How to solve homelessness

Homelessness is simply not curable. Many would love help but others are simply in a state where they cannot be helped. And both groups seem to be growing. Most cities have some temporary housing, but that won’t work forever and it doesn’t work for those that can’t follow the rules.

How to solve homelessness:

  • better safety nets
  • a society that care about people with mental problems
  • universal basic income

thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Why don’t we build some large buildings so these people can have a small apartment to call home? One for those on drugs, one for families, and one for those without children. You could have social workers and drug counselors working out of the building for addicts to offer safer alternatives and help with getting sober. The other 2 buildings would just be normal apartments. If we don’t have land space, go up.

I think most would be happy to see their tax dollars going to help get people off the street.

I believe the causes of homelessness are:

  • Economic: bankruptcy
  • Health: metal health
  • Personal/Choice: people that just don’t agree how life in society works

not everyone that is lost want to be found

It’s pretty clear that the main cause of homelessness is that the rent is too damned high. There is a secondary cause of some of it — the near absence of affordable community mental health services in America — but housing cost is the main one.

Seattle is building/buying buildings for homeless housing. They also have numerous shelters. Supposedly, the homeless don’t want to use the shelters. When major camps are cleared they offer to help and the people don’t want it. They just move to another camp.

As for harsh winters, why doesn’t every southern city have a problem then? When it’s been sub freezing here in Seattle, nothing changes. They just continue to start fires at the camps or sleep in sleeping bags/tents on the sidewalks.

They could also try controlling it. Maybe not allow them to run rampant downtown so people want to continue to come here? Have a nice part of the city where people feel safe? Maybe a park or two that isn’t a homeless camp?

Perhaps partly. I mean it certainly is. I think another big cause is the meth epidemic. I think it was here but maybe not that I found this recent article about synthetic meth and how bad it is.

Of course few people bother asking why people get hooked on this shit in the first place. Happy people with decent lives in healthy communities don’t generally turn to habitual drug use.

Yes, I have read many times that homeless people often don’t like to use shelters because they can be dangerous places.

The camps aren’t dangerous?

Well if you read that Atlantic article it seems some of them are getting to be.

It would get them off the street, and disincentivize all of the homeless coming there and congregating in camps which are unsafe for both the homeless and the general members of society.

I forget, do you live up there? Because the folks I know who live up there, who are definitely not at all right wing folks, are finding that their society is suffering major degradation because of this.

These people are not merely homeless, but they are also having major drug abuse, as well as sexual abuse. But the cops are simply not enforcing any laws, at all, in those areas.

I think you might be underestimating how bad a lot of these people are. I am not talking about panhandlers. Seattle has very aggressive people walking the streets. I have been yelled at for being white, followed for blocks by someone who I told I didn’t have any change, and had to change my route to avoid people destroying public property. I have gone into a Starbucks where a homeless person was inside changing his clothes and yelling at anyone who so much as looks at him. Everyone just pretends they aren’t there because that is all you can do.

I give you…Cabrini Green. That is what you are describing. And we know how well all of those efforts from the 60s/70s worked out.

Plus, the other problem, as always, is NIMBY. No one wants those buildings in their neighborhood.

The impression I’m getting from folks who live in Seattle, is that there’s this feeling of helplessness.

There are crazy homeless people taking over places like the parks and sidewalks, and the people who live there don’t have anyone they can go to to help. The police and government aren’t doing anything, so it’s frustrating.

If you have people breaking the law, but the police refuse to enforce it, what do you do?

(it’s also weird, because the SPD doesn’t have any problem beating up random black people sometimes)

It’s a bit schizophrenic to have, on the one hand, no effective housing plan for the poor and no effective resident treatment program adequate for the number of mentally ill; and on the other, laws against living or sleeping in the streets.

Not really, when you realize that in general people don’t care that there is a problem, they just don’t want to see it. Out of sight, out of mind.

Yes, that’s the schizophrenic part: I don’t want to see this, and I also don’t want to solve it.

It is not out of sight. The tourist area of Seattle is covered in crazy people. It wasn’t as bad before the pandemic because there was a lot of normal people out. Now there aren’t as many business people/tourists on the street, so the guy walking down the street screaming becomes harder to avoid/ignore.

The thing here is that we aren’t talking about the police simply refusing to enforce vagrancy laws.

The police are refusing to enforce ANY laws in those areas. So, for instance, tresspassing laws, or drug offenses, or violent crime.

If you did these things, the police would arrest you… but if you’re homeless, they won’t.

It’s not the police supposedly, it’s the city refusing to prosecute. That and the police can’t keep up. The Seattle City council just voted down a plan to reduce the SPD by another 100 officers this week, which was surprising for them.