From "Disband homeless camps? Some cities rethink them instead" (Christian Science Monitor).
March 7, 2023
"For much of the recent past, one assumption in addressing homelessness has been that everyone wants a solid roof."
"The debate over encampments is shifting those assumptions. Increasingly, cities and states are exploring whether there can be a sense of dignity and agency in 'safe outside spaces' as an end in themselves. As some carry out sweeps to clear out encampments, others are experimenting with the idea of making them more humane, hygienic, and livable as one potential part of the solution to the housing crisis.... The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it is unconstitutional to ban sleeping in public if there are no other sleeping options available, and some municipal courts have made similar rulings.... The Georgia Senate is considering a bill that would criminalize camping and force municipalities to comply. But the bill would also allow the state to designate areas for sanctioned camps.
In Savannah, Georgia, Shirley Walkowicz says the move to criminalize what she is doing – living in her car – 'just shows that people don’t [care] about me and people like me.'"
From "Disband homeless camps? Some cities rethink them instead" (Christian Science Monitor).
From "Disband homeless camps? Some cities rethink them instead" (Christian Science Monitor).
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63 comments:
"one assumption in addressing homelessness has been that everyone wants a solid roof."
The assumption was always wrong: addicts prefer easier access to drugs, and the insane have no clue.
"The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it is unconstitutional to ban sleeping in public"
Where does the Constitution say this?
We've been here before. 3 generations ago they were called "Hoovervilles". Personally, I see nothing wrong with this, and I've personally encountered the want-to-be-outside homeless these people are referring to a few times. For a myriad of reasons (mostly drugs), they want to live in a tent.
I have no problem with modern Bidenvilles (Or should they be called Obamavilles...), just move them out of urban cores.
Mostly the homeless just want drugs. They don't really care about a roof unless there are drugs under it.
The mnemonic is CATO
40% Crazy
30% Addicts
20% Tramps (like the lifestyle)
10% Out of luck
The latter can be helped.
Is sleeping in your car, your own property, the same as sleeping in the doorway of a derelict storefront?
I don't trust the CSM on this. Interview someone literally living on the street.
So-called homelessness is not a lack of sheetrock and HVAC. It's meth and coke and pot, and mental illness, it's the indiscriminate emptying of jails, it's purposeless people. Yes, there are some who have had a run of bad luck. All the low income housing in the world will simply create urban dystopias. Then what?
No, the assumption for a long time has been that the majority of homeless, or at least those sleeping on the streets, have no interest in a solid roof. The like being on the streets.
Please don't put the sanctioned camps in public parks!
Anyone who chooses to live with this kind of freedom is in effect just a tax cheater.
I support them.
More leftie horseshit. If anyone could see the filth and litter that surrounds these encampments, the sense of societal degradation becomes overwhelming. In Los Angeles, whole streets…for blocks….are lined with tents. Under an overpass while stopped at a traffic light, the sense of fetid decay fills the air. Until recently, MacArthur Park was a cesspool of crazies. Piles of literal crap chased by streams of urine that float syringes down the walkways plainly reveal how the lefties plan for our future to unfold.
- Krumhorn
But let's spend millions housing and feeding illegals that Joe Biden invited in.
The problem isn't homelessness, it's drug addiction.
Decline is a choice.
"experimenting with the idea of making them more humane, hygienic, and livable"
I think "hygienic" is about as important to this population as "roof".
The trick is, to keep moving.
Then you're Not a bum. You're a Hobo.
Or, at least a tramp.
What is it that they call them in England?
Romanas or something? Certainly Not gypsies
You want to clear most of the homeless off your streets- crack down hard on drug dealers working the area. If want to increase the homeless on your streets, allow free drug use and selling everywhere on your streets while not prosecuting shoplifting at all. These cities are run by liars and idiots.
Would junkies like a free roof over their heads while they take drugs al day?
Sure...who wouldn't?
But their primary concern is taking drugs and drinking.
I will gladly give you a tour of San Francisco if you want to witness the wondrous results of one-party, ultra-left-wing government...
Blogger gilbar said...
What is it that they call them in England?
Traveler scum is a popular name. But they typically have caravans, so homeless, but not unhoused, so to speak.
I’m for a solid roof and walls. If walls can’t be done because “outdoors” and no fences because “incarceration”, then how about tall hedges. Still, I think we need to revisit asylums and instead of doing away with them, running them better.
"But let's spend millions housing and feeding illegals that Joe Biden invited in."
How many millions? Where are they?
"gilbar said...
The trick is, to keep moving.
Then you're Not a bum. You're a Hobo.
Or, at least a tramp."
Should we give them some kind of identifying mark. A Tramp-Stamp?
This didn't exist for hundreds of years. Then it did.
If it could not exist then, it can be made not to exist now.
Check out Scott Lindsey's list in Seattle:
Of the top 100 multiple arrestees...
100% homeless.
100% drug addicts.
When people get arrested 30+ times and get recycled right back out....
bad things happen.
https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw?t=498
Years ago, before the drug scene took off, I used to bring my medical students to the skid row area of Los Angeles. About half the "homeless" were psychotic. These people were disinterested in living in a shelter. Some of that was rational because there were bad people in shelters. Mostly, it was the psychosis. They could be rational enough to sign up for showers and 8 hours in a clean bed. The "Downtown drop-in center" did not have long term beds available but the center was surrounded by people living in boxes and sleeping bags waiting for their number to come up. They would be called by staff and then could take a shower and get 8 hours in a clean bed. After that they went back to the street. There were missions in the same general area and I was told the "homeless" could eat five meals a day if desired.
I don't know the situation anymore. My impression is that the vast increase in street people is made up of drug addicts. They are being supported by the "homeless bureaucracy" which has grown enormously. Long ago, my old surgery professor used to say there were more people living off cancer than dying from it. That is far more true of the "homeless."
All well and good. As long as there's a list posted somewhere of what cities are going to support this. It's a big country with no end of locales to visit.
Tent camps can also be repurposed as Concentration Camps when the time comes. They're dual and triple-purpose. Highly efficient.
Have a certain portion of the population that you deem needs "re-education?" If tent cities exist, it's much easier to get this job done.
We need fresh thinking outside ze box, herr Althouse.
I'm actually in favor of this. Set up the encampments, but outside the city in a place where it's convenient for the rest of society.
However, there seems to be "one assumption" across several issues that seems to permeate the ideology of the left.
And that is the presumed "victim" gets to determine the venue of their acting out as punishment against the oppressor.
Hence, not only do the homeless have a right to encamp outdoors, they have a "right" to do so in the downtown area of their choosing where there will be maximum disruption.
Similarly, trans women demanding their right, not just to compete in sports, but in the women's category, essentially demanding a right to be a top athlete in an unfair competition.
"The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it is unconstitutional to ban sleeping in public"
Where does the Constitution say this?
I would argue that it would be unconstitutional for the federal government to enact such a ban, as it exceeds the powers granted thereto. Not sure how it would apply against the states though.
"The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it is unconstitutional to ban sleeping in public"
Where does the Constitution say this?
I would argue that it would be unconstitutional for the federal government to enact such a ban, as it exceeds the powers granted thereto. Not sure how it would apply against the states though.
Radical leftwing city administrators have found that a luring a permanent homeless population to their city allows them access to a steady stream of graft from programs theoretically geared to ameliorate the situations of a victim class that will never demand accountability or sue them for their failures.
So growing up with an alcoholic father who also used drugs I used to hear a lot about enabling addiction. Is that not a thing anymore? Or are we just skipping to government sponsored enabling? I don’t want people to be scared and hungry…but I don’t want to pay for people to sit around and get high either.
There are cities that have no homeless problem. And there are cities that do. The difference is in their governments. Portland and Seattle are locked in a bidding war to see who can attract the most "homeless" people. Presumably, they believe the presence of a large "community" of thieves and violent lunatics helps them to retain political power.
Robert Cook said...
"But let's spend millions housing and feeding illegals that Joe Biden invited in."
How many millions? Where are they?
3/7/23, 10:28 AM
At least 5 million. Ask Mayor Adams who is complaining about them, whilst shelling out millions to keep them housed in fancy hotels..and just think....he got only a pittance of illegals...not what the border towns are being invaded with.
https://nypost.com/2023/01/13/ka-ching-adams-ink-275-million-with-hotels-to-house-migrants/
Here you go Robert Cook. How many will YOU take in?? https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fair-analysis-5-5-million-145700831.html
Capitol canopies, and canoes for clean transport.
Robert Cook said...
"But let's spend millions housing and feeding illegals that Joe Biden invited in."
How many millions? Where are they?
3/7/23, 10:28 AM
NYC
TX
The US
"Tiny houses" are a big thing now. Maybe some people think of their cars as "tiny houses." In 1982, when the media "discovered" homelessness, there were plenty of stories about people who left the Midwest for Texas and were living in their cars and looking for work. They weren't typical of the usual homeless. I guess maybe they found jobs and were able to move out of their cars.
I have no problem with modern Bidenvilles
"Bidonville" is French for ... well ... Bidenville.
If you set up a campground you take on a lot of responsibility and it gets complicated real quick.
You'd have to police it and provide sanitation and sewer. That means toilets and showers. Who's going to clean them?
Would you issue specific campsite rights to individuals? You'd have to provide a system to adjudicate disputes over ownership and encroachments. What would you allow or disallow in terms of "improvements"?
Would you allow any vendors? Would you allow campers to sell things? How about prostitution? Would you kick them out for that? Would non-residents be allowed to come and go into the camp? How would you control that? If the rules were too restrictive, people will move to somewhere their dealer can come to.
Maybe you just provide them with drugs if they want them, but that creates a whole other long list of problems.
It would have to be in the city, but nobody is going to want it in their neighborhood. If you put it out in the boonies it would be like a prison camp and the homeless would stay in town. Problem not solved.
Robert Cook said...
"But let's spend millions housing and feeding illegals that Joe Biden invited in."
"How many millions? Where are they?"
I like when you're dense on purpose.
Go to any industrial park in any state. Find a random building and open the back door and yell,"Migra!".
You'd think there was a fire judging by how fast the occupants leave that building and the two on either side.
Robert Cook said...
"But let's spend millions housing and feeding illegals that Joe Biden invited in."
"How many millions? Where are they?"
I like when you're dense on purpose.
Go to any industrial park in any state. Find a random building and open the back door and yell,"Migra!".
You'd think there was a fire judging by how fast the occupants leave that building and the two on either side.
Sleeping in your car should always be exempt. It is a shelter after all that you own.
"Government sanctioned encampments" or "concentration camps," call them what you wish.
But Summertime in a tent in an open field in Athens or Birmingham will definitely thin the ranks.
In fact, that will likely be ruled unacceptable and housing with roofs and air conditioning will be mandated by the courts.
"Government sanctioned" carries a lot of expensive luggage and once you start it's hard to stop.
The Brits call it "living rough". I get that and see how some (men? crazy men?) might prefer it to what some (female?) social worker thinks is "living right".
So let's see. If you want to build a residence with walls, you have to get many, many permits; you have to build it in certain detailed ways, you have to comply with environmental and zoning laws, and before anyone can move in, there have to be various inspections and finally the issuance of a certificate of occupancy. All of which makes it impossible to build cheap housing, or for supply to respond to demand, so housing prices go up and up.
But then because housing is so expensive, living in tents is going to be legalized.
At what point does one walk into the DEA and say "You've failed" and shut it down?
On another note: This is the land of the free. Let people live how they want as long as they commit no crimes and support their neighbor. I've got no problem with towns setting aside land for encampments provided clean water, sanitation, and access to basic needs are available.
The lie here is that "homelessness" is a problem of people not being to afford a place to stay; people who lost a job, are down on their luck, and just didn't have enough resources to find a place to live. "Homelessness" is 75% a drug problem and 25% a mental health problem - actually more a 100% drug problem and a 25% mental health problem because the schizophrenics are also on meth. The chronically homeless aren't people who are just down on their luck and have no place to go, they are drug addicts who lost their jobs and then made themselves unwelcome with every friend who gave them a place to stay. Stealing from someone who is offering you a place to stay tends to do that. In Seattle there are plenty of shelters that the "homeless" could stay in but the catch is that they can't do drugs in the shelters. In addition, the shelters generally are not conveniently located right next to the drug scenes. They'd rather stay close to the drugs and just steal whatever isn't nailed down to pay for drugs and food, in that priority order.
"I've got no problem with towns setting aside land for encampments provided clean water, sanitation, and access to basic needs are available."
That's because you don't live in a town where hundreds of drug addicts loot the stores to support their habits, where there is the constant sound of sirens as the police, the fire department and ambulances respond to crimes and overdoses, and where the filthy, Communist scum who have taken over the city you were born in gabble about how they are going to "solve" the problem they have created by raising your taxes and giving the money to their grifter asshole buddies. Try it, you won't like it.
Robert, do you believe in the law of supply and demand? Do you believe that letting in millions of illicit workers drives down wages for Americans?
Why dismantle 'Bidenvilles'? Just move them all to an island and call it Biden's Atoll.
But just cause these drifters and bums want to live outdoors does not mean they can just put down anywhere... kick their butts out of cities and give 'em room by the trash dumps.
And if they are not willing to work... don't feed them.
No work, no eat.
They chose to live that way... hell let them. Just don't feed them.
We used to have strong social mores against vagrancy and being a bum. Today, we are all sensitive about it all, and enable these types. This is what we get, in return.
Kindness is often far more cruel to the weak-minded than treating them as their conduct would reward them in "the wild", so to speak. By shielding them from the consequences of their choices, we enable them to become even more self-destructive, and destructive of the community.
I've got friends and contacts all over the Seattle metro area. The things they describe going on, and what the impact is on the communities they live in? Unfathomable to anyone who remembers "Seattle as it was", and that city ain't ever coming back. They lost the retail core over the last few years, and a lot of the businesses that used to support the tax base. Everyone is looking to leave, and that's taking the money with it to fix anything. The choices made by the left-wing idiots who got themselves elected to "solve problems" have a lot to answer for, and they likely never will. Most of them don't even recognize what they've done.
Hell, I was just on the phone with a sales rep based out of a neighborhood just south of the new stadium; the reason I had to call her back? They had to call for help because one of the "unhoused" was having a mental health crisis and assaulted one of the employees.
Little things like that are why nobody is going to live or work in either Seattle or Portland in a generation. My sister's old company used to be just off the waterfront, within walking distance of Pike's Place Market. They recently had to move out of town, because they couldn't keep employees who were tired of being assaulted and having things stolen out of their cars. Oh, and stepping over the feces on the sidewalk on the way in to work.
So... Yeah. You think you're being all kind and humane, but what you're actually doing by enabling and encouraging this self-destructive behavior is destroying the people doing these things and the communities they live in.
Oh, and I heard a solution to all of this from a former "homeless advocate" that just gave up on the whole milieu: She said that the best thing they could do was outlaw Narcan and make Fentanyl free...
I think she spent a few too many years living a little too close to the problem. It's amazing how shattered illusions tend to lead to extreme solutions...
Noah Rothmann allowed 'Housing First' advocate Eric Carr (if I recall correctly) to post on his SubStack, and offered that Carr's analysis had changed his mind on the relative impact of housing cost vs other factors in homelessness. It was, to my reading, quite insightful. Carr doesn't discount other issues but repeatedly points out that you can find places with equal levels of a factor like drug use and mental illness but in all cases places with higher housing costs have more homeless.
There seems to be a direct correlation between the number of homeless and the number of panhandlers. Here in Los Angeles that panhandlers have pretty much disappeared.
"Carr's analysis had changed his mind on the relative impact of housing cost vs other factors in homelessness. It was, to my reading, quite insightful. Carr doesn't discount other issues but repeatedly points out that you can find places with equal levels of a factor like drug use and mental illness but in all cases places with higher housing costs have more homeless."
I would be careful with causation here. Places with higher housing costs in the US tend to be places with much nicer and more temperate year round weather. If I were a homeless person, I would decamp from Tennessee to the west coast of California the next day.
“The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it is unconstitutional to ban sleeping in public if there are no other sleeping options available” — I just want to point out that this issue has never been heard by the Supreme Court and that it is unlikely that the current Court would agree with the Ninth Circuit on this. No municipality has sought to challenge the Ninth Circuit ruling because the Democrats who run most cities agree with it.
I thought Madison was going to solve the homelessness in town by building tiny houses. Along with the houses was a page of rules for the tiny house community, but I never heard if they settled on a location for it. Somebody suggested Brenda Konkel's yard, but that was unlikely to happen, and since there were going to be rules, they may not have had anyone signing up.
You can't fix homelessness by treating the symptom rather than the cause. Fix why they are homeless instead of throwing money at it.
Yancey Ward said:
""Carr's analysis had changed his mind on the relative impact of housing cost vs other factors in homelessness. It was, to my reading, quite insightful. Carr doesn't discount other issues but repeatedly points out that you can find places with equal levels of a factor like drug use and mental illness but in all cases places with higher housing costs have more homeless."
I would be careful with causation here. Places with higher housing costs in the US tend to be places with much nicer and more temperate year round weather. If I were a homeless person, I would decamp from Tennessee to the west coast of California the next day."
You also leave out the fact that places with higher housing costs and higher populations of the homeless also tend to have things like rent control and left-wing idiots running the places, which translate into them tending to have much nicer amenities for the homeless.
It's like that baseball field in Field of Dreams: If you build it, they will come. Witness the witlessly generous things offered by all these cities like Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco to the homeless. Most of the homeless in Seattle and Portland aren't actually native to those cities; they come from across the United States to take advantage of all the generous government programs and the fecklessly lax enforcement of law.
Guarantee you that if they cut the benefits to zero and enforced laws against petty crime with time spent in corrective labor camps doing public work? You'd see the "homeless" vanish from the streets.
The problem isn't going to be fixed until the generous benefits cease. These people have made a choice, one enabled by the feckless munificence of our leftoid lords and masters that chose to ruin our cities with their idiot policies.
Guarantee you that if you were to put Leonard the guy who didn't graduate from college in charge of the whole mess, he'd take one look at the situation and say "Yeah; this ain't working. Let's go back to vagrancy laws and zero benefits to social parasites..."
Might not be humane, but I bet you there'd be less people out there on the streets.
I remember what these cities used to be like, and I've watched the left destroy them over the course of my life. Seattle and Portland ain't coming back; the business communities that supported them are done with them and their politicians. Everyone I know in the Seattle metro area who can is looking for a way to leave, and do business somewhere else. Same with Portland; they can't even get people to come into their shops and warehouses to pick things up, any more. One guy I called for parts the other day in Portland eagerly let me know that I could meet his truck in Vancouver, across the river from Portland, and I'd never have to set foot near the city. Apparently, that's what all his customers are demanding. The company had to hire someone to take a panel van across the river to service clients who refuse to risk going to their storefront. They're working on shutting down operations in Portland, and are considering going to an all-remote operation well away from the city.
Yeah, that's going to be the legacy for all these cretins we've let run things. Both cities should still be livable and in demand. They aren't. They won't be, and they likely aren't coming back. I don't know how the hell they're ever going to pay off that idiotic tunnel in Seattle, because one of the big secrets nobody is talking about is the fact that the current level of traffic there does not justify the expense on the bonds. It's also dropping, because nobody wants to live in, work in, or even visit the city any more.
Increasingly, cities and states are exploring whether there can be a sense of dignity and agency in 'safe outside spaces' as an end in themselves.
When I was 17 I did the 23-day Outward Bound course in the mountains of North Carolina. We didn't have tents but we did have tarps that we would tie between two trees.
It was pouring rain one night and we had major streams of water coming into our sleeping bags. It was insane. We were soaked. The guy in the sleeping bag next to me woke me up in the middle of the night because he was frantically digging in the mud.
Me: "What the fuck are you doing?"
Him: "I got a river of water coming into my sleeping bag!"
Me: "Why are you digging in the mud?"
Him: "I'm building a moat! To divert the water! Help me!"
And I'm laughing so hard. And I just flop over in my wet sleeping bad and try to go back to sleep.
They gave us packets of iodine to add to our canteens when we got water from a creek. You were supposed to shake the canteens and wait 30 minutes. That rigorous rule got more and more violated over time.
1st day: wait 30 minutes
7th day: wait 10 minutes
12 day: just shake that canteen really fucking hard
17 day: "I'll trade you all my Iodine packs for some of your toilet paper"
Anyway, there's not a lot of dignity in the outdoors.
Happily, we did not run into a deer with a carcass stuck in its antlers.
The Georgia Senate is considering a bill that would criminalize camping
I'm sure there are no problems with that!
Government is the problem.
What is the purpose of government? As a society we are far apart on what the purpose (power) should be.
Look at this anthropologically. How do societies function? How are societies constituted?
Family is the universal core society. ALL grows from that.
Family, then the extended family of adults. Parents, (man and woman), grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles.
Then the church.
Now we have Family and Church as the core GOVERNING unit.
From that grows a community. Communities replicate as geography expands. Expanding following/chasing resources.
Communities organize themselves to provide things singular families cannot support/fund themselves. Schools, roads, law enforcement
Are we willing to eschew the govt in order to rebuild the nuclear family?
Almost all of these people qualify for Medicaid, while I bust my ass to afford premiums and deductibles I can't meet.
They get free food, free shelter housing, free phones, usually Medicaid and social security checks or at least free medical care, and by all credible statistics are mostly male junkies and drunks panhandling to party. So what does The Christian Science Monitor do? Find two women, one at least in her forties or fifties "attending college" from a homeless shelter, or so she says, and another living in her car who looks like a hard partier. They don't confirm the college or the major, nor do they do any background checks to confirm their stories are in any way true.
The one Savannah woman "Rachel" has a $40+ weave, a nose ring that had to cost something, and she's "going to college" while living in a shelter. Why is she even in a story about camping in the woods?
Why doesn't she get a job instead of "going to college," so my family can stop supporting her lifestyle and unnecessary hair products?
The woman sitting in her car looks perfectly capable of getting day jobs and a room to rent by the week. Lots of work in that area.
Don't trust the Christian Science Monitor. The issue here isn't building $5 million dollar "campsites" for these people to party in. Why should the taxpayers pay for that on top of every other frigging public and private resource we already shower these people with? I worked with people like this for years. These two women don't represent the population being discussed. Second, that population is mostly sociopaths, the dangerous mentally ill, and/or addicts who have burned everyone else who tried to help them. They alone put themselves there, so they have to choose: get their act together and enter already-existing state facilities, where you behave so you don't get banned, and start working at Taco Bell until you can avail yourself of even more of our tax dollars for other types of subsidized housing.
Or don't, and then you don't get to decide which part of public property you get to squat on, panhandle from, and defile, because we are paying to maintain their sanitary and safe conditions. They're not going to move to parkland anyway. How could they panhandle then? And even if they did, why should taxpayers seeking to use the parks they pay for have to meet these types -- actually mostly men, mostly drugged out, drunk, criminal -- when they choose to take a hike or run? See: Silver Comet Trail, Georgia.
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