contexts that call for punishments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkKwyjsJGxk
Steve Yegge wrote an incredibly shoddy essay on the same theme of weird all-in-your-own-mind helplessness arguing that it was impossible to legalize marijuana because doing so would raise too many ancillary questions, as if the same systems that apply to everything by default would somehow fail to apply to marijuana: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legalized-marijuana.html
To be concrete: littering is a crime. A tent left out on the street is litter. Removing litter, after reduction to smaller pieces for ease of transport, is a prosocial act. Repeat for bare sleeping bags.
Sleeping on the street outside any litter is a crime. It is only fair for the ongoing criminal activity to be interrupted with cold water. This fixes the "california's weather is very mild, you can have no possessions and basically be fine" part.
I am not suggesting the police do this, indeed sluggish police response may help, but I am suggesting a hundred men in a couple dozen lightly modified pickup trucks would be sufficient. Wear masks to conceal identities, come out in force on 5 random days each month.
"Provide specific alternatives to those affected" is a commendable impulse, but is the EA failure mode of your circle of concern growing bigger than your competence to improve the world. Solve the actual problem.
Regarding 1, yeah, that's a problem with drug addiction. Any form of cash transfer will get used for drugs. Any card system will have the things the card can buy be traded for drugs. I intuitively like libertarian solutions, but they often rely on assumptions that don't hold true for drug addicts. *sigh*
Regarding 3, that 80% of the homeless probably causes less than 5% of the problems for other people (in my limited experience, the big one is car camping). It's probably worth helping them more than we do, and definitely worth helping them enough that they won't transition into the type of homeless who cause the problems. But it's not going to solve all the problems - a number of people get addicted first, or go crazy first, and then that eventually leads to them becoming homeless.
I have known extremely few addicts that became homeless due solely to addiction, and similarly few homeless people who weren't definitely a bit "throwed off", as we say down here, totally apart from drugs.
I also have known very few who turned to serious crime because of addiction — the usual route is simply to go ahead and start selling too, which... well, 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 it's a crime, yeah; but 'snot really an issue 𝘣𝘺 𝘪𝘵𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧.
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(On one hand, I'm a good source for this stuff, 'cause I sold a lot of drugs and met a lot of addicts... but on the other hand, I'm clearly biased: 'sstupid, to me, to tell a goddamn adult "lol u can't eat teh bad thing!!"...
(...and I am always surprised people think this is a practical lever to wedge in there. It is almost never — never at all, that I've seen — the best use of resources: a crime for which nearly all negative societal repercussions obtain due to that very criminality, as impossible to stem as the flow of water from (through) a sieve, and — for all that difficulty and ambiguous justification! — a just symptom rather than a root cause.
(That is, it's both a mere symptom of the real issue[s] & also — in my experience and belief, anyway — a big waste of time to try effecting change upon.
(For one, everyone likes to get high—won't reduce that population much, and where there's money to be made...
(For two, as said, the problems we're wanting to address are not inherent to "consumed a substance": we all know it's possible, and usually not even difficult, to use drugs without issue—but the more "black-market" an industry, the greater the negative externalities for consumer and society both.
(And, for three... come on, y'all!—surely one must've lived a charmed life, to have never been placed in a situation to see or experience the all-consuming NEED for escape which the homeless [–or–otherwise–down-&-out] individual feels.
(Get rid of all the regular dealers, and they'll just turn to alcohol — worse than almost anything else, in terms of "crazy accelerant"; somehow prevent them from obtaining alcohol [good luck!], and I guaran-fuckin'-tee you, eventually everyone will be complaining about the violently insane and odorous jenkem-junkies.
(tl;dr, you won't be able to stop the trade, nor the desire; and, failing these—nor the junkies. But I guess this is possibly the wrong place to debate the philosophical and empirical merit of fighting yet another battle in the Great Drug War, heh... oops. Sorry!—)
the fuck why can't I edit any more
Not actually sure whether this is a holdover policy/feature from SSC, but I think there is/was an hour cutoff for edits, which is/was an attempt to balance the ability to fix typos spotted immediately afterwards, with preventing the removal of context to make yourself look better after someone had replied to you.
Drugs. ;-)
(I just did a test edit of my grandparent comment, and it worked fine? Sometimes with long comments like yours, after I edit, Substack hides my comments or truncates them, but that's a display problem that can usually be solved by reloading the page.)
I have a family member that is on the verge of being homeless (they only aren't due to the kindness of other family members, which is being severely tried and may run out at any moment) and while I guess in some sense their indigence isn't due "solely" to addiction, but instead due to their inability/unwillingness to hold down a job and their tendency to steal from and otherwise alienate their friends and family members, it's hard not see these latter traits as basically downstream from the addiction.
Yes my friend, you are correct. The War on Drugs is the entire cause of our societal ills and problems when it comes to addiction and substance use. If people had access to safe supplies, and treatment for when they are personally ready for it, we would see massive improvements in all the problems people associate with substance use. Unfortunately, it makes a small group of certain people a lot of money to keep medicines restricted and illegal for most.
Well, alcohol's problematic, to be sure, but it is less problematic than Prohibition was, yikes.
Indeed, and guess what? They still managed to survive, create functioning societies, and take care of one another, despite insanely high rates of alcoholism and drug use and abuse. Prohibition unfortunately is the tool of government control, and an infringement on one of our most essential basic freedoms and rights - if we are not free to choose our partners, our food, our drinks, and what we consume, think, and say, then we cannot call ourselves free, and we most certainly are not brave. If we want to live up to our title as Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, then prohibition has no place in our society. Substances should certainly not be freely available for those under the age of 21 without necessity, but otherwise, they are no worse than having free access to dangerous reading material, guns, or tools.
I don't think there's any world wherein prohibition is a permanent solution.
Even in a state like Texas, where you still cannot obtain cannabis (nor, of course, psychedelics) legally, the head shops are chock-full of both — and the business was booming long before now, just in the more usual ways. (i.e., first dealers & black-market; then grey-market online sellers; then "deep web" black-markets; then head shops; and now all four co-exist & the market still isn't saturated!)
...and that's for stuff that is much harder to acquire outside of the nation than alcohol would be / was, and mostly harder to manufacture as a clandestine "Say No To Nanny-States!" freedom-fighter (as I think bootleggers, drug smugglers, clandestine chemists, etc. ought to be termed) than alcohol is.
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You may say "yeah okay we can't stop it but we can make it a damn sight harder", and this is true, but I think the evidence is essentially undeniable that the /greater part/ of ills from nearly any illegal drug come from the fact of illegality first and foremost.
It reminds me of the "abuse deterrent" APAP in many opioid analgesics — yes, yes, it helps with the pain relief! that's totally why the ungodly amount of acetaminophen was included! it's been subject to blanket reduction or elimination twice now, because for some reason it was just killing people instead of helping them... but it was still a valiant effort, you might say–
...–reninds me of that, I say, in that it's a cure that is either worse than the illness—or, at the very least, _incontestably_ /almost as bad/ as the illness (it's definitely the former, IMO, of course; but so as to avoid argument over exact numbers & the commensurability of this or that outcome)—and, for all the cost levied in both dollars and human suffering, it's ultimately done in aid of a cause that is itself ethnically objectionable...
...or at least questionable. Say we were trying to prevent orphans from starving, or stop the nationwide epidemic of Ginger Murders, and okay—fine—even if the efforts backfire, well, can't blame us for trying our damnedest.
But to levy such costs upon a populace /because you think you ought to be able to tell me—a grown-ass adult! apparently!—what sort of plants and powders I can eat?/
Nah. Go straight to Hell with that, Nanny Sam! Go home; you're all hopped up on Puritinism or something... take a Summer of Love and call me in the new millennium!
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Of course, alcohol IS pretty far to the bad side on the "Harm/Benefit" scale; I've seen more lives ruined by alcohol than anything else (except maybe benzo abuse), /even per-capita/.
Say what you will about my belov–... my, uh, totally-conquered ex-lover, the opioid analgesic—they're certainly playing with fire, for many—but they don't create the same societal ills and lapses of judgment that alcohol does.
People with little first-hand psychopharmacological experience often seem to picture other drugs as Super-Alcohols: "you can't make a decision like that right now; you just took 10mg hydrocodone!" — but in my own experience, one's judgment is left largely intact with almost every drug-of-abuse...
...except alcohol, benzos, and a few little-known side-notes (e.g. datura). With these it's a qualitatively different sort of mental alteration, not at all comparable to—and much, much worse than—other drugs.
I could tell some stories, maaaan! (...but I've already indulgently meandered my way across this comment at far too great a length, heh... sorry, oops–)
>Prohibition is due for a rehabilitation.
As someone who has drifted into being a teetotaler... NO!!!
I don't want to give the Mafia another boost, nor to empower a 21st century version of Al Capone. We tried that already, thank you very much. If you can somehow magically confine ethanol to use in organic chemistry and rocket fuel, fine. Another go at Prohibition - NO!
Perhaps Prohibition would have worked better as 'High Taxation' instead of a complete ban?
Beer was safer than city water before clean tap water technology; the ready availability of clean water cut alcohol consumption enormously. I say that as a lifelong teetotaler.
I agree prohibition isn't a great policy, but we do still see a lot of people wrecking their lives via alcoholism. The traditional image of a bum is a guy begging for money with which to buy a cheap bottle of wine.
I wouldn't say "solely", and it sounds like you have more direct experience than I. But my impression is that addiction is a thing that eats more and more of life, and makes it fragile. So when something else goes wrong, there aren't resources or willpower or habits left to help solve the problem, and then it all collapses.
That's true, actually. It's like a house of cards: you can make it work — until you need one of those cards elsewhere, or an errant breeze strikes a load-bearing flush...
That was my experience and I saw it many times also, so you're definitely correct. On the other hand, I'm currently on opioids 24/7 and it imposes no costs upon me (except $50/mo. for the prescription) — because it's legal, and I've an adequate supply for cheap, and I'm not dealing with sketchy people or driving for hours only to get stood up by a flaky dealer (why they always so flaky? the very few that treated it like a real business were precious as gold to us back then!).
It's like putting gas in the car, or remembering to brush your teeth: impinges dimly upon your consciousness, occasionally, but demands almost nothing.
(Of course, were I to somehow lose my prescription access, we would quickly revert to crawling on the floor vomiting and sobbing that I wished I were dead... [shivers] opioid withdrawal: never again. never again. I'd almost truly rather die... almost. God, THOSE days are just as vivid as the good ol' Morphine Windfall Days that summer of 20whatever... I should remember the former every time the latter tempts me to supplement my "official" prescription...)
...I can't remember if this is relevant at all. Well, I already wrote it, soooo–
Seems relevant to me? :-) I'm sort of in a "there but for the grace of God go I" situation, except as an atheist. Posting comments on other people's blogs is a scary enough addiction for me.
>Posting comments on other people's blogs is a scary enough addiction for me.
You too? :-)
Fortunately the medical side effects are confined to "Its 2 am, why didn't I go to sleep when I planned to?"
Exactly. No matter the substance, even in the case of opioids, as long as safe supplies are provided, along with education, there is a minimal impact to the life of users and even so-called "abusers"(not a real thing but I digress.) This is precisely why the only solution is to offer safe pharmaceutical quality substances and drugs to any adults above age 21, tax them, and offer treatment and medical help to those who are ready to get clean. As your experience has shown you, and mine, along with most medicine-using Americans, it is not the substances that is the problem, but the problems caused by prohibition. Worst of all, prohibition also makes it nearly impossible for medical patients to access important life-saving meds, and it is not the business of other people, or the government to define who needs what medicine. That is between the patient, their own bodies, and their doctors, if they choose to obtain them by prescription.
Yeah, it is always shocking to me that we — as a society, and for some insane and ungodly (if God there be, then for once this word "ungodly" must here surely be only the stark truth) reason — have decided that, between the choices of...:
• people in agonizing pain get relief, and a few people in agonizing pain who cannot navigate the medical system or to whom a bad doctor was assigned get relief too, and a few people who just like opioids get high; or
• many people in agonizing pain /don't/ get relief /even within the system/, and those /outside/ the system who try can add "broke and in legal trouble" to their list of "things making me regret being born", and a few fewer people who just like opioids manage to get high...
...we have decided that, as I was saying, /the latter is somehow definitely the preferable choice./
There's less debate on this topic than upon questions like "avocado toast: delicious, or degenerate?", for cryin' out loud. I shall never understand.
> 80% of homeless people are homeless for under a week. Cheap housing would solve this problem.
What problem? By your description, isn't it already solved?
I was being a bit terse in my comment. It helps solve two problems:
1. People being homeless for a week.
2. People resorting to drugs after becoming homeless for a temporary period, which can spiral into the homeless/drug abuse hellhole.
This might be something that homeless-people-experts know all about, but for me as a layperson, the "short-term homelessness" thing hopelessly confuses all quantitative analysis of the issue. The people who are homeless for less than a week are obviously not the people my father-in-law rants about needing to GET TOUGH on; he's talking about the chronic homeless. He's one of those who thinks lots of homeless people move to California from other states because we're too nice, and who knows, maybe he's right? I could give him statistics about what percentage of our homeless are from California, but it's not clear to me if those numbers just reflect e.g. middle-class friends of mine who were homeless for two weeks one time in their twenties, as opposed to the raving scary homeless people my father-in-law complains about. If we're just going by overall numbers, the former are going to make the latter statistically invisible.
There's also the people who move to CA, spend one night in a sheltered place, and thereafter count as being "from CA". And the people who are homeless in CA for long enough that they count as being "from CA" (in my state it's 6 months, last I heard).
Drug abuse and homeless spiral is a symptom of our ill and sick society - to be more "tough" would only make the problems worse, my friend. It is not the correct way to go.
Weird how some places are "tough" and also have nice safe streets and parks and libraries and stuff. It's a real pity that San Francisco got the tragic dirt and Singapore got the magic dirt.
A large problem that I see, when it comes to the homeless problem, is that people are way too focused on drug use. So what, if people choose to use substances to get through? You would too if you were homeless, or mentally ill, or anything like that. Judge not what other consenting adults do to themselves - so long as they do not cause harm, there is no harm in allowing them to do as they wish. Alcohol is the most harmful substance one could put in their body, and most harmful substance societally, and yet we allow it to be freely sold and consumed. If people focused on helping their fellow neighbors, who are suffering and ill, rather than judging for no good reason, we would all be better off. Illicit substances are not illegal because they are dangerous, or for any reason, other than to control the population, and to control your minds, my friends. We have been freely allowed to consume that which we desire, for all of history, until the GOP decided to enforce prohibition of substances, because they realised a population that does not have access to mind-opening substances is easier to control, dumber, and an excellent excuse to prosecute and arrest "undesirables."
I ask you all to focus on what truly matters, and on yourselves and helping those in need, and not judging them for their private, consentual choices of vice and substance. The overdose problem has become so terrible BECAUSE of prohibition and a lack of safe supplies and clean substances - our friends, families, and fellow beings will continue to die and suffer until we get our heads out of our asses and stop focusing on petty matters used to divide and distract us, and work together and help each other with acceptance, love, and empathy. This is the truth, as somebody who had undergone addiction issues, saved myself, and now regularly helps addicts, and as somebody who had worked with addicts and watched countless friends die because of fentanyl and overly potent and dirty drugs.
It will never end, or ever get better, until prohibition is ended and abolished. Harm reduction, education, and safe supplies are the solution, not what you propose here. All that I see you proposing is a terrible loss of freedoms and an increased police state; it would be a terrible mistake to do as you say, my friend. Do not fall for the propaganda of the government - they do not have your best interests at heart when it comes to this matter. To force peaceful people onto anti-psychotics without their consent is just as psychotic as offering to just line them up and shoot them, to solve the problem. Drug dealer should be arrested, but only if they willingly and knowingly sell and distribute substances that are not what they are advertised as. Drug users and addicts should be left alone unless they are causing harm - to cause harm and public distruption is already illegal, and there is no need to maintain prohibition of substances. It is an infringement on our basic rights and freedoms as a people. Alcohol required an amendment, but no other chemicals or natural herbs and medicines do? It is absurd and does not work or help ANYONE, let alone society.
Portugal decriminalised, and offered rehab and treatment to those who were willing to partake. Crime rates dropped, drug use rates dropped, and believe it or not, much got better. Drug use is not wrong - what is wrong is judging consenting adults for using substances if they so choose. When addicts are offered clean and safe supplies, and safer alternatives, they actually become productive and healthy members of society. Further prohibition and enforement of laws which are morally wrong will only make things worse; the whole problem is a symptom of our sick systems and society, NOT a cause.
I actually have been following along, and only pointed it out as an example. The fact of the matter remains that for the vast majority of human history, prohibition was never required, and is a great infringement on our rights and freedoms. If we are truly the land of the free and home of the brave, then substances cannot be more restricted and regulated than guns, alcohol, ideas, or choice of food, drink, or home; otherwise, how can we call ourselves free, let alone brave?
No worries, my friend, and I certainly do not condone needless substance use, but my comments come from a life-time of struggling personally with addiction, watching countless people die and suffer, and an expertise on the specific medical and societal issues which are related, to the average person, with addiction and drug use and misuse. I would encourage you to keep an open mind, because prohibition has been a valiant effort, stemming from good intentions, but a massive failure in all aspects. It, similar to the DARE programs, has harmed society far more than the substances ever would, increased rates of use and overdose, and is not at all based in good science or reality.
Because it is wrong, and is not humane, good for society, for the individual, and quite frankly, yes, not brave or free. To be truly brave means to do what is right - this means providing people with SAFE and CLEAN medicine, substances, food, and water, and taking care of each other. Just because you bought the propaganda does not mean you are right. You are very wrong - there is no narcotic more brain-rottinn alcohol and sugar, yet they are freely available. I expect once I hear you arguing that we should ban sugar, porn, free speech, and guns, that I will believe you to be truly of your word; otherwise, I kindly implore you to defer to expert and professional medical opinion, since this is a medical issue. And the facts and science state that the only way to help addicts and society are to provide harm reduction practices, safe and regulated substances, while educating people on safe use and real facts, and providing help to those who choose to avail themselves of it and are ready to get better.
That is the only way to help the problems associated with drug and substance use, backed by facts, science, research, and the medical community. Just because YOU don't like it doesn't mean others need to avoid it, it only means that YOU should not do it, and should avoid it. However, other consenting adults must be left alone, otherwise you are no better than those who wish to restrict free speech or any of the other tools that we valuable to humanity. Medicines are a tool like any other, and none are worse than others; the dose makes the poison, not the substance. Water is deadly too in excessive amounts, as is literally anything else in the world.
Is it not looking good? Last I checked, it was still better than prior to decriminalization; but it's been a while.
decriminalization made things pretty good, then folks thought okay, cool, no need for all that funding for rehab programs then ...
... and ... *pikachu face* outcomes worsened!
> We have been freely allowed to consume that which we desire, for all of history, until the GOP decided to enforce prohibition of substances, [...]
Huh, what? Please check your history. Eg the famous prohibition on alcohol in the US is a good example that's well documented. But see also the International Opium Convention of 1912 and 1925.
In any case, it's a false dichotomy to claim you either need complete freedom to consume what you like, or you need a complete ban.
You can get pretty far by legalising (most) drugs but slapping a (high) tax on them. You can even have lots of arbitrary restrictions, see eg the ban on Sunday drinking in some parts of the world etc, and still not have a black market.
Talk with anyone running a beer brewery for the amount regulations they have to follow. Yet, there's not much of a black market in beer.
You could argue that we need higher taxes on alcohol. I don't know if that's true, but you can have a productive discussion about it.
The way tobacco, alcohol and these days marijuana are regulated can be a good framework to see how other substances should be regulated.
You also don't need to legalise absolutely everything. If people have a decent range of options to choose from, you get most of the benefits of complete legalisation of everything.
Ah yes, we do not disagree in this case; I responded to another one of your comments friend as well. Taxation while treating substances the same way we treat alcohol, tobacco, and recreational cannabis is the way to go, while using those funds for education and treatment programs. I apologise for the slightly inaccurate history claims, as yes, alcohol prohibition, and prohibition of some few substances was attempted before the 70's, but prohibition really only ramped up to modern scales and levels of criminalisation and propaganda in recent times, which is what I mostly meant; but regardless I should have been more accurate.
I don't think there's any relation between the amount of tax take you make from a specific drug and the optimal amount of public spending on education and treatment programs. Eg cannabis can probably raise quite a lot of revenue, but as long as you aren't smoking it, there's not too much of a health risk that needs addressing. Conversely, I can imagine there are drugs that need a lot of preventing, that don't raise much revenue.
Money made from taxing drugs can just go into general revenue. And drug related health programs can also be financed from general revenue.
Btw, taxation can be tantamount to prohibition. If a joint costs you a million dollars, it might as well be banned. (And high enough taxation also gives you exactly the same black market and organised crime problems as outright prohibition.)
"if you bussed people to shelters in a cheap town somewhere else what would stop them just getting a bus back" - I'm sure some would, but a lot of people probably wouldn't put in the effort to move back from a mediocre quality shelter in the central valley to a tent encampment in SF (especially if SF didn't give them subsidies). The city itself might want to bus them back, but could probably be stopped with a mix of subsidies from the state for having the homeless shelter and sticks if they tried to bus them back out too blatantly.
The tent cities have easy access to drug markets. If you're not willing to open a drug markey in the valley, I do think most of the psychotic homeless will be willing to work pretty hard at getting back to the tent cities.
Psychotic drug addicts will put a surprising amount of energy into looking for drugs, IME.
Makes sense, part of this really does need to involve actual policing of drug markets (although even getting rid of the fraction that won't or can't put in the effort to move back from a shelter to a tent city to be near drugs is a nontrivial improvement).
Drug markets are everywhere. I'm not sure this is an issue.
My city and I suppose some other European high housing cost cities adopt a solution from DZ above. I.e. forcing the homeless people encampments via systematic police harassment into marginal, liminal spaces. Like under the literal bridges, around railway tracks, out-of -the-way forests, brownfields, wherever; those areas in fact I think form a majority of physical space in almost any country.
It is not very humane to homeless people but it basically successfully addressees the problem of them being annoying and possibly dangerous to normies.
The problem with this is "out of sight out of mind". The encampments degenerate fast, into wretched hives of drugs and theft and rape and murder, spilling out into surrounding areas. But there's less incentive to improve the rest of the system, so the political will is even less available than at present. And then some reporter will show up and film the encampment and it becomes an instant scandal, and we go right back to the current situation. (My city has been through the cycle at least once already.) And the people in the encampment continue to suffer.
I mean I agree that people in encampments continue to suffer, but at least here their suffering is successfully ignored and does not spill over very much; certainly homelessness is way down on political concerns than in California and crime is much lower (for other reasons; it just show that our policy does not lead to some uncontrollable increase in criminal activity).
Likewise, I agree that this solves a number of the problems that the homeless cause for non-homeless people, and minimizes some of the others. But I'd prefer a solution that also helped salvage whatever is salvageable in the lives of the homeless, you know? This is a bit too much like putting them all in a box and waiting until they die.
Well, yes, I completely agree and I would in fact prefer more humane approach in my own country.
The San Francisco option seems to be to put them on a pedestal and wait until they die, so it's interesting to see both extremes presented.
I'm not sure if this belief is strictly consistent with other beliefs of mine, but I do think an advantage of the SF way is that the rest of us notice what's going on, enough that we're actually talking about it. I suppose one could call it "raising awareness"; the show "Kimmy Schmidt" lampooned the alternative as "Febreze" (or a legally convenient reskin of that product).
Perhaps you'd prefer to have that, but it doesn't seem to be on offer.
Slow, hard, boring work doesn't seem to get a lot of traction in online pundit communities. Possibly with one visible exception, but I don't follow Matt Yglesias, so I don't know how well his approach approximates my ideal.
Matt Yglesias' Substack is great, highly recommended! Come join us, Moon Moth, you come across as a thoughtful and caring person, you'd fit right in.
I take issue with your characterization of drugs and substances are wretched - there is nothing wrong or immoral with substance use, and as an expert on the subject matter, compared to all drugs and substances and medicines out there, alcohol is the number one worst substance in term of personal, societal, and mental harm. Aside from that, I have nothing more to note, my friend.
That only occurs in a minority of cases, for any and all substances. It is just as correct to say that being poor is immoral, being mentally ill is immoral, or being homeless is immoral, or not working 80 hours a week is immoral. These are all obviously wrong statements, inhumane, and cruel ideas. And the same goes for substance use; I would encourage you to educate yourself and critically think about the facts and reality of substance use, addiction, and society, and not fall for the government propaganda that only prohibits substances because it makes a lot of money for the rich and powerful, and makes people easier to control, and gives police a convenient excuse to arrest people they do not like.
If drugs were illegal because they were harmful or immoral, guns would be far more criminalised, sugar would be as well, as would alcohol and tobacco, and we would not be allowed to purchase knives or hammers, my friend.
> I take issue with your characterization of drugs and substances are wretched
I'm not actually saying that! But I do think the widespread use of drugs as emotional anesthesia is a problem, especially when they are addictive, and consume people's lives (more problems require more anesthesia), and especially when they cause people to cannibalize everything around them (from their interpersonal relationships, to power lines) to get money to buy the drugs.
I will slightly defend alcohol in that I suspect your "number one worst" is related to its popularity, and if, say, PCP were as widely used as alcohol is, PCP would win.
Ah, well on that you won't find any arguments from me. They are a tool, and like any tool, a miracle in the right hands, and deadly when misused. This is why truthful and factual education about substances is so important, rather than fear and abstinence based propaganda.
Speaking as somebody who doesn't drink, I will defend our right to drink with my very life, even though I don't; PCP surprisingly in my experience is not as physically harmful, but certainly requires as much care as alcohol or any other potent drug.
I hope you have a wonderful day/evening, friend!
Could not possibly be less of my problem as long as they aren't where I live or work or recreate
Reminds me of the Simpsons line "now the planes will be flying somewhere they'll do no harm, over the houses of poor people"
The thing is, at least here in germany these homeless people absolutely have the option to find shelter, food and even some marginal employment. There is lots of supportive infrastructure for them. At that point, if they refuse all of the support society is offering and/or are constantly are violent towards others, telling them to at least please stay away from the rest of society seems less like inhumane harassment and more like a reasonable compromise - if you really want to be on your own, then *be on your own*. Don't bite the hand that feeds you and then complain you get no food.
I cannot disagree with you, except in the case of drug use and mental illness. Drug users should not be placed in the same box, until they become violent or dangerous; same goes for the mentally ill and poor. We are all human, after all.
Once somebody has proven to be violent, and unwilling to at least try rehabilitation, then prison or being allowed to live in the wild or more rural areas seem to be about equally humane to me.
This approach seems to work better than any alternative I’ve seen. I live in Philadelphia, where for years most of the homeless encampments used to be concentrated around the disused Conrail tracks, conveniently located next to the city’s major drug market in Kensington. Then the city “discovered” the “problem” of these unsafe and unsanitary encampments, and sued Conrail to make them evict the homeless people and seal and patrol the area, claiming they would offer shelter to everyone there. Conrail did this, and all the homeless people just moved onto Kensington Ave and/or vacant lots in that neighborhood, where they present far more of a nuisance to normies trying to live their lives, and have rendered sections of an already marginal neighborhood completely unusable to everyone but themselves, with bodegas and dollar stores closing down so that now it is block after block of shuttered storefronts with homeless people camped in front of them shooting themselves up in the neck and making campfires on the sidewalk. The previous situation was preferable to pretty much everyone.
> There’s already more or less a single-payer healthcare system for homeless schizophrenics. Poor people get Medicaid, and I am not a legal expert but I think schizophrenia is enough of a disability to qualify people for Medicare too. None of these people pay for their medical care and this isn’t an issue.
Emphasis on the "less."
One major benefit of single-payer for the mentally ill is the lack of bureaucracy.
Applying for and renewing Medicaid involves a considerably amount of wherewithal. Not having a fixed address, phone number, or email address makes it more difficult, as does having a mental illness. And you need to hold onto your Medicare card after receiving it. Yes, there's help available for applying for those sorts of things, but some mentally ill people reject that help. I think you underestimate how much better it is to just to be able to give your name at a hospital or doctor's office and nothing else and not have to apply for anything.
Plus these "free" health insurance in the US also include co-pays, deductibles, and so forth. They are not fully free. In the UK there is a flat co-pay (£9.90) for certain prescriptions but no other fees for any GP or hospital treatments.
As an American living in the UK, it was unexpectedly really great to not have to fill out forms! Worth it for that alone.
This cuts both ways however. Lower barriers to use means that repeat visitors, individuals who essentially live in A&E or this GP or another are common. Waiting times are extremely high. And it also doesn't appear to have had significant benefits to our own class of mentally ill drug dependent long term homeless population, which appears to go from strength to strength, especially in London.
For anyone interested in this I would highly highly recommend the Louis Theroux documentary "Drinking to Oblivion" from 2015. Whilst it doesn't directly cover homeless people, it does cover extreme alcoholics who are in and out of sheltered housing and some who practically seem to live at the King's College Hospital (free of course). Being able to check in, have your life saved, detox, and go over and over again on the tax payer presumably saves some lives. But trade offs do exist.
IME wait times for routine care are shorter in the UK. I can easily get same day appointments with my GP, for instance. Wait times do tend to be quite long for things that aren't urgent, i.e. autism diagnosis, however. I understand that frustrates people but to me it seems more equitable.
>One major benefit of single-payer for the mentally ill is the lack of bureaucracy
Scott actually mentioned the bureaucratic issues in the original article.
>They lose their prescription and don’t know how to get another one. Or they call their insurance, insurance whines “these drugs cost $500 and you lost your last prescription too, we’re not paying”, and they don’t know what to do.
>The pharmacy/insurance demands the doctor make some trivial irrelevant change to the prescription before they’ll accept it. The patient doesn’t know how to call their doctor, or doesn’t own a phone, or they contact their doctor but the doctor is sick of pharmacies/insurances demanding trivial things. In any case, nothing gets done.
>The patient messed up their appointment with the welfare bureaucracy that was supposed to give them a free subway pass, so they didn’t get one, so now they can’t make it to their doctor’s appointment.
>The patient went to their appointment with the welfare bureaucracy that was supposed to give them a free subway pass, but the welfare bureaucracy was inexplicably running three hours late and closed before seeing them, and the bureaucrats didn’t apologize or make an alternative appointment, so the patient didn’t get a subway pass and couldn’t make the appointment.
>The patient went to their appointment with the welfare bureaucracy that was supposed to give them a free subway pass, but in the waiting room they spotted a drug dealer who had a grudge against them, so they left because they worried they’d get beaten up.
I don't see how "be tough" isn't a viable answer here, so long as we step one meta-level out. Looking at SF, it seems fair to say that it's gotten itself into this situation by systematically following "be soft" every time it got time to choose a policy. So "be tough" *is* a plan:
- Instead of using, as a guide, "be soft" to decide which policy to pick, use "be tough".
- relitigate every decision made in the past, say, decade, going backwards, regarding homeless policy
- when a conflict arises with a prior policy, either carve out an exemption or flip that one as well.
I don't know what sort of plan this actually cashes out in policy, but it seems viable as an electoral movement. Like, you could write down what sort of policy this would actually result in but it doesn't even seem *necessary.* Like the classic saying about ASI, you don't know what moves it will make, but you know what the outcome will be. And a bunch of your objections sound like "well we can't decide to be tough here, because it won't work due to this other policy where we've already decided to be soft". Yes, the plan would be to reverse that also.
Am I missing something? I mean, it's not like anyone proposed a concrete plan for the current state of affairs. Right? We didn't get here as an explicit, coherent plan, we got here as a side effect of vague feelings used as a guide to make policy. If that's what got SF into the mess, it seems completely fair to say "okay, let's take off the part of the decisionmaking apparatus where we pick the decision based on soft feelings, and then back up ten years and go again based on hard feelings this time." It's not very wonkish, but it seems completely realistic.
What is "ASI"?
Relitigating all the bad decisions made in the past sounds like a good idea, but that wouldn't happen unless there was some kind of big regime change.
ASI = Artificial SuperIntelligence.
The point being that, much like a chess match between an Elo 500 player and an Elo 3000 player, the outcomes of a contest between a human and a superhuman intelligence is one in which you may not be able to predict what the moves will be in advance, but you know who’s going to win. This is often used as a rebuttal to the superficial argument that those concerned about AI safety are less focused on the “how” than on the intelligence disparity *per se.* The fact that Dodos had no understanding of the principles of sailing ships made them no less extinct.
I usually read the acronym "AGI" instead.
Technically not quite the same thing, although there's widespread belief that AGI will be able to bootstrap into ASI with extremely short times and it's tough to imagine an AGI that won't dramatically outperform humans various problem domains. AGI generally refers to human-level general intelligence rather than things that will be able to outthink humans in every problem domain.
...great! That's an understandable position and also a fun bit of rhetoric to shout.
Except, thing is, we're not just about the rhetoric here. What we now want is the actual answers to some questions like "so what plan, exactly, do we end up with when we do this? Does everyone who does this end up with the same plan, and if not, can we work out what the differences are so we can think about them?"; and, well, everyone keeps looking down shiftily, taking a step back and muttering "not it!" whenever the call for volunteers to actually do that work comes, because it sounds like it's /a lot/ of work, the work doesn't sound like much fun, and actually proposing concrete things gives people talking points they can argue with and complain about.
This is where Scott came in.
I think the fellow you responded to—or, well, someone 'round here—provided a decent semi-rebuttal to that:
• "SF /got here/ without clear-cut policy objectives & steps (+ sub-steps & prelim. steps) & action plans, and all that stuff; it seems fine to say, therefore, 'I propose we /get back out/ of the pit we wandered into by again simply wandering—in the opposite direction.¹'"
I phrased it as a joke, in my other comment (above) — though now I see that, as always, my genius knows not a bound, nor any Aries! — yet this actually reminds me of my "joke"-proposal:
• "Everyone—especially the cops—just has to start being pricks to the homeless: cause trouble over small things, get rid of / modify anywhere that seems too long-term–comfy (slope the benches!), release the hounds, etc.
• "They're like flies: if it's too much trouble to spread their shit on your shit, they'll buzz off for easier marks and greener patties."²
It's not an instant process, of course, but I think it is well-known that some cities are "homeless-friendly" in a way much–more-so than others; and—in a counter-intuitive turn—it appears being "homeless-unfriendly" (so to speak) /reduces/ the amount of human feces upon your sidewalks!
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→ notes, footnotes, take off your Sunday... coats 🎶 ←
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¹: (up, presumably)
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²: ("...now, mosquito-type bums, they're trickier... they don't stop comin' even if you wave them away a half-dozen times. Had one of these approach me in the Frankfurt airport, some fucked-up–lookin' old Turkish guy.
("I gave him—rather generously, I thought—a 5€ bill; it wasn't enough, apparently; he kept following me and talking at me—in God-knows-what language, because it sounded neither like Deutsch nor Turkey—and finally, he GRABBED ME as if to stop me from leaving to get my rental car... and I came a bit unglued.
("Proof of efficacy, though!— all he needed was to know he wasn't welcome, spoken in the 💚Universal Language💙³, made it so that I never saw him again... or, at least, he stayed away from ME. 🤷♂️👌")
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³: (as Gandhi said: "if only we could learn to shove one another a little more." 😔✊)
Oh, you and your hyperbolic rhetoric are not a solution, and being touch on those who suffer, are poor, and marginalized will only make things worse. Our society is ill and sick, and "tough" will make things far worse, my friend. Society, which means the average person, and most importantly, the rich and powerful, need to get their heads out of their asses, and focus on doing good, uniting, and helping those who need help. We are ALL humans, not just you. We all deserve a place to live, clean food and water, and comforts. Not just you, not just the rich, and not just the homeless. Being homeless unfriendly does not solve the problem; it is no more of a solution than tossing your trash under your bed cleans your home, because you think it disappears when it is out of sight. You would soon find that although you no longer see the shit and garbage, you will soon start to smell it, my friend
I don't know, man — it sounds a lot more like other people, the "we are all brothers" sort, are smelling the shit, and /my/ city is nice and clean.
But it's true that eventually /someone/ is going to get stuck with the buck, so to speak, and be unable to pass it along to the next city/state. What to do about that, I don't know, but I'm glad it's only an academic concern for me & mine!
...well, I say that; but it isn't, actually — now that I think of it, even we are seeing the effects of a sick society. We /have/ had a concerning influx of violent drifters.
The question is: did we get here by being "tough", or being lax? And then the second question is the one Scott asks (if being tough isn't how we got here, how do we use it to get better? /can/ we?).
I'm not really so hard-hearted as all that — it is only luck that I haven't been homeless myself, at a few points, and the way things are going for me lately it's not so inconceivable you'll not soon be reading my ramblings as they're being sent from public libraries — but if there's a solution, I don't see it.
> cause trouble over small things, get rid of / modify anywhere that seems too long-term–comfy (slope the benches!)
...but we already do all this stuff (as Scott points out!). Beggars downtown are treated with hostility before being told to move along. The hostile street furniture industry is HUGE. So I'm not sure what we're supposed to be changing? Since it clearly hasn't worked, by your logic perhaps we should now be trying the opposite - go super kind, get rid of all the hostile street furniture, create comfortable places where people can exist without having to pay someone for the privilege, etc?
> it seems fine to say, therefore, 'I propose we /get back out/ of the pit we wandered into by again simply wandering—in the opposite direction
Even being super charitable and treating our current situation as the result of a simple strategy that can be reversed rather than a random walk through uncorrelated ad hoc decisions, it remains the case that reversed stupidity is not intelligence!
In general, the problem with common sense is that it isn't common. The devil is in the details, and people always find ways to disagree on those; hence the call to pin down the details.
/Do/ you already do all of that stuff? That's the first I hear of it; I've read lots of articles about how e.g. San Francisco is super lax re: homelessness & crime — more like your "super kind" proposal, actually — whereas my homeless-folks-free city in Texas is notorious for being cruel to them.
But I've no personal experience of the famous coastal hellhole, myself, so maybe it's done a 180 recently.
To be tough is not going to help - the homeless problem and all the problems associated with it is a symptom of a sick and ill society. It is not drugs that are the problem, the mentally ill, or the homeless, and to believe that being "tough" on our poor, marginalised, and suffering members of society will help anything is foolish.
??? No, our society is sick because the average person, and our leaders, care more about themselves, money, and material comforts over love and their fellow human beings. This extends equally to those who view addicts or drug users as being immoral, for doing nothing more than choosing consentually for themselves what to do in their free time.
The majority of addicts, drug users, and mentally ill people are functional and help society far more than the average wealthy person, for example. They should be separated from society no more than YOU should, for saying such judgemental nonsense. Those who are addicted to hate, judgment, and fear or money are far more destructive than ANY drug addict out there, my friend. Please engage more critically, not only for your own sake, but for the world's sake.
Then let us thank God and praise the Lord for not allowing you to write our laws, and for your own sake I implore you to reconsider your opinions and ideas, because they are far more judgemental and destructive than any addict I have ever met, even the worst so called 'fentanyl zombie'
I think his opinions are pretty reasonable and shared by a lot of people. The "fentanyl zombie" who steals and assaults people to fuel their habit is way worse than someone who says right wing things on the Internet (I know this is controversial!)
I'm going to unwisely dare to summarize Scott here, but he basically says, or we implies, that the reason you can't just "increase toughness as necessary" until the problem is solved, is that that would require rolling back Supreme Court rulings that we would not be willing to live without. There's no way to target the rights of homeless people without targeting everyone's rights.
A perfect example vagrancy. The Supreme Court didn't strike down vagrancy laws to "help the homeless." The laws were used to harass and demean all kinds of innocent travellers and strangers, including well-compensated traveling workers.
IIRC you asked for responses from law enforcement last time also and didn't seem to get much in way of response. Are there just no cops subscribed to ACX? Do they all just inhabit their own little bubbles on the Internet?
I would imagine their bubbles aren't little, but minimal overlap with a place like ACX. There used to be a couple that commented on the SSC subreddit, IIRC, but maybe didn't make the jump to commenting here. Possibly also more hesitation than there used to be, not wanting to risk negative attention if they're lazy with opsec.
Peter Moskos crosses over from the cop bubble to the academic bubble. But he's on the east coast, I don't know if he's commented on SF's homeless problem.
Law enforement is unfortunately not equipped to help society and this problem. They are trained, and their jobs are the protection of capital and the elite, rich, and powerful. They are not equipped to fix a problem that has been building up for over fifty years of poor government and law, and will continue to get worse so long as we, the people, continue to elect fools and morons who do not know anything, and do not truly care about anything other than themselves and their own bank-accounts. Corporations and the rich have hijacked our society and structures of government, and we will continue to see problems grow until people start living with love, acceptance, empathy, and mercy; not being "tough" and spewing hateful and fearful rhetoric, which only serves to further divide society and further enrich the already rich, my friends.
Abolish the police?
I used to prosecute misdemeanors and, yes, lots of what Scott discussed above about the difficulty of proving your case and what feels like a lot of effort for little gain, is true. But there is a lot to be gained from just declaring that you wont engage in prosecutions like NYC did against Daniel Penny. Declare that your office will always side with the employed over the encamper unless there is a clear instigation of the ENTIRE encounter by the regular employed human (something like taking a Molotov cocktail and bombing a homeless guy). Tell people if they are mildly aggressed and respond with pepper spray, they will be totally fine. Often the problem is that the law is actually a stacked deck against capital 'C' Citizens in favor of the lawless.
"Is it possible to become the sort of state/country that can build world-class high speed rail networks, close 80% of prisons, and end visible street homelessness? Yes, obviously, other countries do this, you could become like them somehow. But you don’t do it through ground-level rail policy, prison policy, or homelessness policy directly. You start by becoming a totally different sort of country. I would like for us to be the sort of country that does all of these things, and I hope that my blog posts/donations/votes make this more likely. But I don’t think you can start by planning the gleaming high-tech rail system, before you’ve solved the fundamental problems that make it impossible."
Huh? Could you elaborate on what these "fundamemtal problems" are? It sounds like they're not the same as the concrete problems you discuss elsewhere. Unless I'm misreading this, you just said "the ultimate true answer is to become the right sort of society" without specifying what that means. Isn't this exactly the sort of hand waving you're complaining about but on a more fundamental level?
I am also very curious about what defines this 'sort of country'. Without spelling that out, it's hard to know how to get there.
At the risk of interpreting someone else's vague comment, having traveled a fair amount, I find Americans tend to massively discount how much other countries' ability to solve complex problems is underwritten by the fact those countries are much more ethnically homogenous nation-states where the "nation" aspect (the common ethnic culture of the people themselves) solves the problem rather than the "state" aspect (the government institutions).
So if you want to know how say, the state of Japan (the most ethnically homogenous country in the world, 98% Yamato) solves the problem of homelessness, an unpleasant answer to this is the national culture encourages people who in America otherwise would end up becoming homeless people to simply go and kill themselves (I was told the modal reason for a train delay in Japan is suicide; they have pre-printed cards onboard to issue to riders to explain the otherwise unimaginable failure).
IIRC, efficacy of a nation's welfare system is very closely correlated with its ethnic homogeneity.
I've also watched a video (obviously, I'm an expert on Japan) which said there are sufficiently cheap gaming spaces so that slightly functional homeless people have a place to stay.
Sure, that seems like a plausible diagnosis, but what's the prescription, doc?
"Efficacy of a nation's welfare system is very closely related to its ethnic homogeneity."
I'm going to read you charitably and assume you're not one of the blatant racists who mention this routinely.
So I'm asking you in good faith, what conclusions am I supposed to draw from this? What does it add to the discussion?
I assume he means something like Ezra Klein's Vetocracy. Where there are too many actors who can block things, in this case local nimbys misusing planning and environmental regulations, local governments, etc
There's an asymmetry in ignorance. If you are ignorant about how dysfunctional systems are, that is part of the dysfunction. If you are ignorant of how a solution works, that is a point against the solution.
You are correct that this represents a rhetorical double standard, but that double standard is downstream of entropy, and not social reality.
Our society is ill, because we allow the greedy, the foolish, and the angry, and the fearful to lead us. A better society is one which elects leadership which embody the values which we as a species and as individuals value most - faith, truth, virtue, wisdom, mercy, love, and empathy. So long as we continue to act out of fear, hate, and division, and not out of empathy, kindness, and love, we will continue to be as sick as our leaders, my friends.
That is what it means to become better, and to become the right kind of society. We as a society value material comfort and greed and money more than life, love, and humans, and so we are slowly killing ourselves, our planet, poisoning our foods and waters, and will soon surely perish if we do not act better. To act better means to act with love, acceptance, and empathy!
While this is true, sometimes acting with love and empathy towards an addict who is destroying their life means setting boundaries. Love and empathy don't mean "here's all the fentanyl you want."
Varying amounts of excessive regulation around building houses/rails/anything anywhere, misunderstanding of basic economics (and thus instituting price controls or whatnot), a surprising amount of corruption, the ability for some small party to block a decision (housing being the prototypical example). He's gesturing at various dysfunctions of America, which other countries have as well to different degrees. I agree it is vague in this article, but he's done a large amount of blogposts where he sketches out plans, provides an overview of the area rather than a specific plan, etc.
I think your standards are much higher on this topic then for typical policy discussion. For example, you respond to multiple things with some version of "but you couldnt get that passed". Your gun analogy includes a "the supreme court blocks it" step. You take it as a given that homeless activists can block shelters being built if they dont like the conditions in them. That seems like exactly the sort of thing that would be solved by BEING THOUGH. I mean, if you write an article about how we need to BE THOUGH, the point is that it wouldnt just be you doing it.
*typo: tough not though
On the one hand, I agree that it would be helpful to separate "why I would do if I was King" and "what I would attempt to pass in a democracy". Work out the answer to the first question, and then you can move on to the second. And it's fine to have only the first answer available to have the right to complain about the problem.
On the other hand, "this would never pass" includes a lot more information about your policy than merely its chances of becoming law. It suggests that large parts of the population believe (and will never be disuaded from believing) that your policy is either unworkable or evil. This is rational Bayesian information, right? And also, not being able to convince people of your policy's merits casts doubt on your ability to effectively implement the policy as well, even if you *were* King. Especially if your policy involves some sort of manipulation of human psychology (e.g. incentives and deterrents) not too different from that involved in political campaigning.
Tl; dr electoral plausibility of a policy encodes information about said policy's merits.
>It suggests that large parts of the population believe (and will never be disuaded from believing) that your policy is either unworkable or evil.
My impression is that the GET TOUGH crowd just disagrees with that.
It's an anonymous ballot. You can vote for a Republican without any of your friends ever knowing.
There's a simple solution. Before you vote, get really drunk.
Disagrees that it IS unworkable/evil, or that large numbers of people believe it is?
Both presumably. If only you write enough blog posts theyll be convinced.
I also had this impression. It reminded me of isolated demands for rigor.
Thank you. I knew there was a phrase but didnt remember.
Yes, it's odd. It's probably just my imagination, but I almost feel like I'm picking up a vibe of, "are there even 10 righteous men in my comment section?" :-/ Maybe it's "pillar of salt" time for me.
From his suggested plan, it sounds like he's thought about it a fair bit, and from a position where he has some insight.
Michael Watts, above, linked an old post by Steve Yegge, and I think there are echoes of it here. A desire for a solution coupled with frustration that there is no simple solution, and more frustration that people keep suggesting simple solutions that are obviously wrong.
I'd say what's going on here is more like this:
1. First, demand that anyone advocating for any change to existing policies articulate a comprehensive suite of policies that achieves goals which are literally impossible.
2. When that doesn't happen, declare that you don't need to listen to anything else.
There's no concern for what parts of the status quo are good or bad, or for whether any policies that somebody does put forward would make things better or worse. Only the demand to achieve the impossible or stop complaining.
Before we even try draconian policies to arrest people how about a national law declaring access to market rate housing a right and suspending all zoning laws, parking requirements etc for the construction of any purely residential structure in any location where the cost per square foot of residence exceeds a certain function of the average density per square mile. Maybe even suspend local building codes and substitute some national minimum in that situation.
Might work under the whole Wickard v. Fillburn theory of a national housing market.
This would be reasonable policy-wise but a much harder lift politically.
(Also though, why have the requirement of cost per square foot exceeding the density? If we're doing this just do it everywhere and let the market sort it out)
By definition, everyone has access to market rate housing, but maybe you mean 'what the market rate for housing would be if various contributory factors were different from what they actually are'. Gonna be tough to codify that.
I felt context made it clear enough what I meant.
Besides, I think that's a perfectly valid usage of the term. I mean do you have access to market rate heroin? Yes, under one notion of the term but under an interpretation that makes it silly. No under the interpretation that means: absent substantial legal barriers to market mechanisms (in some cases it might even be a lack of legal barriers).
Obviously what one means by that depends on context but as I said, I think context did make that clear.
Some of the building code deals with safety. That probably shouldn't be suspended.
I'm more in favor of the government creating a surplus of really durable housing with really low standards and renting it out at a bit less than cost. And also creating a bunch of "sleeping compartments", which are basically a shutbed (think a Pulman sleeper, only designed to be durable and easily cleanable) that are made available for free. Let the "free market" argue about the rest, but safe housing available for everyone.
While I think that housing is beneficial, I also think that it will likely not solve the SF homeless problem.
At the moment, I would guess only a small fraction of the people who would like to rent in SF if not for the exorbitant price are living there. If you lower the price of basic housing (or at least the kind which is compatible with having a job, so even a basic coffin hotel would qualify) substantially, a lot more Americans would move to SF.
From my understanding, a lot of people already live in SF with an oil rig mentality, where they pay a high rent for minimal accommodations to earn a high wage which they plan to spend in some other place less hostile. Half of them would probably move to free coffin hotels in an instant as it would mean not spending a significant fraction of their income on housing.
I'll push back on the "below cost" part. If the cost and the price are decoupled, world-wide experience with subsidies suggests that the gap will grow and it will become politically difficult to fix. Plus, "at cost" allows the private sector to participate through competition.
This is much more reasonable than further restrictions, draconian policies, and giving up our rights and freedoms for no good reason. All of these problems are symptoms of a rot and illness that has built up in our society, and it all started in the 70's and 80's when our previous generations sold their souls to the GOP, to hatred and fear, and to their own temporary material comforts rather than acting with wisdom and love.
Well, for one thing, the market rate for housing is way, way, way, way, way, way, way too high.
Million Dollar Murray. The absolute number of hardcore homeless who are mentally ill and unable to care for themselves is tiny. Housing 600,000 asylum patients is impossible but it's also not needed.
The most common period of homelessness is one day. The second most common period is two days. All of those people can be ignored because they will very quickly remove themselves from the streets. Focus on people who have been homeless for years/decades. Use that criteria to filter on who is going to be involuntarily committed. The few thousand who qualify should get free housing plus intensive therapy, for life if need be. The savings in prison stays and ER visits would allow these programs to lay for themselves.
> Million Dollar Murray
I had to look him up, but that's normal! At least for my area, which spends about $100,000 per homeless person per year. Although inflation means that $1M in 2003 is $1.7M in 2024, so I suppose he's still an outlier.
https://www.ncceh.org/media/files/article/MillionDollarMurray.pdf
I've volunteered in drug rehab in a devastated rust-belt city for the last two decades. Something that is obvious from the inside but I've not ever seen mentioned here is that a lot of the people exhibiting the most antisocial behaviors that irritate the productive members of society aren't actually homeless, at least in my city. Many of them live with relatives, have section 8 housing, live in a project, or have some other arrangement where they can reliably sleep indoors, have access to hygiene facilities, and aren't in anything I'd describe as a "shelter". I've worked with hundreds of them over the last 20 years. What they lack are are money for drugs, and to a lesser extent somewhere that will tolerate their drug use when they do obtain money from drugs. In my area we've a problem with accidental arson too; they break into abandoned residential buildings (of which there are a great number) as somewhere they can get high in relative safety, then nod off with candles burning. The candles are used for both light and to cook the heroin. Stray cigarettes contribute as well to the fires. Very few of the addicts actually sleep overnight in these buildings unless its accidentally. They generally go home to sleep, to their homes, which they have, because they aren't homeless. They just need money and space to get high in peace. I don't know much about the situation in the Bay Area though.
Correct. Addicts are not the problem, and substance use is not a problem, or morally wrong in the first place. Alcohol is far more damaging societally and physically and spiritually than any illicit substance - if people truly cared about the addicts, the sick, and the marginalised, we would offer treatment, safe supplies, and education, in order to reduce harm until the addict realised for themselves that they could get better.
People only want to feel better than somebody, and so they demonise and criminalise addiction and drug users, even though our society, and the average person, is just as much of an addict as the worst addicts I have met and seen in my life, and in rehabs. Everyone has their drug and vice of choice, and to judge and demonise consenting adults enjoying themselves is the worst drug of choice out there. Anger, fear, and being mean and judgmental are far more poisonous than even alcohol or fentanyl, and will kill all of humanity and our planet if we do not wean ourselved from these terrible addictions and behaviors, my friends and followers.
While I love thst public defenders are taking the cases of commitment seriously and so diligently following the law I wonder how well such a system can possibly work given it's an adversarial system which -- in the case of commitment (or of treatment given) -- is tasked with deciding what is essentially a scientific question (diagnosis...cashed out in terms of dangerousness etc) without the ability to hire a competing expert.
For any system with extensive long term involuntary commitments I suspect you would need to hire independent medical experts to meet even the standards we have in the rest of the system. I expect that for such a system to even sorta work you probably need to be willing to commit people who seem totally fine at the moment and that means trusting the expert and that should require an independent expert.
1. massively increase surveilence
2. if someone's distrubung peace on the train, I report them on the snitchr app
3. police reviews camera footage, if I'm right they track them through the web of cameras and lock them up
"snitchr" is an incredible name for an app.
Currently cameras mostly have video, and not sound, I think this could cause issues because often a good part of disturbing peace is screaming and stuff like that.
If someone can scream or otherwise make loud noises without it becoming obvious on silent video, kudos to them.
1) Adding sound recording should be cheap. The storage costs are orders of magnitude less than for video, and microphones are even cheaper than cameras.
2) Maybe something like a "3 strikes" rule to selectively lock up the small (5%? 1%?) of the population that causes the bulk of the problem, as per power-law-distributions, "Million Dollar Murray" etc.
3) We have so much surveillance now that I suspect a modest increase would saturate most public areas, so I suspect that a modest increase rather than a massive one, would suffice.
I don't want to weaken standards of proof of criminal acts (including disturbing the peace). I think that _satisfying_ those standards, given cameras, should be very straightforward.
It would be nice to live in a society where zero (0) people are pushed on to subway tracks!
> It would be nice to live in a society where zero (0) people are pushed on to subway tracks!
This is easy and well within reach for many societies. Some may have already achieved it.
Shanghai isn't quite there (in terms of foreclosing the possibility - I have no idea how often the event occurs), but you can easily observe that old stations have no barrier between the station and the track, while newer stations have a big glass wall that makes it impossible for anyone to be pushed onto the track. The doors in the wall only open when there's a train on the other side.
Build every station that way, and the incidence of people getting pushed onto the tracks will automatically fall to zero.
>while newer stations have a big glass wall that makes it impossible for anyone to be pushed onto the track. The doors in the wall only open when there's a train on the other side.
Neat! Many Thanks! I hadn't known about that. I'm all in favor of technical solutions. And there isn't a 2nd amendment right to push people on to subway tracks.
> lt would be nice to live in a society where zero (0) people are pushed on to subway tracks!
KILL ALL HUMANS
Many Thanks! Is that a quote from Skynet, Godzilla, the NYC DOT, or some other author? :-)
Bender (from Futurama, not The Breakfast Club (probably))
Yeah, Bender is the first who comes to mind (he mutters it in his sleep), but I'm sure it predates Futurama.
Mostly it comes from hanging out around AI safety people too much. When someone expresses a desire which could easily be fulfilled by killing all humans, I sometimes get the urge to respond thusly. :-)
Increased surveillance sounds nice, until you have it. It will not help or improve anything, unfortunately, and is only yet another right to privacy and freedom you are proposing we so quickly get rid of, for no good reason, other than temporary material comforts?! Homeless people, poor people, mentally ill people, and addicts are not the problem. Our problem is the rampant greed, hate, and fear we allow to rule us and our society, and until we deal with that true problem, our true enemy, we will never see improvements, and things will only get worse, my friend.
yes I think there are material comforts for privacy trades that I would like to take
Yeah, sure, right up until a schizo pushes you onto the train tracks.
Having lived in highly surveilled societies (London, Singapore), it's a trade I'd take in a rule of law society (obv very different calculus in autocratic states). High probability repercussions for anti-social / illegal behavior makes a huge difference to quality of life. Describing the experience of living in say tenderloin district in SF as lacking "temporary material comforts" is pretty absurd.
3a. For how long?
3b. Before or after the criminal trial that will cost the taxpayers at least fifty thousand dollars if the answer to 3a is more than a long weekend, and an order of magnitude more if you're going to lock them up for a year? Yes, even with everything on video.
If anybody had a way to make criminal trials not cost so much under American rules, they'd have implemented it long before now. So you don't get to handwave "just do that".
Interesting article, thank you. Much to ponder.
As a total outsider with an interest in the societal issues around chronic mental illness, there have been many successes and many missteps during my 50 or so years window on the subject. The USSR and the problems of sanctioned homicide in cultures where possession and witchcraft were normative beliefs were, to my mind, the most egregious.
I was saddened on a visit to the US Capitol though when I observed psychotic deteriorated people shambling past (as in not using or being treated) new community healthcare walk in clinics which had been recently established as a policy initiative.
In the UK there were very roughly a hundred thousand long term beds closed with discharged patients being given a GP (primary physician) appointment, a prescription to take to a pharmacy and a social worker allocated. However, if they failed to attend the doctor or social worker and moved domicile they were effectively lost to the “system”. Scandalously, no figures/stats were collected or kept. So I cannot say what happened to many very debilitated people - no-one knows. I doubt that things worked out well for the majority.
Some of these problems could be solved by technology to create a microscopic long-term deep implant, containing say a stable population of genetically engineered bacteria that would release compounds to remedy or at least amelioriate whatever made the homeless person engage in self-destructive or anti-social behavior.
Examples might include anti-psychotics, testosterone blockers for kiddie fiddlers and other sex pests, or, in response to the detection of a recreational drug, compounds that would make the implant carrier feel as sick as a parrot, with a thumping headache or some other irksome and not rapidly remediable symptom.
No doubt many homeless people recognise and lament their own psychotic impulses, or wish to get off drugs, and would volunteer for this preventative or aversion therapy. Those who did not, and committed serious criminal offences, could be offered it as an alternative to jail.
It seems to me that at the present rate of progress there is little doubt that technology like this will exist sooner or later, perhaps as soon as twenty or thirty years' time.
This is probably the correct answer.
Ozempic should be a screaming siren red light case study: TECHNOLOGY WILL PROBABLY SOLVE THIS.
Even people who are culturally opposed to transhumanism are now admitting that, yep, GLP-1 agonists are more-or-less miracle drugs for something that we thought was so complex, so deep in the human psyche that it’d never be treatable without horrible side effects (like previous weight loss drugs that were basically meth stimulants).
If, as you said, we could cure psychosis, or even just have some implantable something that makes drug addiction unpleasant, or removes sexual or other urges, then a population of calmer homeless people is much less of an immediate crisis. You’d still have people addicted to hard drugs, living debased like animals etc., and their own life span would remain incredibly short, but we can work on that separately. At least the cities would be livable again.
We have anti-psychotic drugs. As Scott has been noting, there is a problem in getting mentally ill homeless people to take them.
Part of the resistance is due to strong side effects so lots of progress to be made.
Further, anti-psychotics take a long time to work and have variable effectiveness. Some people are not helped much at all by current treatments, others are not helped enough to quiet the delusional reasons not to take them, or to outweigh the onerous side effects. A treatment that could reliably bring someone from florid psychosis to sanity in a few days, rather than maybe help them to an unpredictable degree in some number of weeks, would be tremendously beneficial. I don't see one around the corner, though.
Cities are very much livable, and the problem is not so much a lack of solutions or technology, it is that most people are far too egotistical and too addicted to hate, fear, and anger to ever solve these problems humanely. Homelessness, substance use, and mental illness are symptoms of a sick society, not the problems; and so without curing our sick society, no matter what you do, things will continue to get worse and deteriorate, my friends. Electing leaders who are fools, greedy, hateful, fearful, gluttonous, and lustful is precisely the problem. This is why CA, and other progressive states are so much more economically successful than any states run by the GOP; our nation will suffer the same fate as the states run by the GOP if we continue to elect snakes and evildoers to lead us.
The blind cannot lead the blind, the evil will never solve problems for the greater good.
The deaf will not hear those who speak, and those who are mute will not speak.
Elect wise and loving people, for God has given them to use for a reason, my friends and followers. Do not elect the greedy, the hateful or fearful, or the wrathful, for they shall be our undoing, and shall destroy the planet just as quickly as they destroy humanity.
What's a "fateful" leader?
Oh, my apologies, thank you for pointing that out. It was meant to say hateful, not fateful.
No, I'm sorry, in retrospect that was an obvious typo I ought not to have corrected. In context, I thought you might have meant something with religious connotation, some variant of "playing God" perhaps, that I was missing.
Oh, no worries, friend! I do appreciate the correction, as I wouldn't have noticed it myself! I hope you have a great day!
This is not the correct answer, and what you propose is not only draconian, but cruel and inhumane. You are not the judge of what is psychotic, or what is morally wrong or right, and I truly thank God for that. Why don't we implant into you anti-psychotics and cut off your testicles, and see how you like?
For those who are truly heinous, and unable to rehabilitate, that is precisely what prisons and sectioned off zones are meant for. To do what you propose will only make things worse; these problems are the symptoms of a societal sickness, and your ideas and proposals will only make things worse, my friend.
Those who wish to get off drugs, or wish to be rehabilitated, should certainly recieve this as a VOLUNTARY and CONSENTUAL option, but not to be forced on people who only do no harm, choose to use substances recreationally or medicinally, or are homeless. This should only be reserved for the worst of crimes, which I would say are murder and rape. Nothing more, or less.
If you're replying to my post, can I repeat part of it which you must have overlooked:
No doubt many homeless people recognise and lament their own psychotic impulses, or wish to get off drugs, and would VOLUNTEER for this preventative or aversion therapy.
I do understand, however, I felt the need to reiterate that part of it, and add my two-cents, because although the idea comes from good intentions, applying forced procedures and medicines on people when the only thing they do is exist, whether homeless or not, or choose to use drugs, would be very wrong, and quickly devolve into terrible civil right abuses by the government, if we do not put strict restrictions, regulations, and limits in place.
> The last company they hired to run the project gave up in disgust and moved to Africa because it was “less politically dysfunctional” (this is true!)
That isn't just a company, that's *SNCF*. It's been a while since I had connections to the business, but last I heard, they (and their 1-2 peers) basically represent the current pinnacle of human understanding of how to run passenger rail.
> The fifth broad category of responses was people who admitted that they didn’t have a plan, but thought they shouldn’t have to - that wasn’t their job. These people are certainly in good company:
> I mean our job is to demand solution not provide solutions.
Some of us aren't "demanding"? The whole thing is a mess, but there's lots of ways to improve our response at the margin. More housing, more shelters, better policing, more in-patient treatment for mental health, fewer politicians engaging in social experimentation, fewer laws that prevent these things. Which, yes, all involve our society becoming slightly less dysfunctional at the margin. It's not impossible.
I realize this isn't sexy or clever. There's no "one cool trick", no radical revolution that sweeps away all existing solutions, not even a progressive "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" approach. It's slow and boring and conservative, making marginal change in a number of areas and tracking long-term ROI. And as you say, it's downstream of being a civilization that can actually do stuff like this, but isn't that a worthy goal by itself?
> I don’t know if there are really areas like this, but I welcome learning more from people who know cities better.
My city had one. It came to be called "the Jungle".
> I think that maybe the thought is that the institution seems more “humane” than prison
Ideally they'd come out of the institution better than they went in, with better mental health, more connection to functional society, fewer barriers to acquiring a job and a home, and less time spent imprinting on anti-social criminals. That's kind of the opposite of prison, at least the way America does prison?
> that's *SNCF*. It's been a while since I had connections to the business, but last I heard, they (and their 1-2 peers) basically represent the current pinnacle of human understanding of how to run passenger rail.
I don't know about their big projects in the world but here in their home country SNCF is mentally associated with trains that are never on time. It was always kind of a joke but I feel like it's gotten worse in the past 10 years.
Maybe they've gone downhill? Our point of comparison was passenger rail in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Britain, and various other places, all of which were distinctly worse. (Deutsche Bahn was the other big exception.)
So no more big exceptions, then?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2023/oct/08/german-train-travel-deutsche-bahn-kafka
Ah, that article suggests they've been going downhill for somewhere in the 12-30 year range. :-(
French trains are considered hugely better than UK ones.
Britrail was specifically the most frequent comparison. The US was considered a joke.
The difference between American prison and Nordic prison is not rehabilitation. https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-the-nordic-rehabilitative
"My city had one. It came to be called "the Jungle"."
This wouldn't be Seattle, would it? (ie the place of "Jungle Shooting" infamy?")
I prefer to maintain a bit of plausible geographic anonymity, but I suspect that almost any area of a city that gets dubbed "the Jungle" is going to have similar problems. :-)
Thank you for taking the time to write this. I thought the first article was a bit too defeatist, but with this one they're a very good pair. I'll try to keep in mind that if you don't add a list of well thought solutions in an article, it doesn't mean you don't have any.
It's also interesting to me how I don't think we've heard much from law enforcement in your comments. I'm used to the internet being the place when an expert will pop out at a moment's notice, but thinking back, I don't think I've ever read "Hey, cop here, here's how it goes".
I think that you do Freddie a disservice by pointing out that he shouts GET TOUGH without proposing any particular solutions that we should implement. In a world where everybody agrees that we should GET TOUGH already but nobody can figure out the right policy proposals to solve the problem, someone who keeps shouting GET TOUGH is totally useless. But that's not the world we live in. We live in a world where half the time people are shouting BE SOFT, which creates major practical obstacles to any actual solutions to the problem. Freddie deBoer is not in the business of crafting municipal homeless policy proposals, he's in the business of the culture war - which is in some ways important to fight! Society cannot even begin to work on a solution to a problem until enough people in important places agree on what the goal actually is.
Let's say for starters that your first, second, and third proposals are great ideas and imagine a future in which they actually get implemented. Suppose the City Council of San Francisco convenes a blue-ribbon homeless panel that make recommendations on what to do about homelessness. These recommendations are then brought to the City Council, who like the idea but cannot actually pay for it without funding, and therefore they go to the voters and ask for funding for all this additional enforcement and services and whatever, and eventually use it to pass a bill that solves (makes a small dent in) the homeless problem. Mission accomplished.
Returning from la-la-land, let's see all the reasons this wouldn't happen. At the very outset, said blue-ribbon homeless panel is going to be staffed with "homeless experts" who are made of all the weird homeless activists that Freddie deBoer hates who are definitely on team BE SOFT. Project is dead on arrival: you're not going to get anything useful out of that panel. Let's say you somehow survive that problem and get recommendations. The city council then goes to debate the issue - but since a lot of the city councilors are progressives or politically beholden to progressive activists on team BE SOFT, they successfully spike the issue, arguing the new policies are horribly inhumane and all the resolutions die in committee. Let's say somehow a political miracle happens again and the voters are expected to actually fund this proposal. Team BE SOFT gets a third bite at the apple, lobbies against the new horrible inhumane anti-homeless policies, except this time they get to ally with team "I don't want to pay $100 trillion quadrillion dollars" and nothing ever happens because they're no money for it.
If, somehow, Freddie deBoer could achieve total cultural victory and successfully convince 99.9% of people that actually it's good to GET TOUGH and the remaining 0.1% of BE SOFT people were somehow totally politically and culturally marginalized, we would at the very least avoid these particular problems. Those attempts might still fail for all sorts of practical reasons that figuring out who to institutionalize and actually doing it is extremely hard even when everybody agrees that we should GET TOUGH - but it's simply impossible when they don't, and therefore, it's useful for people like Freddie to keep trying to convince people of it.
This is similar to the argument that SF/California need to be (politically) less like themselves.
Isn't this basically true for any change to existing policy that solves a visible problem?
No, a place and retain the same politics but update its laws simply because time moves forward and the laws passed in the present just wouldn't have occurred to the same people in the past.
Agree completely. The problem with homelessness is at the root an issue of an underlying GET SOFT ideology. I am not sure if they are intentionally trying to promote the problem (rent seekers) or if it is an unfortunate side effect of an absurd and dysfunctional ideology. Let’s assume the latter. As TGGP replies to you, the solution to California homelessness is indeed for the politicians to be less like themselves. If I wanted to promote homelessness and ruin a city, I would do exactly what San Francisco chooses to do.
I’ve already explained multiple times (in these pages) how easy this problem is to solve by those who want to solve it. In brief, it is use one half of the money (already set aside) to build cheap shelters or parking lots with facilities. Require people to use these shelters. Enforce that people do not camp outside of these facilities. Arrest anyone stealing or using or selling drugs.
Scott’s concerns with how this problem becomes too large is simply wrong. Once the derelicts realize that we are no longer SOFT, most will change their behavior or at least hide it in fields or crackhouses like before. Those unable to comply will go to prison. Problem solved and easily funded by a state as prosperous as California.
One final comment to address the issue that some authorities will always be SOFT. There will always be a San Francisco somewhere. The winning move in this game is to not live in San Francisco. I live in California, and the solution to SOFT locales is to live in a TOUGHER than average locale. I surf in Del Mar, not Ocean Beach. Del Mar does not have a problem and never will, not because housing is more affordable, but because the authorities are TOUGHER. You don’t have to outrun the bear when your fellow campers are coating themselves in bacon grease and begging the bears to eat them.
Kicking homeless people out of your town is definitely the cheapest way to deal with the homeless but it doesn't actually fix the homeless problem.
It kinda does solve the problem.
First, it frees me from risking daily exposure to hepatitis every time I surf in the water downstream from their antics. My foremost concern isn’t in fixing everything in the universe, it is in shaping up my neck of the woods. Let's worry about San Francisco after we clean up our neighborhood and prove what works (or doesn’t).
Second, by concentrating the problem to sanctuary cities, we force those running these areas to come to grips with the ineptitude of their policies which actively reward and promote bad behaviors. My assumption is the SOFTIES can learn and eventually will.
Third, I did not ever say to just kick them out. I said to build safe shelters, and require their use. They are safer in air conditioned/heated shelters with security and facilities than they are selling drugs in a tent on the sidewalk or curled up on the sand at night.
The problem with homelessness is actually not the problem with BE SOFT, but with BE TOUGH. A good society is not one which is tough, or one which harms its own people and citizens. Human life is important and what matters, not money, not corporations, not government. Humans matter, and we are ALL human. To be tougher will only make things worse - our problem is that our society is sick, and it is sick because the average person does not care beyond themselves. The average person living in America does NOT care about human life, or anything beyond their own temporary material wealth and comforts, and do not care about problems that really matter until it personally affects them. To be "tough," means to do the right thing, and the right thing is to actually live and act with love, kindness, empathy, and in harmony and accordance with nature. The idea that being "tougher" is the right way to go is wrong, and purely comes from fear, hate, and anger. As somebody who lived in CA my whole life, and now is temporarily living in a so-called "tougher" state, this is all wrong; CA is economically a superpower, and supports all the other so-called "tough" states. Do you know why CA is so strong and so much nicer, compared to most of the USA? Because what you say here is wrong, and does not actually work that way in reality, my friends.
We must save ourselves, and our planet, before we all perish; that time is quickly approaching, and we will all be dead soon unless we strong buying into false ideologies wrapped in nice-sounding lies. A polished turd is still a turd; a turd wrapped in gift-wrap will still smell just as bad.
It's truly remarkable that "being nice" creates gold mines and fertile soil.
Indeed, but there are many strange and remarkable things about life. To act with acceptance, love, and mercy, is precisely what allows civilization to exist in the first place. Being tough, greedy, and acting with fear and hatred is what poisons our earth and waters, and kills the planet, and ourselves.
What good are gold mines and fertile soil, when there are no humans left to enjoy them?
At the risk of ruining my credentials as a flower-power hippy, I must disagree. Caring about people is fine, but I don’t define caring as allowing a fentanyl addict on the edge of the next overdose to sleep unprotected on the sidewalks. I don’t define caring as allowing people to take a dump along public waterways. I don’t define it as allowing dangerous drugs to be sold.
Sometimes we need what my mom calls tough love. This is spending the time and the money to actually interfere with the those in a spiral of self destruction.
I repeat… build safe shelters, require they be used rather than camping anywhere, enforce reasonable laws ensuring public safety and decency. Problem solved. Lives saved.
This is caring.
Ah, I appreciate your response and comments! I cannot disagree and that is what we ought to do; my only argument is being ill, using substances, and being homeless are not morally wrong, and the only and best way to reduce harm when it comes to substance use related harms is to educate, provide safe supplies and substances, and ensure addicts do not die until they are ready to be rehabilitated.
That is unfortunately the best way to care for those who suffer from addiction, no matter how hard it is to see them harm themselves or suffer.
Yes, I made a similar point on the earlier post. In a way it's not really relevant to even discuss practical solutions for involuntary commitment when the dominant faction of decisionmakers is in thrall to the idea that it's immoral to actually try to pursue that avenue.
The dominant faction of western decisionmakers is on the contrary completely dedicated to immoral behavior, and this is the cause of our societal ills in the first place.
Immoral, foolish, and stupid leadership, who care for nothing but themselves and their own wealth and well-being is the problem we have; the blind are leading the blind, and we are quickly heading for a cliff, and we are all stuck in the same boat, my friends. We are all humans here; humans are social creatures and beings, and the whole point of civilization, society, and progress is to make life easier and better for us ALL. Involuntary commitment should never be an option except in the most heinous of circumstances and crimes, and to suggest that the government have the ability to arrest and imprison, or worse, poison, torture, or kill those who choose to live in certain ways, consentually and exercise their freedoms and rights, is a far greater evil than allowing people to harm themselves consentually.
"It is better for a hundred guilty men to go free, than one innocent to be wrongly imprisoned"
Our leaders and policymakers are all bought and paid for by the rich, by the powerful, and most of all, by corporations. They do not care about acting morally, and this reflects the sick nature of our modern society; they are the perfect leaders, in a way, for us, because the average person is just as bad as they are. What is immoral, is not helping and loving your neighbor as you love yourself; what is wrong and evil is to love comfort, material wealth, and money, over the very lives, wellbeing, and comforts of those around you.
There is no greater evil than that, and indeed, it is the root of all lesser evils - we will never solve our societal problems until more people wake up, realise this, and change themselves, and start electing better leaders. If you care about morals, if you care about the world, about society, and about ensuring our children and future generations actually have a decent planet and environment to live on, please consider my words, think critically, and start electing better leaders, who are not so blatantly evil, greedy, fearful, and hateful.
My friend, tell me, do you believe in Angels? In God? In morality and in truth?
I don't think I've ever heard anyone shouting "BE SOFT!".
What I do hear is people saying that yes, we need to be tough but we need to be tough and fair and the specific solution someone is proposing right now is unfair for [not-implausible reason] so we need to find a different way to be tough. Which will then be proclaimed unfair for [not-implausible reason #2], ad infinitum.
It is certainly reasonable to suspect that these people actually want us to BE SOFT, but if they're not actually saying it in those words then BE TOUGH is not going to be an effective response. If they advance not-implausible reasons to refrain from specific policies A, B, and C, then you need defensible new specific policies D, E, and F, or you need better specific arguments in favor of A, B, and C being fair after all.
"Fairness" as a concept is internally incoherent, so any arguments dependent on it can be dismissed with prejudice.
I'd really hate to be your spouse, child or co-worker.
>But I do worry that if police don’t have the resources to deal with normal crimes, then whoever is charged with enforcing the new extreme law won’t have enough resources to do it well either - and that any society capable of enforcing the new extreme law would also be capable of solving this through normal policing.
But the issue, in the previous portrait of panhandling pyromaniacs, was not lack of police resources but inability to prove identity in a courtroom - unless abundant policing too cheap to meter makes available qualitatively different uses of police resources - make a few guys go undercover as homeless people so they can later testify that it WAS their friends that set stuff afire
But more generally, we do this sort of thing(to target some specific criminal behaviour with direct negative impact, also criminalise a closely-related behaviour that is much easier to catch/prosecute) all the time:
- how much alcohol you have in your blood is no one's business as long as you're alert, have good judgement and reaction speed. But it's just so much easier to catch and prosecute high BAC
- people care about smoke in their faces and cigarette butt littering. But it's hard to prove that A blew smoke in B's face, and also to catch A at the exact moment they drop their butt on the ground. Much easier to catch people smoking in public
- it's hard to prove in court that a certain bunch of homeless people were the same ones who light stuff on fire, and much easier to show that someone is homeless. Also doesn't require abundant policing resources
- easier to prosecute tax evasion on criminal income than the crime itself(famously Al Capone)
Create an app where people rate each other's level of mental illness. Those who fall under a rating threshold will be thrown into the ocean. The app will undoubtedly be abused and eventually direct us to throw our politicians into the ocean. The app must be obeyed.
Unfortunately, the bit after "eventually" is too obvious, and the more likely outcome would be that the politicians would ban the app.
We had such an approach to dealing with mental illness in Germany, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4 . Unfortunately for you, but fortunately for everyone else, the Allies stopped it when they liberated us.
As for your method of evaluating mental illness by vote, I can not fathom how anyone who has ever seen an online mob in action can think "this is a fine, decent method to enforce norms, but the only problem is lack of power: while a mob can harass its victim to the point of suicide, it would be even better if they could just impose the death penalty through ostracism".
There may be a language barrier, as I do not mean an app that will "direct us to throw our politicians in the ocean. The app must be obeyed" as a serious suggestion. While I meant it humorously, Californian politicians are one of the largest obstructions to solving many problems in California (also true about America in general.. though we may not be exceptional in this regard).
I've worked at some shelters in rural Canada for a couple of summers now. Homelessness is complex; it only becomes harder to deal with the longer someone remains unhoused. Perhaps a "tough solution" would be to allocate more resources towards prevention (e.g., monitoring foster care for abuse, identifying and supporting at-risk youth at school, more attention towards ex-prisoners, etc), trading off with resources for treatment (emergency shelters, etc.).
This would likely be unpopular but more effective at reducing homeless populations long-term.
I bet you’re right that vulnerable kids could use a lot more support including on the financial side for their parent(s).
Why are social services a necessary prerequisite for making street-camping illegal?
If they can't sleep outside, where do they sleep? If we don't want the answer to be "jail", we need to make sure that there are shelters (the "social services" in question) with empty beds.
>If they can't sleep outside, where do they sleep? If we don't want the answer to be "jail"
See, this is exactly why the first step towards solving the problem is shouting "BE TOUGH" over and over and over again.
Scott's first post pointed out a problem with "just put all homeless people in jail":
Eventually, they're going to get out of jail. At which point, they will be homeless again, because they can't go apartment hunting from prison and don't have a job. So what do you do then? Re-arrest them the minute their sentence is up?
If the answer is "connect them to social services so they can have a job and housing waiting for them when they leave jail," well, couldn't you just connect the homeless people with those services instead of throwing them in jail first?
There's no problem with them being homeless. The problem is them being a nuisance. They can be as homeless as they want, as long as they stay out of nicer areas.
I just can't believe how people keep avoiding any precision or clarity in their proposals, just endlessly proving Scott's point. You seem to have pivoted from "put them in jail" to "keep them out of nicer areas by threat of jail". Whatever you mean exactly by "nicer areas".
Can you be very clear on what the *actual crime* you are proposing to punish is. Is it:
1. Being homeless is itself a crime
2. Camping in certain public spaces (sidewalks etc) is a crime, camping in other public spaces (fields or forrests) is not
3. Sleeping anywhere other than a private dwelling or a shelter is a crime
4. Doing anti-social and threatening things are crimes, the above are not
5. Something else
?
1 is pure communism, just goodbye to economic freedom. 3 requires those shelters to actually sufficiently exist. 4 I fully support and see no reason other than disturbing depolicing why it can't be done. If you're saying 4, has anyone here actually disagreed with that?
That leaves 2 and if people are advocating that, they should be clear on what the legal spaces and illegal spaces actually are.
These are the "missing details" that are the whole point of these posts.
You don't really seem to have needed my help; you run people out of spaces by policing those spaces. That's option 2, the one you've already identified.
The principle here is that if people complain about you, you have to leave. If you don't want to leave, you're free to spend time in jail until you do want to leave. If you don't want to be expelled, you'll need to either (1) be inoffensive enough that nobody complains, or (2) own some land.
Steelmanning, I think the proposed solution is that whenever an unacceptable equilibrium emerges, GET TOUGH and let homeless people and the rest of the system find another equilibrium. Hopefully, if you do this enough times, one of the emergent equilibria will be at least tolerable for society.
I think some of us are extremely clear on exactly what needs to be done, and yes, it is a version of your number 2. If you want specifics, the rule should be that camping overnight is illegal except where specifically permitted. Every beach in California already has ordinances addressing this and has for as long as I have been alive.
Easiest problem on earth to solve with political will:
1) Build shelters and approved camping facilities/parking lots somewhere in the County.
2) Enforce their use and arrest anyone of a crime.
3) Refund the billions in taxes we pay annually for the homelessness-rent-seeking complex or apply it to the above solutions.
4) Watch the incentives work
Problem solved.
If they are illegally camping again arrest them again this time for a longer sentence. For the people who can never find a way not to camp in public places they will be housed in jail.
If you want to make that jail kind of a halfway jail/shelter then fine, but they can't camp on the streets.
Same question I asked Michael Watts. *What*, precisely, is the goddamn crime?
You can make camping on public property a crime if it is not one already. Also you can make public intoxication and begging a crime again if they are not already.
As eccdogg alludes to, the crime is disorderly conduct. It's already illegal. All you need to do is apply some penalties.
There's a lot of places to sleep outside that aren't streets. When I've slept outside, I've usually been in a forest.
I think "street-camping" is an umbrella term? I mostly encounter people sleeping on sidewalks, not the literal street, and usually parts of the sidewalk under an overhang. Tents in parks are another option, as is just finding a bush or tree, or even a bench if the weather is nice. Underneath highways is also popular. Vacant buildings are ideal, especially because they contain fixtures that can be stripped and sold for cash, and they might have working electricity that you can tap into (or accidentally start a fire with). For those with cars, car-camping seems to be the method of choice, enough so that various places have either strengthened or removed (depending on political orientation) laws about vehicles having to move periodically, and some places just block off curbside parking entirely.
OK, but would you agree that banning street camping would not ban all sleeping outdoors, e.g. normal camping in the wilderness where one does not constitute a nuisance to anyone?
Yes, I think generally that phrase gets used to include private property and urban public spaces (like sidewalks, urban parks, libraries, etc.). I don't usually think of it as encompassing things like National Parks or wilderness areas.
The point of anti-camping laws is to prevent encampments: clusters of bums living together and creating an environment for drug dealing, prostitution, and theft rings. They can sleep outside! But they can't set up a Hooverville on the sidewalk, or in a public park.
Which is why jail is besides the point. Anti-camping laws almost never send someone to jail, because there are so many defenses in court the homeless can legitimately use (such as, "I had nowhere else to go"). The point is to break up the camps, which are a legitimate threat to public safety. Scattered bums are less of a menace than concentrated bums.
Well there’s the crux of it. The task is to solve difficult and complex problems, while remaining more dysfunctional than Africa. With “creativity”. Hate to be a black-piller, but… I dunno man. Good luck with that.
>First, if we could do social services this well, we would have already done it, and we would have much less of a problem. Part of my objection is that people are using “we should be willing to be tough!” as a panacea to cover up the fact that we’re failing even at the non-tough part, as if gaining in toughness would suddenly make us generally more competent.
Depends on sort of toughness. There definitely is a mode of governmental operation in which people who come up with procedural objections or loopholes or whatever get told to fuck off and die (and sometimes literally chucked in jail or a grave). Franklin Roosevelt used this mode with the New Deal; when people got in his way he was willing to pull every single trigger to crush them right up to "SCOTUS objects; pack SCOTUS", and so Shit Got Done. It's also typically dusted off for total wars.
Deploying this mode might actually make things considerably cheaper, insofar as all the expensive procedures wouldn't actually be being followed. It is not costless, of course, but it's a meaningful proposal that can be evaluated (not by me; I'm not American and this is none of my business). And it can be described as "GET TOUGH" (though "move fast and break things" might be a better fit).
"As usual, you were wrong."
Heh heh heh. Not I, though!—because (as usual) we seem to have somehow come out with exactly the same mental toolkits, (objectively-correct) intuitions, and just general ways-of-thinking. It's uncanny, sometimes (IIRC we seem to have found MtCTotB at the same time and had the same reaction; similarly for TMI and some mention of an interest in non-dual/advaita systems; similarly for LessWrong and Big Yud, even, really.)
I remember being frustrated, at first, reading this "Yvain" guy's stuff — dam' it, he's saying what *I* wanted credit for s–... I mean, what I too believe, which is great, ha-ha!
It's a regret I have that I was too lazy to contribute much and so missed out on getting to be a ScottFriend® and get sneered at by Eliezer in person and so forth. Shucks.
Well, as I just finished writing in an (unrelated) e-mail: may as well just call me Kveldred "TLx2" Valjarngandr, 'cause "Too-Little & Too-Late" is, was, and shall forever be all I am. 👊
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Anyway, the obvious (tho' likely only so to a steel-trap sort of mind like mine) solution our esteemed host has missed is simple, yet brilliant:
• Many red states have no issue with the homeless, yet they evidently partake of American Exceptionalism no-less-heartily than Hystericalifornia. (𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘶𝘱 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘰𝘸𝘯; 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦, 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢 𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘧𝘦𝘦)
• Why is this?
• It is because we are not very nice to the homeless. People have little sympathy for maniacs shitting on sidewalks in, say, TX, and the police are not notably amused either.
• Therefore, the solution is: just be generally unpleasant enough to 'em in enough dozens of little niggling ways, and they'll move on to the next state.
The "Not My Problem Any More®" Plan, I call it. I would be glad to begin implementing it, as soon as the funding is available; and do not worry, I have no worrying history of going mad with power at the slightest provocation, haha. Haha!
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Anyway, apropos of nothing haha but does anyone know where to get good blow and classy escorts in West TX
> MtCTotB [...] TMI
What do those stand for?
Mastering the Core Teaching of the Buddha and The Mind Illuminated
You say “other US cities don’t have…anti-camping laws”, but in fact there are anti-camping laws in many major cities:
- Houston (https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/housing/article/houston-ticketed-1-400-homeless-people-18262827.php), Austin (https://www.austintexas.gov/propb-homeless) and the whole state of Texas
- Phoenix (https://www.kjzz.org/2024-05-30/content-1881356-phoenix-bans-homeless-encampments-near-schools-day-cares-how-city-plans-enforce-rule)
- Atlanta (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1021348222248)
- Denver (https://www.denvervoice.org/archive/2022/5/12/how-the-urban-camping-ban-has-impacted-denvers-homeless-community)
- even Portland! (https://apnews.com/article/texas-oregon-portland-homelessness-government-and-politics-7a73b5166f6181d56ace33f682298c24)
etc.
I'm confused - I thought the Supreme Court only said anti-camping laws were legal a month or two ago, and before that they weren't.
That was only in the 9th circus (spelling intentional). The ruling had no effect on the rest of the country that wasn't that stupid to begin with.
Here's a map of each circuit's jurisdictions for reference, only the 9th circuit jurisdiction (the yellow parts) had a ban on enforcing anti-camping laws.
https://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/u.s._federal_courts_circuit_map_1.pdf
My understanding from https://www.rutan.com/anti-camping-laws-u-s-supreme-court-holds-that-enforcement-of-anti-camping-laws-does-not-violate-the-eighth-amendment-regardless-of-an-individuals-access-to-alternative-shelter/ is that anti-camping laws weren’t illegal, but the Ninth Circuit had ruled they could only be enforced in specific circumstances. Those restrictions are what the recent Supreme Court decision overruled the Ninth Circuit on, affirming the anti-camping laws can be enforced more broadly.
Right. And the 9th Circuit's ruling (that was overturned) was stupidly absurdly restrictive, to the point that you could have the laws, but enforcing them was a guaranteed loss except in the most narrow of circumstances.
Well, the "narrow circumstances" were simply to provide housing. The original Ninth Circuit holding was described by the Supreme Court in the Grant's Pass case thusly:
>According to the Ninth Circuit, the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause barred Boise from enforcing its public-camping ordinance against homeless individuals who lacked "access to alternative shelter." Id., at 615. That "access" was lacking, the court said, whenever "`there is a greater number of homeless individuals in a jurisdiction than the number of available beds in shelters.'" Id., at 617 (alterations omitted).
No easy task, of course. But perhaps not a "stupidity absurd" holding.
Moreover, since it was based on the Eighth Amendment, it only forbade criminalizing overnight sleeping in public (and in cars). It did not forbid noncriminal measures, such as rousting sleepers.
The "stupidly absurd" part was that the city was required to have enough shelter beds to house *every* bumin the city before they could enforce anti-camping laws on *any* bum in the city. So even if you had 1,000 open beds available, if there are 1,005 bums in the city you can't enforce the rules on any of them.
A couple of brief points:
>The last company they hired to run the project gave up in disgust and moved to Africa because it was “less politically dysfunctional” (this is true!)
One should not uncritically quote headlines. It is true that that was the company's spin. But as the NYT story referenced in the linked article notes, what happened was that "[t]he company’s recommendations for a direct route out of Los Angeles and a focus on moving people between Los Angeles and San Francisco were cast aside" in favor of a longer and slower route that would serve more people. That is a perfectly reasonable choice (what is the point, other than bragging rights, of simply moving people quickly between SF and LA, rather than providing transportation options to the millions of poorly served people in between?). Whether resolution of the various reasonable choices became mired in political dysfunction is possible, but there is not much evidence for that in the article.
>First, enforce existing laws better, such that any homeless person who commits a crime (including public harassment, littering, etc) gets caught and punished.
Enforcing litter laws only against homeless people would be an Equal Protection violation and, possibly an Eighth Amendment violation as a de facto status offense.
Also note that in California, a police officer can make a warrantless arrest for a misdemeanor only if it is committed in his or her presence, or is a domestic violence offense. Penal Code 836
The point of rail is for people to use it, and a longer rail route that never gets built (and thus never used) is pointless. But in the US, transit agencies don't even prioritize ridership: https://www.slowboring.com/p/american-transit-agencies-should
Yes, exactly, the point is for people to use it. Among other things, the company recommended running the line along I-5, where no one lives. As I said, there are tradeoffs, and merely because the state weighed competing interests differently than the company does not mean that the state is "politically dysfunctional."
People live in LA & SF. That company builds railways which people actually use elsewhere, California politicians try to use rail to accomplish every objective other than ridership, then fail to build anything and nobody rides.
>People live in LA & SF
Yes, but also elsewhere. Again, that is the point: There is not one answer to the question of how best to serve the state's residents. Do you also support the proposed route which bypasses San Jose and the peninsula?
I support privatizing all transportation infrastructure so that the infrastructure that gets built is determined by profit-maximization.
How is that relevant to what we are talking about?
He didn't say enforce littering laws *only* against homeless. Does disproportionate impact generate new protected classes?
But that is de facto what he is calling for, because the police certainly are not going to arrest every litterer.
I'm assuming the "disruptive homeless" people are complaining about are doing a disproportionate amount of littering. If the same person has been, say, captured on camera littering on twenty separate occasions it seems perfectly sensible to arrest them and charge them with twenty counts of littering at once.
But even without that, why *can't* police arrest every litterer they or someone sees litter? If it's a lack of funding, give them more funding. If you're not going to pay people to enforce the laws, why have laws at all?
I'm becoming a broken record but: why is "enforce the laws" a bizarre and radical position around here? Everyone's either "*this group* are allowed to commit crimes" or "throw *this group* in jail, crimes or not".
What's wrong with everyone?
>But even without that, why *can't* police arrest every litterer they or someone sees litter? If it's a lack of funding, give them more funding. If you're not going to pay people to enforce the laws, why have laws at all?
Would that really be an effective use of all that extra funding?
>I'm becoming a broken record but: why is "enforce the laws" a bizarre and radical position around here? Everyone's either "*this group* are allowed to commit crimes" or "throw *this group* in jail, crimes or not".
You're attacking a strawman. My point is simply that we live in a real world, with real constraints. And that is pretty much Scott's point, isn't it? That any proposed solution must be practical and effective?
I am very skeptical that a homeless person arrested for littering is going to have an attorney successfully make the case that other, non-homeless people, have been getting away with the crime of littering. I mean yes if that homeless guy is secretly a millionaire with lots of resources for a great defense attorney, sure. Or if the police write an Official Memo that says We Are Only Arresting The Homeless For Littering, and then post it online. But failing that, a homeless guy arrested for littering is just that, and the burden of proof for disproportionate impact is pretty unrealistic. How exactly do you think they'd make that argument in court?
99% of the time they'd accept a plea deal, there wouldn't be a trial, and that would be that
None of this is particularly on point, because we are talking about a local policy to selectively enforce litter laws.
>the burden of proof for disproportionate impact is pretty unrealistic
Disproportionate impact is something to prove when you are claiming violation of civil rights acts. This is different.
>How exactly do you think they'd make that argument in court?
The way these people did, I suppose:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10830722640725547793&q=homeless+%22selective+enforcement%22&hl=en&as_sdt=6,33#[4]
Police discretion exists. I haven't heard of that being an Equal Protection violation.
??? The Supreme Court first held that selective enforcement can be an Equal Protection violation 140 years ago. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/118us356
That's the Board of Supervisors, not police. The Supreme Court has also ruled that the police have no legal obligation to prevent any crimes.
You know, instead of doubling down on your prior, if you had simply taken the new information I provided and googled "selective enforcement" and "equal protection," you would have found voluminous evidence that selective enforcement by the police can indeed be an Equal Protection violation.
>The Supreme Court has also ruled that the police have no legal obligation to prevent any crimes.
What does that have to do with anything?
Police act with discretion. If they were not allowed to use their discretion and were legally required to respond to all calls, you could sue them for failing to respond. A woman tried that after her ex-husband violated a restraining order, kidnapped their children, and killed them. She lost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales
SCOTUS just approved anti-homeless laws. Can you cite SCOTUS decisions showing they would regard selectively enforcing laws against the homeless as unconstitutional?
>Police act with discretion. If they were not allowed to use their discretion
This is a complete strawman. Just because government officials have discretion does not mean that they have carte blanche. "Abuse of discretion" is a thing.
>A woman tried that after her ex-husband violated a restraining order, kidnapped their children, and killed them
The issue in that case is whether the police failure to act was a due process violation. It was not a case about selective enforcement, nor about Equal Protection. Moreover, the seminal case on that issue is actually DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept of Social Services, the key quote from which is:
>The [Due Process]Clause is phrased as a limitation on the State's power to act, not as a guarantee of certain minimal levels of safety and security; while it forbids the State itself to deprive individuals of life, liberty, and property without due process of law, its language cannot fairly be read to impose an affirmative obligation on the State to ensure that those interests do not come to harm through other means."
An arrest of a homeless person is not a failure to act. That whole series of cases is irrelevant to the issue of selective enforcement.
As for the Grant's Pass case, that merely held that anti-sleeping ordinances do not violate the Eighth Amendment. It has nothing to do with selective enforcement.
Finally, your original comment was that you have never heard of the exercise of police discretion being an Equal Protection violation. Well, now you have. And that should be obvious: do you think that if the police only enforced littering laws against black people, that would not be an Equal Protection violation? Again, I would encourage you to take 10 seconds and Google that.
I live safely a very long way from San Francisco, so all of this is hearsay, but smart American conservatives tell me the reason crime is so poorly enforced is because people like George Soros are funding district attorneys who have no interest in enforcing laws (the rationale is roughly: it's racist to enforce laws because doing so disproportionately impacts Black people. This might be what they really believe, or maybe George Soros is just a mega-villain who wants to watch the world burn - Elon Musk certainly thinks so and said this on a podcast once.)
Police can arrest people for committing crimes, but if the city immediately releases them without bail, the police rapidly become jaded. Rinse and repeat, and you end up with essentially no penalty for low level crimes. And criminals know this, so their propensity to commit them goes way up.
Then the fact that crime is not being reported gets exploited by the media, who argue that crime statistics show that crime is falling and any reports to the contrary are just those mean Republicans making up misinformation again.
Scott is very charitable and models other people as operating basically on "mistake theory," where we all want this homeless criminal problem to get better, we just have to figure out the right set of solutions. But maybe a dose of "conflict theory" is needed. Not everyone out there is as nice as Scott.
From these comments it seems like almost *no one* wants to actually enforce laws. They either want to just throw the homeless in jail, no laws or due process necessary, or they want actual crimes to be legal.
Supposedly these are *opposite* positions. To me they look functionally identical: "fuck the idea of being governed by actual laws! Just let me hurt the people I hate!"
Here's my proposal:
1. Homeless people who aren't hurting or harassing anyone have, God forbid, actual rights.
2. Homeless people who harass or vandalise or threaten or assault get arrested and convicted and sent to jail.
3. District attorneys who deliberately don't enforce the laws get tried for treason.
Can anyone tell me *anything* that is wrong with this policy?
"They either want to just throw the homeless in jail, no laws or due process necessary"
No, and this is what I am arguing over with you. I don't want it to be "Aha, you lost your accommodation because the landlord evicted you, straight to jail with you, you vagrant!"
But equally I don't want it to be like that case, which on the face of it is funny, but the details most certainly are not:
https://hoodline.com/2024/07/video-of-nudists-stopping-blowtorch-attack-on-tourist-in-castro-becomes-widespread-in-san-francisco/
"The attacker, identified by police as 38-year-old Zero Triball, is known for his erratic behavior in the Castro, reported by the USA Today. The Standard noted that Triball has a record of causing disturbances, having previously entered the Cliffs Variety store and aggressively confronted employees, and similarly threatening the Castro Country Club, according to their respective managers. Residents and business owners in the area are familiar with his tumultuous presence.
Days after the incident, Chris Watts took to social media to seek further information on an individual who threatened the victim with the blowtorch and vandalized his store."
This guy had a history of such behaviour, and it escalated until he was threatening an ordinary person on the street with a blowtorch. I think scooping him up after the first sixty or so reports of being a "tumultuous person" would *not* be "throwing the homeless in jail, no laws or due process necessary". Put him in a psychiatric ward under involuntary commitment, then if/when he gets let out after "we can't keep him more than X number of days", go with the process of charging him with crimes. "But it'll cost 50 grand to put him in jail for 90 days!" Yes, and? Is it better to let him go until he burns the face off someone and then you have to spend that money putting him in jail (or the mental hospital), plus now you have a victim scarred for life?
The people who should be dealing with that *are* the cops, not a gay nudist in the Castro (more power to the guy, while I may disagree with his lifestyle choices, I cannot deny and must indeed praise his sense of civic responsibility).
1. You *still* haven't answered my direct question on the Open Thread, which I last rephrased to be almost literally "A or not-A?", covering the entire possibility space.
Your persistent refusal to precisely state your *actual proposed law* (not just give examples of the sort of thing you want, or of the sort of thing you don't want, but actually spell it out explicitly with logical rigour) makes your claim here that I'm misrepresenting you hard to take seriously. When I ask you four distinct times "does there or does there not need to be actual proof of illegal activity for someone to be locked up?" and you *never* say "there does" or "there does not" but just respond every time with sarcasm and insults...I don't know what you expect me to conclude. It certainly doesn't look like you're engaging in good faith.
2. Now you're being more civil, and you say
"Put him in a psychiatric ward under involuntary commitment, then if/when he gets let out after "we can't keep him more than X number of days", go with the process of charging him with crimes"
right after saying
"I think scooping him up after the first sixty or so reports of being a "tumultuous person" would *not* be "throwing the homeless in jail, no laws or due process necessary".
You literally said you would involuntarily confine him *before* charging him with any crimes or misdemeanors at all! And *right next to that* you said this wouldn't be rejecting due process!
There's no point in asking again if you would require some kind of proof at the start, because it's clear you're never going to directly answer this question for some reason. I can only speculate that you have a different meaning of due process to the standard one, or something?
As I have said many times, I would absolutely lock up the guy for "causing disturbances" *provided he has been proven to have actually caused disturbances*! This should be very easy in most cases. It *seems like* you don't agree, and think mere "vibes" or vague suspicians should be enough, but fpr some reaaon won't come out and just say that.
I don't think there is any way to answer your question, because you never say what *your* solution is, and you only accept "yes, ascend, you are completely correct" as an answer.
I told you at last in the other Open Thread "yeah, okay, let's do it! let's make homelessness a crime!"
If that's not clear enough for you, nothing I can possibly say would be either.
"As I have said many times, I would absolutely lock up the guy for "causing disturbances" *provided he has been proven to have actually caused disturbances*!"
How do I prove the guy caused disturbances? "He came into my shop and kicked over the displays and threatened to stab a customer" "Ah sorry, not good enough, that's just your word. We have to go to court to have a trial over 'was this a disturbance' and 'did it even happen at all'".
That's how Mr. Triball there got his reputation, and why nothing was done - nobody reported it because they knew the cops wouldn't bother, the cops won't bother because they know the DA won't prosecute, the DA won't prosecute because too expensive and too much court time to send the guy to jail for 90 days and that's even *if* the judge will sentence him, the judge won't sentence him because there are a lot of bleeding-hearts on the bench who give "second chances" to people up before them for the 100th time for the same offence.
And so Mr. Triball goes on his way until he tries to burn a guy's face off with a blowtorch. But you can be happy, ascend, that he was not arrested for no reason before it ever got to that point, because nobody "proved" he was causing disturbances!
I'll let anybody read the thread https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-338/comment/62088400 and judge whether you ever directly answered my question in a clear and non-sarcastic way.
Here's what I last said:
"To make as clear as I possibly can what I'm asking for: can you endorse one of the following two statements: ? (1) nobody can be deprived of their liberty without proof that they've actually done something illegal (including minor things like threats or vandalism) (2) some people do not have this right, and *can* be deprived of their liberty with not a shred of evidence they've done anything harmful at all, beyond "vibes"."
You didn't answer, and now you say ""and you only accept "yes, ascend, you are completely correct" as an answer."" Actually, I PROMISE you I would accept either "1" or"2" as an absolutely and perfectly satisfactory answer. Just tell me 1 or 2 and I'll know what your position is.
As it is I *still* don't know which one is your position, because you only ever "answer" indirectly by talking vaguely about what you *don't* want, and never with any precision.
And it's just extremely rude to be explicitly asked "is it A or not-A" and respond "there's nothing I can possibly say to satisfy you".
I'll try one last time. My question is: is it "1" or "2" or neither?
And what if I reject your binary, as some others do when it comes to gender?
Okay, you have a perfect right to throw this open to the court of public opinion, so long as you are aware that I don't care if people agree with me, agree with you, or want to institute the scheme the greys from Delta Omicron told them about the last time they were taken away in the flying saucer.
My choice, should I accept it, is:
"(1) nobody can be deprived of their liberty without proof that they've actually done something illegal (including minor things like threats or vandalism)
(2) some people do not have this right, and *can* be deprived of their liberty with not a shred of evidence they've done anything harmful at all, beyond "vibes"."
Of course I agree with (1), but that's not what we're really arguing over here, is it? I think most everybody, except maybe extreme Libertarians and extreme Anarchists, agrees with option (1).
I reject the framing of option (2). I do not believe anything should be done on "vibes", but I also believe "everyone in the neighbourhood knows about Jimmy-Joe, that's why parents warn their teenage daughters not to be alone with him" is *not* vibes (a case from my own youth, and one borne out the day Jimmy-Joe met me on the street alone and tried exactly what I'd been warned he would try; luckily, in those days, I was still fit and active enough to be able to run away).
Jimmy-Joe (not his real name) was never arrested, that I know of, but his reputation was not unearned, even though it was all only "vibes" as you would have it. Should Jimmy-Joe have been arrested? Well, that's a prickly question. I don't know the law well enough to say if he could have been, but it might have been possible. The other option was leave him alone to continue being a pest, until somebody or a group of somebodies beat the crap out of him - and I don't think you advocate for violent assault as a solution, either.
Your major fear seems to be "someone being deprived of their liberty with not a shred of evidence they've done anything harmful at all" and you don't or won't engage with "There's plenty of evidence Zero Triball was in fact doing harmful stuff long before he tried burning a guy with a blow torch".
So since option (2) seems to be the real bone of contention here, I say that I do not accept it as framed, but do accept that there are limits on liberty, that there are very few absolute rights, and that liberty may be legitimately constrained even in cases where there is not a trial at law with a conviction and sentence handed down. *After* being constrained, there should indeed be a process to investigate the matter, the state of mind of the person locked up, if they are a danger, what is being done to treat them, and if a criminal trial is needed after all.
You seem to be on the wavelength of "people used to be locked up for being gay! I don't want to go back to that! And that's what you are proposing in kind!"
I don't want people locked up for being gay (our friend the gay nudist in the Castro did valuable public service, after all). I do want people locked up - be that in a psychiatric ward until assessed - if they've got a record of being threatening, violent, and trouble-making. If we get trials on the basis of "this guy has committed a public order offence, let's run him in and start the legal process", then that is the way to go. Unhappily, it seems to be that a lot of the problems stem from "this guy has committed a public order offence, but it's not serious enough to warrant bringing him in since the DA won't prosecute/the judge will just give him a suspended sentence" and so nothing is done until it escalates to the point of "yeah this is serious enough to do something".
I think there must be a step at which intervention is possible, before it gets to "yeah now that he's tried to burn a guy's face off, now we can arrest him".
And everything you're talking about--judges being lenient, DAs not prosecuting, cops not bothering--has NOTHING TO DO with whether there is proof of the offence or not!
Those cops, DAs and judges who delberately don't act in the face of evidence should be hanged for treason, I've said this over and over. If there's proof of the offence, the guy should be in jail, and everyone who stops that happening is evil.
All I'm saying is that the proof itself is not negotiable. You can't be locked up on mere vibes.
What's so difficult about this?
"What's so difficult about this?"
What do you mean by, and would accept as, proof?
You accuse me of not being clear, but you yourself are not clear on that. What is this proof you want? To what standard? How is it achieved, obtained, or found?
- Shop owner says Crazy Joe hassled his staff. Will you accept the word alone? Do you want CCTV footage? Seventeen sworn and notarised depositions from reputable citizens, but not the shop staff, they might be biased? The Archangel Gabriel to come down from heaven?
I'm not joking here - what is the standard of proof? Tell me that, and we may (or may not) get out of this tangle.
>Those cops, DAs and judges who delberately don't act in the face of evidence should be hanged for treason, I've said this over and over.
Umm, maybe license revocation / disbarment / impeachment? Hanging seems like a bit of an overkill to me, since the lesser measures would suffice to replace them in office.
You are not going to get a good faith, detail oriented response from Deiseach. Trying to do so is impossible (no doubt she's going to post a sarcastic response here comparing me to <insert bad people here>).
If you are looking for high quality responses, do not engage. If you think that it's important to understand your interlocutor's stance before dismissing them, I think it's also important to note that this behavior has gone on for more than a decade, past at least two bans from Scott himself and that she still posts because she was reinstated due to commenter outcry; they missed the sarcasm and lack of good faith.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/14/spur-of-the-comment/
Thanks.
She does seem to have finally answered my question more-or-less in this thread, and I speculated on some reasons she may have an aversion to answering hypotheticals (an aversion that I find very annoying but that is *extremely* common among people in debates).
I did explain in the other thread why I thought her endless sarcasm was highly incivil. I won't make any judgement on other events, but I'll say that although I've disagreed with her a number of times this is the first time I've had such an issue.
Perhaps an explicit norm that continued sarcasm is not apprpriate once someone is clearly engaging in good faith would be helpful. People often object to my tone or language in ways I find surprising, and it's not always intentionally aggressive. Which is why explicit norms can help.
And sometimes aggressive language is entirely necessary with some bad-faith people. But I reiterate that the amount of mocking sarcasm in that linked thread was inexcusable.
I like Deiseach. She is funny and an excellent writer.
Sure. 1 and 2 seem fine. 3 has two problems.
First, in the American system, prosecutors have broad authority to choose what to prosecute. Your proposal would be a fundamental change in how the legal system works, and I for one can't even pretend to think of all the effects it could have.
Second, the Constitution specifically defines treason, almost certainly to prevent this sort of escalation in rhetoric. (But that's easy to fix, if you just drop the magic word and treat it like an ordinary crime.)
You're operating in good faith here. Not everyone is. Bad faith abounds on the left and right of this issue. Commenters have mentioned the left bad faithers already. The ones who want to abolish the police and maybe the government so that "spontaneous order" will flourish. These people will nitpick any plan to death to support their hidden agenda of anarchism. But let us not forget the RIGHT bad faithers. The ones who hide behind the mantle of public safety but actually want to socially engineer a Stepford Wives style urban theme park. It's not enough to enforce the law because they fundamentally just Don't Want These People Here. Even if the homeless were totally law abiding in every way, the very sight and smell of homeless people engenders all kinds of negative feelings. They want the homeless Gone.
The last SF DA, Chesa Boudin, was accused of being like that, I think accurately (though a friend who follows the legal system better than I do says the accusations were somewhat exaggerated).
Unhappy residents led a recall campaign against Boudin, which succeeded. One of the leaders of the recall campaign was appointed DA in his stead. The new DA whose whole campaign was "I won't be soft on crime like that last guy" has been in charge for two years now. I don't know if that's long enough to expect to see results, but my impression is that nobody is too impressed.
Would you say so? I also don't follow too closely but my sense is that there are large improvements in catalytic converter theft and in scaled/professional shoplifting (see the arrests of the $x0,000 Stonestown Shoplifter, etc)
Interesting. Perhaps part of the problem that lawmakers have been changing what gets defined as a crime? I understand theft up to a certain value (a few hundred dollars) is no longer a prosecutable offence.
Or maybe it's a cultural thing? My impression is that Californians are very progressive and think social ills should be addressed be dealing with social factors, not with the police. Which is fine as far as it goes, but as Thomas Sowell said "the kind of people who talk about the "root causes" of crime never include leniency."
We had a similar City Prosecutor, and they were voted out a few years back, but change is slow. My guess is that there's a multi-year process of swamp-draining necessary, replacing people who quietly keep doing things the old way. If the city consistently elects people who enforce the law, maybe it'll change after a while?
There's also a tremendous backlog, and I think the replacement is simply writing off a lot of the older low-priority cases, in order to be able to prosecute crimes in a timely manner.
I think the "Soros" thing is a right-wing conspiracy theory, similar to left-wing versions starring Peter Thiel or the Koch brothers. He almost certainly funds stuff, but in the big picture I doubt that he's doing more than tossing matches into a bonfire. Maybe think of him as an "effective leftist", kinda? Fingers in a lot of pies, funding stuff that seems likely to advance his agenda, etc.
The prosecutorial abdication is a real thing, but I don't think that they're cackling villains. I think they're either idealists, or are riding an elephant and tell themselves that they always wanted to go in whatever direction the elephant ends up going. It's the tactic of closing off bad solutions until the only way left is the good solution. I think the communists have a good name for it, something like exacerbating the contradictions?
It's also apparently not simply a matter of the elected prosecutors. We kicked ours out, a few years back, but change is slow. Maybe cities are hard to steer, or the departments are filled with people engaging in passive resistance?
“Exacerbating the contradictions” sure sounds cacklingly evil - make capitalist society unliveable to hasten the socialist revolution. (I hope this isn’t the “good solution” you’re referring to!)
I can accept that some of these people don’t see themselves as evil, but One True Path ideologues are very dangerous. Ayatollah Khomeini probably also sees himself as the good guy, or at least someone who does what he has to do.
But to those of us who don’t want to live under socialism in the West, or don’t want Death to Israel and America, we round off to “evil” those who will stop at nothing to achieve goals that we hate.
Ah, I was writing from their direction, so "good" is relative to them. I doubt I'd agree with whatever they want; it's probably some form of warmed-over communism. More later.
> It's also apparently not simply a matter of the elected prosecutors. We kicked ours out, a few years back, but change is slow. Maybe cities are hard to steer, or the departments are filled with people engaging in passive resistance?
The impossibility of firing government employees is a big problem here.
"if we could do X this well, we would have already done it" is fundamentally flawed argument. No we wouldn't. Not necessary. I don't know much about social issues, but I know my trade (software development) and I doubt the situation is really different in any other area. There's always a ton of things to improve that weren't done yet, mainly because of one/few of the following:
- no one thought about it
- someone thought about it but didn't have time/resources to implement
- someone thought about it, had resources but wasn't the responsible person for that area and either didn't want to overstep or feared missing some important context not obvious from the outside.
And in general nothing ever gets done until it is. "If sun was in the center of solar system someone would've already noticed it" was probably an obvious thing to think until Brahe/Kepler/Copernicus.
You can't just assume something already in optimal state unless there's a formal proof that no more improvements are possible.
In software a new company can start up, do what nobody else is doing, and make a lot of money. Politics doesn't work the same way.
That only reinforces my argument, that we can assume something is already in an optimal state ( "we would have already done it" ) even less than in software.
The argument isn't some panglossian "best of all possible worlds" take. It's that certain hypothetically-desirable policies predictably will never get implemented because there are sufficiently power or people or interest groups who don't want them to be implemented, and they'll successfully block them.
This way of interpreting is more understandable, but I don't think it survives the Hanlon's razor. In my estimation p(malice) << p(stupidity | lack of resources | will to implement).
In politics, the real problem are voters https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/the-real-problemhtml Just as the consumers are the problem with media https://www.slowboring.com/p/media-negativity
I woukd like you, and some of your commenters, to go on YouTube and watch a documentary from the 1960s called Suffer the Little Children. It is ostensibly about the tragedy of state institutions being underfunded. In reality it is video footage of emaciated adults, always called "children", sometimes chained, surrounded by filth
... the *natural first reaction I had* was "that looks like a concentration camp." I do not think our government should be running such places and putting people there for life without due process. It is good that we don't do it any more.
Looking it up, it's the Pennhurst State School and Hospital:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennhurst_State_School_and_Hospital
Like many state institutions, it started out as a project to help those in need who were being shuttled into insane asylums or other unsuitable places:
"In 1903, the Pennsylvania Legislature authorized the creation of the Eastern State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic and a commission was organized to take into consideration the number and status of the feeble-minded and epileptic persons in the state and determine a placement for construction to care for these residents. This commission discovered 1,146 feeble-minded persons in insane hospitals and 2,627 in almshouses, county-care hospitals, reformatories, and prisons, who were in immediate need of specialized institutional care."
And again, like many state institutions, it rapidly became underfunded and overcrowded, with pressure on it to take in those for whom there were no other options:
"On November 23, 1908, "Patient number 1" was admitted to the hospital. Within four years of operation, Pennhurst was overcrowded and under pressure to admit immigrants, orphans, and criminals."
Our friends the eugenicists couldn't resist meddling:
"In 1913, the legislature appointed a Commission for the Care of the Feeble-Minded which stated that disabled people were unfit for citizenship and posed a menace to the peace, and thus recommended a program of custodial care. Furthermore, the Commission desired to prevent the intermixing of the genes of those imprisoned with the general population. In the Biennial Report to the Legislature submitted by the Board of Trustees, Pennhurst's Chief Physician quoted Henry H. Goddard, a leading eugenicist, as follows:
Every feeble-minded person is a potential criminal. The general public, although more convinced today than ever before that it is a good thing to segregate the idiot or the distinct imbecile, they have not as yet been convinced as to the proper treatment of the defective delinquent, which is the brighter and more dangerous individual."
So decades of neglect, lack of funding, and using it as a dumping ground ended up with the situation in the documentary.
This is absolutely the danger of plans about involuntary commitment and new institutions,and why we have to be on guard that the same does not ever happen again. But right now we have the worst of all worlds; we don't have the capacity to take people in to what institutions exist, the prisons are by default ending up as dumping grounds for those who should not be in them, and mentally ill and incapable people are living on the streets, at peril to themselves, and a danger to others (like the man who got shot outside the RNC).
I think the issue is that many people have heard the horror of mental asylums, but that people automatically down-weight it in importance because they don't know how representative it is (even if they aren't thinking in quite those terms). It is in the background. They think 'oh we can do better this time' or 'sure, there was very bad outcomes, but we know how to fix it and so we can get closer to the median'.
Which is admittedly a decent objection because most people's only knowledge of asylums is from a hearing a few horror stories; it'd be good for the discussion if there was a balanced post talking about the varying levels of extremes that mental asylums held, what the percentage of those were, and reasons as to why. (Ex: some mental asylum terribleness is obviously obviated because better medication, and just deciding that isn't something we want to do. Others are because of poor funding, not enough employees per person, poor observation, etc.)
>> Second, make a law against camping on the street. Have good social services so that everyone has an option other than camping on the street, then arrest people who don’t use the social services. If people repeatedly violate the terms of the social services, send them to jail or a locked institution.
> I think this is also basically a good idea, but it’s currently tied up in the “have good social services” stage, which - I can’t say this enough - repeating “BE TOUGH BE TOUGH BE TOUGH” won’t help with.
This really seems to miss the point. You don't need good social services, or any social services. Everyone has an option other than camping on the street right now. Let them figure it out.
Repeating "BE TOUGH BE TOUGH BE TOUGH" is exactly the solution this problem calls for. Get over the idea that you need to provide an official alternative. It isn't as good as the unofficial ones that already exist. The goal is to make camping on the street worse than those existing alternatives, not to implement new ones that are better than camping on the street.
(I might also note that your focus on mentally ill homeless is weird. Most homeless-originated problems aren't coming from the mentally ill homeless. They're coming from mentally normal homeless.)
"Everyone has an option other than camping on the street right now."
They do? What is it?
Also, I'm interested in your claim that most problems come from mentally normal homeless. My impression is that wasn't true - there are more of them, but aside from some annoying begging they mostly leave everyone else alone. Do you have a source for this?
> They do? What is it?
Whatever they choose to do. I'd like to think you know better than to believe it would be identical for everyone, or that I am familiar with the details of the lives of everyone in the US.
What would you do, if everything you owned were taken away, and you were legally prohibited from using the internet? Do you think you'd camp on the street?
> Also, I'm interested in your claim that most problems come from mentally normal homeless. My impression is that wasn't true - there are more of them, but aside from some annoying begging they mostly leave everyone else alone. Do you have a source for this?
I can offer you the personal experience of dealing with (1) a clearly psychotic woman who stood outside my home late at night and wanted to talk about various things that made sense only to her, and had to be removed by the police, versus (2) a normal young man who systematically entered homes in the neighborhood during the day and stole things from them. They were both known to the police as local homeless. Would you believe the man didn't bother to show up for his first court date? Some people might have considered a homeless career criminal to be a flight risk, but California is more enlightened than that.
Random stabbings make the news, and are plausibly concentrated among the mentally ill, but what people object to about nearby homeless encampments is the garbage, theft, and rape (...and arson, I guess), which aren't.
> What would you do, if everything you owned were taken away, and you were legally prohibited from using the internet? Do you think you'd camp on the street?
Probably. I mean, *I specifically* might prevail on some close friend or loving relative, but that's assuming I have trustworthy friends and loving relatives, who are willing to put up with me indefinitely and won't emotionally abuse me for the duration; which not everyone does. I don't have the data to hand but there are, I hear, a lot of former foster kids on the streets, not because they did worse than those with actual families, but because the latter have parental couches to crash on, and the foster kids just didn't.
> What would you do, if everything you owned were taken away, and you were legally prohibited from using the internet? Do you think you'd camp on the street?
Yes? What else would I do?
Ok, I happen to have friends and family with money who'd let me live with them. But if I didn't, and didn't have easily marketable skills either, and there were no shelters with space, then what better option would I have?
Well, you're the second person (of two) to respond "no, I'd do something different, but it's important to believe that I wouldn't".
I've complained before that I used to get a lot of remarks saying that I was arrogant because of my tendency to assume that, if I knew something, anyone I was talking to would also know it.
And how I could never see why my assumption that I was the least knowledgeable person in the world on any topic qualified as "arrogance".
In that spirit, where do you get the arrogance to assume that, if you can't imagine what someone in a difficult situation would do, that can only mean that there's nothing they can do, and you need to provide them with an option other than giving up and dying?
What makes you think that central planning is a better solution to the problem of "where do the homeless go if we kick them out of the neighborhood encampment?" than it is to... any other problem?
The failure of communism wasn't a secret and the mechanisms are well known. And several people besides me have made the point elsewhere in the thread:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-mentally/comment/62474010 (three days before your comment)
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-mentally/comment/62451973 (four days before your comment)
People will automatically select the best option available to them, and it will always be something that you didn't think of. Delaying the solution until you can imagine something that you'd like better is a pure downward spiral; you're preventing people from improving their circumstances until you can finally come in and make them even worse than they already were.
Why?
"Better prenatal testing decreased Down’s syndrome rates"
That's a nice euphemism for "Society has committed a partial and ongoing genocide of people with Down's syndrome."
And everyone is better off because of it.
I don't think the people with Down's syndrome that were killed are better off.
So?
Because if society can tolerate a partial and ongoing genocide for these types, can't they add to the list others who they would also tolerate a partial and ongoing genocide for?
Yes, anyone as politically powerless as a collection of unorganized, unthinking, insensible blastocysts is vulnerable to this. Cows have been subject to a partial and ongoing genocide since before they were domesticated.
Though in the case of cows, it's only helped them.
So what?
That ship has sailed. Abortion is legal everywhere, and it's not going anywhere. Once you abide that, killing the Downs is just a matter of framing the argument 'til the progressives agree.
I'm just wondering what the next group will be. Straight white men seem pretty far over on the "it's OK to abuse" spectrum, so probably them.
Ironically (?), the Jews are also starting to get into the "OK to abuse" area as well. The more things change...
Wow. You're a literal sociopath. I can't believe I made the mistake of engaging with you rationally, like you were a human being with something resembling a conscience.
I take it all back. I fully support involuntary committment asylums specifically designed for people like you. Hopefully with maximal possible suffering inflicted.
I used to think Hell was an inhumane idea, but I've realised it's entirely appropriate for the kind of vicious animal that is actially capable of responding to "innocent people are being killed" with "so?"
It's a majority position in the US and pretty much everywhere else. You must have a lot of trouble getting through the day.
Uh, no, the majority position is some sort of post-hoc "it's the most humane thing to do" grasping-at-straws justification, or some kind of waffling "difficult decision, not the business of the state" and so on.
A cold-blooded "so?" at the killing of babies is the norm only among pro-choice activists, and holding yourself to that group's moral bar (one roughly equivalent to that of Hitler's inner circle) says everything about you there is to say.
People with Down's snydrome are overwhelmingly incapable of living on their own. Past societies would largely just abandon them, except a tiny minority of rich families that might be able & willing to take care of a lifelong dependent. Especially traditional tribal societies simply lacked this capacity.
Our society instead takes care of them and gives them a life that is better than the life of most humans that have ever lived. It gives parents the information and the options to choose whether they are capable of taking on this lifelong responsibility, and it accepts whatever decision they make, even if it causes great costs to society at large in the process. You really have to admit society is being incredibly generous to people with Down's syndrome.
I do not, in fact, need to admit that Society is being incredibly generous to people with Down Syndrome when it's socially acceptable to kill them before they are even born.
I'm curious, are you at least against abortion in general, or do you only think abortion is bad if it's about seriously disabled people? If alcoholic woman usually want to abort their fetus, is that fine or do we have to force her to carry the child to term because anything else would be a genocide against people with fetal alcohol syndrome? If we tell people to have children earlier bc the chance for a child to have DS is absolutely tiny before 30, is that genocide against people with DS as well?
DS is almost entirely an artefact of the modern high age of child rearing coupled with modern healthcare; There is no "natural" population of people with DS. You're claiming that the only society in which people with DS have ever existed in noticeable numbers and live to adult age is "engaged in an ongoing genocide" against them.
Yes, I am against abortion in general.
That's at least consistent, then, even if I may disagree. But again, what about the second question? In a theoretic world in which abortion is illegal but people have the great majority of kids around 20-25, DS would be de facto non-existent. Would that be fine for you because it does not involve abortion?
Yes.
I don't understand how this is supposed to be some kind of gotcha. Like any other disability, if Down's syndrome could be prevented, that would be great. But killing disabled people is not the same as preventing the disability!
I know one case of a woman whose first child has Down's Syndrome but whose second child is 'normal'. There is no blanket "if you get pregnant at this age, your children will all be retards" measure.
I didn't claim it's guaranteed after a certain age, it's just that the chance for a child to get DS increases exponentially after 30.
I suppose "now we kill them before they're born" *does* count as "decreasing rates" but how would that go for other diseases/illnesses?
"We have decreased the rate of myopia in 5-10 year old children! By aborting all those who have the genes for poor eyesight! Better prenatal testing means better lives for everyone!"
Life expectancy with Down Syndrome was less than ten years around 1950. And improved medicine allows countless severely disabled children to survive into adulthood. Assume the problem is much worse now than it was back then.
Improved medicine cuts down on the number of severely disabled children being born/birth accidents, even without abortion in the mix. It can also make more survive where they wouldn't have, but adding abortion into the mix, I think the upshot is that the number of severely disabled children is much lower than it was then. It's not just concealed by the children having been moved to home care or private institutions from now-closed public ones.
You're the second person named "Kevin" I've seen with such a view.
Do you remember being an embryo? I extend human rights to all conscious humans, which requires they at least be born first.
That seems like an odd place to draw the "consciousness" line. I would expect one to draw it either earlier on in pregnancy or later in brain development. What does being born have to do with becoming conscious?
I'm drawing it with a lot of margin for error (erring on the side of don't-kill-a-conscious-person). I don't remember being 0, but I don't remember being 1 or 2, either.
And you independently came to the conclusion, using your "consciousness" approach, that just so happens to be the exact same moment you're allowed to kill the baby as the typical pro-choice activist. Got it.
Many pro-choice activists I've listened to choose "viable to live outside the body". I could live with that, too, instead of birth. Both are good Schelling Points. Actually, yeah, I'd pick the "viable" one (because otherwise you'd really be killing a baby, rather than not allowing a baby to come to exist).
But, I've just told you that I intuitively suspect the actual cutoff point is probably later, and you want me to reconsider my position?? Whose side are you on!? (Note: I'm tongue-in-cheek here, I really do want err far on the side of not killing a conscious being so I would certainly never support post-birth murder).
Also, how do you resolve the "you're committing dozens of murders by not having 100% of the children you could possibly be having" challenge to your ethical system? Accept the horrible conclusion? Argue that a non-conscious zygote is totally-not-arbitrarily deserving of rights that an egg and sperm alone don't deserve?
"Also, how do you resolve the "you're committing dozens of murders by not having 100% of the children you could possibly be having" challenge to your ethical system? Accept the horrible conclusion? Argue that a non-conscious zygote is totally-not-arbitrarily deserving of rights that an egg and sperm alone don't deserve?"
I don't know about Kevin M., but I resolve it by saying "That is so fucking stupid I'm not going to dignify it with a reply, and the mere fact you asked has me wondering if perhaps your mother should have had one of those prenatal tests where the doctor urged her to schedule a termination".
"Many pro-choice activists I've listened to choose "viable to live outside the body"."
No, in my experience, most pro-choice activists choose "whatever benefits me" and "I demand the right to do whatever the fuck I want". And if told they're killing a baby, do *not* respond with "it's not a baby at this stage" but with "it doesn't matter, my bodily autonomy isn't up for debate". They are literally among the most selfish, the most sadistic, and the most evil people I've ever seen speak.
Maybe you encounter better ones, who possess something resembling a conscience. Most of the pro-choicers on this blog are indeed the latter.
But in their own spaces, the majority are utterly, proudly indifferent to whether they're killing a child, and openly care only about "my rights". Just remembering the way they talk makes me feel sick.
In light of that reality--in light of the real reason most of them support abortion, that many of them are shamelessly honest about--I'm going to treat claims about consciousness and viability as post-hoc rationalisations by the less honest remainder.
"I really do want err far on the side of not killing a conscious being"
Hey, you know how we could do that? Not allow *any* killing of human beings for reasons like "I just don't want a child, but I do want to have a lot of sex".
For point 1, remember that the US has roughly ~10x the amount of serious crime, but only 30% more police than many european countries. The US is *dramatically* underpoliced by most reasonable standards. It's just not realistic to expect them to enforce the kind of low priority crimes that can be enforced in (northwestern) europe. Hell, even europe itself is currently losing this capability under the pressure of increasing crime.
Housing affordability also impacts crime rates, a solution for that captures both issues. There is some overlap between factors driving chronic homelessness and crime.
First, a disclaimer. I'm too close to this issue to think very clearly; my last apartment building had two ex-homeless residents placed there by a housing program. The ones above me got high at all hours of the night and woke me up screaming, and collapsed my ceiling when they left their water on. The man down the hall filled his room with trash and made shooting threats to other residents while running up and down the halls while I locked my door and had to wonder if my tool cabinet would block a bullet coming through the wall. I have opinions, but they are colored by experience that might incline me to be too harsh. My gut reaction on this issue, and this one alone, is probably an undue draconianism--I don't think my neighbors belonged in a housing-first program, I think they belonged in jail.
RE plan II, criminalizing camping causes the problem that it's pretty much criminalizing homelessness itself, which violates some pretty basic intuitions about justice. But in general, it feels reasonable to find a specific law that allows us to differentiate between homelessness which is old-fashioned poor-guy-down-on-his-luck homelessness and homelessness-as-synechdoche-for-a-low-grade-criminal-lifestyle.
We don't want to criminalize homelessness, but unless you believe that criminal justice is punitive all the way down, you have to admit that part of the point of criminal justice is finding people whose previous tendencies to commit crimes imply that they are likely to commit further crimes--and removing these people from society for a reasonable period. It doesn't seem unreasonable to set decent standards of behaviour for homeless people, and suggest that the inability to follow these standards means that you probably won't be able to function in society as a whole.
What would be the downside to a law penalizing having a tent up after some arbitrary time in the morning on fair-weather days, say 7AM, with quickly ramping penalties for each offense? I've spent a lot of time backpacking: it's no great hardship for a person sound-of-mind to pack up a tent in the morning. If you are unable to maintain that kind of schedule, a few violations will put you within the reach of a criminal law system, which can then mandate oversight/incarceration/mental-health-care, etc.
I'm pretty far left, and I want an aggressive, semi-paternalist approach to solving the homeless crisis with well funded state institutions, which clearly works in the real world (i.e. other Western nations). But I live in california, which isn't the real world. Barring an ideal solution--which would be something like "make california politics less like california politics"--the fact is that I would rather spend the night in LA county jail than skid row--and so would most rational agents. If I allow myself a slightly paternalist attitude towards this situation, it is better for the average resident of skid row (and society as a whole) that the average resident of skid row be in LA county jail than on skid row. I think this solution is Rawls-compatible. Now clearly the more work we can do to make prisons humane, less punitive, etc. the better, but the horror people have about placing psychotic drug addicts in prison is telling about how medieval our concept of criminal detention is.
I see ... doing something requires a change, and we're assuming change is impossible (more police, more housing, etc. are all impossible because of "dysfunction"), therefore we can't do anything! What a productive conversation.
Matt Yglesias likes to joke that his solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict starts with both sides adopting more reasonable stances that they can then negotiate over. I suppose the analogy here would be for San Francisco/California residents to adopt better political stances, like other states do.
Actually this is a great analogy to what we've been talking about.
Literally just let Israel win the war, and stop covering for the clearly insane side, and this all end tomorrow.
But, people for some reason are extremely sympathetic to fascist jihadist fanatics, just like how they're extremely sympathetic to violent antisocial junkies.
And somehow they are able to throw enough word salad at you (like Scott is doing) to convince you that, "No, you can't just easily end the problem" - they're not acting in good faith, but as a smokescreen.
Scott just tried to explain that his argument isn't that you "can't" do it, but you need to explain specifically how you're going to do it.
That's actually what I'm rejecting. *Why* do I need to explain it? *Who* do I need to explain it to?
To use the Israel example - why does Israel have to come up with a peace plan and a two-state solution and plan for rebuilding Gaza to end the war? Why can't they just unilaterally end it, and if it comes to it, force the Gazans out to just wander the Sinai for 40 years?
Because people like Scott ("the libs") will use their power to help the Gazans and ensure they can't do that. They'll first make you come up with a plan that takes into consideration the needs of the *checks notes* fanatical rapist jihadis - and it better be generous or it will be "inhumane" and they won't allow it.
So IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU DO - The issue is not one of coming up with a plan. They won't accept any plan (at least not one that will work). It's a Fugazi - you are accepting a dishonest frame.
The problem is not the jihadis or the junkies - we know how to deal with them. There are plenty of plans that have worked and will work. The problem is the libs. Until you deal with them and their love affair with the human refuse of the world you'll never get anywhere.
I agree
And this, right here, is why I moved out of SF, because this is too correct. The entire SF bay area is full of people who will kill any effective plan to improve... well... almost anything really.
The parents let the (psychotic overactive) children run the household. Good luck talking any sense into the parents until their house falls over and they have to come to you hat in hand.
There is no plan. Nixon was bluffing in 1968, Netanyahu was bluffing, and I have every reason to assume you are bluffing. Prove me wrong! "Put up or shut up."
Right, the real question is - how to develop better viable political stances. It seems entirely intractable, so what happens instead is blind blundering about, eventually setting in some sort of equilibrium, as it always has been.
For all there is to envy about someone like you, I keep stumbling on this basic roadblock:
> Many of you had strong feelings on this one. As usual, you were wrong.
How can you afford to routinely tell people that? It’s so basic it doesn’t belong in “What You Can’t Say” (<https://www.paulgraham.com/say.html>) territory, but if I thought I had something to say to the world worthy of a blog post, and straightforwardly claimed someone is wrong, it’d be easy to predict the following chain of events:
1) Someone confident in their ability to beat the crap out of me replies something along the lines of “C’m’ere tell me how wrong I am to my face”.
2a) If I don’t go there, I’ve just shown the world my true, cowardly colors. Everything I say is hollow and worthless, and I don’t deserve the oxygen I breathe. GAME OVER.
2b) If I go there—probably having to pay myself the full cost of the trip—they beat the crap out of me, perhaps killing me, perhaps not, but at any rate humiliating me for good. I’d better not cry to any authorities about the fight, even if they don’t just laugh me off, or else I’m a snitch and this option is as good as 2a. GAME OVER.
I dunno, I liked the strong opening there 😀
I like those openings, too, but I think at least part of their appeal is precisely that they are a luxury. Like so many other appealing things, they show you are the kind of person who can afford them, though in this case I don’t know how it works.
>If I don’t go there, I’ve just shown the world my true, cowardly colors. Everything I say is hollow and worthless, and I don’t deserve the oxygen I breathe.
You do understand of course that nobody actually believes that? Scott (or anybody else sane) would just ignore that dude and move on, banning him if he becomes too annoying, and everybody else sane would approve that.
I’m not so sure. My example is perhaps a bit exaggerated, but that’s the point: I don’t know the boundaries.
There’s an essentially universal agreement that those who offend others while conveniently hidden behind a screen deserve no sympathy, and should instead talk to their interlocutor’s faces and suffer the consequences. And, yes, the word they’re usually described with is _cowards_.
This used not to bother me much (though the word _coward_ did trouble me a bit, since it implies there’s some risk you _should_ be taking, but are not, and that this makes you contemptible; and it seemed to be used in a pretty inconsistent way), because I naïvely believed people had no “right” to be offended unless you went out of your way to use certain words, gestures or actions which had no purpose but to offend. Naturally, this means I didn’t actually know what offence was. The concept made little sense to me, and it was always a privilege _other people_ could wield to shut me up. I’d learned that when others said things I didn’t like, the first thing to do was to seriously ponder whether they might be right. And if I still thought they were not, the only recourse I knew was to try to debate with them to show them the truth. Yeah, this went about as disastrously as you can imagine. Physically trying to hit them when they hadn’t hit me first was clearly unacceptable, and if they were stronger than me, that was also a good recipe to get beaten to a pulp and for everyone to think I deserved it; and if they were weaker than me, that would be an even more unacceptable and cowardly act of abuse on my part.
Once you reach this stage, approximately a hundred percent (I love this expression stolen from Scott Alexander) of your future life lessons can be summed up as “No, other people are not absolute losers like you”. Unlike you, they don’t feel the need to be logically consistent. Unlike you, they feel entitled to take the law into their own hands, and to bend said law in their favor. Unlike you, they will use their strength to suppress speech they don’t like, with a perfectly clear conscience: this is what being offended means.
So it turns out that people can be offended by _anything_. Therefore, the only way to avoid being a coward who offends people behind a screen is to be willing to meet in person anyone who demands it, under whatever circumstances they see fit, and to suffer whatever consequences for your offending speech they see fit to inflict on you. I wish there were some way around this, but I don’t see it, and I feel cowardly looking for it.
"There’s an essentially universal agreement that those who offend others while conveniently hidden behind a screen deserve no sympathy, and should instead talk to their interlocutor’s faces and suffer the consequences." OK Boomer.
>There’s an essentially universal agreement that those who offend others while conveniently hidden behind a screen deserve no sympathy
No, there isn't, that's what bullies want you to think, and if you let them succeed your life will be miserable, so maybe it's time to reconsider?
There's a superficially similar but in fact different universal agreement that _assholes_ conveniently hidden behind a screen deserve no sympathy, and it would behoove everybody not to be an asshole, but once you pass that low bar anybody being offended by what you say is _their_ problem to deal with.
Fundamentally I think this debate is at the wrong level.
Most people's complaints about San Francisco (and other cities like NYC where I live) is basically, "I pay a lot to live here and I should not have to be hassled by dirty yelling maybe-dangerous crazy or high people on my daily commute. If I moved to a suburb all of this hassle would disappear; why can't my city do whatever affluent suburbs are doing?"
This is not about dealing with homelessness or mental illness. This is about "community policing" and private security; disruptive people should be kicked out of stores, trains, places where they're blocking the road, etc.
We already have a social technology for this: bouncers. Cities need way more people serving a "bouncer" function. I don't care if they're private security or cops, but ideally they would virtually never use violence, they'd just be imposing and give stern looks while telling troublemakers to move along. And you encourage a culture where average bystanders like you and me can go up to Naked Yelling Dude and say "hey, quit it or I'm calling Security." (Since noticing the problem I have tried to be a better bystander in my neighborhood, in the sense of "backing up the worried retail workers who are awkwardly trying to get an obviously crazy person to leave the cafe.") Most "encounters" of this sort don't have to end in an arrest. Mostly, even a *little* more firmness and initiative can be a substantial improvement.
Right now we have everybody just awkwardly avoiding Naked Yelling Dude because the only people trained to do so are cops and there aren't enough cops and calling 911 takes forever and nice liberals like me don't want to escalate such that Naked Yelling Dude might get *shot*. The obvious humane solution is to have way more people, maybe community police or security guards or social workers or regular people in a volunteer group, who take responsibility for enforcing the "rules" of civil behavior in spaces open to the public, and who only escalate to calling the "real" cops if things get seriously dangerous. Probably not bad if more non-cops get self-defense or firearms training as well.
What becomes of Naked Yelling Dude? To be honest, that's not my problem. I don't believe we should deprive him of his civil rights -- being super unpleasant is not a crime. But he *is* unpleasant, people are entitled to some boundaries on behavior in public spaces, and what most people are upset about is that none of those boundaries are being enforced. At this point I think the best way to *preserve* civil liberties is to do a better job at mundane, usually-nobody-goes-to-jail, Officer Friendly type policing, so that people stop clamoring to rebuild massive state institutions where people die at fifty and get all their teeth pulled out and are chained in pools of their own shit. (Seriously, read some memoirs, watch some documentaries, you do not have to be an unusually bleeding-heart liberal to recognize an atrocity once you learn the facts.)
Bouncers kick people out into the street, which is where the homeless already are. The comedian Ron White was kicked out of a bar, thus rendering him "drunk in public", for which he was arrested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neUaSTSKFZc If a homeless person is just being annoying rather than having committed a crime, what are these bouncers-of-the-streets supposed to do? Your answer seems to be "call the cops", but we already have cops, so I don't see what these bouncers add.
what they add is that people *aren't* calling the cops, right now, for stuff like being drunk/high/disruptive in public. cops are a scarce resource. we need a secondary tier that can be used much more broadly and handle the cases where "overt social pressure to knock it off" suffice.
If people aren't willing to call the cops rather than this secondary tier of people to call the cops for them, then it seems to me they just don't care enough about the problem to deserve a solution.
What they add is that crazy yelling guy is out on the streets, not in the store or coffee shop or restaurant hassling the staff and customers.
Those are traditional bouncers, not the new bouncers for the streets proposed by Sarah.
Part of the problem, or the perception of it, is that Naked Yelling Dude can pretty much do what he wants and if by some fluke he does get arrested, there are the bleeding-hearts to make sure he's not going to jail, or at the least destroy the business by a social media campaign about the heartless capitalist pigs hassling the unhomed.
If the retail worker lays a hand on Naked Yelling Dude, on the other hand, they're likely to be charged with assault and get into the meat grinder of the legal system, while the online bleeding-hearts start a campaign to get them fired or else their employer will be destroyed by a campaign about heartless capitalist pigs violently assaulting harmless unhomed person.
yes, agreed that this is part of what would have to be changed.
We do need to promote a culture where it's accepted that the person making a reasonable attempt to enforce normal civil behavior (and store policy, and property rights) is in the right.
My impression is that most concern about homeless people is about their tents, and that police occasionally clear their tents out of wherever they are but they just set them up somewhere else because they have to be somewhere.
As a recent visitor-to-but-not-resident-of downtown SF: it's not the tents, it's the people in the tents, to put it coldly. The behavior - shitting in the street; having racial slurs yelled at you; open hard drug use (I saw/experienced *all three* of these things in four days in SF!) - is the problem. I don't claim to know what the actual situation is, but the impression I get from the short time I was there is that, while these are all technically crimes, enforcement of the statues against them is more or less nonexistent - and therein lies the problem. "A tent being there" is just an eyesore - "whatever", in my eyes, though I get why people might be irritated by them.
well, that is basically good enough if the "clearing up" happens frequently enough.
I happen to think that there should *exist* places where it's legal to live in a tent. But, realistically, it can't/shouldn't be downtown SF.
In SF, until the recent Supreme Court overturning in Grants Pass, you could not clear the tents unless you had shelter for everyone available.
See this CBS article from earlier this year: "San Francisco's Mayor London Breed blamed Martin v. Boise for worsening the city's crisis. The court order bars San Francisco from clearing sidewalk encampments unless the city can guarantee a place to sleep for everyone it moves – a challenge in a city with more than 8,000 homeless and fewer than 4,000 shelter beds."
Meaning that in SF at least it is not the case that they already clear tents and they just pop back up, they have been unable to clear them systematically for the last few years.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-supreme-court-case-that-could-impact-the-homeless-coast-to-coast/
One of the Victorian-era fathers of modern policing described the role of the police as doing full-time what it is every citizen's duty to do.
This has all kinds of interesting follow-on implications.
Criminal trials are indeed way too inefficient in the US. I was linking to Robin Hanson's proposal for how to deal with judgment-proof criminals earlier, here's his proposal for speeding up the legal system:
https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/double-or-nothihtml
So how is the prison population so hig h?
I find your comment difficult to understand. Are you asking why the prison population is so high? To answer that I would recommend reading Mark Kleiman's "When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment" and William Stuntz' "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice".
Because there are a lot of high level criminals. Most people in prison are there for committing a serious malum in se felony offense like murder, rape, battery, burglary, etc.
I'm surprised that nobody really got what "draconian" would be. You said above 25% of homeless are in shelters, 25% waiting for shelters, 25% too crazy to do rational stuff and 25% hate shelters and prefer streets. So on the one hand build more shelters (the second 25% tranche is just low hanging fruit right there) and try to get that formula to 50% in shelters, 25% crazy, 25% actually prefers homelessness.
Have programs to get them jobs, give free bus tickets if they want to leave, affordable social housing and all that people with conscience would suggest. But on the other hand make streets more unpleasant than shelters. Make it a crime to give money to beggars panhandlers etc and just for media prosecute some normal people just helping homeless people. Make people afraid of helping the homeless. Shutdown and criminalize soup kitchens etc. Punish businesses who give free food to the homeless. In this way, you'll get the 25% who actually prefer homelessness to either pull their shit together, move to another city, or begrudgingly move to a shelter.
At this stage you're left with the irrational crazy psychotic tranche. Just involuntarily admit them to your institution of choice where they aren't allowed to go unless they've been sane for at least a couple of months.
Inhumane but would 100% work.
Leaving aside the moral questions, it’s going to be impossible to find politicians who are keen to
spend their political capital on “putting operators of soup kitchens and those who give money to beggars in jail”
I am actually open to things more “draconian” than whatever San Francisco is doing, but if you criminalized me for giving money to poor people, you would find me marching in the street for sure.
In other words, what you’re laying out might work if it happened but it wouldn’t happen in the first place.
Yes, nobody would do that. I was just giving an example of what I understand from working draconian measures though. By the way, for example criminalizing marching like that and giving hefty fines combined with making any marcher ineligible for any kind of tax break, subsidy, etc would also work better to keep the populace peaceful.
Then we are probably working with different understandings of what “it would work” mean. If the “working solution” cannot reach implementation stage, I don’t count it as something that “would work”.
would work, with some politicians keen to spend their political capital on solving a problem rather than saving it for reelection or something. I wrote the original comment because in Scott's post, measures really draconian weren't mentioned at all.
I would encourage such laws just to make people more comfortable with jury nullification.
> Leaving aside the moral questions, it’s going to be impossible to find politicians who are keen to spend their political capital on “putting operators of soup kitchens and those who give money to beggars in jail”
That's not impossible. It's common.
https://reason.com/2024/04/30/ohio-pastor-criminally-charged-for-letting-people-sleep-in-church-again/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/15/twelve-charged-defying-california-el-cajon-ban-feeding-homeless
Public madness, even institutional madness like politics, needs to be acknowledged and addressed, I think. What the homeless, mass shooters, January 6 rioters, George Floyd rioters, Hamas-supporting militants and homophiliacs all have in common is mental malaise.
We don't acknowledge our minds are attached to our bodies.
Employers should be expected to offer as many mental health sick days to employees as sick days for the body. They can keep calling them "personal" if they're embarrassed, but failing to acknowledge that healthy minds are as important as healthy bodies is ridiculous. People should be excited about psychiatric health as physical health. If we simply try to ban guns, we're missing the whole point.
I think sick days are generic and can be used for mental or physical issues. There's "mental health parity laws" which basically enact what you're suggesting.
I do think calling off from work because you're a Hamas supporter would be a novel gambit.
Personnel managers would have to ensure people wouldn't abuse the system, say trying to tack a few psychiatric health days onto a fishing trip, but I think most people probably need more time off for sanity, rather than typical physical health.
But counselors over zoom may not be the answer. As you point out, the whole infrastructure we had to support psychiatric health was dismantled back in the 1980s. Waiting until people end up in prison is no way to treat mental illness. They figure out what kind of meds to give you, and you show up at the medical clinic for "watch swallows" and if you have a rough episode that requires, say, a cell extraction, you end up in lockdown with a rubber blanket: not an ideal treatment plan.
It would be crazy if we finally came up with some kind of system to manage public mental illness because homeless people were having episodes in public, and had become a danger to passers-by.
>I do think calling off from work because you're a Hamas supporter would be a novel gambit.
Although, if one is both gay _and_ a Hamas supporter, calling off from work because one has a sound judgement problem starts to look plausible... ( A slow motion "danger to one's self..." ? )
The logical conclusion about "Gays for Gaza" is that they should be in favour of the IDF, who have after all dramatically reduced the number of rooftops
Yup, Many Thanks! The odds that an Islamicist Gazan chooses to make a gay supporter rapidly downwardly mobile does get reduced along with the available building height... :-)
Per your suggestion I am acknowledging your joke about the IDF reducing the number of rooftops as a form of public madness that made my stomach turn from the high level of dehumanization it exhibited. While you would certainly care if that was your rooftop and your children crushed to death, you clearly don't see the people in Gaza as deserving of life as yourself.
Perhaps you may be suffering from the mental malaise you are so eager to diagnose in the "other". I have to agree with your comment that we have more societal psychosis to grapple with than the coffee shop disturbing homeless.
"These drugs [antipsychotics] have many potentially serious side effects." But on the other hand there is almost zero recreational value or addiction potential in them, which would remove the number one and two reasons e.g. pain meds and anxiolytics are so tightly controlled.
So, spending time and money to unseat the politicians behind the many bad policies discussed is worth doing.
the systems suggested for handling crazy people seem like they could work pretty well, if actually invested in. But all of these systems spend a bunch of time fighting against people who really really want to do drugs, so much so that theyd rather be living in a ditch w heroin than agreeing to go into the system which would prevent them from doing drugs. What if we just, let them have their drugs?
Heroin is pretty cheap-- much cheaper than prison or massive homeless populations. You really really want to spend your life doing drugs? ok. You can go live in the drug house outside of town, it's free. Drugs are provided, but can only be used in the supervised injection room. No parties, no visitors, regular inspections-- it should be very unappealing to everyone except people who are already fully committed to using drugs all day. Drug House is kept clean, safe, boring, and away from the rest of us
Partner this with some kind of rehab program, and various opportunities to move away from the drug house (like a work program? Bus that goes into town also-- idk. you want to give people an easy path to get out of this system). If you refuse Drug House, and keep using drugs anyway, obviously you go to prison
[Wireheading City](https://www.piratewires.com/p/wireheading-city-george-hotz) is a mass scale proposal for that, but probably insufficiently detailed and "inhumane" for Scott's tastes.
honestly, i love that. like, as crazy as this idea is, i love that he's thinking outside the box, and also proposing ideas that focus more on incentive structures than on forcing everyone to comply or just adding more layers of bureaucracy
That's not a bad solution, but the problem is that junkies want to get high. Just safe drugs that will stave off withdrawal aren't enough for them. So the Drug Home would need to be someplace they couldn't freely leave, and couldn't just pop into the nearest town, score some street drugs, then end up back in Drug Home.
No visitors certainly, because they'll only smuggle in drugs. I wouldn't have it totally boring, you need to give people some options for enjoyment that aren't drug-related, so yeah parties and activities etc. But in agreement on regular inspections, security, and clean, safe, and away from regular people.
oh, right, that makes sense, you dont want to drive them to keep doing drugs out of boredom. So you need to make the actual drug use itself boring (only in designated, well lit supervised rooms, no music or entertainment allowed), but the rest of the house should have lots of drug-free diversions (idk, movies, library, classes, work program like i mentioned.) You do need to balance that with making sure that no one *wants* to move to Drug House, who isn't already on drugs
(as far as getting high, i didn't actually have a problem with that. They get the real drugs, whatever they were planning to use anyway, for free! i didn't care if they're high as long as they do it where it's not bothering everyone else
Yeah, that's the balancing act: you don't want to make it so awful that they'll prefer to do any crime to keep living in squalor rather than go to Drug House, but also you don't want to make it so soft that it's regarded as a cushy number to go there for a short stay, get free drugs, then get out and start back on crime and getting high.
Hard to do the balancing, and I'd rather err a little on the "too soft" than "too hard" side, because the main point is you want to get people off the streets and sorted out for their own sake and the sake of the rest of us.
"The practical reason is that the cost of everything has increased by at least an order of magnitude since 1950."
Actually the cost of most stuff, after inflation, has decreased since 1950. Adjusted for inflation, $13 today = $1 in 1950. So the hardback novel priced at $3.50 in 1950 cost the equivalent of $45.50 today. Food, clothes, and a lot of other basic necessities were significantly more expensive then. Middle class families darned socks and patched clothes, because they were expensive. At the same time, the median family income, adjusted for inflation, has gone from $40,000 to about $95,000, and family size has gotten smaller. Our society, at every level, has gotten a lot richer.
Homelessness, in its modern form (homelessness in the 1930's was different), is a problem of affluence. It is not a coincidence that homelessness is a bigger problem for the most affluent cities in the U.S.
Cool. Now take median house prices divided by average hourly wage to find out how many hours one has to work to get a house.
1950s: 7,354 / 1.2 = 6,128.33 hours
Now: 420,800 / 22 = 19,127.27 hours
Your numbers don't seem to match the numbers provided here: https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/.
Also, 1950's houses were to 2024 houses as 1950's televisions are to current TVs.
See https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ , though I admit I mean more complex things that require institutions than simple consumer goods.
You might be surprised at the complexity of the processes and institutions that produce "simple" consumer goods. I would distinguish not on the basis of complexity but between the goods and services constrained by market forces and those that are not.
Elementary and secondary education is not particularly complex. The service provided hasn't changed much since the 1950's. The cost increase is due to the increase in the number of teachers and administrative staff per student, and much nicer and more spacious facilities. In the case of health care, because of the increase in wealth and the economic incentives that have been created we consume a lot more of it. It would be interesting to look at the change in the cost of over the counter drugs and devices not covered by insurance or other third party payers.
Step 1. Don't be California.
40% of homeless in California are in Los Angeles County. Los Angeles County is the largest county in the country at 9,861,224 residents.
If it were a country it would be around 95th in the world next to Israel and Honduras.
More than Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Norway, New Zealand, Ireland.
Take the LA county government and split it up to 5-10 counties.
I think most counties in the Bay Area are normal sized, and they have the problem as much as LA. So does San Diego.
San Diego is second on the list at 3.2 million. Orange county is also over 3 million.
Might be normal for California but Texas only has 1 county over 3 million and Florida has no counties over 3 million.
Maybe it's time to downsize.
Long time reader, first time posting. Some time ago when NYC was going through a "Tough on homelessness" policy discussion I proposed a *thought experiment* to colleagues, an optional free ticket for homeless people to a mental health villages set up in a lower-income country, where housing and healthcare could be provided cheaply, paid for by the originating city. In New York, I think a shelter bed cost new york around $30k/yr for housing alone, plus the additional costs of homelessness, that money would presumably would fund a nice lifestyle somewhere low-cost, bring money into the local economy there, and support more doctors and nurses getting trained and given well-paying jobs.
I happened to be chatting about this before a seminar w/a Yale economist, and a harvard b-school prof (the guest speaker) turned around and they both agreed "I can't think of anything wrong with it technically, but good luck getting buy-in because it feels morally wrong" (akin to the famous Summers Memo about exporting our waste to poor countries perhaps?)
I happened to later be meeting up with colleagues in one of those open plazas in NYC outside Penn Station with tables and chairs and asking about the morality of the thought experiment compared to our current system (assuming it's all voluntary), and a guy at the next table with a suitcase asked if the ticket to treatment was an option, because he was bipolar and homeless - his family in Kentucky couldn't deal with him and put him on a bus to NYC, and he got in the cycle Scott described: Has a manic episode, gets arrested and sent to Bellevue Hospital, they stabilize him, and discharge but can only give meds for 30 days, they run out, he gets arrested, etc. He was perfectly nice, and very much wanted to get treatment, but had just found he didn't have viable options in Manhattan.
There seems to be some kind of error in understanding at least certain versions of the "be tough" position. "Be tough" doesn't need to be complicated. Arrest people who commit crimes. If they keep committing a lot of crimes, don't release them (and the kind of homeless people who disrupt everything constantly commit crimes!). Whether they are stored in a mental institution or a prison doesn't really matter. This solution worked amazingly well in NYC under Giuliani, and Bloomberg. It is not some hypothetical idea.
Do what already is known to work is a fully developed and viable plan that shouldn't be ignored.
As someone who lived in both NYC and SF it continues to boggle my mind that people in SF have such trouble conceiving of this.
How about less law?
Since reading the first article I had in the back of my head the idea of a new type of institution which could side-step the issue of commitment by being, well, voluntary. And I still think it's an interesting direction, but the kicker is that when trying to imagine how it would look like, I constantly go into two direction: less regulation, and more intentional negentropy.
Let's imagine a town-sized area where you don't have FDA, don't have zoning laws and don't have minimum wage. But you do have people which are hired specifically to facilitate things (the intentional negentropy part). That's my plan.
How would that look like, exactly? I'm less sure of that, not because I don't have ideas but because the final form would probably be the result of several iterations. You could start with literally that - an area where you have as many support personnel and services you can afford, but no enforcement except the bare minimum regarding violence and theft. Somebody wants to build a shack? Go by and ask him if he's got enough nails. Yeah, sure, at some point you'll have somebody building a 3 story shack out of cardboard and you'll have to put the foot down and adopt more regulation than literally zero, but it'll be closer to "imminent danger" than to "zoning regulations".
You get a lot of things out of that, one of them being that those people won't be living outside a functional economy anymore. The administration can be one of the main employers, actually - you will have to pay a number of expensive specialists, but once somebody builds a good shack, you can pay him cheaply to go around and check on other people's shacks. Oh, this would be impossible due to liability, you say? Well, see the original idea of a "regulation free zone".
Because honestly, reading the first article it looked to me like those people simply can't function with the current complexity of the society, or at a sufficiently high efficiency level to be part of it. I'm saying that instead of ejecting them or looking for a place to lock them up - give them a way to live on a lower energy level.
It's not like they're lacking enough calories to live, nor are they in danger to freeze to death in California, and the state is already spending the cash for the medical services. So why exactly would you force them to follow minimum wage laws and live in a house that's built on ridiculously expensive codes, when their current need is a roof and a shower, and their actual earning capacity is actually pretty close to that?
Why do you "have to" accept regulation when someone tries to build a 3 story cardboard shack? There are shantytowns that actually exist. Fire hazard?
Shantytowns have a history and a culture to back them up, and possibly a higher tolerance for accidents than California is ready to accept. Our experiment would start from scratch, with a population self selected to rather risky habits. I'm proposing less regulation for the sake of end results, I'm definitely not willing to sacrifice the end results just for the sake of ideological no regulation.
Is the end result you're referring to related to externalities or public goods?
To be clear, an 'acceptable' plan is going to be at minimum a thousand pages long single-spaced 12pt, with at minimum an OOM more in references and citations?
It seems it would have to be a detailed description for how to revolutionize society from the ground up: housing, the legal system, bleeding hearts, drug prescription and dispensing, massive economic redistribution, police and social worker responsibilities/staffing/budgets, etc. Establishment of a right to live wherever you want at no cost, assuming you're willing to accept whatever is eventually defined as state-minimum housing (good luck with that one). So on down the list. I look forward to the propaganda section, reminding people that cities can be nice places rather than just tolerable ones, and somehow convincing libertine progressives that letting people rot in the streets and/or victimize the public is not actually kinder than paternalism.
A few comments call this an isolated demand for rigor. I don't disagree and I'll add: "perfect is the enemy of good."
A proposal for state-minimum housing: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/universal-basic-dormshtml
Sorry, but you forgot to include a model for projecting tax revenue in the years 2024-2030, so I'm afraid your thousand-page proposal would pretty much be the same as saying "BUT I WOULD BE TOUGH AND NOT SOFT!".
I don't make the rules.
I'm going to go on a slight tangent and say that I would like for it to be far easier to families to conserve relatives. I know somebody who has been an alcoholic for decades, and has been drinking all day every day for the past ten years. They have severe liver damage and are basically slowly killing themselves. The family tried to get them conserved but failed. It is basically impossible to get a conservatorship over a person who doesn't want it and who has the money to hire somebody to fight it in court. In the US it is not legal to kill yourself... unless you do it with some sort of addictive substance. Then it's totally fine.
Why not make extreme addiction a crime in the same way that attempted suicide is a crime. If you've gotten to the point that you've given yourself cirrhosis, you should be banned from ever drinking any alcohol ever again. And if you are caught drinking, then that's an immediate one year conservatorship for you, either under the family (preferable), or the state.
You could do the same thing for fentanyl. If you're caught in public once doing the fentanyl fold, that's a warning for you. Twice and that's a three day involuntary lockup. Third time and you're conserved for a year as well.
I know that institutions are supposed to be bad, worse even than prison (I don't know if I believe that). But would you rather see a loved one in an institution or dead? I'd rather see them in an institution. As bad as it may be, it gives them a year to clear their head and try to fit their life back together. Many probably won't be able to and will end up right back in the same place again, but it's still better than death, and certainly gives them a better shot than a saline drip, a saltine, and a trip right back out onto the street.
It's not that we don't have the institutions, it's that we don't have enough of them. American prisons are already over-crowded, so using them as dumping grounds for the mentally ill/criminal homeless is not solving any problems (and may indeed be one reason cops won't follow up on reports and prosecutors won't bring such cases to trial):
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/01/06/federal-prisons-release-staffing
"Federal prisons are chronically short-staffed, creating dangerous conditions for both the people working there and for those who are incarcerated. The aging buildings are in need of major repairs and maintenance. The bureau estimates its already overcrowded prison population will expand to 10% over capacity in 2024."
Back when I worked in social housing, there were shelters and spaces for the homeless - but not nearly enough. So in an emergency (say a family made homeless due to eviction or someone fleeing domestic violence), they might have to be put up in private accommodation, such as bed-and-breakfast places. Clearly that's not a long-term solution, the accommodation is not intended to be living quarters, and it costs more money in the end.
The homelessness section was always faced with ringing around to see if the shelters had a space available (often not). Sometimes this had a salutary effect; one guy had finally been kicked out of the family home because of his persistent drinking. Before he sobered up, he wasn't one bit inclined to be co-operative, but once he did sober up and realised he had nowhere to stay (not even a shelter bed available) and no money for more alcohol, the very real fact that he was one step away from ending up on the street hit him in the face like a brick and made him a lot more tractable to co-operating with the services trying to help him.
But for those who don't want to, or can't, engage - what then? Maybe there are more shelter spaces and options available today, but that's not a guarantee. I wholeheartedly agree that more housing is needed, and that's a fix for those newly or temporarily homeless; people who want to be helped and can be helped.
For the mentally ill? For those who don't want to change and are happy to be criminals and aggressive beggars? Even jail isn't the solution. We need more of the institutions to be built and staffed and funded, that can and will take those on. Maybe you will need to keep "I hear voices" Billy 'locked up' for life in what is an asylum. That doesn't exist right now, as Scott has pointed out, due to both costs and the tangle of legal issues.
That's what needs to get sorted out, and that's why I suggested prison asylums; there does seem to be the appetite to build prisons and the perception that the disruptive homeless are a threat to others, and if that's the only way to get asylums and places of treatment built, then build a new 'prison', call it that, and get people off the streets and into it for some kind of help.
I know, I know: castles in Spain.
Jails/prisons actually are the solution for people who are "happy to be criminals".
Yeah, I have to agree there. There are people who are, I won't say "natural criminals", but who don't give a damn about anyone else but themselves, want the easy fast way to make money, won't change because not interested in getting an education and a job like the normies and squares, and who will go on committing crime as long as they get away with it.
So prison for them.
The crazy people? Treatment and, in the cases of those too far gone to help, asylums where they can live but not damage themselves or others any further. The people who fell into crime but can be helped out of it if given support and guidance and supervision? Help them. Drug addicts? Get them sober and help them stay sober, if possible (not always possible, I know; some people will never get off drugs, some people have to nearly die or otherwise burn everything in their lives to the ground before they finally get determined to fight the addiction).
The guys who will lie up to your face about how they've really changed, honest, while laughing up their sleeves about what an idiot you are to believe them? Prison, for as long as that takes, and if that takes life, then so be it.
I'll go further and say that some people should be executed rather than imprisoned. Not legal in the EU, but thankfully still existent in the US despite all the opposition to it.
Still think Scott is missing the point here.
"Radically alarming problems need radical solutions from radical leaders with radical agency. "
When millions were dying of polio in south asia, the solution wasn't to think of ways to get around the dysfunctional govt systems. It was to correctly point out that this was a monumental crisis, and demand emergency response with the kind of authoritarian powers that are needed for extreme agency. It seemed impossible at the time, but in some 50% of cases, these country's dysfunctional govts. actually managed to alarm themselves into competence. Now, Polio is completely eradicated in these nations. We have more recent examples : Paris's transformation into a cycling city, India's embrace of sanitary bathrooms or Bukele's cleanup of El Salvador.
"We want to strike a happy middle ground between working with the system and solving the problem", is the kind of wishful thinking that helps people sleep at night. However, historic examples thoroughly dismantle such illusions. No situation that's this far gone has been solved with gentle methods.
West coast cities have the first world's highest rates [1] of unsheltered homeless by a country mile. Why is it so wrong to expect 'radical' solutions that work outside the established legal system ?
"California's grid-lock is permanent and I ahve accepted the eternal and degraded state of our beaurocracy. my pessimistic mind does not have the capacity to engage with a solution that demands basic competence from everyone involved."
It's good to be practical. But, if an independently-funded internet substack refuses to articulate unlikely solutions, then what hope is there for anything in the US ? Impracticality has never stopped Georgists, Communists and Libertarians from proposing their radical ideas. What are SF tech people so scared ?
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/homelessness-in-us-cities-and-downtowns/#:~:text=The%20prevalence%20of%20homelessness%20varies%20widely%20among%20major%20cities
There's also the insight that one can't really reform existing institutions, but one can replace them. Another point for a more forceful solution.
See also "More Dakka".
Scott is writing from a place of frustration with the problems he sees, and how there are no easy, quick, cheap answers.
I get that, and I agree. But if we're talking about, say, "do you want to criminalise being homeless?" (which I am fighting over with someone else in a different comment thread) then I ask you this - is that better or worse than "being homeless and crazy gets you an automatic capital punishment sentence?"
Because look at this:
https://nypost.com/2024/07/16/us-news/police-shoot-suspect-armed-with-knives-near-rnc-sources/
"A knife-wielding homeless man who allegedly “heard voices” was shot dead outside the Republican National Convention Tuesday".
So prosecutors (for good reasons) " don’t want to spend $50,000 to have a big trial to put a homeless person in jail for 90 days for disturbing the peace or whatever."
Great, so instead we wait until the guy snaps and gets himself shot to death.
From the account in the story, he was on crack, he was hearing voices, and in the end he got himself killed:
"Watkins told The Post that the suspect was homeless — and there is a large “tent city” in the area.
He identified the dead man as “Sam,” but said he was known to others in the encampment as “Jehovah,” referring to a voice Sam heard in his head.
It was known in the community that Sam “wanted to die,” Watkins said, adding that “Jehovah” made frequent appearances in the past few days.
“He just told me he was having these thoughts in his head. And he said, “Jehovah’s coming down.” And I believed him, because I hear voices, too,” Watkins said.
“So when he ran toward the front with the knives, I knew he was ready to go.”
Watkins claimed Sam wasn’t waving the knives at police or trying to engage with them when he was gunned down.
The grieving man did not know Sam’s last name and said that the two only knew one another for four months. Both lived in the tent city and did crack cocaine together, he said.
“That’s what we love to do. When we’re in Tent City, we feel we’re free,” Watkins said."
So yeah, it's too much trouble and too complicated to get a guy who's delusional, drug-addicted, and psychotic off the streets and put him in jail (for lack of anywhere better). But we can certainly solve the problem permanently by execution without charge, trial and sentencing. Is that much better than "don't make being homeless a crime" when in effect the end result is the same as if we formally made it a law that homelessness invoked capital punishment?
If that's what we're going to do, let's be honest about it. Let's have the Central and South American death squads, and let's not be surprised if thrill killers and vigilantes get in on the act.
Nothing makes me more impatient than gun talk. Even from Scott. That is to say, this pedantry from supposedly red-blooded manly men about their different kinds of guns. Like, we're all supposed to stay current on your asinine hobby. We're supposed to speak with great precision about your millions of guns. Doh, you just misspoke about my gun!! You see, it's not automatic at all, blah blah.
No: all this parsing of gun types and accessories and so on and so forth and scooby dooby doo - is absolutely a sign that we have lost our collective minds, and nothing good will ever happen culturally while this nonsense prevails.
I think there's frustrations on both sides of this discussion. A friend was recently discussing guns with some East Coast anti-gun coworkers who have never fired a gun. Talk turned to, "why do you need so many guns, you're just overcompensating, etc."
They found out my friend's husband owns multiple guns. She talked about how he likes to hunt, and uses different guns for different game. You're not going to take down an elk with a shotgun, or a duck with a 30-06. Meanwhile, neither of these is good for home defense. They understood that there's a reason people have multiple guns, besides just "overcompensation" or whatever. (Do some people overcompensate? Certainly.)
Part of the frustration also comes from gun laws that make people LESS safe because people who don't understand anything about the nuts and bolts of how guns work craft laws about them. Like restrictions on sound suppressors. These things don't work like in the movies, making your gun completely silent. Instead, they take your gun's ear-splitting noise from a level that will damage your hearing down to just below dangerous to everyone involved but still uncomfortably loud. If you're in a home defense situation, you don't want the person with the gun putting on ear protection before she makes a life or death decision. She might hear something at the last second that changes the outcome. Equally, you don't want her ears ringing after the first shot, when everyone needs to make life or death decisions once deadly force has been introduced. Suppressors make all kinds of safety sense, and in a sane world where we could talk about gun policy they'd be recommended for home defense, just like hollow point is recommended for home defense.
Hollow point, too, is an area where ignorance leads to wrong conclusions. For some reason, they sound scary, but they're actually about safety. When people who don't understand anything about ballistics talk about banning something like hollow point bullets because they sound intimidating, it's frustrating because it looks like a purported "gun safety" bill whose practical effect is to make nobody safer, but dramatically endanger bystanders.
People who own guns want gun safety, too. They hate the mass shootings, too. But just as Scott is impatient with people who complain that their ignorance shouldn't count against their uninformed policy proposals, gun owners are often exasperated that bad gun policy is driven by willful ignorance. Nobody is asking anti gun advocates to become aware of every minute detail of gun culture. But if you're planning to pass legislation and you don't understand the difference between a semiautomatic and an automatic, or you're talking nonsense about a 'gun show loophole', you're not ready to propose solutions.
I have noticed *zero* overlap between serious hunters, people interested in wildlife generally - and the gun LARPers.
I grew up in a family about as thoroughly invested in hunting - especially coastal waterfowl, doves, and quail before their numbers became such that it is generally bad form to shoot other people’s quail *even* if invited into their property during quail season - as it is possible for urbanites to be. They even had a shell reloading thing in the garage (!).
My eldest brother as part of his rebellion and exit from the family turned away from hunting, and the rest of their social milieu.
To the hunting others, this trashy gun culture would be as foreign to them as it is to me. Much on the order of a quiet contempt for the sort of people who pay to shoot tired old animals on game reserves.
No bleeding hearts, just - that’s not hunting.
I even remember my father being a little embarrassed about having been invited along with his wealthier kid brother to some fancy schmancy place where they released pheasants. And my father is an unthinking man who tends to be very keen on rich people and their doings. Yet in the matter of hunting, he’s pretty infallibly without BS. Simply from having imbibed a certain code from people long, long dead who had a more mature grasp of both guns and hunting and presumably life itself.
It is actually the non hunting vegetarian brother who now connects politics with gun ownership, boasts about his guns that serve no practical purpose unless in the hands of a lunatic, and has hopes of buying one of those pre-ban guns. And disturbs the peace of his rural home with pointless displays of shooting.
A gun for defense if that is your choice, is a far cry from gun mania.
I agree with most of this, including the sentiments behind it. There are definitely gun nuts out there, and they have some weird ideas, entirely divorced from reality.
This reflects a more general push over the last 10-ish years to push subcultural identifiation with hyperconsumption (a phenomenon I call the Funko Pop Effect: go and look at a comics store and wonder who exactly is buying all those things). Power-law distributed consumption as a form of displaying affiliation with specific niche subcultures are very much A Thing, (cf with people on the other side of the aisle who bought RGB or Fauci candles, for example)
Interesting. I associate intense desire for consumer goods with a period long in my rearview mirror. And I don't know that one starts an utterly de novo oddball "collection" in middle age.
About as niche as I ever got was postcards, which started organically enough with people sending a small child postcards; a little James Dean ephemera; miniature things, first from my dollhouse days which was never much about the dolls, dollhouse dolls being rather ugly or too large for the furnishings; the miniatures later not so much as a collection in themselves but more to sit on bookshelves and relieve the relentless bookishness. My last miniature thing was a tiny llama from a Mexican market that set up in a defunct mall here, which also sells South American things much like the Southwestern Indians sell Mexican/Central American crafts (I don't want to turn it over to see if it's made in China.) (I would still love it though, as I'm captivated by miniature things.) (I once bought a Navajo taco from a South American woman at a roadside stall in AZ which seemed like a bridge too far.) I'll buy a vintage paperback if it's an option, but not if I don't want the book. (This can backfire: I ordered Bertrand Russell's guide to a happy life, and found that a prior owner had circled every sentence. I guess that was the pattern he started - circle what you approve, or circle what you've read - and he faithfully went on with it. Anyway, I am not sure Bertrand Russell had very good ideas on the conduct of life.)
A friend found in her scrapbook a flyer from a concert she once attended as a young teen, at the Love Street Light Circus Feel Good Machine, signed by Roky Erickson. Being a (serious) postcard collector (of a particular time and area) she used eBay quite a bit, so she put her old flyer on there.
She was flabbergasted when hours later it had been bid up to $700.
If the problem is visible homelessness, can’t you go a long way toward solving it by building lots of shelters and having a law that you’re not allowed to sleep on the street? That’s well within CA’s state capacity. Obviously it doesn’t address root causes or even eliminate street panhandling and weirdness in daytime, but it gets you from SF to NYC levels, which is pretty good.
I can never quite escape the sense that the residents of San Francisco are soft whingers when it comes to homelessness. Perhaps there’s something I’m missing.
I live in the highest homelessness areas of Sydney, and possibly Australia generally. Further, as much homelessness as there is Redfern, there are even more severely mentally ill and disruptive people wandering around, which is usually what people actually mean by homelessness. People walking down the street screaming abuse and shouting for heaven to smite us all or screaming late at night about perfidious psychiatrists is a big thing here. Although homelessness in Sydney is lower than San Fran generally, I suspect Redfern- my part of Sydney- would have to be at least comparable to relatively high homelessness areas of San Fran.
To be honest, people who aren’t homeless mostly just… get on with it in Redfern? Homelessness is a human tragedy, and many of us advocate against it, and for housing for all, but we don’t experience it as a terrible, nigh unendurable thing that is happening to us non-homeless people.
There’s no romanticizing any of this- to be clear. Homelessness is awful. Moreover, it is distressing to the observer, and not just the homeless- hopefully for compassionate reasons. Nevertheless, I’m perplexed by just how terrible San Franciscans seem to find it. If I were to look at things from a purely selfish perspective, not considering the welfare of the homeless people themselves (as seems to be true of many of the San Fransciscans in this thread) it wouldn’t even be in my top five issues for Redfern.
One point that I do take about this is that it’s easy enough for me, a 6’3’’ youngish man with a powerful build to be this blase, but the women I know mostly seem pretty calm about Redfern too.
What am I missing?
Well, are the crazy screaming people living in tents outside your front door or place of work? Do you routinely have to step over or walk around people passed out from drugs on the street? Does the entire area smell of urine and faeces? Are businesses boarding up or leaving because of the amount of shoplifting and hassling of customers? Are you leaving your car windows open, when you park, so the thieves can just help themselves to anything in the car and won't smash the windows?
https://www.wawanesa.com/us/blog/tips-to-prevent-san-francisco-car-break-ins-bipping
"Bipping is the slang term for a specific type of car break-in in San Francisco that shatters vehicle windows with very little noise. Bipping originated as thieves broke off the porcelain pieces of sparkplugs to throw them against the vehicle’s window. Porcelain being far harder than glass, the flung sparkplug pieces would quietly break the window, allowing access to the car’s contents. Today, bipping is more often accomplished using a resqme car escape tool. The practice is rampant in the city and surrounding areas. So many San Francisco car break-ins have led to the nickname “Bip City.” But San Francisco car break-ins are hurting residents and tourists alike. So, let’s see how to prevent car break-ins.
Bipping has become such a nightmare in the Bay Area that some residents leave their car windows down, hoping thieves will be content to steal their belongings while leaving the vehicle windows undamaged. Our tips to prevent San Francisco car break-ins are certainly more effective than that. But please understand that you could follow all our advice and do everything right yet still get bipped. The primary goal is to make your vehicle less enticing to thieves than other cars."
Back in 2021, it seems car owners used to leave the boot open as well:
https://abc3340.com/news/nation-world/bay-area-car-owners-leaving-trunks-open-to-avoid-break-ins-per-report
"People in California are reportedly leaving their vehicles' trunks open to deter thieves from breaking their vehicles' windows.
Vehicle break-ins are reportedly on the rise in San Francisco and Oakland. To keep potential thieves from damaging their property, some people are emptying out everything of value from their vehicle, unlocking their doors, and leaving the trunk open while they go about their business."
From what I gather, and I'm only getting this from online, it's not that all of San Francisco is terrible, it's that the problem is concentrated in specific areas, has become *extremely* visible, and little to nothing seems to be being done about it.
I don't exactly know how this compares, in 2023 it seems Redfern was one of the "five most dangerous suburbs in Sydney" (but that may just be newspaper clickbait):
https://www.news.com.au/national/crime/the-five-most-dangerous-suburbs-in-sydney-revealed/news-story/8a9d519ab7b83b0360bb7dd09cef50a4
"Nearby Redfern was another inner city crime hotspot with the 2016 postcode recording 816 serious incidents based on a population of 13,072 people. The crime statistics show the most prevalent serious crimes were assaults (259), thefts from home (119), and incidents of malicious damage to property (179)."
That seems to break down to one serious crime per sixteen people. What about San Francisco? They're saying that it's getting better, but that does seem to be as a result of getting tough on crime:
https://www.sf.gov/news/san-francisco-2024-crime-rates-down-city-prepares-implement-new-voter-approved-public-safety
"Recent examples of enforcement activities that have supported making San Francisco safer include:
SFPD and the SF Sheriff made 54 arrests in one day, including dozens of fugitives, as part of the City’s multi-agency drug market enforcement effort
The District Attorney secured a conviction in an organized retail theft case that targeted multiple locations in San Francisco
The District Attorney’s Office charged two individuals in connection to narcotics trafficking in the Tenderloin in possession of almost two pounds of fentanyl
The US Attorney’s Office secured two separate convictions in federal court for individuals selling drugs in the Tenderloin
San Francisco began installing 400 license plate reader cameras at 100 intersections across the city
SFPD made an arrest in the Richmond District after someone vandalized 20 cars in the area
The District Attorney’s Office secured a conviction of a prolific auto-burglar
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/san-francisco-crime-rates-drop-19400210.php
"Reported crimes fell in San Francisco over the first quarter of 2024 across all categories, with some offenses dipping to levels last seen before the pandemic — welcome news in a city that has seen its image battered over concerns about public safety.
The trends, documented in city police data, continue the downward trajectory San Francisco saw in 2023, when cities nationwide experienced falling crime.
The figures include double-digit percentage drops in both violent and property crimes, with homicides falling from 11 to 8, rapes by 23%, and burglaries by 15% over the same time last year. Larceny — a type of theft that includes San Francisco’s notoriously high level of car burglaries — fell the most over the previous year, plunging by 35% from 8,389 reported incidents to 5,402, the city’s statistics showed.
Jeff Cretan, a spokesperson for Mayor London Breed, said that for many years public safety agencies in San Francisco were relatively siloed. The local U.S. Attorney’s Office and Drug Enforcement Administration didn’t reliably communicate with local law enforcement, and the two previous district attorneys, George Gascón and Chesa Boudin, were often philosophically at odds with police, Cretan said."
"Philosophically at odds" is a very diplomatic way of putting it. But if Redfern has police who will show up to reports and will take people off the street, even if Redfern is this dangerous Wild West suburb, that makes a difference in perception of safety or danger.
> Porcelain being far harder than glass, the flung sparkplug pieces would quietly break the window, allowing access to the car’s contents.
This doesn't make any sense. Whether the glass breaks is a property of its structure, not of its hardness. If the windows were diamond instead of glass, they'd still be easy to break.
"I think this is cope; not only won’t the institutions be more humane than prisons, but people won’t believe they are and won’t allow the low-friction legal maneuvers."
People ... or lawyers?
"But isn't the real issue that we have SO MANY MORE homeless and mental health issues and drug addictions than in prior decades?"
Is this actually true? Or does some combination of the internet and population growth just make it seem that way?
It seems to me that a lot of these issues have what I'll call step functions. What I mean is housing is either over $1k a month or it's free (if you live in a shelter or on the street), crime either sends you to jail or you're not punished at all, healthcare is either "free" if you have good health insurance or insanely expensive, or free if you're poor. I guess that sounds like systems have raised the bar too high for certain things to occur at effective thresholds.
Theoretically that would mean these issues could benefit from deregulation or more a la carte approaches? As in worse houses, worse jobs, worse medical care, worse punishment systems, etc. I'm wondering to what degree that's worthwhile in practice tho, since we supposedly raised these standards up for a reason. Maybe we overshot?
> I guess that sounds like systems have raised the bar too high for certain things to occur at effective thresholds.
I see this as a major problem of American leftism in general. There's a strong impulse to declare some standard (in whatever context) and then make anything that fails to meet that standard illegal. Accepting lower quality on the grounds that it's cheaper is not an option; you have to take high quality at high prices.
This would work a little better if everyone were infinitely wealthy.
One way this *will* be dealt with is by becoming majority Hispanic, or perhaps I should be more specific and say Mexican. I cannot endorse this for other reasons, but on this one single issue - homelessness - you will find that when you have a majority "minority" - that somehow this absolves you from worshipping at the altar of certain gods. It provides a certain cover, in effect. Thus, San Antonio, though little more than an hour from Austin if the NAFTA trucks or the drag racers don't cause an accident on I35, has a very different homeless population than Austin, in quantity and kind. Plenty, of course, but not so plenty as Austin ... and definitely not enjoying political power, so to speak (at least if you go by how much of the budget is devoted to ensuring a steady stream of homeless people).
Of course, Austin is a boomtown in a sense (though SA is faster-growing). Austin represents affluence, regionally, and obviously the homeless and the affluent go together (in some mysterious way ;-).
But SA police can arrest homeless people. Can move them along. Can choose to bust up their camps without having purchased a home for them. Can certainly keep them from overtaking the areas they don't want them to overtake.
The homeless in SA are much more reminiscent of the homeless in Austin 30 years ago. While they are *perhaps* as readily to be on drugs - and on novel drugs that 30 years ago weren't circulating like water - they in general act in manner suggesting they are trying to keep their heads down. There's a guy who slept for a short time in the alley behind my apartment. I didn't care whether he did or didn't but partly this was because I knew he'd be moving along, as "urban outdoorsmen" used to do; and would not be setting up a cardboard fort with a generator, a bunch of stolen goods, an American flag and a TV and eleven friends and a whole lotta trash piling up.
I, misanthrope, was able to be "tolerant" because the police are not. I would have given him a glass of water had he asked, just as I used to do in Austin in the early 90s.
Laws aren't everything.
And I don't mean to suggest Mexicans are uncaring.
Indeed, if you are sitting at a light that lets just a few through at a time, and then realizing it's green but no one's going because someone has engaged the corner panhandler, and is handing a bill through the window, it will most of the time be a Hispanic lady, presumably Catholic. And yes, you will curse her, because that just made everyone's day a little worse.
Friction, as you say.
"Indeed, if you are sitting at a light that lets just a few through at a time, and then realizing it's green but no one's going because someone has engaged the corner panhandler, and is handing a bill through the window, it will most of the time be a Hispanic lady, presumably Catholic. And yes, you will curse her, because that just made everyone's day a little worse."
On behalf of my co-religionists, sorry 😀
https://distributistreview.com/archive/on-pilgrimage-giving-the-addict-his-due
(That one is Dorothy Day).
https://platitudesundone.blogspot.com/2014/12/i-am-sorry-to-see-that-there-is-sort-of.html
"Why should I worry because I do not know whether I am doing good or harm when I give a meal to a beggar? I do not know whether I am doing good or harm when I give a meal to myself. Food such as we eat in civilised times and with civilised digestions, food, in this sense, contains the seed of death almost as much as the seeds of life. Do not tell me that I do not know what happens to the half-crown that I give to that recognised tramp, Weary Willy. I do not know what happens to the ham sandwich that I give to that hungry outcast, G.K. Chesterton. I do not want to know. I know that in one sense we are all pouring gifts into a bottomless universe, a universe that uses the gifts in its own way and in a complexity beyond our control or even our imagination.
Undoubtedly in the matter of beggars and charity I know that I do not know- I do not know what use will ultimately be made of the present in money that I give to a poor man. But no more do I know what use will be made of any other present that I give to any other man. To give any present worthy calling a present is to give power; to give power is to give liberty; to give liberty is to give potential sin. If I give the most decorous and pious present, it passes beyond my power merely because I have given it. If I give a man a Bible, he may read it in order to justify polygamy. Many men have read the Bible (the Mormons, for instance) only to justify polygamy. If I give a man a cup of cocoa (which I feel sure I should never do), he might gain from that cup of cocoa exactly the amount of nourishment and vigour which he needed to commit a murder. Many men, I feel sure (though I have no statistics to hand) have committed murder under the immediate invigoration of cocoa. If I give a man a church he may hold a Black Mass in it. If I give a man an altar (which seems improbable) he may use it for human sacrifice. And if this is the logic even of those cases in which the gift itself is something commonly accounted blameless or correct, the case is overwhelmingly strong as regards the ordinary gifts that people of the world give to each other. If it is possible that money or drink can be misused by our social inferiors, it is quite certain that books and clothes and furniture and works of art can be misused and are misused by our equals."
Lol. You misconstrued, perhaps not unreasonably. I am utterly indifferent to the act of charity and make no judgment about it.
It’s the traffic flow that is continually impeded, at intersections across the city, the thousands of ripple effects for everyone.
It’s a kind of inconsiderateness, which I - general dislike of humanity notwithstanding - would be loath to perpetrate.
But it's the religiosity which promotes it; my late mother once stopped the car slap-bang in the middle of the street to get out and help up a guy who had fallen/was lying by the side of the road, and never mind the people behind us.
(If I remember correctly, I think the guy was drunk rather than anything worse, but that made no difference to my mother) 😀
So I can well believe you have Hispanic ladies holding up the traffic giving help to beggars! And not likely to stop because "pfft, traffic? who cares if you're five minutes late? are you in the same hurry to get to your funeral?"
But absolutely agree that religiously-motivated charity is more legitimated by being perfectly “dumb” charity and if it makes the world worse, the more venerated it is.
Latin American here. You're kind of saying "San Antonio police can regularly break the law in little ways to ensure the greater good is achieved." Yes, police corruption is tolerated in Latin America and it's a disaster. This slope is definitely, 100 percent slippery. You might be happy with the results you see right now. But you won't be happy when a cop asks you for a bribe.
Nah, they just have no compunction about making others adhere to the law.
This sounded illegal: "Can move them along. Can prevent them from overtaking areas they don't want them to overtake." Not sure what was meant by this, then. Sounds like illegal policing to me. What laws empower the cops to just move people around unless they are suspected of a specific crime, like trespassing?
I will have a post up about this hopefully soon, but it's crazy that the phrase "IMD exclusion" does not appear anywhere in either piece.
Here: https://thecausalfallacy.com/p/serious-mental-illness-is-an-optimization
This was a really excellent post, thank you for sharing.
Seconded, this was more informative than anything else I've seen thus far.
I think you may be missing the point of the BE TOUGH people.
It is not actually hard to arrest people for continual low-level crime.
I live near NYC rather than near SF, but the NYPD chief of transit has a recent tweet https://twitter.com/NYPDTransit/status/1771550384038850777
Reproducing most of it:
"In calendar year 2023, NYPD cops made over 13,600 arrests in the subway system.
Of these 13,600 arrests, 124 people were arrested 5 or more times in the subway system in 2023 alone.
When looking further, these 124 people combined, have been arrested over 7,500 times in their lifetimes.
So, in case you’re curious what your cops are doing … well … they’ve arrested these people over 7,500 times!
The better questions are … where is the accountability & consequences for these repeat offenders? How is this happening?"
So I just plain do not believe that the answer to "why hasn't the legal system already sent disruptive homeless people to prison" is that it's hard because "homeless people mostly commit low-level crimes that police mostly don't see and victims mostly don't report." I think that the answer sounds a lot more like "many cities have elected officials who are ideologically opposed to doing things to prevent crime."
In NYC they do arrest people, but then they let out people Jordan Neely under their own supervision, and fail to do anything when Neely doesn't do any of the things he was supposed to do as a condition of his freedom.
My remark about other places being cheaper than SFO was not intended to be, or lead directly to, a policy suggestion. It was meant to point to an apparent assumption in your original article (and others') which clouded and skewed your analysis of policy suggestions in unhelpful ways.
For example, in the original post, you write:
"In San Francisco, the average wait time for a homeless shelter bed is 826 days. So people mostly don’t have the option to go to a homeless shelter. If you criminalize unsheltered homelessness, you’re criminalizing homelessness full stop; if someone can’t afford an apartment or hotel, they go to jail."
But that's false! You're criminalizing being homeless *and remaining in SF*. But if they get tired of being criminalized, they could go somewhere else that has shelter beds. So the policy proposal in this case is just the one you dismissed -- except with your ability to dismiss it so easily taken away.
Or at least -- it's not a proposal, even, exactly. Maybe there are other good reasons not to criminalize homelessness. But it's a request to please not engage in this particular fallacy while analyzing proposals.
Rationalists are supposed to be able to help each other Think Better without being taken to task for not having the full answer, right?
I think Scott did a decent job of steelmanning your comment into specific policies, but I also think those policies would work better than Scott implies. Specifically:
> Give homeless cities free mandatory bus trips to those other cities? What prevents the other cities from giving them free mandatory bus trips back?
Keep up the free mandatory bus trips. Make it clear to the other city that you're San Francisco and you can and will outspend them. If they know their game theory, this means they shouldn't try this in the first place.
> [W]hat if the homeless prefer being homeless in San Francisco to having a better situation in a cheaper city?
Keep up the free mandatory bus trips. Make it clear to the homeless person that you're San Francisco and you can and will outspend them. They may not be very good at game theory, but a $60 bus ticket is still cheap for you and expensive for them.
In practice I think the above would work, but not as well as:
> Maybe some plan like making a deal with a big cheap city in Texas to take SF homeless in exchange for money, and as soon as the homeless get off the bus, they’re met by a Texan social worker who gives them a shelter bed and social services? Might help along the edges, but remember that only about half of homeless people want/will accept shelter beds (depending on how good the shelter beds are).
If half of homeless people will accept shelter beds, then moving them to a big cheap city in Texas saves you (number of homeless people) x 0.5 x (cost of shelter bed in SF - cost of shelter bed in cheap city). That's a lot more than helping along the edges! It also saves you (number of homeless people) x 0.5 x (negative utility of homeless person in SF - negative utility of homeless person in cheap city), which is probably substantially positive since SF is more densely populated.
Moreover ... what fraction of homeless people in SF are from SF originally? If any of them came from elsewhere, the prospect of being deported might have deterred them from coming ... reducing the homeless population in SF without even needing to pay the $60 for a bus ticket.
[Edited to remove an unsuccessful reply to a subthread.]
Scott seems to still be downplaying the extent to which this is a drug/drug psychosis problem and not a homelessness problem *per se*. I commented on the original thread that the drug problem is growing at such a pace that it may require reopening institutions, whatever the political and financial costs, since society's other mechanisms for handling it are getting overwhelmed and not functioning.
>> I think most places' solutions are combination of: 1. Cheaper housing so that more people can afford homes
I think this was discussed adequately either in the San Fransicko review itself or in the comments, but providing affordable housing is orthogonal to the problem of marauding mentally ill colonists of public spaces. It solves _a_ homelessness problem but not _the_ homelessness problem but most people are really bothered by.
If you can cut the average rent in a city from $1,500 to $1,000, you allow low-income people to build up a savings buffer such that they don't lose their apartments immediately upon encountering some bad luck, such as a job loss, a medical emergency, or a relationship breakup so that they're no longer in a two income household. It's bad when that happens but it's not causing psychotic breaks and related stabbings. Those people had their lives together enough to hold down a job to begin with, so they're usually resourceful enough to find a new job, crash on a friend's house, sleep in their car, or find a shelter for a couple days while they get back on their feet.
But if someone's not taking his meds and goes crazy, how is the availability of a cheaper apartment supposed to solve that problem?
I think because the government provides free housing and services to people, and most mentally ill people in a free house with good services will stay there most of the time, but if housing is too expensive, the government can't afford this.
The "good services" is the load bearing part of this, though. If it means "social worker with ninety-nine other clients in their caseload who might, if you're lucky, call in to see you once a month for fifteen minutes", then the person who needs constant support so they won't topple back down into chaos is not going to do well even if you put them in decent housing.
("Decent" doesn't mean "luxurious" or "expensive", it means "room to sleep in, cooking facilities, bathing facilities, no water leaks, mould, or vermin infestations" and most importantly of all "little to no chance of criminality, craziness, or trouble with neighbours").
“Probably many patients will start doing better once they’re on antipsychotics. Do you release them (at which point they will probably get off antipsychotics?) Or do you awkwardly keep sane people around in your mental institution because you don’t trust them?”
You also need step-down institutions (like assisted living) where people can stay as long as they need to. Maybe for the rest of their lives.
"Second, halfway houses let people leave during the day. Because they’re unpleasant places, most people do leave during the day. That means they’ll be hanging out around parks and public libraries, same as now. Will they be less mentally ill? Maybe, if they stay off drugs and the meds work well. But those are big ifs, and you might find that somewhat-less-mentally-ill dysfunctional-poor-people hanging around parks and libraries is less of an improvement than you thought."
I have no problem with " somewhat less mentally ill dysfunctional poor people" sitting in parks looking at the ducks and the pigeons, or sitting in libraries reading books or on the computers. If they're not causing trouble, they have the same rights as other citizens.
I do have a problem with "the library has now become a hangout for the mentally ill and drug addict homeless and we can't do anything because we're not allowed to do anything". If Shoeless Joe was looking up bestiality porn and playing that loudly on the computers, pissing on the floor in between the shelving, doing drugs in the bathroom, and using the library as a crash pad, the staff should be able to kick him out. If Joe goes to one of the halfway houses, gets straightened out, and is stable enough on his meds so he won't be shooting up in the bathroom or having loud arguments with the voices in his head, then Shoes But No Socks Joe has as much right as anyone to hang out in the library looking up conspiracy sites about government UFO cover-ups on the public PCs, the same as any other private person.
It's very amusing, of course, to say that "North Africa is less politically dysfunctional" than California, but my understanding is that Morocco is fairly stable. A lot of the issues in North Africa are, from what I remember, centralized in the eastern half of the region. "North Africa" is huge.
I've been working in homeless services in California (in a non-governmental, volunteer role) for several years, working with a population of fallen-through-the-cracks on-the-streets people. These are some things I've observed that may help to inform this discussion:
1. There are a vast number of ways a complicated mechanism like our brains can go awry, and homeless people exhibit the gamut. I get frustrated when I hear people propose solutions like "why don't they just take [or we just force them to take] their meds" as though it were that easy. There aren't any meds that make someone with advanced dementia functional, that cure a traumatic brain injury, or that undo a developmental disability, for example. Even for straightforward (ha!) psychosis, many patients won't get relief from medical treatment, and others who will won't get enough to lift them into the housed-and-employed category. From what I can tell, only a small subset of people who are homeless are so because they have an "oh, we have a drug that fixes that presto" sort of mental disorder.
2. Everyone in my town wants the government to do something about homelessness. And everyone wants it to be done somewhere where they don't have to see it happening. NIMBY activism crushes or slows to a crawl anything like a shelter, treatment center, etc. Our county supervisors tried to respond to this by slap-dashing together a "safe parking" area for people living out of their vehicles -- way out of town by the dog pound and county jail, maximally distant from services and employment opportunities, because at least in the short term they could claim it got ne'er-d'ye-wells out of the neighborhoods. It was negligibly planned or funded and quickly became a clusterfuck and fodder for a scathing grand jury report. My take-away: from a political economy point of view, short term "quickly fix the problem my constituents are yelling at me about" beats long term "actually take steps to make the problem diminish".
3. It is difficult for homeless people to move to new places for a variety of reasons. There is confusing paperwork involved in changing the county of your Medi-Cal plan, for example, and then you have to find a new doctor, etc. Want to do this while you're trying to maintain the continuity of your attempts to find a working antipsychotic? Want to do it in the midst of cognitive challenges? Want to do this as your paperwork is thrown out in the latest camp sweep? If you finally found a job, or a group of friends who are willing to pool their money together for a motel room when the weather gets terrible, or a doctor who seems to understand what's wrong with you, or an attorney who's willing to take your case, etc. you've got good reasons to stay put. The place you're in may be expensive, hostile to poor people, etc., but it's the devil you know and it'd be a lot of work to introduce yourself to a new devil.
4. Among the hundreds of thousands of homeless people in California, several thousand of them are registered sex offenders. This should be of little surprise, since there are tremendous obstacles in the way of registered sex offenders in California getting employment and housing. What you might not have considered is that such people also are shut out of a lot of homeless services. For example, the homeless shelters (even the emergency stormy-weather back-up shelters) in our county ban registered sex offenders. So some people are on the streets -- probably the very people you'd least like to be desperate, hopeless, exercising poor judgment from sleep deprivation, etc. -- because that's the only place left for them. There's no simple solution here: the offenders are banned because the operators want to keep the shelters non-threatening for everyone else (e.g. families with children) and they don't have enough resources to e.g. keep roaming security guards checking on everyone or to have a walled-off wing of the shelter just for registered sex offenders.
If your proposed solution includes something like forcing everyone off the streets into shelters, institutions, or ghettos, you may need to account for this in your plans, and for the fact that by law, registered sex offenders are legally restricted in terms of where they can exist or with whom they can be in proximity.
5. In my non-methodical survey of the local homeless services scene, it seems to me like institutions work best-to-worst in approximately this order: ① people voluntarily coming together and organizing to try to ameliorate things themselves (maybe in the form of private nonprofit corporations, or maybe more informally), ② corporations and nonprofits who rely entirely on government grants and try to submit the lowest bid for government contracts, ③ fully government-run organizations.
That said, I think there are probably different sorts of tasks that are best handled by groups of different sorts, at least under the system we find ourselves in.
But based on this experience, I encourage the people in this discussion to consider solutions not just of the form "what should the government do about this?" but also of "what can I and my neighbors do about this?" as those solutions may be more efficient, effective, and enduring.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qug24xqmwxG69wfsD/notes-on-social-responsibility
6. In my town there's a lot of political pressure to essentially ban lowest-tier housing, by which I mean poor quality housing. This is done by means of laws that require inspections of rental units between renters and forcing landlords to bring the property up to ever-rising quality specs; or laws that restrict the number of unrelated people who can live in a home, or the number of rooms that can be bedrooms (or that prohibit use of garages, etc. as bedrooms); or things of that nature. These all have their justifications (who wants to stand up for poor quality, overcrowded housing?) but they have the effect of dismantling the lowest rung on the ladder out of homelessness. There doesn't seem to be an awareness of the fact that the people who lived yesterday in the slummy house you just congratulated yourself for condemning are the people whom you will complain about living in the park tomorrow.
There's also some political pressure in the opposite direction (California's recent liberalization of laws regarding Accessory Dwelling Units, for example). So this seems like an area where people might fruitfully work to tilt the scale.
How many cities with homeless problems have unused city land at the periphery where you could have a sanctioned homeless encampment with lockers/bathrooms/showers and a ton of police to keep an eye on things? You could run buses from there into the city proper for folks who have jobs while being homeless encampment dwellers, although I'd rather get them into low income housing.
I ask because Salt Lake City could do that if they wanted to - they have a ton of unused city land out west that's basically scrubland (including where the state government stuck the prison, two miles from the Great Salt Lake). You'd probably have to put a giant mosquito net over the whole thing because of the bugs in summer, but it would be doable.
What are some good books about the (development of the) particular dysfunction of California's political environment? It's taken as a given in these types of discussions but really seems like a story worth explaining.
Fun fact! There is an SF County jail in San Bruno (in San Mateo County), so there is already precedent for building your public services extraterritorially in the Bay Area.
>If a homeless person stabs someone, then I think most places (I don’t know if this includes SF), they get prosecuted under general anti-stabbing laws, which the police mostly have enough resources to investigate.
This is where you lose me. In New York, at least, we have a completely incompetent legal system that plays catch and release with murderers and is incapable of keeping them off the street. This is where I want to be much more cruel and draconian.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/man-accused-in-deadly-nyc-subway-stabbing-released-without-bail-2-days-after-incident/4426572/
https://abc7ny.com/queens-stabbing-spree-jermain-rigueur-arraignment-court/14340534/
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/as-suspects-in-long-island-body-parts-case-remain-free-critics-urge-bail-reform-laws-change/5208535/
https://nypost.com/2023/11/21/metro/nyc-man-hit-with-murder-charge-in-neighbors-shooting-death/
https://nypost.com/2021/10/06/nyc-subway-shover-was-free-on-assault-due-to-bail-reform/
You're playing semantic games here. No one is a murderer in the eyes of the law until they are convicted. So no, NYC is not "releasing murderers." They are releasing suspected criminals.
I assume that the "maximally tough" folks are actually advocating for the traditional solution, which is draconian laws combined with selective enforcement in order to keep the homeless away from the politically empowered. One can't simply say so, so the thing to do is to demand just the draconian laws and trust that the selective enforcement will happen spontaneously, as it generally does. Asking how these laws will actually reduce homelessness overall misses the point.
(I say this without criticism - I think that the problem is intractable overall, but it's both possible and reasonable to make it not your own problem.)
From a purely policy level, I do not think it is right now possible to help the homeless, because the vast majority of the homeless problem is actually a mental health problem, and mental health is not solvable at scale at this time.
What is possible is to save our major cities and economic engines from the homeless, and without undue cruelty. Using SF as our example, here is how I would do it.
1. Create a police registry of all homeless people in the city who have ever acted in an anti-social way. You do this by asking the public to send pictures and videos of all incidents and disturbances to this registry.
2. Buy a few square miles of nice land in the countryside, not more than a few hours away from SF. Build public bathrooms and shower facilities, build a large kitchen facility, build a medical clinic, all large enough to service 20,000 people. Clear and level the ground so that it's suitable for camping. Stock tents, sleeping bags, and blankets onsite. This new town is staffed by sanitation workers, medical workers, and social workers. These workers do not venture out into the town proper ever, and the workers and facilities are protected by armed security at all times. State police maintain a presence strictly for the purpose of apprehending residents who commit serious crimes.
3. Make public camping a misdemeanor.
4. Arrest every single homeless person who commits any felony or misdemeanor. If it's not prosecutable for reasons of importance or evidence, and if the person cannot provide evidence that they have somewhere to stay off the streets, they get put on a bus to the new homeless town.
5. On arrival, they are given a tent, a sleeping bag, and assigned a campsite, and they are scanned into a local biometric system that gives them access to the facilities and three meals a day, and they are examined by a medical team.
6. Anyone who ever enters the town is thoroughly searched for drugs.
7. While living in the town, residents have their full civil rights, and can leave whenever they want. A paid bus service will connect them to a non-SF transit hub.
8. If a resident returns to SF, they are immediately scooped up again the moment they commit another felony or misdemeanor and put back on the bus.
This system would be very expensive (though much less expensive than existing systems and most other proposed alternatives), but it would completely rid SF of its homeless problem. It would not make life much better for the homeless people, but it also wouldn't make it worse. This is I think all we can hope for until we get some mental health treatment breakthrough.
So an urban problem, entirely the deliberate creation of the kind of people who have "staffed" San Francisco for decades - should be foisted upon a rural area?
I suggested something similar in Austin though inside the city and without any enforcement of drugs or attempt to keep people healthy or interfere in their lives. I actually thought the nearness of a convenience store was a plus. Convenience stores are like community centers, for the homeless.
After the '08 bust, a former Home Depot with its anvil of a parking lot - some dozen acres as best I recall, or maybe a little less, was purchased by the city. No particular purpose in mind, though some people wanted a community center or such - an actual community center, that is to say, a building that is mostly idle but where occasionally the city can hold a meeting and somebody who's got a grant can hold yoga classes or crafts for seniors, probably about as little return for a dollar as is possible in civic matters, but in an atmosphere of civic deterioration, it's nice to know one building will be maintained and won't become a vape/kratom store - in a city rather littered with community centers. The property had sat vacant for nearly a decade. During the chatter over what to do with the millions the city had gathered to spend on the homelessness industry, I proposed that instead of buying a bunch of hotels to retrofit into apartments and babysit forever, the city could turn the old Home Depot property into a campground. Tear down the Home Depot. Build bathrooms. Rip up some of the asphalt so that it was grassy and as pleasant as possible. Plant trees. Then let people camp.
What were these recently-arrived homeless people good at? Camping! What did they seem to like? Camping and sitting around outdoors and jawing with each other. Why ignore this striking fact?
There's a tiny state park on the edge of Austin, whose campground is nightly full.
But my proposal got nowhere, and Greg Casar didn't want a city homeless encampment in his district.
I don't know what happened with that parking lot. Condos, probably, with an affordability component or lottery that will become increasingly difficult to preserve over time.
I'm with you on the camping though. I think it's funny that people whose hill to die on is "right to camp anywhere, live as see fit in the public domain" would presumably hold at the same time that building a campground versus building them each a house or renovating a hotel, is inhumane, savagely cruel.
In answer to your starting Q, on a purely utilitarian level, absolutely yes. Needs of the many etc. But drifting down from the abstract, in real life such a plan would obviously require the cooperation/bribing of the local rural municipalities, and those could be really really generous while still keeping the project cost-effective from the SF perspective.
And fully agreed on your last point. These are not normal people, and they demonstrate by every action that they do no want to live normal lives. We shouldn't force them to.
But in the very long term, the many of us need rural areas to stay rural and grow food. How much do we need it? I don't know. Will we always be getting more out of land, is that process irreversible? What I do know is that changing a land use away from rural, from ag or from wildland - is as permanent as anything in this world can be.
I notice China likes to buy land in the Midwest. But not for growing homeless people.
I don't think there are enough homeless people in the US for this to be a serious concern. You could octuple the the US homeless population and fit them comfortably in less than 1000 square miles ( a very small chunk of the US's 3.5 million square miles of land) under such an arrangement.
I did some very quick math. The US homeless population is around 660,000 at this time. Let's round up to 750,000. Industry standard for camping is apparently 25 campsites per acre. So to give each individual homeless person a nice campsite, we would need 30,000 acres, or 46 square miles of land. Double that to make space for facilities, and we're still talking about a truly tiny slice of US land.
Idaho State University developed a perfect plan to set up a Tiny House community in Boise. They looked at existing safe and secure camps like this. They secured funding without threatening one penny the (local) public budget. A do-gooder donated the land. College students and volunteers built all the homes. They provided hard evidence that other camps like this were safe and didn't cause crime spikes.
No zoning permit given. I can only assume it had something to do with property values and keeping developers happy.
If it's a mental health problem, how come it's so much worse than just 10 years ago?
Scott,
I feel like you’ve sidestepped and didn’t engage with the argument of shutting down shelters in SF and instead building them in the least dense parts of California. After that enforce vagrancy laws and start busing anyone found sleeping on the street to these homeless camps. Yes, they’ll have drugs. Yes, they’ll have some degree of violence. But they’ll be out of sight, out of mind. Some local farmers might complain but I’m sure they could be paid by the government for their troubles.
Not a single piece of homeless infrastructure should exist within a 100 mile range from either LA or SF.
"... as usual, you're wrong."
I LOVE it!
(Reading slowly, in between chores.)
"... many of the “BE TOUGH” plans assume so much state capacity, that the state capacity alone would be enough to solve the problem even without the toughness."
No need to invoke state capacity - the capacity exists and is generally the *cause* of the problem.
Sometimes this blog feels like Opposite Day. Which is not surprising, I guess, as it was probably someone very clever indeed who first came up with the notion of Opposite Day.
I left a comment last time, but should have responded to Eledex. I believe he's told that story before, and this may have come up in earlier discussions, but let's walk through some older ways of responding.
In the 1950s, would these disruptive homeless people starting fires have all been safely housed in insane asylums? Maybe, maybe not. Who cares, though? That's already assuming that the role of state power is to directly solve problems. Were there any other solutions that communities used within living memory?
Well yes, actually -- there's one named after a Quaker, Charles Lynch. The derived term of course has gained racial connotations, but extrajudicial violence isn't inherently racial nor (obviously) does it date to the time of the American Revolution.
We don't need to imagine a state that is able to house or jail everyone, we only need to imagine one that stops interfering with people solving problems. If Eledex and some friends had simply shot a couple of the worst offenders, what would have happened? In our current environment, they'd have gone to jail. Are there negative possible downstream consequences of bringing back lynching? Yes of course. Is turning a blind eye towards hurting or killing the mentally ill homeless people a serious policy suggestion that I endorse? Also no. But pretending that there isn't an entire neglected zone of idea-space isn't helping anyone. What better version of this could someone come up with?
> If Eledex and some friends had simply shot a couple of the worst offenders, what would have happened?
Scott appears to be doing his best to commit to the position that, lacking options, the rest of the encampment would have remained in place, and been shot too.
There's no way to extend any type of charity or generosity to that position; it's ludicrous on its face.
I'm genuinely interested in seeing people explore the rest of the space, not really attacking Scott's position. I'm not sure I fully understand his position, but if I do I think he's right that it's really hard to improve without deep trade-offs.
I suspect that if there were some way to accurately poll people, virtually every member of the electorate would be unwilling to go down and start shooting homeless people in encampment, even if they were credulous-enough to believe a government-announced amnesty. This itself is interesting to me, as is the follow-up question of "what percentage of the electorate would need to be so willing before the political will to actually solve this problem appears?" The government would suddenly be able to fix all this if its monopoly on violence were actually threatened, but as long as it's just people complaining online and perhaps moving one exit further out on the freeway, why should they? People get the policies they deserve, and this seems about on-target.
Like everything, I think this would only help around the edges - the fraction of homeless mentally ill people who drugs can help, who are willing to take the drugs, and who are prevented only by cost and bureaucracy. What percent is that? Low confidence guess 25%."
Much lower I am afraid.
Less than 5%
THat is a very good point
I'm confused and also somewhat skeptical. I thought that the deinstitutionalization push from around 1960 to around 1980 relied heavily on antipsychotics. If they only work on 5% of patients, why didn't the mass deinstitutionalization immediately produce the full severity of the problems we've been discussing here?
no you missed the point. not that only 5% of people drugs will help. Only 5% in my experience who on their own accord would choose to stay on these drugs
>Only 5% in my experience _who on their own accord would choose to stay on these drugs_
[emphasis added]
Many Thanks for the clarification!
Are they driven off the antipsychotics by the side effects or by some other factor?
that is one way for sure. in this community many are just resistant to western meds. Many of my manic patients love aspects of the mani (easily understandable). Trust is lacking overall.
Many Thanks! This seems to imply that the subthreads about making it easier for patients to take their meds (e.g. to recover from a lost prescription) are mostly barking up the wrong tree. What do you think?
Here's an idea. Move. Not the homeless people, yourself. Yeah, that's not a solution to homelessness in SF, but it's a solution to being directly confronted with the negative externalities of homelessness in SF. You might still feel bad for the homeless people that you left behind, but it's better than feeling bad *and* living with all the negative externalities, right?
It's costly, but it might have other benefits that make it a net positive. The brain drain from people doing this en masse might make SF even more dystopian, but at least that could spawn a disaster tourism industry and (maybe) serve as a cautionary tale to others. And there is always the off chance that if enough people leave, the ones that remain will get the message and the culture and politics of SF will change.
They'll all move to the same few places & recreate the problems they were fleeing (Californication).
Why does it seem that halfway houses are always “halfway between jail and general society” and never “halfway from general society to jail”?
That is, has anyone tried taking the disruptive person on the street and forcing them into a halfway house type program FIRST, and only escalating to a more serious involuntary commitment if they continue to be disruptive with halfway house level support?
Having a less severe initial consequence might mitigate the backlash against “be tough” style enforcement against public camping.
I didn't look through the whole thread, but I was surprised "Canadian Health Care" never came up as a response to the problem.
I've often thought that one compromise solution to the homeless-up-in-our-grills problem would be for the city to designate marginal land as encampment friendly and then just focus their sweeps on other areas. I'd much rather the encampments be in freeway right-of-ways and along industrial streets than in city parks--basically push them into places where their existence minimizes disruption to others. Ideally you'd combine that with more shelters/cheaper housing/better services but I think even by itself it would improve the lives of the non-homeless significantly and only hurt the homeless somewhat.
Side benefit: Office space near those marginal areas should be cheaper than office space in the core, so homeless services could easily set up shop there?
You can't do this in Idaho because the local government wants/hopes to eventually develop said marginal areas to increase their property tax receipts. I suspect this is a problem nationwide. Not sure what the solution is. Capping local tax property tax receipts and relying on state and feds to fill in the gaps? (Not that state and fed officials are immune to developer wiles but they are certainly less vulnerable)
“do you awkwardly keep sane people around in your mental institution because you don’t trust them?”
If you really don’t trust them, yes. What is the alternative? Prison or the status quo. So the question becomes, how do they get us to trust them?
If “don’t trust them” just means they might go off their meds, is there a way to monitor them and encourage them to take their meds?
If “don’t trust them” means they might go off their meds and become dangerous, mental institutions or prison sound reasonable.
I am not at all confident I know where to take this, though. How do we figure out who to trust?
I guess the not at all compassionate alternative would be a complex of gated communities interspersed with favelas. If homeless persons show up in a gated community somehow, security will deport them to the nearest favela. This seems workable, but has a large “ick” factor and probably many costs that are not immediately apparent.
>Also, other US cities don’t have long-term mental asylums or anti-camping laws, so how can you use “other US cities manage to do this” as support for those programs?
Most US cities do have anti-camping laws. You ever go to a public park and see a sign that says "No unleashed dogs, no fires, no camping"? It's typical. The only problem was that the 9th Circuit kept those laws from being enforced in the West for years and years.
The point of anti-camping laws is not to throw the bums in jail: like the lawyers mentioned in the comments you highlighted, there are a lot of active defenses against those kinds of crimes. You can even say "There weren't any shelter beds, I had nowhere else to sleep" and the Judge will probably let you off. The point is that the cops can physically remove the bums from the park, and then throw away any of their stuff they didn't take with them. If you do that consistently you don't get encampments. The bums find other places to sleep, and they don't cluster together creating drug and prostitution dens.
Before the 9th Circuit cracked down, here is how it worked in my city. If a citizen noticed a tent or shack set up in a public park there was a city website where you could report the encampment, how big it was, and put a pin on a Google map type thing where it was. Then the city would send around a city worker who would put up a sign next to the encampment saying that they had three days to clear out (this person might have been a social worker, who would let people know about resources they could access while they were at it, but I'm not sure). Then three days later the cops show up with a bunch of city workers. The city workers take anything that's still there and throw it away, and the cops make sure anybody that's still there get's cleared out and doesn't cause trouble for the workers. Because the city did that consistently, usually the bums would have cleared out already and taken any of the stuff they value, leaving nothing but garbage behind.
This system worked for years until the 9th circuit mess made it unenforceable. I'm hoping it will work again. It encourages bums to seek out services, and it prevents them from ruining public spaces and creating environments for drug dealing and prostitution.
Good info.
News say that the Supreme Court just overturned this last month. Saying that it isn't unconstitutional.
"In 2018, a panel of Ninth Circuit judges decided the case of Martin v. Boise, ruling that the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment clause against “cruel and unusual punishments” prevented cities from enforcing laws against street sleeping or camping, if homeless people didn’t have sufficient alternatives."
... ruling in the Johnson v. Grants Pass case that even civil fines against some types of camping and sleeping were unconstitutional."
FWIW, camp sweeps like those you describe as "before the 9th Circuit cracked down" were still going on in my California town after the 9th Circuit ruling and continuing through to today. I think all the 9th Circuit ruling did was say that you couldn't *criminally penalize* someone for sleeping outdoors. Camp sweeps and whack-a-mole shooing people from place to place never were banned.
It did ban camp sweeps *if* you didn't have enough shelter beds to house the entire homeless population of your city. Your city must have met that requirement, mine didn't. See, for instance, this article from the city of Bremerton that says "The decision overturned the...2019 ruling on Martin vs. Boise, which prohibited cities and counties from enforcing their anti-camping laws if no shelter space was available. That precedent had prevented the City of Bremerton from sweeping its growing encampments until November 1, 2023 when the Salvation Army reopened its 75-bed overnight shelter."
https://eu.kitsapsun.com/story/news/2024/07/08/grants-pass-ruling-informs-bremerton-homelessness-response/74294395007/
We don't have enough shelter beds in our town (shelter beds = roughly 120; homeless in latest PIT count = roughly 512). Still, camp sweeps of the type you describe have been happening all along. They just were not accompanied by fines, arrests, or prosecutions for sleeping-in-public or for possession-of-a-sleeping-bag-in-a-park or anything like that. If your town is saying "we can't play homeless encampment whack-a-mole because the 9th Circuit wouldn't let us" they're not being completely straight with you. What they probably mean is that it's a mostly futile, counterproductive, and inefficient enterprise without the stronger threats of fines and criminal sanctions behind it (and, what they may know or they may learn, is that it's likely no less a futile, counterproductive, and inefficient enterprise when you try to add fines and criminal charges to the mix).
It may just be that your town was flouting the 9th Circuit here. It is my understanding that forcing people to move, and especially confisticating their stuff (and the piles of garbage around encampments count as their stuff) is considered enforcing the anti-camping laws, and you couldn't enforce those laws unless you had enough shelter beds for everybody.
It would help if you could cite something for your interpretation of the 9th Circuit's decision in Martin vs Boise, and then later in Grant's pass? According to this article from CBS, Martin v Boise (before being overturned recently) "bars San Francisco from clearing sidewalk encampments unless the city can guarantee a place to sleep for everyone it moves". This matches everything else I know. Do you have a more in depth legal analysis you could point me to that says otherwise?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-supreme-court-case-that-could-impact-the-homeless-coast-to-coast/
My city is working around the rules, downtown, by doing frequent pressure washing on sidewalks. The washing is necessary to remove urine, feces, and other stuff I don't like to think about it, and it really does make downtown smell nicer. But it also has the convenient property of being able to displace any group that appears to be settling down. This is (was?) probably not legal, but I don't think it's been challenged yet.
It's probably legal; the 9th Circuit prevented cities from enforcing anti-camping laws and other laws clearly aimed at making sleeping in public areas illegal, but the washing of sidewalks is completely unrelated to anti-camping laws. I'm sure someone could have sued about it, and maybe the 9th Circuit would have decided that the washing was actually done with the intent of displacing homeless people, but washing sidewalks did not fall under their ruling as it stood. Especially if the sidewalks are dirty, the city has a right and possibly a responsibility to clean them.
This is similar to a method some companies use to remove squatters from homes. Generally the problem with squatters is that you can't get the police to evict them because they claim they have a right to live there, at which point the cops say "This is a civil dispute, take it to court and if the judge gives you an order then we can remove them". However, in many states the law allows landlords to remove tenants temporarily from a property for a safety inspection, provided they notify the tenants with 24 (or more, depending on the state) hour's notice. So the landlords give these squatter removal companies power of attorney to notify residents of a safety inspection, then after the 24 hour notice period they remove the tenants from the property. If the squatters call the cops, the cops say "Looks like he has the right to remove you fine tenants if he gave notice, and his paperwork is clear. We won't stop them." Once the squatters are kicked out by the landlords hired muscle, they change the locks and put bars on the windows and throw all the squatter's stuff into the street, refusing them re-entry.
Now with actual tenants, if the landlord refused to let them back into the property after a safety inspection the tenants could sue the landlord and would likely prevail in court: but these aren't actual tenants, they're squatters. So now they're stuck in the same position the landlord was in, where if they call the cops saying they should be let back in the cops will say "Sounds like a civil dispute, you'll need to take it to court and get an order before we'll do anything."
To defend the Get Toughs for a second, Shellenberger talks a lot about how a carrot and stick approach is necessary to deal with the problem of homelessness because of the behavioral problems these people have that put them in their current circumstances in the first place. Supposing for a second that he's right and knowing what you know about SF and the socio-political culture there, do you suppose the current strategy for dealing with the situation--ineffective as it is--errs too much on the side of carrots or sticks? What does Shellenberger say about this question?
Bureaucratic carrots that require making and keeping appointments aren't really carrots in this context.
The comment above about industrial areas or run down parks as preferable for homeless encampments was interesting to me. I missed the original post, but this last Sunday I was exploring San Jose on my bike, and it seems they've implemented this solution to an extent. I saw hundreds, possibly as many as a thousand, homeless people in parks, and huge encampments with large structures, tents certainly hundreds of square feet in size at least.
One of the best ways to get through the city on your bike is along the Guadeloupe River, and there is parkland on both sides of the river through much of the city. And of course there are numerous other parks as well. The Guadeloupe River park is well-designed and the intent of the builders is clear, and obviously huge sums of money were spent to build it. It also runs through the downtown core, and just up the stairs are some very nice surface-level parks, tourist and family attractions (such as the Children's Discovery Museum), and swanky high-rises.
Much of it consists of large amphitheater-like steps from surface level down to the riverbank, and clearly ordinary people are intended to gather in these places and have wholesome fun and so on. I saw no such people, only the homeless. Part of the reason for the lack of adoption by regular people is that the river itself isn't very attractive, let alone swimmable or any such thing.
The homeless don't gather in the amphitheater areas; they generally build their encampments on dirt or grass near the riverbank. As a result, the built areas were pretty deserted, if dirty. Most of the surface parks are very nice, or at least acceptable. Most of the river-level (not just the Guadeloupe River, but Coyote Creek and others) parks are homeless encampments. There were very few in-between parks.
One such in-between was the Happy Hollow Park and Zoo. The zoo area (at surface level, and with a very cool pedestrian suspension bridge leading from the parking lot on the east side of Coyote Creek to the zoo on the west side) is very nice, but it is literally just a stone's throw down a dirt ramp to the bank of the creek, where, you guessed it, are homeless encampments. But also down at that level are the Japanese Friendship Garden (very nice), the History Park (absolutely immaculate, if quite creepy actually), and the frolf course (run-down and boring looking, but no homeless). And it was right across the street from the Excite Ballpark, where the Giants were playing that evening, and that was my gateway into downtown proper, which was spotless if a little deserted.
The Emma Prusch Farm Park looked like the Shire with a very cool playground; Lake Cunningham Park was extremely nice if well-used and not gleaming in the slightest; and the Hillview Park was extremely working-class but everyone seemed to be having a lot of regular-people fun like birthday parties and such.
Also saw a lot of pro-south Vietnam war memorials, which was interesting. There was one with a giant statute of an ARVN and US Army soldier standing shoulder-to-shoulder, but unfortunately it was closed and I wasn't able to read the inscription. They were all very well-maintained as well; it seems the hatred of Communism is still strong among the Vietnamese community in San Jose, which gives me hope.
With respect all this is pretty much beside the point. Let's take this as the gospel truth and "There are about 8,000 homeless in San Francisco, but assume that most are ordinary people down on their luck, and we only need to institutionalize 2,000."
So I was just talking about Draconian stuff and social work stuff and legal stuff it's pretty much about 25% of the population of homeless. For the 80% you're basically figuring out what the penalty should be for being unlucky. To me the solution is pretty obvious, make it less likely the people are going to be unlucky. In other words all you have to do just completely restructure our economic system. Fewer monopolies and biopolies. Better antitrust. Politicians who aren't going to knuckle under to rich people seems for becoming more rich. The tax system that makes a tiny bit of sense. Health insurance that makes a tiny bit of sense. And so on. The problem with homelessness is that we have a fucked up social system from the top down. Everything in the two posts you've done is basically what shade of lipstick do we put on that pig.
A large problem that I see, when it comes to the homeless problem, is that people are way too focused on drug use. So what, if people choose to use substances to get through? You would too if you were homeless, or mentally ill, or anything like that. Judge not what other consenting adults do to themselves - so long as they do not cause harm, there is no harm in allowing them to do as they wish. Alcohol is the most harmful substance one could put in their body, and most harmful substance societally, and yet we allow it to be freely sold and consumed. If people focused on helping their fellow neighbors, who are suffering and ill, rather than judging for no good reason, we would all be better off. Illicit substances are not illegal because they are dangerous, or for any reason, other than to control the population, and to control your minds, my friends. We have been freely allowed to consume that which we desire, for all of history, until the GOP decided to enforce prohibition of substances, because they realised a population that does not have access to mind-opening substances is easier to control, dumber, and an excellent excuse to prosecute and arrest "undesirables."
I ask you all to focus on what truly matters, and on yourselves and helping those in need, and not judging them for their private, consentual choices of vice and substance. The overdose problem has become so terrible BECAUSE of prohibition and a lack of safe supplies and clean substances - our friends, families, and fellow beings will continue to die and suffer until we get our heads out of our asses and stop focusing on petty matters used to divide and distract us, and work together and help each other with acceptance, love, and empathy. This is the truth, as somebody who had undergone addiction issues, saved myself, and now regularly helps addicts, and as somebody who had worked with addicts and watched countless friends die because of fentanyl and overly potent and dirty drugs.
It will never end, or ever get better, until prohibition is ended and abolished. Thank you. If you are interested in supporting the search for truth in the face of so much adversity and misinformation, I would kindly like to ask anyone reading to check out my publication as well. This Astral Codex Ten seems to be lovely so far, and I hope we can be something of a nice community!
The harm comes from two areas:
1. Addicts steal to support their addiction. There used to be no homeless around my place of work, and over the last few years an encampment has grown about a block away. Since then we've been broken into twice. Heroin addicts especially will steal anything that isn't tied down. The bolder ones will start mugging as well. They need cash, desperately and quickly. That harms the whole community.
2. Addicts are more dangerous than non-addicts, especially to themselves. Milage varies on this based on the drug used: opioid addicts are pretty much harmless to others while using, crackheads are very much not so. And even the opioid addicts are at extreme risk of killing themselves, which has a lot of externalities (no man is an island, after all).
If you're an addict, you need rehab. You are harming your community, and are not well served yourself, by living on the streets.
You are correct in the case of a minority of addicts stealing to support their addictions - this is why stealing is already illegal, and not why drugs are illegal. Otherwise, we should force kleptomaniacs into rehab, and anyone else who is mentally ill, which is silly. And although addicts do need treatment, it cannot be forced; the best society can do is keep them alive and safe by providing safe supplies, education, and treatment for when they are individually ready to get better. Alcohol, for example, is far more prone to causing societal harm, and violent behavior than any illicit substance - need I mention the high rates of DUI and car crashed stemming from alcohol use; yet it is not controlled for consenting adults, only kept out of the hands of minors. In fact, the illicit nature of more harmless drugs makes them easier to access for our youth compared to alcohol and tobacco, which I would argue is worse for society than allowing addicts to use their substances of choice in peace, until they act out or commit other crimes.
It can definitely be forced. Court ordered rehab. That or go to jail.
>But you don’t do it through ground-level rail policy, prison policy, or homelessness policy directly. You start by becoming a totally different sort of country.
Agreed. Step 1 of my proposal to solve homelessness is to adopt Approval voting in all government elections nationwide.
Would you care to write a bit about how this would work? (I'm a fan of approval voting for other reasons, but I'm very weak on my understanding of how it would alter political systems in practice, especially when compared to systems other than winner-take-all FPTP. And maybe you could persuade some other people!)
I always recommend everyone glance at this set of voting simulations for a very intuitive visualization of how different voting systems work, and why our current voting system (and Instant run-off voting) both lead to a two-party system:
http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/
There are three basic mechanisms here:
-If a FPTP election has three candidates, a moderate and a partisan to each side of them, then the moderate will typically lose even f they are closest to the average of public opinion. This is because the partisan to the left will get the votes of everyone left of themselves, as well as everyone right of them up to halfway to the moderate. And the partisan on the right will get the votes of everyone to the righto f themselves, plus everyone to their left up to halfway to the moderate. So partisans can always place themselves in such a way as to squeeze out the moderate who is closest to the center of public opinion, ensuring a two-party system where each side is more extreme than the average voter would like.
-If there are two parties with similar placement on whatever political axes, they split the votes of people who like that position, tending to make both those parties lose in favor of the party most opposed to that position. Since parties that lose a lot become unstable and less powerful, this creates a long-run equilibrium where third parties destabilize whichever existing party they are nearest while being unable to win themselves, and two parties is the only stable configuration that the system can settle in.
-Since people know about the vote-splitting problem, they will actively dislike and attack third parties which are close to their own preferences (as they might vote-split the people like themselves and cause the hated enemy to win). This causes people to undermine and be reluctant to support third parties in general, as well as causing them to vote strategically for the major party they hate least instead of voting for the third party closest to their preference.
Approval voting is just 'here is a list of all the candidates, put 'yes' next to any you're ok with and 'no' next to any you dislike, most yesses wins.'
It gets around these problems because more parties springing up close to your portfolio doesn't lose you anything (people can just put yes for both of you) and there's no value in strategic voting (failing to honestly fill out your ballot can't get a result you prefer more than just being honest, because you can just say yes to everything you like).
This makes it a lot easier for third parties to exist, it discourages extremism relative to the current system, and elects leaders that are closer to the average of public opinion. It makes it less of a situation where a pendulum is swinging between extremes every election (or between precincts), and more where there's a continuity in which different parties may take power but they're all closer to average public sentiment and less extreme.
Thanks!
> I always recommend everyone glance at this set of voting simulations for a very intuitive visualization of how different voting systems work, and why our current voting system (and Instant run-off voting) both lead to a two-party system:
The message of the page is that instant runoff voting leads to indefensible crazy outcomes, not a two-party system. It's true in the four-candidate scenarios and in the three-candidate scenarios. What do you see that suggests IRV promotes a two-party system?
(For those not curious enough to look at the page, note that I'm not editorializing this. The author's conclusion is, and this is an exact quote: "the Hare method yields extremely strange behaviour. Alarmingly, the Hare method (also known as "IRV" or "RCV") is gaining momentum as the most popular type of election-method reform in the United States". But the point at issue here is that the simulations don't show third parties getting squeezed out of IRV-based elections. They definitely do show that effect in plurality-voting-based elections.)
Look at the second set of graphs, 'Squeezed out'. IRV never elects a third party candidate in that scenario.
This is the set that shows the most common situation with real-world third parties. Most of the later graphs are demonstrating less common scenarios where IRV does weird things, just to show that it can be non-monotonic.
Additionally, note that in both the 'vote splitting' and 'shattered' scenarios the area for third parties ins much smaller under IRV than Approval, and in 'vote splitting' specifically the third party doesn't win when it nails the center of public opinion under IRV. It's true that IRV doesn't make it impossible for a third party to win in these cases, just a lot harder; but having it be a lot harder for third parties to win trends towards a two-party system, given that parties are long-term institutions that need wins to rally support and donors over generations.
Look at the third set of graphs.
It is not in fact the case that "the most common situation with real-world third parties" is that two parties are barely distinguishable along any policy dimension at all, but that's what's going on in 'squeezed out'.
"If a homeless person stabs someone, then I think most places (I don’t know if this includes SF), they get prosecuted under general anti-stabbing laws ..."
I think you underestimate the reach of Soros.
Forget NextDoor, even Reddit, which is extremely pro-disorder in its moderation, allows posts of the "watch out for chain-wielding guy/knife-wielding guy, he's menacing X Square today". The criminal justice system is making no effort to hold onto these people.
Soros is pro-stabbing
I don’t know that he is pro-stabbing but he is indubitably pro-stabber.
> I don’t know if there are really areas like this, but I welcome learning more from people who know cities better.
The run down parks are typically the places you already are more likely to have lots of homeless, because that's what causes them to be run down in the first place. Or the parks are run down because the local neighborhood is not as rich, in which case this is just a repeat of the shitty 1950s "gotta build highways through the poor black parts of NYC, but definitely not the trendy ones."
The thing that causes parks to be overrun by the homeless (at least if you believe Jane Jacobs) is single-use areas A park next to a bunch of offices (and nothing else) will have people walking through it shortly before 9 AM, shortly after 5 PM, and around lunchtime, and no other time. A park in a mixed-use neighborhood, on the other hand, will have people walking through it from early morning to night. This naturally prevents the buildup of homeless encampments, just as a natural incentive gradient: It's more enticing to choose the former park (or somewhere else entirely). It sounds like the idea here is to recreate this incentive gradient with policing, which might have a similar effect but seems like it requires constant input of energy rather than having it happen naturally as a result of factors that are good for cities anyway.
.....
It would not surprise me if part of the difficulty lies in the dynamics of popular opinion and diminishing returns. When things are *really* bad, people are willing to have the police crack down and pay for more services. Once the worst problems are partially resolved, you have less willingness for those things. You get more really difficult cases, or sympathetic ones, which are expensive and lead to sob stories on the news. And since the problem has been partially ameliorated, popular opinion no longer favors really tough crackdowns and high spending. I wonder if there's any evidence on this hypothesis.
OK, look, Jane Jacobs is fine, nothing against Jane Jacobs, but single-use neighborhoods are not what causes parks to be overrun by homeless people, or to be run-down in the first place, and mixed-use neighborhoods absolutely do not prevent either of those things from happening.
Gotta say a lot of the more draconian proposals are draconian enough that living in a society totalitarian enough to implement them would be worse for me than the status quo even though the status quo is pretty bad.
This idea might fall into the second category of objection that Scott mentioned, but maybe not.
Maybe instead of solving homelessness on a city-by-city basis we attempt to solve it by creating a special economic zone for the country focused on homelessness. Take some land somewhere (let's say Wyoming, they have lots of land), and build a city that literally caters to the homeless (Homelesstopia?). Most of the residential buildings are homeless shelters. Almost all of the restaurants are free soup kitchens. Support structures are there to the extent that they help rehab/medicate/treat. Get every homeless person that wants one a free bank account and a low skill job (I am trusting that manufacturing companies can be creative here, but it may have to be that various places have work for the first X number of people that show up).
Cities would need to meet some sort of criteria before they could send their homeless to Homelesstopia, but the homeless can leave whenever they want. Most could probably do so after a day of work, but since food, shelter, and work are easily available any person trying to get back on their feet can stay and have a solid opportunity to do so. It might even be a place for people to go to on their own as they become homeless.
The place can be funded by the cities that send the homeless there proportionate to how many are sent, but with economies of scale the cost of care per person would be dramatically reduced.
*I realize that anything that ends in -topia is going to end badly, so definitely don't use that name. I couldn't think up anything better to convey the general idea though. I think the idea is politically infeasible (nobody is going to want this city in their backyard), but at least it is a pie in the sky idea that might actually solve the problem. And more of those is generally a good thing.
I don't know the current state of homeless care/service. I haven't needed those services in some years. I can't speak to what policy prescriptions are instituted at the macro level, but I can say from experience in other areas of life that it's myopic to assume that, "If it hasn't been done, it can't be done."
It could simply be that the policy(ies) haven't been executed well/vigorously enough. Humans are remarkably adept at squirming through to the laziest option.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YIMBY_movement
The good news is that I have an article with a different journal specifically about solutions and a book under contract with Simon & Schuster on this topic so your cup will soon floweth over
I look forward to that, Freddie, since I often find myself agreeing with you on things even though we probably have about as opposite views as you can get, short of one of us being the reincarnation of Hitler/Stalin 😀
Here's my solution: Bus all the homeless people to Texas. When Texas buses them back, send them again. Now all the homeless people will have 24 hour shelter (on the buses) and you got Texas to pay for half of it.
Alright, I have a proposal that is novel and specific which addresses the issues with 'Being Tough!' in option two. Specifically, I think option 2 does not go far enough in flipping the script on *access to spaces*. My proposal is a compromise between the anarcho-capitalists and the socialists by disentangling a right to housing, food and healthcare, with a right to accessing highly expensive city infrastructure (where your being insane is everyone else's problem). Ultimately, it would solve not just homelessness but crime generally.
My idea is to make glamping a human right while privatizing most public spaces and granting their holders the right of Exile. This solves what I see as the primary factor in all this discussion which is the question of 'who is going to decide who is crazy?' and its twin prong, 'that's too much power and we can't afford mistakes'.
The reality is that you do not need well-trained policemen or judges or psychiatrists to designate a person as undesirable, if the stakes for *getting rid of them* are much, much lower than imprisonment in rapey institutions (as most institutions are for some reason). Forget crazy, if you act disruptive for any reason in Disneyland an underpaid employee will spot you and you'll be hauled outside. Now expand that. Act annoying in the classy clothes store and you're taken outside--act annoying on the street corner *outside the store* and you should be removed too. 99% of people do not feel oppressed or even particularly put out by these standards of behavior, because the market works. Our goal will be to expand the presence of these standards as much as possible using market forces while providing someplace humane to go that qualifies as the aforementioned 'outside'.
Consider the case of a suburb, where Scott says he doesn't want to push the problem off to. For all practical purposes the people in that suburb own the streets of the suburb, and it's absurd that some abstraction would keep them from policing it as they choose. If we just suspend our notions for a moment about public infrastructure it's obvious that human judgment is sufficient to handle this problem. It's easy to handle cases involving a crazy homeless person *the moment they step into somebody's front door* because then suddenly common sense and property rights take over.
So eventually all the completely dysfunctional people get pushed out. They're living on nature preserves with starlink Wi-Fi, solar panels, a tent, a mini-AC, and regular food drops (this food could be made ketogenic, because a ketogenic diet is indicated to be successful in some cases for treating mental disorders). I estimate a maximum budget per year of 10k per person. Sure, they're basically self-governing anarchies where prostitution and horrible things may happen but newsflash: they're happening in the tent cities right now, only in proximity to defenseless women, children, and malnourished tech workers.
This avoids the issues inherent to the other poster's idea of Homelesstopia where they have to explain at-length about which bureaucracies will exist to manage the problem. Let the problem manage itself! The homeless are free to leave the woods any time they want assuming someone will take them, and someone will always take them. It will be the government's job to provide them food-drops and also encourage higher pay for the kinds of jobs these people will do--let's say cattle herding for instance, since we'll need to increase beef production to keep up the keto dieters.
This is part of an overarching set of solutions I believe would work in our current moment, to sort of intensify the dipolar relationship between cities and wilderness. Make cities desirable and highly designed places, as utopians always dream of, but make nature the pristine escape-route as those suspicious of utopia know there needs to be a counterbalance to enforce the market on central planners.
I believe this would also create a renaissance of intentional communities, fwiw. Not just a good idea for the homeless but to let all eccentrics blow off steam and self-govern.
Private homeowners routinely throw people off of their property for petty, stupid and cruel reasons. If we privatized public spaces, how many communities would just drive their poor into the woods so everyone left could get a property value boost?
"For all practical purposes the people in that suburb own the streets of the suburb, and it's absurd that some abstraction would keep them from policing it as they choose."
I'm not sure what this really means.
The whole point is that all the poor people (specifically homeless) get driven into the woods. Homeless people should either put in the work to be integrated into society or they should have their tent cities in isolation. If someone is not homeless than they're not so poor that they would lack for a stake in the decision process. If you're talking about neighborhoods and the like, HOAs already drive out the poorer. Economics does that.
Note, privatized spaces would be owned primarily by corporations, which are less arbitrary than individuals. What I mean by police as they choose is just what I said throughout the whole comment. There is no such thing as a perfectly rational and comprehensive system, as Scott points out at the end of the day it's all just vibes. The best force to determine vibes is NOT bureaucracy or abstractions like some set of principles, but primary stakeholders.
I led with the negative but you're more humane than most extreme libertarians. At least you want to feed the homeless. Still, these were red flags for me:
"Note, privatized spaces would be owned primarily by corporations, which are less arbitrary than individuals."
It's astonishing that you believe this. It just doesn't match what I see.
"If someone is not homeless than they're not so poor that they would lack for a stake in the decision process."
This is less surprising, because it's (classical) liberal dogma. But I still don't buy it.
Corporatized public spaces would be driven primarily by consumer demand, in which case it's obvious that their rules will be less arbitrary than those surrounding someone's personal home--they have to be in order to compete. Unlike an individual, Disneyland will never have a schizophrenic break and accuse you of being an android as a precursor to ejecting you from their premises. How is that astonishing to point out? In a private setting, management is typically functional and rational (if often middling). This of course assumes the market is being well-managed and these are not the corporate towns of the past, which people needed to access for work and thus the towns leadership did not have to compete to be appealing. You're right I'm not an ancap I'm barely even a libertarian. What I am is a mixed market liberal in this context who thinks there should be a market for public spaces at all--after whose establishment we can quibble about regulation.
Unlike an ancap I don't expect this to just govern itself and never devolve into a monopoly. There needs to be a competitive system in place to maximize competition. Minimally that's my Universal Basic Glamping, but probably it should include a voucher system too--whereby those managing spaces get a share of your tax dollars depending on your usage. It would be a multi-trillion-dollar industry overnight and need relatively little intervention.
As for the poor but not destitute stakeholders, you can adjust for that again by the tax voucher, whereas rich people will still have nicer places (as they do already) which they will pay for in excess of the basic voucher sums. Kind of like the way private schools work. It's a lot like school choice now that I think about it. I'm sure that probably doesn't reassure you, lol.
Scott, I love the “how to design and implement laws for mentally ill & homeless people” blog post, plus this follow-up on experiences/ideas from other countries. If possible, proceed with a 3rd and 4th wave of comments from ACT readers & your reflections on their comments. This is really useful.
A comment that as far as I can see has not already been made from other Scandinavian readers: The scope and mandate of child protection services may play a role. Homeless people have children, plus many presently psychotic and/or homeless people have had a rough childhood and adolescence. Scandinavian countries put a lot of effort into child protection services, and also have low tolerance of serious parental drug use plus any type of domestic violence. For example, if a child watches a husband beat his wife this can be regarded as violence also against the child, and may trigger placement in a foster home.
…let me hasten to add that I do not want to give the impression that children are routinely taken very early from parents in Scandinavia if parents do not behave properly , and usually "nice" policies like councelling, free kindergartens and much else is done first. However, “violence” as well as “drug use” among parents are among the so-called trump cards that can lead to foster home placement. Without wanting to disregard the problematic sides of early-intervention & rather tough (from the parents’ perspective) child protection policies, it may have long-term effects on how many that end up on the streets 10-20 years down the line. I would not claim it is a major factor- policies more close-to-the-actual-homelessness (plus non-political stuff like a cold or warm climate) are more important. But the potential importance of general "very early intervention policies" are worth further investigation.
Some additional comments, supplementing those made by other European commenters:
Unlike the US, mentally ill or homeless citizens in EU states cannot migrate to other EU states since “people” are not fully mobile within the European Union – only “labor” is. Meaning, operationally, that non-state residents are not eligible for tax-financed welfare benefits in the new state. (Unlike the US, cf. Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969).) In any case, unlike the US people in Europe speak very different languages which in itself prevents mentally ill & homeless people from crossing state borders. That’s part of the reason we do not see a pile-up of homeless Europeans in Greece, Italy or Spain/Portugal.
> More generally, unlike the US, mentally ill or homeless citizens in EU states cannot migrate to other EU states since “people” are not fully mobile within the European Union – only “labor” is.
> In any case, unlike the US people in Europe speak very different languages which in itself prevents mentally ill & homeless people from crossing state borders. That’s part of the reason we do not see a pile-up of homeless Europeans in Greece, Italy or Spain/Portugal.
I'm somewhat familiar with homelessness in London and Hamburg. Many homeless there are from abroad, with Eastern Europeans being common. They could go home and go on welfare, but it would be meager. The hot countries are poor, but also much less tolerant. Hamburg (a leftist city) apparently manages to attract people from as far away as Italy, where rough sleepers can be beaten by police. London draws them in with charities, public libraries and a police force that takes pride in "policing by consent", i.e. does not hassle them.
Those are good points. How local authorities treat the homeless is likely to matter more than climate, also in Europe. Some homeless travel to Scandinavia for similar reasons. They can get free shelter and sometimes food from voluntary organisations and survive by begging/panhandling. Making it possible to survive without claiming public welfare.
They tend not to be mentally ill, though - the social and cultural barriers to move to other European states (language differences etc.) are probably higher than in the US, which create a stronger selection effect against migration from people with such problems. (Digression: I also notice that up here, the homeless do not travel with children. Since also children of non-citizens come under the juristiction of the child protection agencies.)
There’s one obvious change that would do a lot to fix the problem: End the minimum wage. At the federal, state and local level, just get rid of it. Make it legal to hire people and work for employers at any mutually-agreeable wage.
Sadly, I don’t have a PLAN to end the minimum wage. I don’t think it’s possible to reverse almost any established public policy to the extent that one could get it done given the competency crisis. But if you COULD get it done - if something ever happened to enable us to reconsider dumb old public policies and try something different - that’s the thing to try.
The problem is that every time you increase the minimum wage you make it harder to employ *people with low productivity*. Their jobs become worse, lose benefits, they lose access to training or flexibility or “slack” and are reduced in hours, and ultimately as the minimum wage increases over time the jobs disappear entirely. Then almost by definition the people who were only barely profitable to employ where they already were won’t be able to find anywhere else to hire them; they become unemployable and (once savings and friend/family support runs out) homeless.
California (and San Francisco in particular) has one of the worst homelessness problems because it has the worst labor policies in terms of making it more expensive to employ people. If you want to keep employed people who don’t always show up, if you want to offer flexible hours or training or uniforms and want to offer work to people with cognitive issues or family issues or poor work habits, you can only afford to do that if there’s a buffer between how much those people cost to employ and how much value they provide to the employer. Every minimum wage increase shrinks that buffer until it’s gone. With no buffer, one can only afford to hire the already-reliable; those with any strike against them are literally stuck on the outside; it’s *illegal* to put together the kind of work opportunity that could give them something to do all day and self-respect and a little income. Even a VERY low-wage job could still make a huge difference in people’s lives. It doesn’t have to be a “living wage” to do so. Mandating the minimum be so high as to constitute “a living wage” is in fact extremely cruel to those now excluded and stuck.
I don't know what percentage of the problem it would solve, but I would guess not higher than 99% and the remaining 1% are the cases that are causing most of the public mess.
There are people who don't just have low productivity, but negative productivity. Anyone who damages goods, steals or would otherwise get in the way of other workers subtract productivity, and would not get hired at any price. I agree that eliminating min wage would have some of the benefits you cite, but I don't think it would solve the most pathological parts of the problem, which is where most of the trouble comes from.
I agree that it wouldn’t solve *all* the problem, but if you just reduced the number of homeless by some *large fraction* it becomes a lot easier for existing institutions to handle the remainder.
It also wouldn’t help quite a lot of the *existing* homeless who are too far gone, but I’m thinking of this as a pipeline problem - what we really want is to be shrinking the *future* homeless population, catching people *before* they have a bad drug problem and bad reputation and no private social support.
Some teenager right now is fully capable of doing simple janitorial work like sweeping the sidewalk for $10/hour. They’ve been crashing on a friend’s couch. The fact that they have a job at all means they’re out of the house all day every workday - they’re not spending that time hanging out in a park or library annoying the public or at home annoying their friend whose couch it is. Having an income stream means they can buy their own meals and clothes and some entertainment - they don’t have to mooch so much which again reduces the stress on friends/family. Having a job all day means they’re not getting high all day and having to be somewhere in the morning means they’re not getting super drunk or high each night before. Having a boss and coworkers who are gainfully employed is a source of good advice and connections. Having a daily routine means building soft job skills, maybe eventually growing into a more lucrative role with more responsibility.
If we *also* re-legalized SROs - allowed developers to convert dead office space into windowless apartments with a common bathroom down the hall - then that $10/hour job would be enough to live off of on your own - and we totally should do that too - but even without that change this $10/hour job should be enough to make couch-surfing or sharing with roommates somewhat manageable in a way that *not having a job* does not.
Even if the kid occasionally has to sleep in a car or under a desk at the office, *having a job* means they can probably sneak in early and use the office bathroom to clean up so they don’t *look* or *smell* like someone who sleeps in their car.
If we make that $10/hour job illegal so the kid ends up with nothing to do and nowhere to be with only bad influences and unsafe locations around, we shouldn’t be surprised if they get a drug habit and become poorly socialized and sick and crazy and isolated and *after* that happens it’s unlikely you can save them…but there was a moment when you *could* have saved them by just letting the market work; that’s the part of the problem I’m obsessed with. It seems plausible to me that 90% of the problem is people like that, people who don’t need to become permanent victims but are being pushed into that status by our stupid laws.
Shrink that pipeline so fewer people end up on the streets in the first place and it starts to seem more likely the number of much-less-swamped police and social workers and beds we can afford might start to be enough to address the remainder.
Basically agreed, though I think this addresses a somewhat different problem than psychotic homeless defecating in the streets and screaming threats at passers-by.
I agree that the minimum wage basically cut off the lowest rungs of the employment ladder, and banning SROs basically cut off the lowest rungs of the housing ladder. These were both bad ideas. Both put marginally productive people (whether starting out, or having bad luck, or having some flavor of family or health problems) in a much more tenuous, risky position.
I'm not sure how strong the link is between forcing these people out into the street and the dangerous, psychotic homeless, whether that is, indeed, a "pipeline". Even if the "pipeline" is a minor contributor, it would be a good change to restore those lower rungs of the ladders. They make the difference between economic bad luck being a "soft" failure mode where someone can at least maintain a safe place to sleep and a catastrophe for them.
I do think that the small fraction of the homeless who are dangerous are a different problem, and, if found to be repeat offenders, need to be "warehoused" in _some_ way, where they don't do damage to everyone else.
Yeah, I essentially agree with Jeffrey, it's not clear that the population this would help has great overlap with the homeless person who yells grAaaaaaH at people randomly.
There's a minimum cost of living. If you reduce the minimum wage below that , why would anyone want the job? And if you can't make the rent, you become.homeless as.well.
If - as you believe - nobody wants to work for less than $X then jobs offered at that wage won’t get filled so there’s no need to outlaw their existence. The only reason to *have* a minimum wage is that at some level you believe people would accept less than that.
Which they would, for many reasons.
Reason #1: there is no specific minimum cost of living so people - especially those *on the margin* or *just getting started* or *retiring* - can temporarily cut back on almost any expense. They can crash on a friend’s couch or have multiple roommates rather than paying for a single rental. They can live with parents. They can live off savings or investment from prior work or loans or gifts from a support network. They can eat or buy clothes at subsidized locations. While doing any of those things - just ask a college student or recent immigrant- a job that pays *less* than “living wage” can help bridge any gaps until one gains enough skills and experience and connections to qualify for a *better* job. If you don’t make those kinds of bridges available, people are screwed who don’t have to be. Jobs are rungs on the economic ladder; sometimes people take a while to climb up or have to or choose to step down a rung or two before attaining their desired height.
Reason #2: jobs have *other benefits* than the salary alone, especially if we’re not forcing employers to maximize the salary component of compensation. People don’t just work to get income, they also work to have something to do, somewhere to be, to get a sense of accomplishment or belong to a community. They work for health coverage or to build a pension. They work because they like their coworkers. They work because they like the free snacks in the break room. They work because they enjoy the *flow state* of doing something as zen as washing dishes or sweeping floors. They work for the *artistic satisfaction* of contributing in some small way to a greater project. They work to attain *training* or *knowledge* that might put them in greater stead later in life.
People just plain *like* to work and they’d like it *even more* if we allowed a greater range of work to be available - including jobs that don’t on their own provide all of the salary one would need to, say, support a family of three in their own apartment. The job that doesn’t pay much in cash can afford to pay more in *every other* way that people like to benefit from a job so when we outlaw jobs that don’t pay much we’re not *just* forcing people into homelessness, we’re also making the world a less satisfying place to live with fewer interesting opportunities.
"They can live off savings or investment from prior work or loans or gifts from a support network."
How much savings will they have if all their jobs have been below minimum wage/living wage?
" a job that pays *less* than “living wage” can help bridge any gaps until one gains enough skills and experience and connections to qualify for a *better* job"
Who are not the people you are talking about - the ones who aren't reliable, won't show up on time, " people with cognitive issues or family issues or poor work habits". They'll probably never be able to get it together to get a better job, and the people who can do so are the reliable ones who, you admit, are worth employing at minimum/living wage levels.
I'm not against allowing people to work, but for jobs that pay less than minimum wage, we are going to have to subsidy them with government allowances and payments.
And there are people too far gone for even those kind of jobs, like our friend 'Jehovah' who got himself shot at the RNC:
https://apnews.com/article/republican-national-convention-milwaukee-police-shooting-columbus-2a85bd8dd3be69500e5c0992fb302343
"“They came into our community and shot down our family right here at a public park,” said Linda Sharpe, a cousin of the man who was killed. “What are you doing in our city, shooting people down?”
Linda Sharpe said her cousin lived in a tent encampment across the street from King Park, where the shooting occurred."
And why the hell was your cousin living in a tent encampment, smoking crack, and hearing voices telling him to grab knives and run at the cops, Linda? Why weren't you taking care of him? The man should never have been in a situation where this was the end result, but the family certainly seem to have failed him.
People with poor work habits can learn better work habits on their first job…or never have the opportunity to do so if that job is made illegal by dumb labor laws.
The job they can get *when* they have poor work habits doesn’t pay much because they’re not worth much then. Things like showing up at a specific arranged time and being presentable and polite and non-hungover, you don’t necessarily need those skills to, say, be a late night janitor. But once you *have* even the lowliest job you’re on a path to potentially greater success.
Re: savings, my paragraph was combining people in a variety of circumstances who all have different need or use for a low-paying job. Some of these people will just be starting out without much savings but others might have previously worked at a higher-paying job or have been working multiple jobs or have an inheritance or who-knows-what. The people you can most easily save from becoming homeless are the ones on the margin, the ones who are *nearly* productive enough to justify a real job with a real salary.
FWIW, in the realm of *acting* jobs my best one so far in terms of getting material for my “reel” - my main goal at the time - was a job that paid literally nothing in salary (besides a few free snacks on set). With a “living” minimum wage you limit the world to jobs that pay a lot per hour OR pay nothing at all and *only* provide non-salary benefits; without one there’d be room for jobs in the middle between those two extremes…and people would take those jobs because doing so made them better off. Just as I took that free job, but with bonus extra cash! (I had savings/investments from a prior career in tech).
So how were you paying rent on your snacks only internship?
Having had an entire prior career in tech/finance, I had sufficient savings and investment income as to not need my acting income to pay the rent. (Also this particular acting job was just a single night's work, a level of time investment that's entirely compatible with being a student or having a regular "day job".)
>If - as you believe - nobody wants to work for less than $X then jobs offered at that wage won’t get filled
Its not a binary, or a bright line. People will prefer the job that allows them to pay both pay rent and eat, but they ll still take the job that only allows them to eat, in preference to starving.
>especially those *on the margin* or *just getting started* or *retiring* - can temporarily cut back on almost any expense.
Including rent , because they can live in their cars or on the sidewalk.
Abolishing the MW will create homelessness, and that's one of the reasons there is one. Without the MW, the state plugs the gaps through benefits, or the community plugs the gaps through the negative externalities of homelessness.
>They can crash on a friend’s couch
That is homelessness.
>They can live off savings or investment
How does someone on the bottom rung of the economic ladder have savings?
You can have a minimum wage for most people, but another arrangement for some other people. For instance, it's common to have an exception for young people, who can be assumed to be living with their parents. You can also have a system where the govt and employer co-,pay a living wage. That has to be carefully controlled so that employer dunt over use it.
> Abolishing the MW will create homelessness, and that's one of the reasons there is one.
Nonsense. the minimum wage prevents jobs from existing that would make both worker and employer better off. Which almost by definition means it makes workers as a class worse off compared to not having it. The jobs that remain legal may have a higher average salary but there are *far fewer* legal jobs and the ones there are tend to be objectively worse jobs in every way *other* than their raw salary.
Before the minimum wage was introduced, the black teenage unemployment rate was the same as the white one. After the minimum wage, black workers (especially teen ones) were about twice as likely to be unemployed as white ones. Minimum wage harms the most those who are nearest the bottom of the economic ladder who are also those most likely to become homeless as a result of not having a job. Denying jobs to black workers (who could potentially undercut the union rate) was the EXPLICIT PURPOSE of the minimum wage at the time it was first enacted, this being a time when unions were white-only - look it up!
>>They can crash on a friend’s couch
>That is homelessness.
No it's not. I've had friends crash on my couch - one did so for over a year. She was never "homeless". Couch-surfing is a perfectly comfortable and civilized way to live for those able to pull it off. It's a way to save money and maintain flexibility. People who are good at it generally have *multiple* friends they can mooch off so when one gets sick of them they can go somewhere else or maybe can stay with family, or even just rent an apartment with all the money they saved by mooching during the non-renting periods.
Couch-surfing is a *lifestyle choice*, one which allows for sleeping in a secure location and taking showers and knowing your stuff will still be there when you come back and generally existing without breaking any laws. Couch-surfing doesn't tend to *stop people from being employable* the way homelessness does.
> >They can live off savings or investment
> How does someone on the bottom rung of the economic ladder have savings?
Sometimes people near the bottom rung are starting over after being on a high rung somewhere else. Maybe they're switching careers. Or semi-retired. People in those situations need "starter jobs" too!
Very cogently explained
The people saying be tough are afraid to describe what real toughness looks like.
Routinely grab everyone in encampments or creating a nuisance, throw away all their stuff except phone and wallet, arrest and book them, then let them go. This is strike 1. Second offense earns you a public flogging, delivered immediately, with subsequent release. Third offense and you go to a prison/work camp for 1 year. Fourth offense and it's a public hanging. Sentences ineligible for appeal. Eliminate all spending on social services and replace with funding for speedy enforcement and trials. You can have an orderly society. It just wigs most people out to take the steps necessary.
This almost certainly incentivizes the ~75% who are not mentally ill to not become a problem. It also incentivizes families to take responsibility for any members who they don't wish to reach strike four.
It would also incentivize a massive, broad-based revolution against any government so tyrannical as to issue death sentences for illegal camping. I would expect mutinies in the police and the military. I realize we're a quirky bunch here but your proposal really takes the cake, as they say.
The whole point of public punishment is to shame the offenders out of recidivism. I don't think this is a winning strategy against people who are insane/high/willing to defecate in public.
Not the only point; there's also an element of averting others by providing horrific examples.
Yes, they are the minority who continue to strike four.
As another commenter pointed out, the "throw away all their stuff" thing is already done quite frequently in large American cities, and, shockingly, has failed to make any of the newly homeless and stuffless people pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become homed.
I think those cities see less homelessness and less refusal to go to shelters. It's about disincentivizing people letting themselves end up in that situation.
Well, you see, no, they very much do not see less homelessness and less refusal to go to shelters. That's precisely why I bring it up. Los Angeles is one of the cities that does this.
Because other people are wreckers and give them expensive stuff for free.
I wonder whether attempts to segregate out those that can't comport themselves amongst others because of their mental illness will be stopped by enforcement like this.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/06/24/thousands-with-mental-health-disabilities-segregated-in-missouri-nebraska-utah-doj-investigation/74175601007/
That does sound like a lot of problems, but having been on the other side of "we contacted the officials and they didn't respond*", I know there's a whole other side of the story not being told.
Take this snippet:
"“Prisoners have more rights than a person under guardianship has,” said a resident named Angela. “Anything I do or have pleasure in, like smoking, can be taken away (at) the whim of my guardian.”
Do we know anything about Angela's health? Why is she in a nursing home at the age of 50? Maybe her cruel guardian is imposing their whims on not letting Angela smoke tobacco because of medical advice that if she doesn't quit smoking, she's going to get lung cancer?
I think this is the crux of the problem right here:
"The people in Missouri institutions instead need community-based services, according to the report, which allow them to live in their communities in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. All are offered in the Midwestern state but not widely. "
So these people need places, but there aren't enough places for them (and their families can't or won't look after them in the home). What do you do? You put them in state facilities, or you let them become homeless/incapable 'in the community'.
*I have mentioned this before, but one fine day at work in the social housing department, there was a heart-rending story in the local newspaper, followed up by the local radio station, of a poor single mother being strangled by us heartless bureaucrats and our red tape.
Which was an entire pack of lies, if you knew the real facts of the case, but the person in question knew how to game the system for maximum sympathy and to leave out all the pesky awkward little details that didn't fit the narrative and tug at the heartstrtings.
I would not be one bit surprised to find out that Angela is on oxygen for lung problems, for example, but the cruel heartless guardian won't give her permission to smoke and is taking away her last little crumb of pleasure!
I'll just dump this here for the moment, and maybe follow up later.
Part of the fundamental intractability of the problem is that we're not looking at it right. Not only are the homeless not a homogeneous population, the problem isn't even "homelessness". It's a giant multi-dimensional Venn diagram of conditions that can drag a person down into a living hell. There's homelessness, joblessness, mental illness, drug addiction, disability, criminality, anti-social behavior, and just not giving a fuck any more about what civilized society thinks. (That's my guess. I'm not sure how one would do a factor analysis on this stuff.) Catching one of these conditions makes it more likely to catch another, and the more someone has the more they're likely to pick up the rest. Our solutions tend to address one condition at a time, and break down when there's more than one thing going on. Homelessness simply happens to be a condition that dramatically increases the visibility of the person. But people who only have that one condition - homelessness - are not the cause of the problems we see, and are fairly easily helped.
Yes, but what if we just started getting tough on complexity? I'll bet complexity would get really scared and stop being so complex.
'The social fabric' looms around, behind all this. Great post
>I don’t know if there are really areas [where police herd homeless populations] but I welcome learning more from people who know cities better.
Los Angeles designated skid row as a containment zone for the homeless population in the 70's:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skid_Row,_Los_Angeles#1970s_containment_zone
I believe this policy has waxed and waned over the years as various interest groups (ACLU, anti-crime, etc) have had political ascendency. I remember driving to the symphony one night in the late 90s when I took a wrong turn and would up there: imagine ~500 vagrants milling about in a 2-3 block stretch.
> (I once asked a Swiss person how their streets were so clean, and he answered “everyone here is rich”).
Perhaps you should look to Singapore. We cleaned up before we got rich.
(In fact, cleaning was part of our strategy to get rich. Gotta send a message to foreign investors. The road between airport and central business district was kept especially shiny.)
Common denominator: everybody *expects* to be rich in the near future?
When Singapore started, it wasn't at all clear (at least to most people) that their programme was going to work. The programme of essentially neoliberal economics to make the country rich and successful.
You could perhaps turn around the casualty: a society that has enough capacity to pull of a deliberate project like 'physically clean up the city' is probably also one that can pull off becoming rich?
So taken to Switzerland:the cleanliness explains the prosperity, not the other way round?
Speaking of mental illness: I found it.
I found where the Democratic Party saw the tactic of repeatedly saying "He needs to decide."
Netanyahu has been telling Hamas "You need to decide. Will you return the Israeli hostages, lay down your arms, surrender, and end the war -- or do you insist on fighting."
So far, Hamas's answer has been to keep fighting.
So Netanyahu repeats "You need to decide. Will you return the Israeli hostages, lay down your arms, surrender, and end the war -- or do you insist on fighting."
> Third, realistically everyone will fail their drug tests and go back to prison, so be ready for that.
Perhaps being less Puritan would work? Ie only tests for some drugs that are really badly harmful, and quietly let them know all the drugs that are fun that they can still take.
Eg you want to test for alcohol. But perhaps stimulants are fine? (Just an example, consult with someone with actual knowledge.)
You don't need to explicitly legalise the less harmful drugs, you can just conveniently not test for them.
> But perhaps stimulants are fine?
Have you never met a person who has done too many stimulants for too long? Meet too many of those and you'll be begging to go back to dealing with drunks.
Sure. Please just replace my examples with better ones.
I've volunteered in soup kitchens and shelters for over 15 years and the drunks are definitely a bigger problem. The tweakers steal a bit more but the drunks easily outweigh that through their violence.
I feel like the thing that’s missing from this analysis is that it sure seemed to me like the same people who fought against building shelters because we’re supposed to be focused on permanent house _also_fought against any housing development that wasn’t the absolute perfect 150% low income housing development carved out of purest limestone blocks matching the local neighborhood character by a unionized workforce of racially diverse sylvan elves on a lot without any history of being, say, a historical gas station (“Harvey Mill filled up here once, you can’t tear it down!”). But maybe that’s just my perception.
Vibes are how you become a totally different sort of country.
(Scott says:
> “Be tough” is a vibe, not a plan.
and
> Is it possible to become the sort of state/country that can [fix big problems]? Yes, obviously, other countries do this, you could become like them somehow. But you don’t do it through ground-level [...] policy directly. You start by becoming a totally different sort of country. I would like for us to be the sort of country that does all of these things[...] But I don’t think you can start by planning the gleaming high-tech rail system, before you’ve solved the fundamental problems that make it impossible.)
For example. Imagine if, via media, religion, social pressure, etc, Americans were to all become extremely draconian, cruel, heartless, tough and fastidious. In fact, we all get so draconian and fastidious that we wear Ebeneezer Scrooge suits and carry heavy, ornate walking sticks, and if we see a homeless person, we hit them with our sticks until they run away. The police are even more draconian and tough than normal people are; but in the rare case that normal people catch the police trying to arrest a normal person for hitting homeless people with sticks, they gather in a crowd and verbally abuse the police and throw rocks and bottles at them. Yes, this is illegal; so is whatever the homeless person was doing; so is exceeding the speed limit.
(In ancient cities, it was normal for crowds to gather around people caught breaking the law and throw rocks at them until they died. What I'm describing isn't foreign to the human experience.)
I would hate to live in a country like that! But they wouldn't have a homelessness problem. Or, not for long. And the difference between that country and ours isn't any law anybody could make; it's the moral character of the normal people. And that's vibes.
On the other side, you could imagine that every American suddenly decided to take the Sermon on the Mount very seriously and became extreme practitioners of non-violence, accepting any violation anybody wanted to do to us without resisting, and without recourse to law. Forgiving everybody for everything all the time, even if it kills us. Who knows what that country would look like, but they also wouldn't have a homelessness problem. They might have lots of homelessness ("look at the birds of the air", etc) but it wouldn't be a problem.
I feel like the current American point on the toughness / softness spectrum is pretty good. Or, at least, I don't think we can move it significantly without incurring costs that I don't want to bear; and we'd have to move it significantly to fix homelessness. So, no thanks.
But I'd like to point out a plan that seems to have been overlooked: a vibe shift. An actual vibe shift. Laws aren't people, making laws tougher or nicer isn't a vibe shift. "Politics is downstream of culture," they say.
It could be that the commenters who are failing to propose plans with concrete, implementable policy propositions are actually trying to push the national vibe in the direction they favor. If they win, and our vibe genuinely changes, and we all get tougher, it would probably have a real effect.
> On the other side, you could imagine that every American suddenly decided to take the Sermon on the Mount very seriously and became extreme practitioners of non-violence, accepting any violation anybody wanted to do to us without resisting, and without recourse to law. Forgiving everybody for everything all the time, even if it kills us. Who knows what that country would look like, but they also wouldn't have a homelessness problem. They might have lots of homelessness ("look at the birds of the air", etc) but it wouldn't be a problem.
Are you positing psychopaths and sociopaths don't exist? Or that somehow they'd all get kicked out of this hypothetical "side"? I guess you are.
But those people would be somewhere, and as soon as one sneaks into this "side", it all goes to shit.
Whereas your other hypothetical side, where everyone's a Scrooge, takes care of the psychopath/sociopath problem, so of the two, I'd honestly rather live in the Scrooge one. It's more resilient to reality.
No, psychopaths exist. They just get to do whatever they want and normal people won't try to stop them. Their victims usually think, "This suffering is making me more Christ-like. Hallelujah!" or "By forgiving this person who hurt me, I'm storing up treasure in Heaven." They would give anybody anything they asked for, anything at all.
I would call this something like "extreme naive Christian non-violent anarchy". I don't think there have ever been enough people like this to see what it's like when practiced on a large scale. Maybe medieval monasteries were like this? But they were also strictly authoritarian.
Like, imagine if 95% of people had Mother Teresa levels of self-sacrificing generosity and forgiveness. There might not actually be any homelessness. I'll bet there would be other problems, though, with people's evil impulses unrestrained by anything but shame and empathy. But maybe shame and empathy would become very strong deterrents, if all your victims were extremely saintly.
What I'm trying to describe is a genuine vibe shift. Not a legal policy change. That's why I'm suggesting extreme examples, to try and make it obvious that changing people's moral character (if you could actually do it, not just pass laws about it) would have an effect on the problem.
> On the other side, you could imagine that every American suddenly decided to take the Sermon on the Mount very seriously and became extreme practitioners of non-violence, accepting any violation anybody wanted to do to us without resisting, and without recourse to law. Forgiving everybody for everything all the time, even if it kills us. Who knows what that country would look like, but they also wouldn't have a homelessness problem.
Terry Goodkind wrote a heroic fantasy series in which each book (after the first, which is more generic) specifically lampoons a dysfunctional modern philosophy. The one you mention is lampooned in book 8, 𝘕𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘌𝘮𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘦.
(The titles are generally less on point than that. The anticommunism book is, if I'm remembering correctly, 𝘍𝘢𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘯. One of the earlier books (#3?) is antiwoke, which is impressive given that it was written in the 90s.)
I remember a contest to retitle classic fantasy novels with something more accurate to the contents, in which the first book in this series was given the title 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘯. I still think that was a stroke of genius.
Huh, I didn't know that. I liked Wizard's First Rule, then I was really bored with Stone of Tears, and didn't read any more of his books. Maybe I should give him another try.
I think Native tribes should set up rehab facilities on the reservations. Sweat lodges, work and training for tribal members and keeping the addicts away from their supplies.
It turns out hollowing out the state such that nobody can do anything ever was a bad idea, because corporations and organizations that are not state-like can only do as much as the state they inhabit or parisitize; who knew except for anyone who has ever cracked a history book.
I wonder if we pay homeless people to move to Tent City. Most homeless would probably accept low dollar amounts in exchange for a bus ticket to shelter, food, safety, and warm weather. Weird idea but it lowers the costs of a lot of current solutions while providing similar benefits.
Wow. My impression after reading Scott's objections is that he wants a plan to solve homelessness that would work on the assumption that every single step will be done by incompetent people and on 1/4th of minimal necessary budget. I don't think this one's solvable, chief.
A couple of relevant pieces of context for why shelters are a rough option for homelessness from a study on LA homelessness options I co-wrote:
* marginal shelter beds at least in LA net out to about $100k/person housed per year (we think this is high but those are the numbers the city gave us)
* other government housing programs (section 202, section 8, public housing, subsidized ADUs) cost $20-30k per person housed per year (and this is assuming a marginal construction cost of $0.5 million/unit)
* in a QALY analysis of (a very small sample of) people who had experienced homelessness in shelters, streets, or vehicles near uniformly rated any of these as a life not worth living
Our conclusions were that shelters are not cost effective at the margin and they get underutilized partially because homeless people see them as providing no quality of life.
https://franciscolaragarcia.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/4_laadureport_submittededited.pdf
Lots of limitations to the paper (small sample size, elderly population without mental illness) but worth emphasizing that shelters are an extremely expensive way to house people. You will inevitably have the hard cases you've been discussing that are especially hard to house but you really want to lean towards just housing people even from a pure financial calculation.
I'm not law enforcement, but here's one possible reason that plan number one is so hard for them to do now: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/04/police-versus-prisons.html
tl;dr: the US has a third fewer police per capita than the average European state
Just had this pop up in my mailbox:
“ACT is a model of care for people living with severe and persistent mental illness. First developed in the late 1960s in Madison, Wisconsin, it pairs patients with a multidisciplinary team of professionals to provide wraparound care within their community.”
https://www.tvo.org/article/theyre-the-gold-standard-of-care-for-severe-mental-illness-so-why-doesnt-ontario-fund-more-of-them
They need to be better and more reliably funded so they get experienced and committed pros. Especially managers.
If you could benefit from one of these you should access to it.
There is also the cases of viral infections triggering mental health symptoms. Wild. This is why I am of the firm belief that health research should be multiples of what is now. There is still a lot of mystery and room for improvement in medical diagnosis and treatment!
Wishing you all the best in figuring things out as best as you can. Maybe a GLP-1 drug could help. I’m not all kidding. Seems like they’re finding that it does some good in areas other than blood sugar and weight by reducing general inflammation.
Scott:
Your argument against the third category of response seems like a fully general argument against fixing anything. Should we try to make housing cheaper, education better, college less crazy expensive? Should we try to stop people bashing transwomen? Should we try to make police more accountable and less trigger-happy? Should we try to decrease CO2 emissions to blunt the effects of AGW?
You can answer every one of these with "yeah, it's just American dysfunction, nothing to be done about it." But unless you're going full doomer on everything and expecting continual American decline forever, it seems like the real answer is that we need to repair some of the dysfunction.
For example, making housing cheaper (which won't solve the ranting crazy person homeless problem, but will help some poor people at the margins keep a roof over their heads) requires overcoming some dysfunctional bits of US politics and law--the ability to file blocking lawsuits and use administrative action to delay any building project for a decade and add millions of dollars of cost, the existence of restrictive zoning laws in many places, the entrenched interests of existing property owners who are better off when their most expensive asset stays crazy expensive because competing assets aren't permitted, etc. And yet, it sure seems like making some progress on NIMBY-ism and the death-of-a-thousand-cuts method of preventing development is possible, and in fact, people are working hard on that and seem to be having at least some success. Your argument above seems like it would say the YIMBY people should stop demanding change because hey, the US is just broken and can't be fixed.
I understand that there's not some magic wand we can wave and make all the dysfunction go away, but I honestly don't see why the problems with institutionalizing long-term crazy people are so intractible that we just have to give up on them and leave the crazy ranting people on the street. (Where we must then let them crap on the sidewalk and occasionally assault people, because somehow jailing them for that would be too expensive and would strain police resources too much, even though cities have done just that in recent memory without going broke or giving up on other law enforcement.)
Because seriously, we didn't have this same problem in 1950, when we were a much poorer country with much less effective drugs to treat serious mental illnesses. Have we really become so dysfunctional that it is simply impossible for us to take our massively more resources and more effective drugs now and run better asylums with better treatment, at least for crazy people who keep bouncing between the street, jail, and temporary commitment? If so, it seems like we need to be addressing that dysfunction.
Suppose some state decided to actually go back to the 1950 version of this--vagrancy laws on the books and enforced, panhandling forbidden by law, involuntary commitment for people who keep bouncing between jail and cardboard box and hospital, etc. Don't imagine California doing it, but could Utah or Missouri do it? My impression is that federal laws and court decisions would forbid it, but laws can be changed, and ultimately court decisions can be overturned, or (usually) addressed by a change in the law. One thing I'd like to propose is that we stop forbidding any state or city from solving the problem, before we decide that we're just doomed to massive public dysfunction forever and there's nothing to be done about it.
The part I don't understand is why we need to make San Francisco work as the mecca of homeless rehabilitation, out of all places.
We have a practically infinite supply of cheap space in places like Bakersfield, Lancaster, Fresno. What is a person overcoming addiction and a decade of unemployment going to do in one of the most expensive 7x7 miles of land in the world that caters to machine learning engineers and wealth managers? Already teachers and firefighters cannot afford to live in the city. What exactly is someone who's lived on the streets for years screaming at passerbys going to do in SF once they recover, short of being on government handouts for life pretend-sweeping the streets? Are they suddenly going to spin up cloud infrastructure in AWS? Are they going to learn product management? Are they going to apply to Ycombinator?
IMO they need to be 1. relocated to a geography where they can actually afford housing or housing is more affordable for taxpayers to provide 2. relocated somewhere where there are job opportunities for them, whatever form that takes.
>The practical reason is that the cost of everything has increased by at least an order of magnitude since 1950. Partly this is increasing social and governmental dysfunction.
Is there somewhere to read more about the idea of increase governmental dysfunction over time? If it got worse since the 50s, that is concerning.
People like to blame “dysfunction”, but I think they underestimate how much is caused by people wanting, and understandably demanding, better things.
For example: Regulation and security measures that save lives, regulations to help the environment (flora & fauna in addition to climate), population increase adding pressure on real estate and requiring regulation for being good neighbors, equipment becoming more powerful but heavier + more complex + more expensive to buy and run, livable wages, less corruption and less opportunities to skirt rules, etc.
Many of these things interact in complex ways, and add to the need for bureaucracy and approval, but if we agree we want to (e.g.) require fences along the railroad track to prevent kids, animals and irresponsibles from getting onto the tracks, not least because the new train weighs 10x more than the old one and moves at 10x the speed, and is much harder to stop, I’m not sure it counts as dysfunction to also add a requirement to check the contractor’s work.
The results probably don’t show up in cost or productivity, but in fewer accidents, less noise and emissions (relative to dimensions of things and number of people), slowing local extinction of species, etc., etc.
Not to say there’s no dysfunction, but I don’t believe it has increased as dramatically as people like to suggest, especially not in the same era that so much documentation has become automatic, transparency has become easier and more expected, information retrieval and communication is almost instantaneous, people have become more (better?) educated, etc… I think dysfunction just used to be better hidden and less expensive.
Compare to pulling a tooth ca. 1875, 1955, and 2025… I’m guessing the price has increased dramatically, but so has the comfort level and the chance of living through it without some infection spreading to your brain and killing you. You can argue that dental schools are dysfunctionally priced, big pharma’s supply chain and pricing of antibiotics and anesthetjcs is dysfunctional, and dentist certification schemes are dysfunctional, and they all drive up the prices, and I might agree to some degree, but I wouldn’t primarily blame dysfunction for the price increase. Even if I could find someone to pull my tooth the old way for $50, I think I would opt for the new, dysfunctional version. 😉
If the police are willing to ignore the crimes committed by the homeless, why not simply ignore the crimes committed *against* the homeless as well?
You've accidentally reverse engineered corrupt third world policing. This is how they operate in places like Mexico, and once if you allow them this much leeway, they will start thinking, "hey, let's not bother investigating virtually any crime unless we get a bribe."
Not much different than the "developed" US, honestly. Half of all murders go unsolved. Anyone who's lived in downtowns has their cars broken into and everything stolen repeatedly (I average 4x a year), and never bother filing a report because the police will just laugh at you and throw the report into the trash right in front of you.
Honestly, I'd welcome being able to pay a bribe and get whatever crimes I wanted investigated to the front of the queue, it sounds strictly better than what we have today (and I've actually lived in multiple different developing countries, I'm not just being "grass is greener" here).
"I'd welcome being able to pay a bribe and get whatever crimes I wanted investigated to the front of the queue."
Until someone with more money outbids you and you get pushed down the queue. And you'd better never piss off someone affluent or they might pay for you to be falsely arrested.
Mexico has a murder clearance rate in the single digits. Corrupt police don't have much time to investigate crimes, they're busy seeking more bribes.
I'm not saying Mexico is a "bad" country. I'd be happy to live there. I might move there someday. I just think OP (onodera) is an absolute doofus.
True - the worst part about openly corrupt systems is that it revolves even more hugely around "who you know" and guanxi.
Not that "who you know" doesn't help in the US, too. But it definitely seems more existentially important in developing countries, and that can be pretty hard for introverts and the majority of less-connected people in the country.
“ What are the criteria for committing people to this institution? If it’s “convicted of crime”, we get the problem discussed above: police won’t catch most people.”
One of the reasons police don’t crack down on certain types of crime is that they know there won’t be meaningful consequences for people they arrest. If you create a system that keeps the mentally ill off the streets, the police become a lot more incentivized to actually police them.
Here yet again to comment in defense of California HSR (thankless work for sure).
Does anyone remember how much the Japanese bullet trains cost? The Chunnel between Britain and France? Okay, those were other countries. The Hoover Dam? The Golden Gate Bridge? The Interstate Highway System? First BART system? I would be impressed if anyone knew the price of those. Does anyone seriously believe we shouldn’t have built the Golden Gate Bridge or the BART? No. Every project is short term pain for long term/permanent gain. Probably they had cost overruns too that have faded from memory - on Wikipedia it says that the Shinkansen had a cost overrun from 200 billion yen to 380 billion yen and a director resigned over it. The Big Dig was also heavily criticized as a “boondoggle” during construction for going from $3B to $15B, but now if you ask any Bostonian about it I think they would probably be positive about it because it really beautified the downtown spaces. I’m not saying that the price of infrastructure literally doesn’t matter, but even an expensive California HSR could still pay back a net benefit to the public over the 100+ year life of the system.
Also, I assume everyone here is media literate, so they understand that “Government Fucks Up, Wastes All Our Money!” gets more clicks than “Rail Service Works As Proposed, Good Job!”.
California HSR is a first-in-the-nation project that was always going to struggle. Building an electrified rail for 200+ mph trains is similar but not directly comparable to traditional rail. Finding the right track fabricator, rolling stock, engineers to design it, workers to build it, etc. is going to be harder just because it’s a first-in-the-nation project, plus add in all that California NIMBY politics during permitting and land acquisition.... Hopefully if high speed rail is a success we could start growing new industries and break this cycle and the next project will be cheaper. Maybe that’s cope, idk, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that part of “become a country that can build a high speed rail competently” is “build at least one high speed rail”.
Bottom line, if you want to mentally tack on a x3 multiplier on the cost of any construction proposed in the US for the next 20 years, I think that would be reasonable, and it’s what I personally do. But to oppose building new infrastructure that creates economic gains based on initial cost seems… depressing? NIMBY? How a society’s GDP stagnates? It doesn’t feel right to me. And it also threatens my job. So I still support building infrastructure.
If I had a gun to my head and I had to write an objection to California HSR, it probably wouldn’t mention cost at all, or at least not directly, it would be something like: “The Central Valley segment is going to be completed in 2033, and the SF to LA system requires about 30 miles of tunneling, so God knows you’ll complete it in 2050 or 2060 or 2070… that’s too fucking long of a schedule! Maybe it’ll be made obsolete by better air travel, self-driving cars, teleporters, whatever. Or maybe a giant exodus from California makes traveling from SF to LA not a priority anymore. We can’t blow our money now in 2024 on something for 2050, either build it faster or just don’t build it.”
>> Agreed. People don’t want them in the residential areas or suburbs either and for good reason. But my guess is cities can identify certain areas where they would prefer the tents to set up. Something like industrial areas or run down parks. The key is that city officials should be able to use arrests as a strategy to move the tents/homeless concentrations without having to face a million lawsuits.
> I don’t know if there are really areas like this, but I welcome learning more from people who know cities better.
Freeway on/off ramps are a good candidate.
I also hate it when someone's policy plan is just a vibe, but in this case I think "be tough" gets translated into pretty clear policy at the city level. It means the mayor tells the police that they don't want to see homeless people in X part of the city. Police then start harassing homeless people (legally or illegally) to get them to move somewhere else.
There's a liminal space between travelers, temporarily destitute "normies" looking for work and the capital H homeless. There's no way to neatly differentiate between these categories and so during the Bad Old Days, they just used the vagrancy laws to harass all of the above. The right to travel was severely curtailed. But for almost 50 years, we've lived in a world where you can travel wherever you want, by foot or by car, without having to provide proof of employment or income. There's no going back. People are sick of the homeless epidemic but most would go ballistic if cops returned to routinely asking people to prove they had work/income. It's abhorrent.
Yeah, I wasn't passing judgment on the ehtics or practicality of this position. I just wanted to describe what I think peopleeam when they say it
I object to you not passing judgement here. Poor form.
Thank you, Scott, for being a prescriptive optimist.
Some thoughts. Actionable maybe?
## Violent crime in the city is caused by a few hundred people
* https://x.com/BenMillerise/status/1811431008593465404
* https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/remarks/grassley_americans-are-rejecting-policies-that-kill
* https://thecrimereport.org/2021/11/23/can-we-build-an-infrastructure-for-violence-prevention/
> We found that gun violence concentrates within social networks. So, a small proportion of individuals are at the center of gun violence within any given community—and by small I mean a couple of hundred people in a community of tens of thousands.
## Repeat offenders
By court order, repeat offenders are required to wear ankle monitors.
Data can be used to
* Track the movements of repeat offenders and to determine if they are in the vicinity of a crime.
* Deliver meds or other treatments to them
* Pick them up and take them to a safe place
## Ankle Monitor / Parole Bracelets
* https://www.perplexity.ai/search/what-do-parole-bracelets-do-r11BTSjhTWKL3or7VraPDA
> Ankle monitors use GPS technology to provide real-time location data of the wearer. This allows authorities to monitor whether the individual adheres to geographic restrictions, such as staying away from certain areas or remaining within a designated zone
## Help people "re-enter" society
Housing is not sufficient to help people re-enter society. Find and organize things for people to do
They are paid for participating in activities that help them re-enter society.
* Pay $25 to complete a soccer match, softball game, or other local club sports event.
* Pay $50 for busking in a park or on a street corner.
* Pay $25 for picking up trash or weeding a park garden
* Pay $50 for helping repair bicycles
* Pay $25 for helping to sorting trash and recycling
* Pay $50 for helping to paint a mural
* Pay $25 for helping to build a community garden
* Pay $25 to shovel snow, rake leaves or clean up a beach or lakeside
Some of these activities for some of the participants might require wearing a camera or other monitoring device.
## Repurpose old buildings
* Use the underside of elevated highways for housing
* Box cars in old rail yards
* Old warehouses
* Old schools
## Instill a sense of community
* Every neighborhood in the city must accept a certain number of people who are homeless into their midst
* Perhaps two places for every 1000 people in the neighborhood
* Participants have been selected by the city to be suitable candidates
* Participants must be willing to live in the neighborhood for at least 6 months
* Names, photos and background information of the people living in the neighborhood are posted on a bulletin board in the neighborhood or on a website
* The neighborhood must set up places for them to live that has washing facilities, a kitchen, and a place to sleep etc - ways of enabling them to live in the neighborhood with a clean and healthy environment
I think your incorporation of the gun control problem is very smart, if perhaps unintentional. IMO this is because: 1) They are largely the same people; and 2) They cant find the solution because they are, more or less, ideologically blinded to seeing a solution. Gun controllers don't know how guns work. They don't want to, guns are too scary. Oh, and by the way that also have significant overlap with the people who make CA prisons $100k+ a bed and psych wards $300k+ a bed. These costs can and should be reduced 10x minimum if progressive activists were just locked out of policy discussions.
If you can't break down a pistol and a rifle, re-assemble them quickly, then hit targets at 25 yards with the pistol and 100 with the rifle, why are you talking about gun control? Similarly, if you are still talking about beds instead of stockades and outlaw status for the homeless, isn't you bubble just causing you to confuse yourself into an epistemic crises of "not being able" to solve the problem, because you've intentionally broken Chesterton's fence, then got gored by the bull, and are now asking about what is the best cohabitation plan with the horn up your ass. Maybe just re-build the fence?
Because people just having access to pistols and ARs is just kinda stupid? It's obviously dumb?
You don't need to have ever held a gun to understand that you pull the lever and bullets come out; all the bloviating about expertise is intentionally missing the point.
The fact that for 1200$ and a pin drill I can get 85% of the way to an M4 is fucking wild.
I mean, I like mine and will continue to raise it in LARP for the revolution or whatever, but the general gun owning population outside hunters is mainly of fairly low quality I would say; such that the majority of gun owners wouldn't meet your criteria.
The point is people *proposing policy* about an issue need to be knowledgeable and specific about it. Which is what Scott has laboriously been trying to get across with his last two homelessness posts. Knowing that a gun shoots when you pull the trigger is analogous to knowing homeless people don't have homes. That level of expertise doesn't exactly get you to solving the problem.
I object to your specific example only, in that case. The metaphor doesn't work because guns are very simple and social organization is very complicated.
It matters when people create ignorant policy. This either results in the policy being struck down by the courts, as Scott alluded to. The right to bear arms 'shall not be infringed' is the strongest language in the Constitution, right after 'Congress shall make no law' in the 1st Amendment. Or it results in policy that makes it less comfortable for people to use firearms with no impact on public safety, like outlawing pistol grips or suppressors. Or policy that is totally ridiculous, like outlawing bayonet lugs. Guns may be dangerous, but you know what's really dangerous, a gun with a knife on the end!
Fair enough, I retract 85% of my objection.
Specific gun legislation that has no effect on arms control but just makes shit annoying is spurred by people just going for any gun regulation they can even if it does nothing. I personally would love to be able to put a suppressor on my cheapo taurus .22 target pistol and run subsonic just for comfort.
That said I still maintain that people who know nothing about guns can still credibly say "I want there to be less/no guns", even if it is never gonna happen. If sandy hook didn't move the needle, nothing will.
Except the opposite is true. Modern firearms are the result of millennia of technological development. Homeless people occupying premium real estate is a modern innovation caused by incentives of the welfare state and the anti-law and order progressives.
Dude, this is just not true. Firearms are dead simple as machines, anyone who is mildly intelligent can pick one up and have a complete understanding of the mechanics in a couple hours.
A friend of mine has been working with the homeless population for some time in our small city and is convinced the institutional method doesn't work well and wastes tons of money on overhead because it ignores the humanity of the homeless person and the fact that each person needs unique help. So on his own he's been trialing his method of establishing a relationship of trust with a chronic homeless person built on unconditional positive regard. He genuinely likes people. Then he helps them find the resources and solutions they need to not to keep cycling through the system. It often involves helping them find a stable support group and working with their families, engaging community volunteers, churches, helping them stay medicated and find meaningful work. It's being there in a crises before things spiral out of control. It's a deeply personalized work and very effective so far. It's also a far less expensive solution in the long run, but unfortunately hard to get funding for as donors are often looking for quantity over quality.
I don't know how this could work in a big city or scale because the institutional is inherently dehumanizing but I think it's important to keep in mind humans aren't just machines, output the sum of inputs. And if you put them in a rabbit cage called housing they won't automatically self-actualize. Of course you can manipulate human behavior by imposing suffering, but in the long term that isn't going to help anyone heal and it isn't going to create the kind of society that values the unique worth of individuals and their potential contribution to a community of life, that actually everyone would prefer to live in.
On the topic of "crimes committed by mentally ill people are hard to follow up on":
I once saw a woman walking with her husband get slapped across the face for no reason by a crazy presumably-homeless lady who was wandering around muttering to herself.
The slapped woman, her husband, and myself, all just stared in disbelief at what had happened, and then within 30 seconds the crazy lady had disappeared down a side street with basically no hope of being found.
So we all just continued walking.
(This happened in 2020 in the Tenderloin in SF)
Perhaps I'm missing the humour, or misunderstanding, but as I read it, the intro is weirdly hostile and quite insulting "Many of you had strong feelings on this one. As usual, you were wrong."
Why directly insult your readers and commentors? What aim does this serve?
You have a large audience, and having such an audience (thought well earned!) is also a rare privilege. It is not seamly to insult people who spend time attempting to engage with you (and your community) in good faith.
You’re missing the humor.
To ruin the joke: It takes chutzpah to confidently say “nope, you’re all wrong and I’m right about everything!”Having decided to do that *anyway* (at least to the extent of disagreeing with all the takes given), he demonstrated self-awareness by first“calling out the elephant in the room”. You’re not supposed to just SAY “I guess I’m smarter than all you peons” so doing so is funny/transgressive and softens the blow a bit. I read it as *actually* saying “hey, I might be wrong about some of this stuff but you’ll have to try harder to convince me to change my mind.”
Thanks for clarifying, and explaining. It didn't seem like a joke to me!
The joke not landing reminds of the remark “the failure mode of clever is arsehole.”
To reliably land these kinds of jokes (doing the rude thing ironically) i.m.o. requires realtime audience-feedback or at least a richer medium than text.
Further, the tone of the rest of the article comes across (to me) as frustrated and angry, with Scott seaming genuinely annoyed by much of the community response. This pervasive article tone (as I perceive it) makes the initial joke even less legible (e.g., joking about being annoyed while actually being annoyed isn't really a joke).
I read more of the comments on the other piece than I really should have. I am struck by two things: first, that a tremendous number of the commenters are too cowardly to admit that their solution is mass executions. Aside from that one reactionary gadfly who candidly endorsed hunting them for sport, the solutions along the lines of "deploy them to the front line of a war" all really mean just kill them.
Here are my outside the box ideas:
-Actually incentivize cooperation with a relocation program by giving people what they want (instead of what we think they should want) which is ready access to affordable drugs. Build a nice town in the middle of nowhere, somewhere with decent weather, station some administrators and police, and prescribe fentanyl or whatever else people want, for free. Fentanyl is easy to make. Opiates are cheap. Give people prescriptions and let them ruin their bodies and lives, which this cohort are already doing, but remove the stressful middle step of subsistence thievery for funding.
-The drug cohort is responsible for a lot of the intractability (including political resistance) to helping houseless people. Like, if the drug people leave then you are left with the unlucky and the hopelessly insane. The former respond well to help, the latter you can put in It's Not Prison or just prison if they insist on assaulting people. White voters will still get mad that helping the down and out might accidentally help a black or hispanic person, but I think if they felt like it would actually do any good the people would support it --a large part of voter recalcitrance relates to the reasonable belief that money spent on this is wasted.
-One of the worst parts of homeless shelters for people with normal functionality is that violently insane or narcotic-infused criminals are there. These places could be nicer if they people in them were nicer, basically.
-Housing is a huge part of this, obviously. Repeal the federal ban on building housing, re-allow Flophouses (which were removed as a policy choice), crash the housing market even if it sends the economy into recession (it's going to happen anyways). Have a computer running a mysterious algorithm determine the best place to put the shelters, subsidized housing, and flophouses, then have organized crime intimidate the inevitable NIMBY's. I guess you could just change our legal structure dealing with citizen objections and suits to prevent construction or demand environmental review, that's what they do in Sweden, but I would accept a more violent, sub rosa response vis a vis the Karens of Orange County and the like.
Responding to DZ on just forcing homeless people into industrial areas.
This is exactly what Boston does. Most of our homeless population is in the "[Mass & Cass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_and_Cass)" area which is south of the city away from anywhere anyone except hospital workers would want to go.
Though, Boston has mostly accomplished this by centralizing services in that area rather than the suggested approach of just arresting people until they move to less desirable areas.
These aren't my views, but I feel inspired to steelman the "just get tough" plan. To be clear, I think this is morally repugnant, but I do 100% think it could work.
The core premise of the "just get tough" plan is: don't care about outcomes for homeless people. Actually, not quite right. There is an ideal outcome, which is the homeless person dies. Second best outcome is the homeless person leaves for somewhere else. Third best outcome is the homeless person stays in the city but learns to hide where they can't be seen or found easily.
The rule of the game is that you must follow the letter of the law, but not necessarily the spirit of the law. You're allowed to exploit any fuzziness or loopholes you can find to achieve your desired outcomes.
So the basic plan is to try and use every trick available to make it unbearably painful to be a homeless person living in the city. Police go in and intentionally provoke incidents, killing anyone who seems sufficiently scary. Prosecutors refuse to pursue cases of police brutality. Every existing law on the books is enforced as maliciously as possible against the homeless. You don't ever have to actually go to trial: just keep arresting people for a few days and make sure you lose all their stuff every time you bring them in.
The local community can get involved. Police can let local kids know they'll look the other way if they go trash the homeless encampment and steal everything that isn't nailed down. Let business owners know that if they shoot a homeless person in their store, they're not going to face any serious consequences. Get sympathetic journalists to write stories of local heroes who stood up to an evil homeless person.
You're essentially implementing a plan of state-sanctioned stochastic terrorism against the homeless. You can do 90% of this with existing powers, you don't need a bunch of new laws or programs. Just an attitude shift that harassing or killing homeless people is acceptable or even laudable.
The difficult part is preventing political blowback. If you lose elections and a bunch of softies get into office, then the plan falls apart. So you need to build a political constituency for being as mean as possible to homeless people. And you pull every trick you can to keep your guys in charge of aa many institutions as you can. The hope is that your intentional cruelty starts to work well enough that voters come around to it and support you rather than undermining your efforts.
How does this work? Well, first off, the very worst offenders are unlikely to survive at all. They'll get into trouble one way or another and get themselves killed. Others will realize that life on the street is no longer tenable. They'll check into shelters or skip town. The cleverest and most determined will learn to live in ways that don't draw attention. This is a success - the point is not to help them, but to keep them out of the way. If you train the homeless to hide, you've succeeded.
This is the sort of plan that tends to snowball. Once it starts to work and visible homelessness becomes less common, you can focus all your resources on cracking down anytime it starts to reappear. If every city implements similar policies, you'll end up pushing homeless people into the most marginal land around. Many of them will die of various causes. The others will learn how to keep their heads down so as to not bring the hammer down.
Does this solve the homelessness problem? In one sense, no, not at all. The homeless are worse off than ever. But you have solved the problem the typical person actually cares about, which is that they have to interact with homeless people on a regular basis.
This is maximally uncharitable. The reality is that the purpose of a "get tough on bums" strategy is to make less people bums. Contrary to your opinion (and seemingly that of Scott in his op) there is no fixed population of people engaging in public bummery. If there is no open air drug market and no ability to just encamp in high traffic areas, most of these bums wont die, they will just find being a bum unfun. They will then cease to engage in the act of being a bum, as being sober and living under a bridge that is a long way away from good peddling corners (rent free by the way) is not interesting.
If you just eliminate the free food, cheap drugs, and free rent (imagine what a normal person would have to pay to rent a tent on the sidewalk in Central Park or the Tenderloin!) and less people will do that behavior.
I guess this is an interesting example for how you can have different axes of charitable. I agree actually that a lot of people would just make different choices under this regime and not end up homeless at all, or get off the streets and get jobs. But I wanted to make the point that even under extremely cynical assumptions, "just get tough" is probably a viable strategy.
One thing that your analysis totally misses Scott is that we now live in a surveillance state, yet no legislator have ever attempted to weaponize this for a GOOD cause (like catching criminals) rather than a BAD one (like oppressing people with political WrongThink). In any big city, we have hundreds of cameras watching almost anything at any time. It would be very EASY to tie them together into one consolidated network and use that to prosecute homeless criminals based on more than just "vibes." Plus, the advantage (assuming we had PUBLIC oversight of the network rather than government access only) is that it would be the equivalent of having police bodycams everywhere that the police can't turn off, which would also shut up all those ignorant left-wingers who say things like "Defund the Police." This system wouldn't just punish homeless criminals; it would ALSO punish police who overstepped their authority.
It's very difficult to respect either you or your thinking when you fail to account for such obvious technical solutions in your analysis. We don't live in the Stone Age anymore; we live in the Digital Age. Digital Age problems call for Digital Age solutions.
I lived in Japan (Tokyo area) for three years, and almost never encountered a homeless person. In 2019 the official number was fewer than 1000 homeless people in the Tokyo metro area, an area with like 40M people!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Japan#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20the%20number%20of,Kanagawa%20prefecture%20(719%20people).
Some of this is social stigma: it's considered shameful to be homeless and many retreat away from cities and hide from the census (and yes, some choose to end their lives, a problem in Japan to be sure).
When I asked my Japanese friends why it was, they also pointed to social stigma, but on the *families*: if your son/daughter/sibling/cousin/etc is homeless, that is shameful for you, and this provides incentive for the family to support that person rather than dismissing or disowning them (as sometimes happens in the US).
Like many things in Japan, this social/familial support structure might be a nice thing to import to the US if we could, but as they say, https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/10/society-is-fixed-biology-is-mutable/
I haven't gone through all the 786 comments at the time of writing this comment. So apologies if someone's made the point below.
As Harry Deuchar's comment highlighted above shows, building more better homeless shelters is a clear improvement. I mean that seems to be the common thread in the rest of this post as well.
But you can't do this in SF as the housing costs are too high.
So perhaps, homelessness should be considered a problem of Bay Area in whole and there ought to be homeless shelters around the cheaper parts of Bay Area. That'd go a long way in mitigating the problem except I think nobody wants homeless shelters in their neighborhood.
*Shameless self-promo*
I wrote something related to your original post:
https://schizotypy.substack.com/p/speculations-on-ways-to-improve-medication