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comment by cgod
cgod  ·  2723 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

There are multiple car break ins every night in our neighborhood. Peoples mail, anything in their back yards, any garage left unlocked gets liberated. You can't get a package shipped to your house. Garbage is strewn across any natural area, as is tents and feces.

I don't know why it's gotten so bad in the last year but holy shit it's snowballing. The city changes their plan to address homelessness every six months.

I know that when you have nothing you'll take anything that helps you survive. I know that except for a few good breaks and the fact that I've dodged a few bad ones it could be me. The homeless are my enemy. They are preying on me every day. They've broken into our car, I'm sure they've stood in my back yard, tried by patio door on a day I wasn't home. They've stolen my packages. It's becoming an increasingly stressful part of city living and it doesn't make me a more compassionate person. There are times when just seeing them fills me with anger. It's hard, knowing they want to fuck me out of whatever they can and at the same time to remember that they are desperate people just trying to get a tiny bit of comfort out their miserable unfortunate existence.





kleinbl00  ·  2723 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I had all my shit stolen by ave rats when I was in college. I relate.

And I don't think it could be you. One thing I've learned is that the homeless are not monolithic. There's this one guy with a bike with about eighty dozen mirrors on it. He's well-groomed. He's friendly. He's never looking for a hand-out. I always say hi. Then there's this other posse that has a couple dozen bikes and maybe a dozen shopping carts chained up. There's the dude who sweeps the river (really) and there's the lady who's always squatting to take a dump downstream about a mile who never gives the first fuck who sees.

I think that the unseen homeless are the ones that aren't stealing your shit because they recognize that the costs-benefits analysis on it doesn't pencil out. They're the ones that aren't flaunting their condition, that see the homeless as "them" instead of "us" and are every bit Steinbeck's temporarily-embarrassed millionaires. And I don't see you stealing someone's packages just to see if they're something you can use.

_wage? _wage totally woulda stolen packages.

We all deal with adversity differently. I think part of our frustration is we mostly encounter those who deal with adversity by disregarding the social compact. Those who abide by it are invisible to us.

cgod  ·  2723 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I don't know.

If you work as many hours as you can get and still end up on the street the social compact has disregarded you.

If I were homeless with a kid I don't know what I wouldn't do to get by.

wage asked me for a job at my shop one time. I'm glad I wasn't in a position to hire anyone at that time. Don't ask anyone for a job if you've talked about the shit you've stolen from your work.

kleinbl00  ·  2723 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That would be why I didn't find her a place to stay in Seattle.

Don't ask anyone for a place to crash if you've talked remorselessly about the friends you've ripped off.

user-inactivated  ·  2723 days ago  ·  link  ·  

While I admit that I do not think homelessness should be considered a crime in and of itself, braking and entering, theft, trespassing, littering, and who knows what else are all crimes. Do the police do much to address these acts? Have you guys considered forming a neighborhood watch?

I ask, because I know two different people where drugs and theft were HUGE problems in their neighborhoods, and while it took a few years for both, working closely with the police and city council eventually made a major difference. If you want, I could ask one of them if they would mind getting in contact with you, see if they could share some ideas and tips.

cgod  ·  2723 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Our police bureau is in crisis. It's way undermanned and is going to stay that way for years.

We have a neighborhood watch program and apps like nextdoor let the community communicate about issues pretty freely.

http://koin.com/2015/12/15/city-struggles-to-take-action-as-homeless-camps-multiply/

http://koin.com/2015/12/03/rules-hard-to-enforce-at-growing-n-greeley-camp/

These permanent camps are just a tiny part of what's going on. There are ten times as many people camping here and there. You can neighborhood watch as much as you like, without a police force that is able to work on issues instead of running from call to call, housing for people to live in you are pretty much fighting the ocean.

user-inactivated  ·  2723 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Shit. That's hard. I wish there was an obvious and easy solution, I really do. Just try to hang in there man. My offer to reach out to my two friends still stands if you ever need it.

cgod  ·  2723 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's fine, it's just a stress of city living. Make sure your doors are locked, don't leave your garage open, even for a minute. The wife can't jog on the scenic trail anymore.

I'm sure that 5% of the homeless commit 95% of the crime.

There are lots of great things to living here as well.

We definitely need to do something about homelessness.

snoodog  ·  2723 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    We definitely need to do something about homelessness.

I think its shitty that you and your wife can no longer feel safe where you live. The question is what would you do? Assume you could pass any local legislation you wanted but had no control over state and national policy or resources. How would you go about making your neighborhood safe.

cgod  ·  2723 days ago  ·  link  ·  

We have to cough up the money and put as many homeless people in housing as possible. Shelters aren't a long term fix. We need more mental health and drug abuse counseling. People need some kind of viable minimum income. On the streets people receive inadequate medical care whic cost us more in the long term. They resort to petty crime to survive, burdening our police departments, filling our jails, alienating them from civil society and creating police records which make them unable to find work down the road.

Instead our mayor hoots that he's delivered water and sanitation services to the homeless camps, which does nothing but entrench the problem. People need jobs that pay enough to make the rent and they need health care that doesn't bankrupt them. We need to get rid of predatory financial scams that prey on the poorest members of society.

Who knows what will happen, my guess is that it will continue to get worse seeing how disorganized and inept local government is.

goobster  ·  2722 days ago  ·  link  ·  

And here's the bigger housing problem: You can't put them all in the same housing. Otherwise you have just created a ghetto.

The "homeless housing" simply needs to be low-rent (subsidized) flats on the ground floor of that regular old apartment building. The homeless need to be integrated into the community rather than stored away elsewhere. It has proven to be the only viable solution.

The whole idea of consolidating the homeless in one area to provide group services is just wrong. The result is a bunch of directionless people with nothing to do all day, and many of them have drug/mental issues, which are exacerbated by being closely housed with other people with similar problems.

Once the homeless are integrated into regular housing, they are out of the cycle, and out of the perpetually homeless community, and can receive the services they need to live on their own and build a real life.

Failing that, there needs to be a catch-basin for those who simply cannot care for themselves. This used to be the mental healthcare system, until Reagan de-funded the whole thing in the 1980's, and simply pushed the indigent out onto the street without their meds.

And that is the new "normal" that Reagan created for us: A world in which you walk by a crazy person, or a person who is clearly in distress, because the only recourse is the police.

Actually addressing homelessness in a meaningful way requires a restructuring of societal base expectations that have been built over the last two generations.

And that just isn't going to happen on an America-wide scale.

kleinbl00  ·  2722 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    The "homeless housing" simply needs to be low-rent (subsidized) flats on the ground floor of that regular old apartment building. The homeless need to be integrated into the community rather than stored away elsewhere.

This is, in fact, the way Seattle does it. You get tax incentives and grants for providing subsidized housing units as a part of your building complex.

snoodog  ·  2722 days ago  ·  link  ·  

IMO that doesn't provide me as a tax payer very good bang for the buck. Housing someone in Seattle proper probably costs 2-3x as much as it would to house them somewhere else. Do you think its a good idea? It may be slightly better outcomes for the homeless person but significantly worse outcomes for the community.

goobster  ·  2722 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Actually, the right solution is FareStart, which answers all of the problems around homelessness: lack of housing, lack of skills, lack of discipline, lack of connections, and lack of support.

And, for those with insurmountable drug or mental issues, they have pipelines into programs that handle these people, too.

So yes, it absolutely makes sense to have homeless programs in a city like Seattle. In fact, these exact programs work in other cities all around the world. The only difference is that those cities are backed up with federal support that takes care of the 10% that fall out the bottom of the system.

Really, your knowledge of the reasons for homelessness, the barriers to becoming un-homeless, and the support systems in place for the homeless is absolutely laughable. You are willfully uninformed on the subject, and your pontifications bring no new thinking to these well-understood issues.