In the early and mid-90’s I lived in New York City. Manhattan was awful in the early 90’s. You couldn’t go into a fast-food restaurant without street bums following you in and asking for some of your food. The subways were a mess, full of graffiti, and during every ride you’d have panhandlers going through the trains asking for money. Graffiti on every bridge, sign and building. These were the days you’d have hobos run out to your cars while they were stopped at a light, wipe off your windshield, and then demand payment.
He’s lost his mind since then, but Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor in 1993, and it was amazing how quickly he cleaned things up. I believe the city and state of New York came up with a program to move the homeless away from Manhattan into shelters and housing on the outskirts of the city, and the only options given to the homeless were to accept the offer of shelter or housing, leave town, or go to jail. It worked.
Now I live just outside of San Francisco, and it reminds me of New York City in the early 90’s. People are really fed up with it, but city (cough, cough) “leaders” only know how to keep coming up with very expensive programs that do nothing. They frankly need to stop coddling the homeless and start cracking down. I kinda’ wish SF would hire Rudy as a consultant on how to deal with the homeless, but for political reasons there’s no way they could do that.
Providence has a medication based program for incarcerated people, not for homeless on the street. Has that worked to reduce homelessness or (which is also a good thing) to reduce addiction and overdoses in prisoners?
Well for a very different look at the effects of Giuliani’s clean up of NYC, you may want to read Jonathon Kozol’s “Amazing Grace - The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation”. My D had to read it for her Poverty Studies course, and passed it along to me. There were actually devastating societal outcomes from banishing the poor to the South Bronx, all of which just continue to fuel the cycle of poverty and all its accompanying issues. Hence why the issues are so difficult to address. It’s an eye-opening read.
@BivalentChomps The WaPo article did mention benefits. One of the original tenants said that most of the new tenants (formerly homeless) were fine, but that the city (or apt building) needed to screen better and provide support for buildings with many of these tenants. But I felt the article was skewed to talk more about the problems than the benefits.
“They frankly need to stop coddling the homeless and start cracking down”
Well, if municipal leaders followed some of the advice here, they’d have a lawsuit slapped on their asses by the ACLU. There are constitutional and individual’s rights to deal with after all.
The ACLU eventually sues anything that moves, but it doesn’t make them right. Panhandling, public intoxication, urinating in public, and squatting are crimes that should be enforced.
Cities have attorneys who should be able to give authorities guidelines. Even something as basic as enforcing trespass & littering laws could help.
Governments should not be ineffective & docile simply out of fear of a potential lawsuit by the ACLU. I am not advocating that government action run afoul of any law, statutory or constitutional, but something needs to be done if only for the safety & welfare of mentally ill and / or drug addicted homeless individuals.
Also, governments have a duty to act in an effort to protect others. What about children who come across discarded drug needles ? What about unsanitary conditions & disease ?
This is a tough problem and I haven’t heard any new ideas. This problem may not, in fact, have a solution. Instead it should be managed. There is an axiom in chess that if you’re not sure what the next move should be, you should start by understanding what moves would be bad. In the case of the homeless I’d say some bad moves include transforming public parks into camp grounds, or sidewalks into bathrooms.
As I drove by today, I saw five police officers talking to a homeless man on a bus bench. From neighborhood reports, the man is old, does not know his full name or where he lives or lived. He has been offered help from the police almost daily and refuses it saying that a friend is coming to pick him up. It’s been two or more weeks now. No one is coming. Maybe this is a case of a family dumping off an unwanted old person. That is only speculation.
But there should be some way to mandate that this man go into a shelter until his family can be found. Sadly in so many of these cases of the demented, the mentally ill and the addicted, the family has given up or has had enough.
I find it cruel & inhumane that government doesn’t take action to help these individuals while also protecting others.
P.S. I suspect that some have just stopped taking their prescribed medication & are now disoriented. It would seem as though we could enact laws or use existing laws to detain some for a few days in order to protect them from themselves. During that time medical & psychiatric / psychological care / examination could occur.
I find it difficult to believe that most homeless individuals choose to live without adequate food, shelter, medical care & in such unsanitary conditions.
There are private shelters run by charities and there are city shelters. But if a person doesn’t want to go, they cannot be forced to go, even if there are clearly not in their right minds.
I’m not sure if it got enacted, but San Francisco was working on a law that allowed the city to take custody of the chronically homeless who it determined were mentally ill. It’s a way to force them off the street. It’s gotten to the point where most people don’t care about being compassionate. They just want their city back.
Watching the video mentioned earlier Seattle is Dying it is quite apparent that most of their homeless appear to be drug addicts. Presuming this is accurate which would make sense means that shelters will not solve the problem. The drug addiction has to be dealt with foremost. Lets say you lost your job and luck is not on your side would you want to room with drug addicts who will steal For their dug habit? Heroine and the like does exactly make for sane behavior. Hence why many families throw them out as they are not someone you necessarily want sleeping under the same roof.
The drug becomes their life and everything else is secondary. Allowing them to have three grams of heroine, permission to defecate on the street is insane. They are sick and need treatment but the courts especially in certain jurisdictions will rule that is a violation of their civil rights. Its not that laws dont exist but in recent years there has been a total disregard of laws by the powers to be. And the only way to fix that is either vote or vote with your feet. If nothing is done about it, sooner or later when it will hit the point of critical mass where business and residents leave things will change.
Which one came first? The drugs or lack of job opportunities or some other trauma. Its probably a mixture. So not only do you have to deal with addiction but the causes of addiction.
Jails & prisons with special sections for drug addicts convicted of non-violent crimes is a possible partial solution.
@TatinG : If arrested and / or convicted of a crime they can be forced to serve time. This is a health & safety issue which benefits both the drug addict & society by temporary incarceration & evaluation. Those with serious mental health issues can also receive needed treatment & medication. It is also a humane approach. These folks are not eating healthy meals, are not living in sanitary conditions & are not on a path to salvation or redemption.
My uncle was a homeless vet who had family, children, a home, but chose to move to where he couldn’t be located in order to… I don’t know why. Because he was always running away from life. He died alone not because he was mentally ill or a deug addict, but because he consciously chose it. His siblings found out he had died many months later when his last companion mailed a note to a family member. They don’t know where he was buried.
All of which is to say that it is all very complicated, and resistant to blanket policy decisions.
I don’t think that they don’t have compassion, but don’t they also have a right to use parks and sidewalks? The current system of letting everyone sleep on the sidewalks and panhandle means they get to use all the public spaces and all others don’t.
We have a mall shuttle to get people up and down the downtown area. You can’t SIT on those shuttles because they are so gross. I don’t mind standing up, but do feel sorry for families with little kids trying to balance.
Isn’t it a question of who to be more compassionate towards, the ten thousand ordinary citizens who are in effect denied the use of the public park, or the dozen homeless who wish to camp out there? I’m not at all convinced that the rights of a small group of homeless should prevail over the rights of the rest of the population.