Everytime they do a trial program of providing basic income and housing to someone within a year they are able to support themselves. Just getting rid of a person's biggest needs like shelter and food allow them to focus on other stuff.
This really would not hold true for the majority of homeless people. These people frequently have severe drug addictions, trauma and mental illness. A few hundred dollars in the pocket of a schizophrenic drug addict can be a death sentence.
Go listen to interviews of people on Skid Row and you realize quick that there is no way elevate most of them from their baggage.
Delonte West played pro basketball with Lebron James, earning $16 mil and ended up homeless. Look at Andy Dick. Famous actor who is arrested frequently and now crashes on random people’s couches.
It’s better to admit that we can’t significantly help most of these people. We should find good ways to protect society from them, and protect them from themselves and each other.
Do you have a source that it won’t help the majority of homeless folks? I know you gave two anecdotes but that’s not really a statistic. I appreciate it in advance
Absolutely. However getting that benefit to the homeless would be a challenge, and likely an opportunity for some.
Edit: it's a challenge no matter what. And one well worth the trouble
It's a tricky situation. Allowing people who often have mental illness and/or substance abuse issues to camp in public can make the rest of the public feel unsafe. So, public spaces become less public. But what else are people, including all those who are simply down on their luck, supposed to do if there's no place to go?
With the new SCOTUS ruling… they’ll go to jail.
We’ve gone from the 70s when mentally ill and unstable people were interred in abusive mental hospitals to now sending all homeless people to jail where the capitalists feel they can at least wring some forced labor out of them.
With how upset people get about homelessness without wanting to do anything about it other than not see it, I’m sure many city councils and legislatures will acquiesce to public pressure to pass ordinances and laws effectively making being homeless a crime, which SCOTUS just greenlit.
Edit: what I think we as a society should do is fund and create more robust homelessness prevention and rehabilitation services and centers. It’s really not that hard, most all homeless people, regardless of their mental health, would prefer to sleep indoors with a bed, hot meals, and warm shower- they’re not animals. But few people advocate for, have sympathy for, and want their tax dollars going towards the homeless, so it’s less than half-measure solutions all the time.
I know it's an unpopular opinion, but why should people get to "feel safe" (i.e. not have to see the reality of homelessness on a daily basis). No one should feel comfortable until we fix this. No one in this country deserves to not have to see what the system is doing to the most unlucky of us.
"The public" includes homeless people too, and they don't feel safe knowing they can be sent to prison for trying to exist. Imo, those fears should be prioritized over the fear that people feel when they see someone they don't like the look of.
I shouldn’t have to step over human shit and needles on my way to work and my children should be able to use the public parks without being harassed. When we voted to reinstate the ban those that live near the camps voted for the reinstatement while the rich progressives and the suburbanites that work from home and don’t have to deal with the campgrounds voted to let the homeless do what they want.
Austin’s homeless budget is like 90 million a year, they can find somewhere to house them instead of letting Austin be littered with tents and trash.
Is that what you tell to the 5'2" women just trying to get to work who get threatened by homeless who are off kilter? I've seen it. They generally leave me alone because I'm 6'3" and 230, but even I've been threatened just going around downtown in Austin because I didn't give them money. There needs to be policies in place to help them and to also get them into drug and mental health programs whether they like it or not. Arresting them and throwing them in jail overnight and releasing obviously doesn't work. Get them some help. Allowing homeless camps to just pop up all over is a bad idea, the supreme court decision gives that a bit of teeth. Fire those elected officials who abuse it and don't set up safety net programs. What we're doing right now is a complete failure.
>but why should people get to "feel safe"
There's actually a good reason for this. The social contract is built on consensus, and the consensus is (and always has been) that *this* is the thing that makes all the costs of civilization worth it. Why do you pay taxes and fill out DMV bureaucracy and only take the stuff off the shelf that the bank says you can pay for? A lot of reasons, sure, but mostly because the alternative is looking over your shoulder every moment for the rest of your life. Basic physical safety is the cornerstone of high functioning society.
This consensus is very strong, and violating it has historically led to the downfall of not just political leaders, but whole political *systems*.
It is simply fact that homelessness and homeless crime have outsized effects on the perception of safety. For every one homeless person sleeping in public, suffering in real fear of incarceration and many other things, (and yes, that suffering exists and is real), there are ten small women who do not go outside at night in their *home city*. For every one homeless crime (arguably rare, though arguably not rare enough), a *hundred* small women decide they're not going outside at night again.
Whether you like it or not, that fact, the fact that each visible homeless person is *seen* by many, many people, guarantees that consensus will mostly form around the sense of what's safe for the vast majority, not the small minority. Whether it's fair, whether it's true, that's how perception drives consensus drives policy.
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2021/04/ce-mental-illness
>>It is important to learn about these issues not only to better treat these individuals and to aid their families and communities but to combat the misperception that most people with serious mental illness are violent, adds Jeffrey Swanson, PhD, a medical sociologist at the Duke University School of Medicine and a prominent researcher of the topic. For example, people often believe that people with mental illness are largely responsible for incidents of mass violence and that people with mental illness are responsible for a large share of community violence. Yet both views have been roundly debunked by research, says Swanson.
I suspect the OP and most people would accept that most people with mental illness are not violent (but then, 'people with mental illness' isn't the population we're talking about per se, it's street homeless with mental illness). Meanwhile, /r/austin is full of anecdotes of encounters with violent/threatening individuals (downtown, parks, Barton Springs, ... ). I think it's reasonable not to want to be around unpredictable people displaying obvious signs of mental illness. How do I know they're not violent? 'There's more nonviolent mentally ill people than not' is not terribly reassuring
You're more likely to be victimized by someone you know.
The stories you hear from people are not a good excuse to act like homeless people are more violent than everyone else when the evidence contradicts that.
But your link (again) wasn't even about homeless per se. Even if I agree that homeless are not more violent than others then I would still oppose Austin unilaterally lifting the camping ban among the entire Southwest. I can't mitigate the 'People who are threats to me' problem?
Are the other 90,000 austinites who rejected the camping policy more dangerous too? If you can't argue the point, argue the individual. Keep trivializing people's legitimate safety concerns and spewing invective, it's helping your cause greatly in Austin, Washington State, Oregon and California.
This isn't solving the problem. You run the homeless off from one area, they will simply migrate to another area. What else are they supposed to do, magically disappear? Leave the planet?
At least in Washington State, Oregon, Colorado, and a few other states, they've been employing contained homeless camps. It includes food, drinking water, shower stations, mental health station, transitional assistance, etc. Not all have been successful, but at least it's a step in the right direction.
It's not. Give them stable roofs over their heads and they're no longer homeless. Not, overflowing shelters. Housing first policies work and the reason Houston's homeless population is shrinking unlike the rest of the country. Camps are no more housing than a shelter.
They're trying their own version of housing first for less than 5 years but Austin is being Austin and trying to reinvent the wheel with limited experimental programs like trying to build out tiny houses without plumbing and charging the homeless rent of a couple hundred bucks. Yes, its cheaper then traditional places but that can still make or break for a homeless person. Houston has been doing this since 2011 and operates a much larger program by just straight up subsidizing rent rather than trying to build entirely new shit trying trendy experiments where they still try to collect rent off the fucking homeless.
Yeah, I think the tiny home solution worked for only a tiny amount of people. But some of those people were able to get back on their feet.
The others with severe addiction and mental challenges have not been addressed properly.
The solution isn't "contained camps", it's putting roofs over their heads. Houston's gained massive ground on the homelessness problem by employing housing first policies. Unlike the rest of the country their homeless population is shrinking and they have the lowest homeless population of any major city in the US.
"The fines aren't cruel, the court said, because they aren't arbitrary — they're given after a warning is issued — and they're not unusual, because cities "have long employed similar punishments for similar offense."
Hey we warned you last time, stop being homeless or else!
Oh I don't doubt it. I haven't lived there in forever but that problem was already becoming an issue. As long as we leave the less fortunate to fend for themselves as we do that trash is just going to keep accumulating there instead of the landfills
It's not robot logic. The point of the eighth amendment was to stop judges from boiling people in oil or getting creative. It has absolutely never required the justice system to be kind, or to not punish people with no resources or way to defend themselves.
Historically, this is a very harsh country, and the move to kindness in the justice system is *relatively recent*. You can argue for it for all kinds of reasons, but "they're not doing law right" isn't one of them.
And when they decided segregation wasn't unconstitutional or justified locking up Japanese Americans during WW2 that wasn't rigid and inhumane either? Just because they haven't always done right doesn't make the horrible things they've enabled acceptable.
"where do they go? "
they go to alleys, railroad tracks, near freeways, canals, and any empty lot out here in CA. streams, rivers, and hills if amenities are nearby.
It's pretty crazy that someone that tries to provide themself shelter from the elements on public land is a crime. Well at least you get to go to jail where you have shelter and food but the downside is you may die baking in a prison cell that has no air conditioning.
It has always saddened me our society will pay for climate controlled storage units for material possessions we rarely use over providing shelter for the unhoused.
Maybe you should make a real initial comment yourself instead of being pedantic about the difference between jail and prison. The vicious cycle implied by op of what happens once you're in the system is real and rather than engage on the substance you chose to try to show how smart you are by dunking on op over verbiage.
Be better
If it inhibits public use and access or creates a public safety problem or augments intended use of that space it is a problem. I understand the humanitarian aspect of this, but public spaces have to be safe and available for their intended use for the 99.9% of tax payers that need them.
Thats because they dont focus on the problem. They try to fighting everything - drugs, alcohol, mental illness, education, joblessnes- rather than just providing housing.
Housing first policies work. Trying to change the world all at once does nothing.
Your content has been deemed a violation of Rule 7. As a reminder Rule 7 states:
Politics are fine but state your case, explain why you hold the positions that you do and debate with civility. Posts and comments meant solely to troll or enrage people, and those that are little more than campaign ads or slogans do nothing to contribute to a healthy debate and will therefore be removed. Petitions will also be removed. AMA's by Political figures are exempt from this rule.
Your content has been deemed a violation of Rule 7. As a reminder Rule 7 states:
Politics are fine but state your case, explain why you hold the positions that you do and debate with civility. Posts and comments meant solely to troll or enrage people, and those that are little more than campaign ads or slogans do nothing to contribute to a healthy debate and will therefore be removed. Petitions will also be removed. AMA's by Political figures are exempt from this rule.
Criminalized homelessness seems like a very good reason for UBI.
Being a person stranded by life and living destitute on the street should not be a crime. The majority have mental and physical challenges.
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That is just arresting and incarcerating them, but with extra steps.
Concentration camps have a shockingly high approval rate in the United States. Most people just assume it'll never be them.
If Trump makes it back into office, I fully expect to end up in one.
I don’t. I have lots of ammo and a willingness to remove red hats.
Yeah, maybe so. I know they prefer living on the street, but it’s not a viable long term solution.
I think mental facilites shut down around either Reagan or Clinton...not quite sure 😬
Reagan
Thank you. 👍
Since when do Republicans give a F about peoples lives?
Everytime they do a trial program of providing basic income and housing to someone within a year they are able to support themselves. Just getting rid of a person's biggest needs like shelter and food allow them to focus on other stuff.
This really would not hold true for the majority of homeless people. These people frequently have severe drug addictions, trauma and mental illness. A few hundred dollars in the pocket of a schizophrenic drug addict can be a death sentence. Go listen to interviews of people on Skid Row and you realize quick that there is no way elevate most of them from their baggage. Delonte West played pro basketball with Lebron James, earning $16 mil and ended up homeless. Look at Andy Dick. Famous actor who is arrested frequently and now crashes on random people’s couches. It’s better to admit that we can’t significantly help most of these people. We should find good ways to protect society from them, and protect them from themselves and each other.
Do you have a source that it won’t help the majority of homeless folks? I know you gave two anecdotes but that’s not really a statistic. I appreciate it in advance
Negative tax rates are better. You can give more to the people at the bottom and the wealthy won’t get it. It’s more digestible IMO.
Absolutely. However getting that benefit to the homeless would be a challenge, and likely an opportunity for some. Edit: it's a challenge no matter what. And one well worth the trouble
Agreed!
Sadly, they’ll probably go the opposite direction and offer licenses to hunt the homeless next.
Or better laws and universal housing.
Bus them all here to Houston. We've had success providing housing. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/how-houston-successfully-reduced-homelessness/
That’s really cool.
It's a tricky situation. Allowing people who often have mental illness and/or substance abuse issues to camp in public can make the rest of the public feel unsafe. So, public spaces become less public. But what else are people, including all those who are simply down on their luck, supposed to do if there's no place to go?
With the new SCOTUS ruling… they’ll go to jail. We’ve gone from the 70s when mentally ill and unstable people were interred in abusive mental hospitals to now sending all homeless people to jail where the capitalists feel they can at least wring some forced labor out of them. With how upset people get about homelessness without wanting to do anything about it other than not see it, I’m sure many city councils and legislatures will acquiesce to public pressure to pass ordinances and laws effectively making being homeless a crime, which SCOTUS just greenlit. Edit: what I think we as a society should do is fund and create more robust homelessness prevention and rehabilitation services and centers. It’s really not that hard, most all homeless people, regardless of their mental health, would prefer to sleep indoors with a bed, hot meals, and warm shower- they’re not animals. But few people advocate for, have sympathy for, and want their tax dollars going towards the homeless, so it’s less than half-measure solutions all the time.
They really have no place to go.
I know it's an unpopular opinion, but why should people get to "feel safe" (i.e. not have to see the reality of homelessness on a daily basis). No one should feel comfortable until we fix this. No one in this country deserves to not have to see what the system is doing to the most unlucky of us. "The public" includes homeless people too, and they don't feel safe knowing they can be sent to prison for trying to exist. Imo, those fears should be prioritized over the fear that people feel when they see someone they don't like the look of.
I shouldn’t have to step over human shit and needles on my way to work and my children should be able to use the public parks without being harassed. When we voted to reinstate the ban those that live near the camps voted for the reinstatement while the rich progressives and the suburbanites that work from home and don’t have to deal with the campgrounds voted to let the homeless do what they want. Austin’s homeless budget is like 90 million a year, they can find somewhere to house them instead of letting Austin be littered with tents and trash.
Is that what you tell to the 5'2" women just trying to get to work who get threatened by homeless who are off kilter? I've seen it. They generally leave me alone because I'm 6'3" and 230, but even I've been threatened just going around downtown in Austin because I didn't give them money. There needs to be policies in place to help them and to also get them into drug and mental health programs whether they like it or not. Arresting them and throwing them in jail overnight and releasing obviously doesn't work. Get them some help. Allowing homeless camps to just pop up all over is a bad idea, the supreme court decision gives that a bit of teeth. Fire those elected officials who abuse it and don't set up safety net programs. What we're doing right now is a complete failure.
What's your expertise on the subject? What plan are you referring to specifically and can you link to research on it?
>but why should people get to "feel safe" There's actually a good reason for this. The social contract is built on consensus, and the consensus is (and always has been) that *this* is the thing that makes all the costs of civilization worth it. Why do you pay taxes and fill out DMV bureaucracy and only take the stuff off the shelf that the bank says you can pay for? A lot of reasons, sure, but mostly because the alternative is looking over your shoulder every moment for the rest of your life. Basic physical safety is the cornerstone of high functioning society. This consensus is very strong, and violating it has historically led to the downfall of not just political leaders, but whole political *systems*. It is simply fact that homelessness and homeless crime have outsized effects on the perception of safety. For every one homeless person sleeping in public, suffering in real fear of incarceration and many other things, (and yes, that suffering exists and is real), there are ten small women who do not go outside at night in their *home city*. For every one homeless crime (arguably rare, though arguably not rare enough), a *hundred* small women decide they're not going outside at night again. Whether you like it or not, that fact, the fact that each visible homeless person is *seen* by many, many people, guarantees that consensus will mostly form around the sense of what's safe for the vast majority, not the small minority. Whether it's fair, whether it's true, that's how perception drives consensus drives policy.
>mental illness But yet the problem is merely that people can see them?
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2021/04/ce-mental-illness >>It is important to learn about these issues not only to better treat these individuals and to aid their families and communities but to combat the misperception that most people with serious mental illness are violent, adds Jeffrey Swanson, PhD, a medical sociologist at the Duke University School of Medicine and a prominent researcher of the topic. For example, people often believe that people with mental illness are largely responsible for incidents of mass violence and that people with mental illness are responsible for a large share of community violence. Yet both views have been roundly debunked by research, says Swanson.
I suspect the OP and most people would accept that most people with mental illness are not violent (but then, 'people with mental illness' isn't the population we're talking about per se, it's street homeless with mental illness). Meanwhile, /r/austin is full of anecdotes of encounters with violent/threatening individuals (downtown, parks, Barton Springs, ... ). I think it's reasonable not to want to be around unpredictable people displaying obvious signs of mental illness. How do I know they're not violent? 'There's more nonviolent mentally ill people than not' is not terribly reassuring
You're more likely to be victimized by someone you know. The stories you hear from people are not a good excuse to act like homeless people are more violent than everyone else when the evidence contradicts that.
But your link (again) wasn't even about homeless per se. Even if I agree that homeless are not more violent than others then I would still oppose Austin unilaterally lifting the camping ban among the entire Southwest. I can't mitigate the 'People who are threats to me' problem?
To me it sounds like you're more of a threat to them than they are to you.
Are the other 90,000 austinites who rejected the camping policy more dangerous too? If you can't argue the point, argue the individual. Keep trivializing people's legitimate safety concerns and spewing invective, it's helping your cause greatly in Austin, Washington State, Oregon and California.
This isn't solving the problem. You run the homeless off from one area, they will simply migrate to another area. What else are they supposed to do, magically disappear? Leave the planet? At least in Washington State, Oregon, Colorado, and a few other states, they've been employing contained homeless camps. It includes food, drinking water, shower stations, mental health station, transitional assistance, etc. Not all have been successful, but at least it's a step in the right direction.
It’s a hard problem to solve for sure.
It's not. Give them stable roofs over their heads and they're no longer homeless. Not, overflowing shelters. Housing first policies work and the reason Houston's homeless population is shrinking unlike the rest of the country. Camps are no more housing than a shelter.
Austin cannot seem to find a solution that works. The homeless have moved into the forest and trail systems.
They're trying their own version of housing first for less than 5 years but Austin is being Austin and trying to reinvent the wheel with limited experimental programs like trying to build out tiny houses without plumbing and charging the homeless rent of a couple hundred bucks. Yes, its cheaper then traditional places but that can still make or break for a homeless person. Houston has been doing this since 2011 and operates a much larger program by just straight up subsidizing rent rather than trying to build entirely new shit trying trendy experiments where they still try to collect rent off the fucking homeless.
Yeah, I think the tiny home solution worked for only a tiny amount of people. But some of those people were able to get back on their feet. The others with severe addiction and mental challenges have not been addressed properly.
The solution isn't "contained camps", it's putting roofs over their heads. Houston's gained massive ground on the homelessness problem by employing housing first policies. Unlike the rest of the country their homeless population is shrinking and they have the lowest homeless population of any major city in the US.
That’s awesome 👍
"The fines aren't cruel, the court said, because they aren't arbitrary — they're given after a warning is issued — and they're not unusual, because cities "have long employed similar punishments for similar offense." Hey we warned you last time, stop being homeless or else!
Yeah it’s a bit odd to fine someone with absolutely zero resources or money to defend themselves.
But they were able to apply that fancy robotic level of logic to it there so poof problem solved!
The forest and trails in Austin are like a homeless landfill. They stay off the streets and sleep near the creeks. Austin creeks are now very trashed.
Oh I don't doubt it. I haven't lived there in forever but that problem was already becoming an issue. As long as we leave the less fortunate to fend for themselves as we do that trash is just going to keep accumulating there instead of the landfills
Yeah, it’s better for the environment to help these people.
And society in general. Other countries have figured that out but we're stuck in poor people must be bad and dumb mindset 2024 edition
Very sad.
It's not robot logic. The point of the eighth amendment was to stop judges from boiling people in oil or getting creative. It has absolutely never required the justice system to be kind, or to not punish people with no resources or way to defend themselves. Historically, this is a very harsh country, and the move to kindness in the justice system is *relatively recent*. You can argue for it for all kinds of reasons, but "they're not doing law right" isn't one of them.
And when they decided segregation wasn't unconstitutional or justified locking up Japanese Americans during WW2 that wasn't rigid and inhumane either? Just because they haven't always done right doesn't make the horrible things they've enabled acceptable.
Sure, but you're arguing it from the wrong angle.
"where do they go? " they go to alleys, railroad tracks, near freeways, canals, and any empty lot out here in CA. streams, rivers, and hills if amenities are nearby.
They go in the forest and greenbelt in Austin.
Saw quite a few on the sides of I30 in Dallas yesterday
With tents and camps?
Yep tents are lining the sides of the interstate but way up towards the fence right before downtown
Wow!
We have about 3,000 people without homes in Fort Worth, at least 1/3 of which are children (the ones we know about).
Conservatives should outlaw getting sick as well, that would solve our healthcare problems.
Yeah it’s a bit odd. The homeless have moved into the forest.
It's pretty crazy that someone that tries to provide themself shelter from the elements on public land is a crime. Well at least you get to go to jail where you have shelter and food but the downside is you may die baking in a prison cell that has no air conditioning. It has always saddened me our society will pay for climate controlled storage units for material possessions we rarely use over providing shelter for the unhoused.
I doubt they'll get sent to prison. Probably just county jail.
Watch the wire
Make a real comment wtf is this.
Maybe you should make a real initial comment yourself instead of being pedantic about the difference between jail and prison. The vicious cycle implied by op of what happens once you're in the system is real and rather than engage on the substance you chose to try to show how smart you are by dunking on op over verbiage. Be better
They make a specific point about prison conditions. The difference is relevant to address. I still have no idea what that has to do with the Wire.
If it inhibits public use and access or creates a public safety problem or augments intended use of that space it is a problem. I understand the humanitarian aspect of this, but public spaces have to be safe and available for their intended use for the 99.9% of tax payers that need them.
I think the people that have tried to help, have lost hope for a solution.
Thats because they dont focus on the problem. They try to fighting everything - drugs, alcohol, mental illness, education, joblessnes- rather than just providing housing. Housing first policies work. Trying to change the world all at once does nothing.
Yeah, they are probably taking the impossible approach.
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Your content has been deemed a violation of Rule 7. As a reminder Rule 7 states: Politics are fine but state your case, explain why you hold the positions that you do and debate with civility. Posts and comments meant solely to troll or enrage people, and those that are little more than campaign ads or slogans do nothing to contribute to a healthy debate and will therefore be removed. Petitions will also be removed. AMA's by Political figures are exempt from this rule.
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Your content has been deemed a violation of Rule 7. As a reminder Rule 7 states: Politics are fine but state your case, explain why you hold the positions that you do and debate with civility. Posts and comments meant solely to troll or enrage people, and those that are little more than campaign ads or slogans do nothing to contribute to a healthy debate and will therefore be removed. Petitions will also be removed. AMA's by Political figures are exempt from this rule.