Seattle Is Dying (and it's not alone)

[10023]

^ Actually most of these people probably do need to be locked up, not in prisons but in mental hospitals and addiction treatment centers. But make no mistake, crazy people and addicts don’t generally want help, so they would need to be held against their will.

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

This situation of people living on sidewalks without normal sanitation available has health implications:

One report claims there are now 12 million rats in LA. Rats are associated with a number of medieval disease like plague and typhus.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckde.../#6a2a8e1e610d


https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/...603-story.html

wow that sh!t is atrocious. remind me not to visit california. ill stay in redneck, gun happy, oregon thank you....fudge.........

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Encolpius

Sure, they brought things around in Europe and everywhere else in the developed world -- somehow. Gee, did the solution to the problems of Victorian England involve building tons and tons of social and council housing and creating the NHS? Let's not think too hard about how they did it -- we need to find our own path. Sounds like that path will be giving these bums some tough love and putting more of them in prison. You shit on the street, we'll lock you up. Don't know why we didn't think of that before. Oh wait...



Yeah, there's no political bias to the conversation on SSP -- that's why after seven pages of discussion I'm the first one to point this out.

Although in fairness, the issue of high incarceration rates in the US was raised back on the first page.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I watched the whole thing when it first came out. At first I had concerns in the sense that from the tone it seemed like it was going to be a gish gallop of general unrelated grievances meant to give a sky is falling type message, but they actually did a fairly good job of focusing onto the thesis that there's a poor mental health and substance abuse strategy. It seems there's a genuine conflict caused by the desire of public officials to avoid funneling too many people into the prison system which tends to be an issue in the US. But in this case the strategy is incomplete because it manages to avoids excessive criminalization but doesn't provide an alternative for people who do need more attention than to just be let be. They do suggest some possible alternatives, (although I don't remember a lot of details since I watched it months ago) and whether or not the suggestions are as effective as they suggest, I did find the presentation quite persuasive.

I think most of the forum understands that the standard knee-jerk "tough-love, crack-down, lock 'em up approach" that's common in the US has been thoroughly debunked and discredited as a viable solution and is mostly just display of power. That it's the dominant sectors of society sending a message to the rest of society that social problems will be "fought" by the dominant groups rather than "solved" by everyone working together.

But really, I think the reason this becomes such a hot button issue politically is that the very existence of the problem is extremely inconvenient for some ideologies. Not just the problems that the issue causes, but the fact that the issue exists. The US has always had a sort of individualistic, libertarian-leaning slant (preference toward negative liberty in the "don't tread on me" sense). The issue being that when the societal balance shifts too far toward negative liberty, things inevitably start to break down, and the proponents of negative liberty are left with the awkward choice of either supporting additional positive liberties (offering help to reduce problems) or actually backpedaling in their commitment to negative liberty by revoking freedoms from people not adhering to the societal conventions.

Generally the strategy they find easiest is to simply portray the "problem people" as either evil or crazy and therefore beyond help in order to say that taking away their freedom is the only, and therefore natural, choice, hoping nobody notices that this simply isn't the case in most other places that don't overly-rely on negative liberty approaches.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Encolpius

Sure, they brought things around in Europe and everywhere else in the developed world -- somehow. Gee, did the solution to the problems of Victorian England involve building tons and tons of social and council housing and creating the NHS? Let's not think too hard about how they did it -- we need to find our own path. Sounds like that path will be giving these bums some tough love and putting more of them in prison. You shit on the street, we'll lock you up. Don't know why we didn't think of that before. Oh wait...

Yeah, there's no political bias to the conversation on SSP -- that's why after seven pages of discussion I'm the first one to point this out.

Your point is misplaced. The cities with the worst "people living on the sidewalks" problems are America's most liberal and, at least in San Francisco's case, it has social services programs for housing and health care (and attitudes toward incarceration) comparable to those in Europe. It doesn't help. The people causing the problem would not be tolerated as neigbors in public housing and will not access free mental health and drug treatment services. They are severely mentally ill or so addicted they spend their days seeking drugs or high.

The talk about forced hospitalization is because that's just about the only thing that hasn't been tried. All the things you talk about have been and are being.

[dc_denizen]

The us has higher incarceration rates because people here commit more crimes, especially homicide. . Criminals are not being arrested for stealing bread to feed their starving families a la les miserables, despite what encolpius would have you believe

[Encolpius]

^ Not higher, highest. The highest incarceration rate in the entire fucking world, United States of America. Larger prison population than China (which passes for an authoritarian police state). Over six times the incarceration rate of Canada, twelve times that of the Netherlands. (Do Americans really commit twelve times as many crimes? What's wrong with us?). Yet lots of you evidently think we've got to do a better job at imprisoning people for shoplifting and urinating in public.

Pedestrian: San Francisco has housing and health care programs comparable to those in Europe? No, sorry. But it's not entirely the fault of your local politicians; really, the federal government should be funding housing, mental health and substance abuse treatment for everybody who needs it, instead of the rest of America dumping their homeless and mentally ill populations on a handful of more tolerant cities on the West Coast.

This is not a very complicated issue. That's why not one other city in the developed world has shantytowns like Portland, Seattle and LA and San Francisco. That's why Salt Lake City succeeded in reducing their chronic homeless population by 91% simply by giving them homes; unfortunately, they couldn't find the money to keep the program going, and homelessness has started to creep back up.

And wtf, of course forced hospitalization has been tried. London's mental hospital was called Bedlam. It used to be a middle-class pasttime to pay admission to gawk at the inmates (see the two well-dressed women in background):



Actually, the UK still practices forced hospitalization. The trick is, you have to actually be willing to fund the treatment, as mental health services are expensive. (The Conservative government recently increased the NHS's budget by £84 billion, with a huge chunk of that going to mental health. They don't fund it anymore by charging admission to spectators).

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Generally the strategy they find easiest is to simply portray the "problem people" as either evil or crazy and therefore beyond help in order to say that taking away their freedom is the only, and therefore natural, choice, hoping nobody notices that this simply isn't the case in most other places that don't overly-rely on negative liberty approaches.

It's a well-demonstrated fact that most of those living in sidewalk encampments ARE either substance addicted or psychotic or both. They are a distinct group from the transiently homeless folks who've lost a job or been evicted or otherwise come on hard times but who are mentally capable of accessing social benefits and helping themselves.

I simply don't believe that somebody setting up a tent on the sidewalk in a German or other western European city and using the local alleys as his toilet while scattering used needles around him would be tolerated. I don't know where they send such people, but they wouldn't just let them stay where they are just as they don't tolerate other forms of extreme anti-social behavior.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Encolpius

Pedestrian: San Francisco has housing and health care programs comparable to those in Europe? No, sorry. But it's not entirely the fault of your local politicians; really, the federal government should be funding housing, mental health and substance abuse treatment for everybody who needs it, instead of the rest of America dumping their homeless and mentally ill populations on a handful of more tolerant cities on the West Coast.

Sorry, but we do have such programs. And we are continuously creating more. We have city-funded treatment on demand for substance abuse. We have a city health care program for all uninsured residents paid for by a tax on any employer who doesn't provide health insurance for his employees (plus additional city funding). We have a Dept. of Public Health that runs both a large general hospital and a network of outpatient clinics where treatment is free for those with no ability to pay (otherwise it's based on ability to pay). Both in and out-patient facilities provide mental health services. We have mobile providers who cruise around the city providing Buprenorphine and other forms of substance abuse treatment to people on the sidewalks if they'll take it. In addition to temporary shelters of various sorts, we have all sorts of "public" and affordable housing including some targetted specifically at the homeless.

What we don't do is say, "No, you can't just erect a tent on the sidewalk and live in it".

That the federal government is not doing these things and the city is does not mean they don't exist. Leaving aside the issue of what the federal government should be doing (there's a thread for that), under our system of federalism many things directly affecting individuals including running mental health facilities and enforcing laws on public behavior are done at the local level.

But even if you continue to deny that the social benefits in West Coast cities like SF, Seattle, Portland and LA are anywhere equivalent to Europe, they are unquestionably better in these cities than in most of America and yet the problem of public homelessness is also worse in the same cities. There seems to be a negative correlation, not a positive one between "progressive" politics and this problem.

[Encolpius]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Although in fairness, the issue of high incarceration rates in the US was raised back on the first page.

True, I overlooked your earlier post. Good points in both that post and this one. But I don't agree that most people here understand what you understand.

[dc_denizen]

Originally Posted by Encolpius

^ Not higher, highest. The highest incarceration rate in the entire fucking world, United States of America. Larger prison population than China (which passes for an authoritarian police state). Over six times the incarceration rate of Canada, twelve times that of the Netherlands. (Do Americans really commit twelve times as many crimes? What's wrong with us?). Yet lots of you evidently think we've got to do a better job at imprisoning people for shoplifting and urinating in public.

The white population has an incarceration rate of 272/100k, so 2x higher than the UK. Not much higher when you consider that the US has many more guns and is generally a more violent society.

on the other hand, the black population's incarceration rate is 1600/100k. reasons for this are complicated, so we won't get into that. Hispanics are at 800/100k.

(I wonder what the black vs white disparity looks like in canada. I wonder if the rates are similar to the US across demographics).

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...tes-in-prison/

But I would be happy committing only white homeless people for shitting on the street ,to start the overdue clean up SF and Portland

[dc_denizen]

oh look: in Canada the racial disparity in prisons is EVEN MORE pronounced than in the US!

https://torontoist.com/2016/04/afric...on-population/

According to Morgan, the silence around the issue stems from our willful denial of the situation, and our conviction that Black incarceration is a uniquely American problem—not a Canadian one. “It has a lot to do with what I’ve called Canadian racial exceptionalism,” says Morgan. “If America is having a conversation about the hyper incarceration of Black males, in order to maintain our sense of moral superiority, we can’t look into those issues as we experience them here in Canada,” he says. Morgan notes that, in reality, overrepresentation of the Black population in prisons is slightly more pronounced in Canada than in the U.S., where African-Americans account for 37 per cent of the prison population and 13 per cent of the general population.

“We’re not, as a country, ready to contest that,” Morgan continues, “because of the myths we tell ourselves about multiculturalism, and thinking that we have it all figured out. The truth of the matter is, when you look in our prison systems, if you go to our courthouses, if you go at children’s aid offices, to school detention halls, it is overwhelmingly Black kids who are being criminalized and punished. I think the generalized silence has to do with what we want to believe about ourselves as Canadians.”

so please dont bring up irrelevant incarceration rates , which have a massive racial dimension, and proving nothing about America or our social morality, to this conversation about street defecation.

[Encolpius]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Sorry, but we do have such programs. And we are continuously creating more. We have city-funded treatment on demand for substance abuse. We have a city health care program for all uninsured residents paid for by a tax on any employer who doesn't provide health insurance for his employees (plus additional city funding). We have a Dept. of Public Health that runs both a large general hospital and a network of outpatient clinics where treatment is free for those with no ability to pay (otherwise it's based on ability to pay). Both in and out-patient facilities provide mental health services. We have mobile providers who cruise around the city providing Buprenorphine and other forms of substance abuse treatment to people on the sidewalks if they'll take it. In addition to temporary shelters of various sorts, we have all sorts of "public" and affordable housing including some targetted specifically at the homeless.

Somebody living on the streets is not going to sober up and get his life together because a mobile provider rolls up in a van outside his tent and offers him Buprenorphine. A far more comprehensive support network is required. I don't know much about SF's local politics, but here's what I just read after five minutes of googling:

“Every single day in our neighborhood, we see people that are leaving the emergency room. They still have their hospital bracelet on, sometimes their gown, and are clearly in a daze, clearly mentally ill … and have been released right onto the streets to fight for themselves,” Ronen said. “You can’t watch this every single day and not feel that the system is in shambles.”

San Francisco’s mental-health resources remain woefully underfunded. A city report showed a $40 million cut in behavioral health care between 2007 and 2012. At the same time, the homeless population has only increased.... In San Francisco, painfully few beds exist at every level of care. Psychiatric Emergency Services at S.F. General has 44 beds. Hummingbird Place, a Navigation Center serving those experiencing psychological issues, only has 29 beds, which a health official stated are “always full.”

SF’s psychiatric services have been cut to the bone

So no, it seems San Francisco does not provide social services to its vulnerable population in a manner comparable to even the poorest developed countries in Europe. As for Seattle, the city tried to tax tech companies to fund very basic housing and mental health services, but that failed after Amazon started making threats. You have no idea what you're missing when you compare American cities to European ones (nowadays). You were more on target when you compared American cities to Victorian London.

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

But even if you continue to deny that the social benefits in West Coast cities like SF, Seattle, Portland and LA are anywhere equivalent to Europe, they are unquestionably better in these cities than in most of America and yet the problem of public homelessness is also worse in the same cities. There seems to be a negative correlation, not a positive one between "progressive" politics and this problem.

Obviously, people compelled to live on the streets will be drawn to cities that are more tolerant (failing that, they might be bussed there from a city that's less tolerant). Because of this, a complete idiot might conclude that 'progressive' policies cause homelessness. You, however, I think have a bit more common sense.

[Pedestrian]

^^People leave the ER in the conditon you post BECAUSE the law in CA makes it tough to keep them against their will and you seem to be arguing that that's as it should be. They GOT TO the ER because they were acting in some bizarre fashion in a public place and were taken in by the police (usually) but they have to be released unless they are so disturbed that they are considered a danger in which case they can be kept for 3 days max. This all needs to change and more extensive use of the Mental Health Conservatorship law, which is new may make that possible if people get used to using it.

As for funding, your references are old and out of date. As I mentioned far above, San Francisco is one the verge of doubling the resources available for homeless programs, including mental health programs, to around $700 million annually due to a new tax. That's an amazing amount of money. It's almost $100,000 per homeless person per year. A lot of it goes into housing for the "formerly homeless" which means people who would probably be homeless were it not for the housing in question. Such housing is very expensive to build in San Francisco but a lot is being built anyway. And it is a good deal nicer than the "Council Housing" which was referred to above judging from the pictures I've seen. I'd live in most of it.

However it IS true that in the recent past--the times your articles reference--mental health programs have been cut. In a way, this too is part of the "progressive agenda" since in accordance with that agenda any sort of insititutionalization is to be avoided, by cutting it's funding if by no other way. I also mentioned above that, having eliminated most inpatient psychiatric facilities, they are now eliminating juvenile detention facilities and closing a lot of the county jail beds (one entire city jail is closing and won't be replaced--so much for the incarceration rate). This is not because the city lacks funds.

SF’s budget to soar to $12.3 billion with focus on homelessness and housing
Trisha Thadani and Michael Cabanatuan May 31, 2019 Updated: June 28, 2019

Mayor London Breed’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year will soar by $1.2 billion — making it the largest in city history — and boost investment in tackling the city’s most urgent problems: housing and homelessness.

The mayor’s $12.3 billion budget would be a 10.8% increase from last fiscal year, which came in at $11.1 billion. Much of the extra money, city officials said, came from $142.3 million in excess cash in a county education fund and “better than expected” property-transfer and business taxes.

But that doesn’t mean the city has $12.3 billion to freely spend — about half must go to so-called enterprise departments, such as the airport, Public Utilities Commission and Municipal Transportation Agency. Another portion must meet other specific needs, such as public libraries and parks, due to voter-approved mandates. And the city will be paying more salaries. The budget covers 31,830 full-time equivalent positions, up 0.8% from the previous year.

That leaves the mayor and the Board of Supervisors with $3.3 billion in the general fund to decide how to spend . . . .

Homelessness: A major chunk of Breed’s proposal — over $100 million in additional funding — would increase and support homeless services over two years, helping Breed meet her campaign goal of 1,000 new shelter beds by 2020.

Affordable housing: Breed proposes over $118 million to buy land and build 100% affordable housing, and another $10.5 million to fund a five-year, rent subsidy program for 350 low-income households and seniors struggling to pay rent.

Mental health services: Another $50 million would help expand the city’s behavioral health system, which includes more than 100 treatment and recovery beds for those suffering from mental illness and substance abuse.

“Combined with the 100 beds we already announced earlier this year, that means we are committing 200 new beds for our most vulnerable residents this year alone,” Breed said. “That is the most significant expansion of behavioral health beds in a generation” . . . .

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics...php?psid=csnlb

Keep in mind that SF is a city of only 800,000+ residents with about 8000 "homeless".

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

The white population has an incarceration rate of 272/100k, so 2x higher than the UK. Not much higher when you consider that the US has many more guns and is generally a more violent society.

on the other hand, the black population's incarceration rate is 1600/100k. reasons for this are complicated, so we won't get into that. Hispanics are at 800/100k.

(I wonder what the black vs white disparity looks like in canada. I wonder if the rates are similar to the US across demographics).

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...tes-in-prison/

But I would be happy committing only white homeless people for shitting on the street ,to start the overdue clean up SF and Portland

Black and indigenous people make up a highly disproportionate share of the prison population in Canada.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

I was in Grant's Pass, OR recently and noticed, for a city its size, it had a large number of homeless people. There were homeless people hanging out in suburban shopping centers, walking along the freeway, hanging out downtown, and you name it.

Grant's Pass is a conservative area so it's hardly a "left" coast thing. But if you look at a map of homeless rates by state you notice it's definitely a west coast thing. Even Alaska, which can hardly be called a bastion of liberalism, has high homelessness rates.

When I was noticing all the homeless people in Grant's Pass I got the impression a sizable percentage of the homeless were simply vagabond types. I think the combination of the gentle climate and the nice scenery encourages free-spirited vagabonds to concentrate on the west coast. If you tried that in Kansas City, for example, you'd have to put up with blistering cold in the winter and hot and muggy weather in the summer.

Though I suspect the easy availability of drugs on the west coast contributes to it. You get to be a vagabond AND get stoned, too. Even in Grant's Pass there were marijuana stores everywhere.

Here's a map showing homelessness rates per 10K people, as of 2018. As I said, it's heavily a west coast phenomenon. Except for NY and MA, the only states that have rates over 50 are on the west coast. Even both Alaska and Hawaii are in that category.

[austlar1]

Never mind.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

It's a well-demonstrated fact that most of those living in sidewalk encampments ARE either substance addicted or psychotic or both. They are a distinct group from the transiently homeless folks who've lost a job or been evicted or otherwise come on hard times but who are mentally capable of accessing social benefits and helping themselves.

I simply don't believe that somebody setting up a tent on the sidewalk in a German or other western European city and using the local alleys as his toilet while scattering used needles around him would be tolerated. I don't know where they send such people, but they wouldn't just let them stay where they are just as they don't tolerate other forms of extreme anti-social behavior.

It can be tricky to tell whether it's more common for someone to fall on hard times because of substance abuse issues or if they started turning to the substances as a coping/numbing method to deal with hard times, but obviously it goes both ways. And I'm sure that falling on desperate times isn't good for one's mental health either. Regardless of how it starts, I think it's safe to say that the US "war on drugs" tends to be quite extreme compared to many peers and is prone to criminalize people for their addictions.

It's also important to note that homelessness can often be tied to societal inequality, so places that are more active in preventing it from getting too extreme aren't going to have the same level of social problems to begin with. So it isn't necessarily an issue of how they deal with the same problems once they occur, but rather how they reduce their occurrence.

[Pedestrian]

Here's a take on this issue from a genuine social justice acitivist who is well known and respected in San Francisco:

Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw is the author of four books on activism, including The Activist's Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. His new book is The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco

All those who think some of us have been overly harsh here should read it: http://beyondchron.org/sf-turns-tend...ent-free-zone/

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw is the author of four books on activism, including The Activist's Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. His new book is The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco

On my most recent trip to San Francisco (end of June), I bought that book, and have started to read it a week ago. It's actually very interesting, and it's giving me a new perspective about the Tenderloin.

[Pedestrian]

^^Interested to hear more on that new take, actually.

Over the years, I've frequently argued the Tenderloin, not to far from which I live and in which I have worked, is not the horrible place it is often depicted. While I personally disagree with artificial constraints on gentrification, a place as diverse and storied as the Tenderloin can be an asset to a city. It just needs the sort of basic policing and standards enforcement that Shaw advocates.

These days, as Shaw says, the city has simply not done its basic job of enforcing laws on public behavior in the Tenderloin the way it has in other neighborhoods and it needs to start. I'm a libertarian. I don't care if people want to sell, buy and use drugs or whatever--they just don't have to do it on the sidewalk and toss the needles also on the sidewalk (and poop there too).

But all that aside, the Tenderloin has some excellent restaurants, storied dive bars, ethnic groceries and a lot of new or rehabbed housing for the city's poorest residents that's quite decent (a lot of it done by Shaw's Tenderloin Housing Clinic).