Zionide: Perfect. Not only is moving the homeless shelters unreasonable and unethical, it's nonsensical. It would be a classic case of sweeping the real problem under the rug...or at least to another rug that is not quite as visible.
No one wants to own the homeless problem.
No one wants to tackle addiction, which is at least responsible for 70 to 80% of the homeless. Worse, addiction is directly responsible for far more than 50% of people locked up. For some reason, we prefer to spend $100M's each year on jails and far more on related healthcare and not deal with the real problems, booze and dope.
When I lived in Switzerland in the mid-90's, I was stunned by the lack of jails and prisons, almost none in a country of 9M. How could this be? Are the Swiss the most reputable people in the world? Nope. They just have a very practical solution to a very large problem.
People used to congregate in a park not far my house in Switzerland. The locals called it needle park. At the first of each month, there wouldn't be very many. Then the number would grow daily until the end of the month, then they would all suddenly disappear. I asked one day what happened. A local told me the police round them up, take them to rehab, and keep taking them to rehab until they get it.
Switzerland still has one of the highest standards of living in the world and one of the lowest crime rates, with almost NO violent crime. Instead of packing people off to prisons, the Swiss deal with addiction head-on--they treat it like any other disease. The system is not full proof. People still die of alcohol and drug-related causes, but the incidences are almost non-existent by our standards. The incidences of related diseases, like Type II diabetes and heart disease, are far lower, and this in a society that smokes almost universally and eats a high-fat diet.
If we really want to deal with the homeless, we need to get them sober first, then give them skills. This is a far cheaper scheme than building more homeless shelters (regardless of where they are), more prisons, more hospitals, and more cemeteries. Why the the greatest country in the world (ours) cannot figure this out is beyond me. Oh, there is one additional benefit...we would stop funding all the narco-terrorists that are now perched on our border in Mexico.
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) If you get a chance, I would highly recomend driving, biking, or walking 2nd South starting just north of the library and going all the way past Gateway to 6th West. I see some major progress in the development of this corridor and see some more great potential in the future. I think it's doing alright on the street-front, however, I think it has some good skyline potential. I love the idea Cololi and Urbanboy are floating around of building some skyscrapers within the blocks. 2nd South already has some good mid-rises lining most of this corridor (4th East to 6th West) with a couple high-rises where it bisects Main St, but I can see some more high-rises going up between West Temple and 6th West. I think 2nd South could viably become a sort of sub-Main St - it bisects Main St at a pretty central location and has some good street life to it (plenty of bus routes travel this corridor, the street has 4-lanes of auto traffic, there is plenty of pedestrian traffic). Gallivan can deffinately become a central square being at the crossroads of these two streets.
(sorry that was stupid, childish and in poor taste, but I couldn't resist. Long day!)
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