Can't get over how incredibly clean and bum-free Dallas is

[Crawford]

I still think people are confusing street people and homeless.

Homeless are people who can legally prove they have no fixed residence. They typically work, have family ties, generally aren't addicts or crazy, etc. A street person is just anyone hanging out in the public sphere, whether or not they have a residence (I'm betting a very large proportion do). A very high share are addicts or mentally ill.

Most of the agita here is about street people, which is generally not a housing issue. I don't think there's any reason to assume the weirdo doing bizarre things in public in the Tenderloin doesn't have a residence, or is somehow hampered by a housing issue.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Most of the agita here is about street people, which is generally not a housing issue. I don't think there's any reason to assume the weirdo doing bizarre things in public in the Tenderloin doesn't have a residence, or is somehow hampered by a housing issue.

I'll bet you, with 1,000 to 1 odds, that the dishevelled street person on my L car this morning, mumbling to himself, hunched over, aimlessly stumbling about this way and that as he dragged a sack of his possessions behind him, and smelling like he hadn't bathed since the Clinton administration, has no fixed address.

Whenever we get these kinds of arctic cold snaps here in Chicago (it was 11 degrees this morning), the L trains transform into rolling shelters for these kinds of people. It makes a lot of people here not want to ride transit.

If these people had residences, they wouldn't pile on to the L like this wherever it gets frigid.

We need better solutions, but I don't have them.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

I'll bet you, with 1,000 to 1 odds, that the dishevelled street person on my L car this morning, mumbling to himself, hunched over, aimlessly stumbling about this way and that as he dragged a sack of his possessions behind him, and smelling like he hadn't bathed since the Clinton administration, has no fixed address.

Whenever we get these kinds of arctic cold snaps here in Chicago (it was 11 degrees this morning), the L trains transform into rolling shelters for these kinds of people. It makes a lot of people here not want to ride transit.

We need better solutions, but I don't have them.

That happens in NYC too but it's mostly just seen as a fact of life in the city and not a problem to be solved. Very few people are deterred from using the subway because of homeless people, and 99.9999% of the time those people aren't violent. You're more likely to die in a car accident than you are to get assaulted by a homeless person on the train.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I still think people are confusing street people and homeless.

Homeless are people who can legally prove they have no fixed residence. They typically work, have family ties, generally aren't addicts or crazy, etc. A street person is just anyone hanging out in the public sphere, whether or not they have a residence (I'm betting a very large proportion do). A very high share are addicts or mentally ill.

Most of the agita here is about street people, which is generally not a housing issue. I don't think there's any reason to assume the weirdo doing bizarre things in public in the Tenderloin doesn't have a residence, or is somehow hampered by a housing issue.

It's true that the vast majority of people homeless for any period of time in a year are "transitory homeless" - often fleeing abusive family members, crashing on couches, etc. Or maybe they have a car they sleep in. Around half of them are employed. I'd guess even with street people, there are a fair number who are sane/sober who we don't see, because they have reasonably good hygiene, act normal in public, and try to pitch their tent somewhere isolated.

Here in Pittsburgh, it's absolutely the case that a lot of the notable panhandlers are not homeless. However, I don't know if that same thing is true when you consider high-cost areas with scarce housing supply.

On a more extreme, if you look at a very low-cost area (like say West Virginia) there's presumably as many addicts and crazy people as anywhere else, but there's not really any visible "street people" to speak of. Actual migration of addicts/the insane from WV to big cities is minimal, so yeah, presumably if you have housing that's cheap enough, even the disordered/unemployable will find somewhere to live.

[FromSD]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I dunno man. Some of the comments in this thread remind me of the news stories I've read from the 19th century complaining about the "plague of hobodom" which was sweeping the nation. Which happened to be during economic depressions. People at the time didn't really understand economic recessions/depressions, and just thought a lot of people suddenly became homeless for cultural reasons.

When it comes down to it, beggars predate the modern social welfare state by thousands of years. I'm aware of accounts from the Roman era, and I presume they go back even to Sumeria. Some people in every society will for various reasons be incapable of holding down a job and taking basic care of themselves.

In 16th and 17th century England there was growing concern about "sturdy beggars" who were subject to forcible removal from one parish to the next--this was called "whipping the vagrants" to the next parish. Most of the comments after any LA Times article on the homeless give off a similar vibe: just do something about the homeless so I don't have to see them. But don't use any of my tax money to do so.

[mhays]

It's very different from that in Seattle. We vote yes for lots of money for low-income housing etc., but also voted in moderate liberals to address street disorder as well.

In fact I suspect newspaper comments are a bad gauge of these things, and all the west coast cities are more like I'm describing.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

That happens in NYC too but it's mostly just seen as a fact of life in the city and not a problem to be solved.

"Fact" or life or not, I think it does a terrible disservice to our shared public realm to make our public transit systems serve double duty as unsupervised rolling mental health asylums/homeless addict shelters every time the weather gets cold.

We can and should do better.

But we probably won't.

[llamaorama]

So, as a resident of DFW (I live in Fort Worth) who goes into Dallas often, I don't agree with the assessment that it's "bum free".

There are are a lot of homeless and general loiterers concentrated in Downtown Dallas. This is because a lot of are shelters on the periphery of downtown. Also downtown is surrounded by a noose of elevated freeways and these create a lot of "no man's land" underneath and surrounding them, which is where campers and junk vehicles can hide out.

Also the light rail system suffers from being the means by which suburban cops tell the homeless to scram and so they all hop on and ride to West End Station where they hang out around the 7-11 and a large Liquor Store that is on that corner.

Also, there's a ton of homeless people in the suburbs that you don't interact with because you are in the suburbs inside your car and not in a city where you notice them.

Finally, Tarrant County, which is where Fort Worth is, (not Dallas, I get it), is notorious for its jail conditions for deaths in the jail. Homeless people in Fort Worth tend to end up in and out of jail in a revolving door situation where they don't get the help they need and can't function but are treated like nusiances.

There is also the part about North Texas being full of religious groups who treat homeless services as a chance to proselytize and the whole thing seems like "poverty pimping" than actually wanting to help. Like there's an organization called Mercy Church in Fort Worth which is one of those "God sent Trump, obey him" type things. They are building a compound for what they claim are 🞵🞵🞵 trafficking victims, but reality is they are looking for women to entrap in whats been described as a kind of cult.

Then all that considered, the problem with DFW is that it is the largest metropolitan population center for a region of the country which is objectively close to being the worst on most human and social metrics. All those problems are then dumped here. What I mean is that we are the biggest city in proximity to places like the Mississippi and Arkansas delta, Northern Louisiana, the poor eastern parts of Oklahoma, you get the idea. Every time a special needs child is born to a single mother in Shreveport, when they grow up they always get on a Greyhound, go to the east side of Dallas, and spend the rest of their life living under I-30 and in and out of jail.

I'm with the progressives on this. To me if we want to fix the homeless crises, we need to be proactive rather than reactive. By all means housing first is a good idea, but I think we need to look at the supply side of homelessness. Where do they come from and what preventative measures can be put in place to keep people off the streets before they end up there? In my opinion most of the fixes come from the left side of the political spectrum - promote contraception to reduce vulnerable people from having kids they are going to neglect/abuse. More welfare services for families who have children or young adult children who might be vulnerable to ending up on the streets if cut off. Measures to reintegrate people who have been incarcerated or treated for substance abuse, etc. For the mentally disabled, I wonder what the cost breakdown would be if you gave subsidized housing vouchers to a low income parent who is their caretaker vs. putting them in their own housing with paid on-site staff, or the combined cost of jail stays, police wages, ambulance rides, etc that they effectively cost if they live on the street and that lifestyle is criminalized. I have a theory that if we just gave money and protected from housing discrimination people who have adult children who can't take care of themselves you'd have far far fewer mentally disabled people roaming around in downtown.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

"Fact" or life or not, I think it does a terrible disservice to our shared public realm to make our public transit systems serve double duty as unsupervised rolling mental health asylums/homeless addict shelters every time the weather gets cold.

We can and should do better.

But we probably won't.

This is one of those cases where we should probably look at how other industrialized countries handle these things.

Japan, I know, has a very low number of homeless people: About 4,000 across the entire country. The actual number may be a bit higher because it's common for homeless people to spend the night in 24-hour internet cafes, but it's still quite low.

Homelessness is all over the map across the developed world though. Much higher than the U.S. in Canada, the UK, and Australia. Lower in Scandinavia and much of southern Europe.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by eschaton

This is one of those cases where we should probably look at how other industrialized countries handle these things.

Japan, I know, has a very low number of homeless people: About 4,000 across the entire country. The actual number may be a bit higher because it's common for homeless people to spend the night in 24-hour internet cafes, but it's still quite low.

Homelessness is all over the map across the developed world though. Much higher than the U.S. in Canada, the UK, and Australia. Lower in Scandinavia and much of southern Europe.

I find it hard to believe that Japan only has 4,000 homeless people. Tokyo has a pretty visible homeless population that is not hard to find at all. It's not nearly as visible as San Francisco, but I saw it in places like Shinjuku Station without looking that hard.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

We need better solutions, but I don't have them.

There are possible solutions, but all of them come with their own downsides; there are zero solutions that wouldn’t have some people somewhere complaining about some negative aspects.

So, often, immobilism is the scenario that gets implemented — anything else, and there’s too much opposition.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by eschaton

This is one of those cases where we should probably look at how other industrialized countries handle these things.

Japan, I know, has a very low number of homeless people: About 4,000 across the entire country. The actual number may be a bit higher because it's common for homeless people to spend the night in 24-hour internet cafes, but it's still quite low.

Homelessness is all over the map across the developed world though. Much higher than the U.S. in Canada, the UK, and Australia. Lower in Scandinavia and much of southern Europe.

Japan is shrinking, population-wise (and therefore economically too). Cut all immigration to the US to zero and slash all help programs for young families, and eventually, you’ll have such a glut of empty housing that you’ll start to see desperate landlords rolling out financial incentives to seduce the homeless into renting their empty apartments rather than other landlords’ empty apartments.

Of course, this one (“emulating Japan”) would create a lot more problems than it would solve.

[lio45]

I was reading the thread backwards, but now that I got to read your post about West Virginia having little homelessness, we seem to be in agreement about the Japan thing: when a location is stagnant/shrinking demographically, there’s too much existing housing, and all of the housing being owned by people, and people generally not liking to lose money, results in some of them preferring to be slumlords to people who are frankly bad tenants (mental illness and drug issues) than have it be perpetually vacant.

In markets with near zero vacancies rate (most of urban Canada these days for example), it’s the diametrical opposite: for every available apt, there’s plenty of quality tenants applying, so in that context, no sane landlord would ever rent to anyone who looks like they could be a bad tenant, and these people all end up on the streets (or in social housing for the ones lucky enough).

[JManc]

I just got back from Anchorage and the visible homeless population is pretty wild. This is Alaska in December mind you and downtown was pretty full of them. Mostly AK Natives.

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

Originally Posted by JManc

I just got back from Anchorage and the visible homeless population is pretty wild. This is Alaska in December mind you and downtown was pretty full of them. Mostly AK Natives.

I was there in October and was shocked at the number of tents and crazy people around and im coming from Downtown LA. I cant believe there are that many homeless in such a wet and cold place

[muppet]

Originally Posted by eschaton

This is one of those cases where we should probably look at how other industrialized countries handle these things.

Japan, I know, has a very low number of homeless people: About 4,000 across the entire country. The actual number may be a bit higher because it's common for homeless people to spend the night in 24-hour internet cafes, but it's still quite low.

Homelessness is all over the map across the developed world though. Much higher than the U.S. in Canada, the UK, and Australia. Lower in Scandinavia and much of southern Europe.

The homelessness in the UK is different from the US insofar as there's a far smaller population of the unhoused, and mostly invisible on the streets. In the UK you get classed as homeless (which is at record levels due to the housing crisis) even though housed by family/ friends or by the council in temporary accommodation (not to be confused with homeless 'hostels' of halls with beds in it). If you lose your job and move back to your parents in leafy suburbia, you can still register as technically homeless and join the waiting list for a council house -if you have enough desperation -eg with kids or an addiction -you'll be put near the top and get a home for free, plus counselling. Of course this is not an easy option, because if you're housed, sane and not as desperate as others who aren't, you can be on that list for decades. As mentioned before in this thread, it still works out cheaper to house someone and get them back to employment, than to pay for the social fallout that results otherwise.

Many still hold down jobs and have families etc. I and my partner have both been 'homeless' before, but thanks to the social security net, not to mention a raft of charities after, it's a temporary thing before you have enough for a rental deposit, or get a job again. It's telling that the UK puts it that 1 in 200 households is 'homeless'.

For a city the size of London (9 million+) only 5,000 actually go unhoused, although a whopping 180,000 are registered as homeless, 4x higher than a decade ago due to the current property bubble. For rough sleepers/ tent sleepers on any given night this has climbed 23% this year -but it's still only 1,100 for the whole city.


So take the stats with a pinch of salt, as the homelessness crisis here looks completely different. It isn't even evident on the streets as the majority would blend into a well-dressed crowd -they rarely present as 'bums'.

[muppet]

The unhoused get free clothing on every high street (charity shops), food (many restaurants, all supermarkets have food banks) and facilities (train stations, pubs), while begging is illegal (community support officers/ police).

Mad-as-a-bag-of-snakes Vera with her trolley of cats would be bundled into an old folks home, Screaming Terry would be plugged into some medical facility, and Cornelius / Little Mother Maria who has a house in Chelsea but prefers to make $300 a day cos-playing beggardom with their dog/ grand daughter, would be given a community order then jailed on the 3rd transgression. Any tent will have to run a gamut of wellwishers (think a deadly mix of carol singers and Jehovah's Witness) knocking on their flap every 15 mins, offering 'community guidance', accommodation and support. Maybe a CD of Enya hits. Any encampment can last a few months, so long as they pack up by day and are hidden at night. Oh and don't grow- before sudden clearance at the whim of a councillor.

The obviously mentally ill are quickly spotted and taken in, and thank flip there hasn't been an opioid crisis. Don't get me wrong, you will still spot the genuine / professional beggars (many are drug addicts playing cat and mouse with community support officers), the odd crazy, or the fella smelling of wee, but they're rare enough. The ones that are very obvious are the addicts, ignoring all support and hygiene, whose considerable income go into their next fix.

[muppet]

This was the closest to a homeless encampment in London that I know, in the corner of Hyde Park surrounded by the most expensive apartments and mansions in the city:

• Video Link

It's the traditional landing ground for the Roma / rural communities from Romania, and most don't sleep in tents but in a hidden tunnel to the expensive carparks underground. Yesterday I dragged two binbags worth of sleeping bags, groundsheets and pillows from work to donate there (many get left behind at sleepover events), but the entire encampment had gone, the tunnel locked, and none of the community to be seen. Perhaps the last straw was having the gall to put tents out of the summer heat, on that traffic island. Worryingly, no one had any idea what's become of them.

I even asked the tube staff outside, about 20m from that video spot, who thought I was talking about the one bloke who slept downstairs.


I did manage to find some Syrian refugees, all well dressed but cold, and only spottable because one had a blanket laid over the bench. They even refused the donation at the start.

The other 'hotspots' for the unhoused are around St Martin-in-the-Fields Church on Trafalgar Square, and by evening, the tents that will appear in nooks and office doorways around Tottenham Court Rd. Both areas are in chichi tourist routes, spotless let alone human-turd-less, and you wouldn't have a clue by day.

[LA21st]

https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/dall...bers-rise-in-surrounding-cities-21237557

Speak of the devil. And the reddit comments about this story say even more.

[downtownpdx]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

I saw this on the news last night, out of Inglewood, California:


LA Daily News

They were Billie Eilish fans camping out for good seats at the Forum.


LA Daily News


LA Daily News

I guess THIS is ok, camping and squatting on sidewalks for capitalism, like a concert, or the night before a Black Friday sale.

But the unhoused, or protests like the Occupy Movement from the 2010s and camping on college campuses last year for human rights in Isr*el, FORGET ABOUT IT. You'll be arrested and your belongings will be confiscated.

The homeless are living in miserable, dangerous squalor and, the camps are often the site of drug and human trafficking. Many who were sober turn to hard drugs to get through the cold, wet, desperate conditions and are quickly addicted and arm themselves to keep up the habit and protect themselves from other mentally unstable people. The adjacent neighborhoods and businesses have to deal with trash, needles, illicit/illegal/psychotic behavior for weeks, maybe months.

Are you comparing this to camping over one night for concert tickets?