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Originally Posted by mhays
But "the vast majority of the homeless will not camp on the street" if offered alternatives? Without a stick, no. Seattle's camp sweeps come with offers of temporary shelters and/or permanent housing (we've been building or buying thousands of units), and large percentages don't take any of it -- in 2023, only 16% took the offer! Sometimes it's lifestyle freedom. Sometimes it's sobriety requirements or a dog or lack of parking for the RV they're living in. Or the danger of living in a shelter.
So we need to enforce behavior at minimum. No camps, no litter, no inebriation, pick up after your dog, etc. (I don't know about outlawing sleeping by itself, as normal people might doze off in a park, and it seems like a useful last resort if your bus shows up at 3:00 am or something.) We'll see how the lifestyle choice goes when you have to follow the rules. |
Without a stick? What the hell do you mean without a stick? Street people are sleeping outside in the elements. They don't have regular access to bathrooms and have to defecate in public. They cannot secure their few possessions and could lose them to theft at any time. They could be subject to physical or sexual assault with limited recourse. They don't have regular access to food, having to rely on public aid and eating garbage.
How much lower can you fall than this? I guess they could keep confiscating tents and make people sleep even rougher outside. And sure, they still can qualify for some public aid (transit passes, food stamps, Medicaid, etc.) but they'd qualify for even more if they had an address!
I just don't buy the problem being "lack of consequences" because you've already had some pretty goddamned terrible consequences if you're unemployed and living outside. If you really prefer this over other options, you're no longer in proper touch with reality.
Anyway, looking at Seattle, it's clear that there are, in fact, way more homeless people than the shelter beds can accommodate:
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Out of the 2,874 shelter beds the city of Seattle fully paid for within its city limits at the end of 2023, the city controls who gets into 841, or 29%, of them. Those consist of a mix of tiny houses and shelter beds.
Between July 1 and Sept. 30 of 2023, seven beds out of the city’s 841 were available on average per working day — with one caveat. These open beds are reported in the morning, according to the city, so a bed could open up later in the day, but it won’t be represented in this count.
That means that less than 1% of the city’s set-aside beds were vacant at the beginning of the day last summer.
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From what I can tell, Seattle now has close to 10,000 homeless who are unsheltered. Clearly they can't fit in seven vacant beds. So even if it's true that a substantial proportion of the unsheltered homeless prefers to be outside, there realistically is not another immediate option for the bulk of them.
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Originally Posted by edale
San Francisco spends $1.1 billion a year on homelessness. LA spends $1.3 billion, and the County spends another half billion a year on the homeless. How much more should these cities spend? This post really does come off as delusional.
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The total does seem to be about $140,000 per homeless resident for San Francisco, which seems excessive, though less so when you consider the crazy property values in the Bay Area. That said, it's inclusive of all social services provided to the homeless (rehab, mental health, etc.). The actual housing cost is about half of that.
To be clear, I think that essentially everyone who is unsheltered homeless by choice either has untreated mental illnesses and/or substance abuse issues, and should be involuntarily committed. But that's not going to be cheap by any means. Judging by the cost of criminal incarceration, it's roughly in the same range ($130,000 per inmate in California).
Quote:
Originally Posted by mhays
In the movie "Boys in the Boat" (set in 1935/1936) they showed the main character living in Seattle's "Hooverville," a shantytown south of the current stadiums. I'd love to have one or two of those again. Let the lifestyle preferrers live there, with no drug or dog rules, and kick them out of public spaces everywhere else.
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The Housing Act of 1937 made shantytowns illegal in the U.S. People outside of these communities hated them, because they had negative impacts beyond their borders. They were fire hazards, disease risks, etc. But once they were established, it meant housing had to be built to minimum quality levels, so logically the whole system of subsidized housing spun out of this (there's no way increased supply will ever support the bottom of the market for this reason as well - because there's a relatively high minimum cost per unit most places in the country).
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