Are there no prisons? And the Union workhouses. Are they still in operation?
Work sets you free!
Still sounds better in the original German…
Then it sounds as though it’s long overdue for everyday working people to start making some constructive decisions on this issue for once, doesn’t it? (And not just the NIMBY decisions about “put these people somewhere where I don’t have to see them or deal with them”.)
We as voters and citizens and taxpayers have to really responsibly address these problems. Not just demand that our elected officials and law enforcement make the problems magically disappear so we are no longer inconvenienced by them.
But you don’t like what actually needs to be done. You want to continue the same lame things that has failed for decades and want to call the productive citizens of our communities heartless, selfish, mean, etc for wanting those actual solutions.
Yes, I have. They say things like you do–treating homeless people as less than human. You talk about them the way people do wild animals. They cause disease. They’re smelly. You act like making money matters more than they do.
And literally none of your arguments would be something that could justify a full on ban. At most they would support zoning, not trying to get rid of homeless people entirely by passing laws that solely exist to try and force them to go be “someone else’s problem” rather than do anything to actually help.
As for the claim that you believe in helping out those who “really want help”—have you actually done so? The thing is, this is one of those things people love to tell themselves, but few follow through. It’s easy to create criteria for such that exclude nearly everyone, so they don’t actually wind up helping.
Heck, I’m not perfect. I have the same problem of wanting to believe things but not always acting on them. It’s why I’m so bullheaded on saying that true beliefs result in action. It’s easy to fall into the trap of telling myself I believe things just to alleviate guilt.
Perhaps I missed it, but you do not seem to have actually proposed any solution. You just say to lock them up, which only relocates the people, without doing anything about their problems.
You seem to see the problem as the homeless getting in the way of others, rather than as people who need help.
You can’t say the problem is put people in cages. Inhumane treatment is not a solution to inhumane conditions of homelessness.
If you have proposed any actual solutions, I apologize. But “just lock them up” is clearly not one.
I wasn’t talking about jailing them and you know it.
Forcing the severely mentally ill or the severely addicted into treatment is doing something about their problems. Many of the homeless do not have the faculties to make these decisions on their own. This is why the revolving door drug/alcohol treatment and mental health care system doesn’t work. As long as they can sign themselves out it simply isn’t going to work.
If involuntary treatment served both the homeless and the communities they were in and actually worked compared to what has been failing for the last 40 years, why wouldn’t you at least try it? Nobody is talking about going back to 19th century style abusive scenarios.
Yup, the State forcing the mentally ill and addicted into treatment facilities that they can’t voluntary leave isn’t anything like jailing them . . . what were you thinking?
Of course what this does to solve the problem of those people that are not mentally ill and/or addicted is left to the reader’s discretion.
You don’t seem to have any proposals for “what actually needs to be done” other than involuntary commitment of many mentally ill homeless people to facilities they’re not allowed to leave.
You haven’t offered any evidence that this is in fact an “actual solution” to any problem, except the problem of non-homeless residents not wanting to see or deal with homeless people in their communities. I acknowledge that your proposed “solution” does solve that particular problem quite effectively.
From what I gather with regards to homeless camping, people object much more to the semi-permanent shanty towns as compared to just the homeless. People certainly are displeased with homeless people in their community, but they are really displeased by the homeless taking over public spaces with improvised housing. If the cities just allowed public sleeping with temporary, overnight shelters (e.g. popup tent) and prohibited any sort of structures during the day, it would allow the homeless their freedom without the blight that shanty towns create.
As I said upthread, if a community supports sufficient housing options - SROs, shelters, subsidized housing, etc, AND if there are adequate mental health services available - do folk think people should still be allowed to live on the streets? I don’t.
And it is unfortunate if someone has a mental illness, but if they choose to forgo treatment, well, I’ve got no objection to society placing limitations on their lifestyle choices.
I am very much in favor of increasing various assistance available to the most needy. But I also have no objection to living in a community where people are not allowed to live in public areas.
If the ordinance is not carefully written, it could make it a criminal offence to hold sit-down protests on public streets and sidewalks in and near the Downtown area or around UT Austin.
~Max
“Limitations on their choices”, in the form of requirements like “You have to sleep in one of these shelters or supported housing options or camping areas and may not sleep on the city streets”, or “You may not construct or occupy shelters on the city streets”, and that sort of thing, sure.
“Limitations” in the form of “You will be shut up in this involuntary treatment facility unless and until we decide to release you even though you haven’t been convicted of any crime”, not so much.
To clarify prop B, everyone would be subject to the ordinance against sitting/laying on roads and sidewalks near Downtown/UT Austin, or camping in non-designated public places. It wouldn’t matter if a person chose to undergo/forego treatment for mental illness, and it wouldn’t necessarily matter whether some other public shelter is available for that specific person, or available at all.
~Max
It’s probably true that only about 50-60% of homeless people are mentally ill or addicted at any particular time. But that’s because, although any working class person in this country is just a few bad breaks away from becoming homeless, most of them have the social and personal resources to get housed again fairly quickly. People with serious mental illness or addictions, on the other hand, have a much harder time. So, while at any given time, only 50% of homeless people might be mentally ill, there’s a lot more turnover in the non-mentally ill half than there is in the mentally ill half.
It frustrates me to hear people say things like “Giving people housing won’t solve the homeless problem”. OF COURSE IT FUCKING WELL, BECAUSE THEN THEY WON’T BE HOMELESS. It won’t magically solve all their other problems, but it certainly will solve that one. And solving that one will go a long way toward making it possible to address the others.
I used to work in a facility housing formerly homeless people; only people with both serious mental illness and a history of addiction were eligible. The only expectations were that they not commit acts of violence against people or property while in the residence. They were given access to mental health care and addiction treatment, but they weren’t obligated to participate in these. Theoretically they weren’t supposed to possess alcohol or drugs on the premises, but they all had private rooms and we didn’t inspect them unless there was some obvious reason to. As far as what they did off the property, we absolutely didn’t care. I can say with certainty that all those people were better off with us than they were sleeping on the streets. They weren’t ever going to become “normal productive members of society”, but at least they were well-fed, warm and not under constant stress. Once they didn’t have to constantly struggle to get their basic daily needs met, not all of them chose to make positive changes, but many did.
I think this is a model that should be much more widely emulated. My position is that housing is a human right, and (except when one’s behavior is actively dangerous to other people) declining treatment for one’s mental health and addiction issues is also a human right. Forcing people to accept treatment they don’t want in order to get housed is inhumane.
FFS Discourse won’t let me just edit a post to say “nm?” It has to be at least five characters AND a grammatical sentence?
One has to consider what living on the street in an unforgiving city does to one’s mental state (which is impacted by one’s emotional state). Stabilizing these folks’ living situation is the first step toward stabilizing their mental state. Making their housing unconditional removes the uncertainty that they might transgress and find themselves sleeping under newspapers again because they failed to toe the line.
Do folks think that if a community supports sufficient housing options, any significant number of people would choose to live on the street? I don’t.
And it is your opinion that if, say, someone is diagnosed with mild depression and doesn’t want to take an antidepressant, they should be imprisoned and forcibly medicated? How about ADD? Does that diagnosis take away all your civil rights? Social anxiety disorder? Nicotine addiction? Hypoactive sexual desire?
Legal mechanisms already exist to compel mental health treatment in cases where the person is genuinely unable to make decisions on their own behalf and/or is acutely dangerous to themselves or others. It appears some people in this thread would prefer to replace that standard with “Anyone who makes choices I think are unwise must be incapable of making their own decisions”.
So, you are offering people places to live, as long as they want, for free, coming and going as they please with no curfews and without any obligations to engage in any sort of treatment they don’t want to engage in? And large numbers of them are refusing this? I find this hard to believe.
The place I used to work at always had a long waiting list. Nobody “chooses” to be homeless. If people aren’t taking what you’re offering, you need to offer them something else.
Put it this way: a lot of people have mental illnesses and addictions that they aren’t addressing. If those people have homes, as most of them do, nobody would suggest that throwing them out on the street would be likely to improve their situation. So why do we think it’s OK to insist that people who don’t have homes need to address these issues before they get to live indoors again?
Instead click the three dots icon next to the pencil = edit icon and then click the trashcan icon that appears to delete it completely. It’ll still be there, but the content won’t be. Like the one below I deleted as an example.