Oh - that IS my opinion? 
Make all the unwise decisions you want. But you don’t get to unilaterally choose to significantly detract from common spaces, and other peoples’ enjoyment of those spaces. Oh yeah - and making decisions that you aren’t paying for…?
Read your own posts, dude.
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.
Of course, if people are creating a public nuisance, that shouldn’t be tolerated. But it shouldn’t be tolerated regardless of their housing status or medical history. And nobody should have to accept any sort of treatment as a condition of receiving housing, because, again, housing is a basic human right.
The proposition simply reimposes statutes that were on the books for years before the City Council repealed them two years ago. Austin wasn’t exactly a stranger to sit-ins, die-ins, teach-ins and other such forms of protest during all those years – it’s practically a civic pastime.
I didn’t say that at all. Shelters do have rules, curfews, etc, they are not flop houses. But many of the homeless refuse to go to them because A) they don’t want to abide by the rules and curfews and/or B) They’ve been kicked out of the shelters for not following the rules, causing problems, etc and are not allowed to return.
There is also voluntary mental health care that they can sign into but most refuse to do it. Every now and then we are able to talk one into it. But the problem is they start to feel better for a bit and leave and end up back on the street.
Except many of them do commit crimes. Theft, Lewd and lascivious, prowling, vagrancy, criminal trespass. These are the most common crimes we see the homeless commit. Many of them end up in the special needs pod of the county jail until their hearing but they don’t get any real treatment there. Then the DA cuts the crime down to an ordinance violation, they get a fine they’ll never pay, and are put back out on the streets. Then there ends up being a warrant out for them for not paying the fine. Eventually they get picked up again either for the warrant or some other offense and it begins again.
Rather than doing this over and over again, wouldn’t it be better to force them into the treatment they need? Occasionally a mentally disturbed homeless person will commit a violent act and will end up in long term psychiatric care rather than being imprisoned. We should be doing the same for mentally ill homeless that don’t commit violent crimes as well.
Toe the line? How is having a curfew unless employed, maintaining sobriety, no possession of narcotics, staying on psych meds, maintaining treatments, no theft, no disorderly conduct, no assaulting other residents, in other words acting like a human being so hard to do to have someone provide you with shelter?
If homeless people don’t go to shelters because there are too many rules, then there need to be fewer rules. You are failing to serve the people you’re supposed to be helping, and your solution is to blame them and apply escalating levels of force to make them live their lives the way you want them to, rather than the way they want to live.
Your statement that maintaining sobriety is some effortless thing that anyone can easily do only reflects your total lack of understanding of how addiction works.
In other words, just operate an anything goes flop house? How is not allowing disorderly conduct, theft, drug possession, sexual assault, and battery on the property “too many rules”? Which of those rules do you object to? Sorry, if you’re living on someone else’s dime they get to set some perimeters. Many of the homeless don’t go to shelters because they’ve been kicked out and banned. What do you suggest the shelters do about someone who consistently comes in and starts fights, steals, tries to sell/use narcotics and so on?
I don’t set that rule, the shelters do.
And the fact that I do understand addiction is key to my entire position. Addicts generally are not going to seek out the help they need, especially when they are homeless and mentally ill. Which is why I advocate for some forms of temporary involuntary commitments to mental health and rehabilitation services for some homeless individuals.
This is bizarre logic to me…You are saying that the people doing the damage, (vandalism,ruining public spaces, etc) are the ones who get to choose what happens because that’s “the way they want to live”.
What about the way everybody else wants to live?( free to walk through the streets and parks of their own city without stepping on feces and needles, etc.)
I don’t have a moral obligation to “serve the people” who are damaging society. They have a moral obligation to live by the rules of society, just like I do.
If they can be helped, and if they want to be helped, then we need to provide that help.But if they refuse to accept the help, and refuse to live by the rules of the shelter which helps them, then the responsibility is on the homeless person, not on me. And that means that it may be necessary, and legitimate, to house them in a different shelter, where they have no options to refuse to obey the rules.
For those interested, Proposition B looks to be cruising to victory with about 65% of voters voting in support with about half of precincts reporting.
I also have to laugh because someone thought it would be a good idea to put a proposition on the ballot to move to a “strong mayor” form of municipal government – this just five months after our mayor got busted for tweeting at citizens not to travel as he was at his daughter’s destination wedding in Cabo. The proposition is currently losing 13-87.
Here are some of the reasons homeless people don’t stay in shelters:
Also, where would you put homeless people? Jail? That’s an expensive and temporary “solution.” And what do you do with their kids? Send them to jail, too, or put them in foster care–another over-burdened, under-funded option? Or would you foist them off on another city? And if you do, prepare to receive homeless people from other cities.
One thing I’m wondering is if the camping allowance means more people actually living on the street because it’s more convenient than trying to scrounge for housing on a regular basis. Many homeless end up rotating between things like staying on someone’s couch, staying in motels, staying in their car, and staying on the street. But when there is no restriction on something like setting up a tent under an overpass, that seems like it would be a more stable housing solution and the person would just do that all the time. In addition, it means the $30 or whatever that might be spent on a motel can stay in their pocket. I’m not convinced that all the people in the tent cities really have no where else to go and will end up in the woods. I’m sure that’s the case for some of them, but I would think that some of them can find alternative housing and were actually in alternative housing before they were living in the tent. But they prefer to live in the tent rather than whatever housing they had before.
This is a bit of strawmanning. I do not believe that anyone here is proposing Niven’s Anarchy Parks model for housing the homeless. Those things you describe are things that get people sent to the Iron Inn, sometimes even from your own privately owned home. That housing for the homeless would tolerate illegal behavior is severely reaching. It is the arbitrary rules like curfews that most of us object to.
I will say that this vile “war on drugs” is at the root of many of these issues. Drug abuse is a concern, but handling it as a criminal matter (using, not so much the selling) has been a massive failure (assuming the goal is a stable society, as opposed to marginalization of those people) that needs to end now.
Drugs won, now we just have to negotiate peace. Which is to say, if a resident is shooting up in their room, if they can keep it in their room, let it go. It seems preferable to walking past them as they are shooting up in the street. I mean, if you are imagining a bunkhouse layout, yeah, I do not think that is going to be feasible.
Fair enough, but consider the practical side. Having everyone out fending for themselves without any meaningful safety net (Individualism!) is all well and good until it leads to the stratification that destabilizes society. If you have all the nice things and Jean Valjean breaks in and steals your stuff to feed his family (or his habit), that is on him, but it is also on you if you acquired all the nice things with no regard to the social cost.
In other words, society is a group effort. If some of the group are working to make it harder for others, they become non-contributing members, even if they are fabulously wealthy. Crime works both ways, and it is often the upper class who are fostering the disorder that they lament. No one should get a pass.
I think so also. Not to mention medical care, since homeless medical care is by way of 911 or ERs.
Homeless camps are are a fire danger.
It is just better to give them a place to live. The USA has tens of 1000’s of shipping containers, they are easily converted to living quarters- fireproof, water proof, etc. With communal bathrooms and cooking facilities you can make a homeless town that will- in the long run- save taxpayer money. Not to mention is it just the right thing to do.
But as shown before anti-vagrancy laws are mostly Un-constitutional.
The law will not stand up in courts, as Max-S has pointed out.
In San Jose, when I was a Commissioner, we did a study, and yes a large number of the homeless are regular people who just need a job. But they dont usually live in camps or “on the streets” , they live in their car or couch surf or similar. You would not recognize them as homeless. They need job training, a decent interview suit, and perhaps a grant of security deposits.
Of the rest we have druggies, a few real hobos, the mentally ill, teenage runaways and a few people that actually prefer the lifestyle. The druggies are victims of the stupid fucking War on Drugs. The mentally ill should be in places that can care for them.
But they are.
What @pkbites said was literally in response to that. It’s not a straw man when you’re reacting to the actual words a person is saying. I will assume you didn’t catch that though.
What pkbites describes is no rules. That is not what Thing Fish conveyed by saying that there should be fewer rules. Show me where Thing Fish or I suggested that housing for the homeless should look like a total free-for-all, because that appears to be what pkbites has us saying.
And which rules do you so object to?
Having a curfew is part of maintaining order in the shelter. I’ve seen shelters turn into complete chaos. Letting tenants come and go at all hours of night while not doing anything to improve their lot is turning the shelter into a flop house. Go out into the streets and puke, shit, piss, and aggressively pan handle in public then come back for a meal and nights sleep? Whatta deal.
Do you object to not bringing liquor or narcotics into the shelter? Not stealing or starting fights? Because these are all problems that happen in shelters.
Here’s “the rules” in the only available shelter where I live-for men and it only gets you a cot in a big barracks (101 beds). Lots of religious services and praying, whether you like it or not. I would prefer to sleep outside too.
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Those rules sound similar to a youth hostel, definitely not prison like
But it’s not. He asked which rule you stop enforcing. He even asked it again. He described a set of rules and asked which one you avoid.
Now, if as @BippityBoppityBoo stated there are other rules that act to do anything but keep people safe then that’s another story. The problem is that when people aren’t specific, it’s hard to define what you’re objecting to. If the solution is “fewer rules”, but you don’t say which rules you want to drop, it isn’t a solution at all.
Maybe @Thing.Fish can be more specific then?
They are obnoxious infantualizing rules if you are an adult. Plus the vastness of an 101 bed dorm room is not like any youth hostel I know, not can someone avoid the religious proselytizing and witnessing.