Breakdown In Civil Order

[TSwizzle]

My personal story of homed people being more dangerous that the guy living under the bridge follows.

Cool story bro but these encampments still have to go.

 

[scombrid]

Yes. Encampments aren’t good. Bad for people in them. Bad for people near them. Solution? Any fixes for the conditions that cause them to exist in the first place?

Here the BCSO breaks them up and they just end up moving from place to place.

Mugshots published in the paper are a bunch of low level offenders getting buried deeper under the system. Seems keeping the boot on their necks takes priority over bigger structural problems in society.

 

[Jarhyn]

Yes. Encampments aren’t good. Bad for people in them. Bad for people near them. Solution? Any fixes for the conditions that cause them to exist in the first place?

Here the BCSO breaks them up and they just end up moving from place to place.

Mugshots published in the paper are a bunch of low level offenders getting buried deeper under the system. Seems keeping the boot on their necks takes priority over bigger structural problems in society.

Of course, the better solution is to expect every single municipality to have an acceptable refuge for the homeless people they generate. This way they never end up amassing in any one place. Each and every small town might have 1-10 homeless people instead of 0, and a city would end up with maybe 200 homeless people instead of 2000.

If small towns were expected to manage their homeless person production rate (by making places for teens to succeed out of highschool, and for gay youths spurned by their parents, fosters who age out of the system, and adults who come on hard times), we would all but eliminate large encampments without any need to clear them. The problem would just evaporate over the course of a generation down to a manageable level.

It would take ridiculously few homes per community to house their endogenous homeless population rather than making them fuck off to a big city, and we would all be better off for it.

Then we could design encampments which are both easy to clean and easy for the residents to relocate through for cleaning days to pick up the remainder, and place those homeless populations strategically to prevent undue stress in other infrastructure.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Of course, the better solution is to expect every single municipality to have an acceptable refuge for the homeless people they generate. This way they never end up amassing in any one place. Each and every small town might have 1-10 homeless people instead of 0, and a city would end up with maybe 200 homeless people instead of 2000.

If small towns were expected to manage their homeless person production rate (by making places for teens to succeed out of highschool, and for gay youths spurned by their parents, fosters who age out of the system, and adults who come on hard times), we would all but eliminate large encampments without any need to clear them. The problem would just evaporate over the course of a generation down to a manageable level.

It would take ridiculously few homes per community to house their endogenous homeless population rather than making them fuck off to a big city, and we would all be better off for it.

Then we could design encampments which are both easy to clean and easy for the residents to relocate through for cleaning days to pick up the remainder, and place those homeless populations strategically to prevent undue stress in other infrastructure.

Excellent.

 

[ZiprHead]

My personal story of homed people being more dangerous that the guy living under the bridge follows.

Cool story bro but these encampments still have to go.

Go where?

 

[Emily Lake]

As far as violence goes, the homeless are more likely to be victims than assailants.

This is true, but also misleading.

The homeless are more likely to be victims than to be assailants. But the likelihood of a randomly selected homeless person being an assailant is higher than the likelihood of a randomly chosen homed person being an assailant.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Many things are illegal despite not always being a problem.

Things? Sure.

Not people.

Homeless people are not "things".

In this case "things" is both a noun and a verb.

I gave the example of lockpicks being locally on very suspicious ground and then in the next part referred to right on red which is an action.

And there's no law about being homeless. By one definition I was "homeless" for 7 1/2 months (and actually a few weeks longer in staying with my uncle before we got a new place to live) but not remotely illegal. We did many international border crossings during that time, never were we suspected of being bums.

The laws are about actions. You block the sidewalk, I object.

The lines are drawn at the point where it could become a problem and in practice when people break the "law" but stay within the bounds of safe the cops do nothing. (Just watch a line of cars turning right (or left in your case) on red.)

Literally nobody turns left on red here unless it us explicitly permitted and signposted as allowed (which it isn't in my state, they trialled it and decided not to implement it. It's allowed where signposted in NSW); And if they did, the cops would come down on them like a tonne of bricks.

Ok, so you don't realize what I'm talking about. Consider a place where it's legal and note what happens:

Light is red. Car #1 stops at the stop line. Car #1 pulls forward as far as they can without encroaching into the cross traffic. Car #1 gets a gap and goes, car #2 rolls forward to where car #1 was. In all probability car #2 "ran" the red light because their stopping position had nothing to do with the position of the stop line. Car #2 endangered nobody. It's a big deal because of red light cameras. The majority of red light tickets are issued to car #2.

Or consider lockpicks. Locally there is a rebuttable proposition that they're for malicious use unless you're a locksmith. AFIAK it basically precludes locksport in the state.

This has no relevance to the matter at hand - collective punishment of people who have done nothing wrong other than to look a bit like some other people who have broken the law.

Not relevant?? It's illegalizing harmless (locksport) conduct that is too often correlated with harmful (burglary) conduct. Exactly what you said shouldn't be done.

The problem is you live in an idealized world where perfect enforcement of the law against only those who actually are causing a problem is possible.

NO!

The problem is that you are so unthinkingly authoritarian, you can't even see the problem when it has repeatedly been explicitly pointed out to you.

You didn't realize you're just as guilty.

In the real world it often is necessary to draw the lines so as to prohibit some behavior that causes no harm.

Being homeless is not "behaviour". It is circumstance. Prohibiting behaviours is not like prohibiting peoples.

Collective punishment is immoral and unethical. You must not punish somebody - anybody - for looking a bit like (or being in similar circumstances to) a different person who behaved badly.

But it's not criminalizing people. It's criminalizing behavior that is too often associated with harm. Exactly like the lockpick case.

If you're homeless but keep off the radar it's unlikely anybody's going to do anything.

If you are a Jew in the Third Reich, but keep well hidden, it is unlikely anybody's going to do anything.

That doesn't make the Third Reich an exemplar of justice and freedom, though.

Keep off the radar doesn't mean to keep it well hidden. Just don't draw attention to yourself. The guys behind the transformers. I haven't even seen a Karen complain because they aren't causing problems.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yes. Encampments aren’t good. Bad for people in them. Bad for people near them. Solution? Any fixes for the conditions that cause them to exist in the first place?

Here the BCSO breaks them up and they just end up moving from place to place.

Mugshots published in the paper are a bunch of low level offenders getting buried deeper under the system. Seems keeping the boot on their necks takes priority over bigger structural problems in society.

Of course, the better solution is to expect every single municipality to have an acceptable refuge for the homeless people they generate. This way they never end up amassing in any one place. Each and every small town might have 1-10 homeless people instead of 0, and a city would end up with maybe 200 homeless people instead of 2000.

If small towns were expected to manage their homeless person production rate (by making places for teens to succeed out of highschool, and for gay youths spurned by their parents, fosters who age out of the system, and adults who come on hard times), we would all but eliminate large encampments without any need to clear them. The problem would just evaporate over the course of a generation down to a manageable level.

It would take ridiculously few homes per community to house their endogenous homeless population rather than making them fuck off to a big city, and we would all be better off for it.

Then we could design encampments which are both easy to clean and easy for the residents to relocate through for cleaning days to pick up the remainder, and place those homeless populations strategically to prevent undue stress in other infrastructure.

The problem here is that you assume the homeless are that way for economic reasons.

So long as you can identify the ones that are homeless for economic reasons putting a roof over their head is by far the best solution. I'd like to see minimum safe accommodation available to any well behaved citizen for the asking. No means test, but there are expectation of behavior.

The problem comes from the fact that the majority of homeless aren't that way for economic reasons. When you try the roof approach with them all too often your roof gets damaged.

 

[Jarhyn]

Yes. Encampments aren’t good. Bad for people in them. Bad for people near them. Solution? Any fixes for the conditions that cause them to exist in the first place?

Here the BCSO breaks them up and they just end up moving from place to place.

Mugshots published in the paper are a bunch of low level offenders getting buried deeper under the system. Seems keeping the boot on their necks takes priority over bigger structural problems in society.

Of course, the better solution is to expect every single municipality to have an acceptable refuge for the homeless people they generate. This way they never end up amassing in any one place. Each and every small town might have 1-10 homeless people instead of 0, and a city would end up with maybe 200 homeless people instead of 2000.

If small towns were expected to manage their homeless person production rate (by making places for teens to succeed out of highschool, and for gay youths spurned by their parents, fosters who age out of the system, and adults who come on hard times), we would all but eliminate large encampments without any need to clear them. The problem would just evaporate over the course of a generation down to a manageable level.

It would take ridiculously few homes per community to house their endogenous homeless population rather than making them fuck off to a big city, and we would all be better off for it.

Then we could design encampments which are both easy to clean and easy for the residents to relocate through for cleaning days to pick up the remainder, and place those homeless populations strategically to prevent undue stress in other infrastructure.

The problem here is that you assume the homeless are that way for economic reasons.

So long as you can identify the ones that are homeless for economic reasons putting a roof over their head is by far the best solution. I'd like to see minimum safe accommodation available to any well behaved citizen for the asking. No means test, but there are expectation of behavior.

The problem comes from the fact that the majority of homeless aren't that way for economic reasons. When you try the roof approach with them all too often your roof gets damaged.

Many are, and most I expect start that way.

I don't even expect good behavior.

Give someone a home, they behave badly enough and you know where to find them, and see them, and see if and when they behave badly enough to get new, much more secure dwellings for the mentally unwell.

But most homeless folks are that way at the end of a pipeline that starts near the end of highschool, especially for certain folks.

My birth mother spent most of her life homeless, and yeah, there were behavioral issues there. All things told, things would still have been better if she had a home. There would have been one less infant in a group home.

 

[TSwizzle]

As far as violence goes, the homeless are more likely to be victims than assailants.

This is true, but also misleading.

The homeless are more likely to be victims than to be assailants. But the likelihood of a randomly selected homeless person being an assailant is higher than the likelihood of a randomly chosen homed person being an assailant.

The homeless victim is likely to be assaulted/robbed by a fellow homeless person.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Give someone a home, they behave badly enough and you know where to find them, and see them, and see if and when they behave badly enough to get new, much more secure dwellings for the mentally unwell.

But most homeless folks are that way at the end of a pipeline that starts near the end of highschool, especially for certain folks.

My birth mother spent most of her life homeless, and yeah, there were behavioral issues there. All things told, things would still have been better if she had a home. There would have been one less infant in a group home.

The problem is that you can't reasonably divide the world into those who need lockup and those who will deal with the place they're living properly. There's a substantial middle ground. Those are the ones that should be denied access to government-provided shelter.

 

[Jarhyn]

Give someone a home, they behave badly enough and you know where to find them, and see them, and see if and when they behave badly enough to get new, much more secure dwellings for the mentally unwell.

But most homeless folks are that way at the end of a pipeline that starts near the end of highschool, especially for certain folks.

My birth mother spent most of her life homeless, and yeah, there were behavioral issues there. All things told, things would still have been better if she had a home. There would have been one less infant in a group home.

The problem is that you can't reasonably divide the world into those who need lockup and those who will deal with the place they're living properly. There's a substantial middle ground. Those are the ones that should be denied access to government-provided shelter.

You absolutely can reasonably divide the world that way.

We have had laws for tens of thousands of years. Literally the one job of "laws" is to effect that division.

One part of the solution, part that keeps getting looked away from, is the fact that we need to start designing encampment locations with the intent that they be used by those who need a more durable living area.

Some people need to be housed in homes.

Some people need to be housed in a parking garage style structure but with walls and doors and floor drains.

Some ostensibly need an open space (possibly the top level of such a structure) where they can just pitch a tent.

I will return to my demand, therefore, for homeless encampment sites that will tolerate a high degree of abuse.

 

[TomC]

I will return to my demand, therefore, for homeless encampment sites that will tolerate a high degree of abuse.

We have those.
Places where people who must abuse are all kept together, at taxpayers expense. Places that tolerate a high degree of abuse.

The general term for those places is jail.
Tom

 

[Jarhyn]

I will return to my demand, therefore, for homeless encampment sites that will tolerate a high degree of abuse.

We have those.
Places where people who must abuse are all kept together, at taxpayers expense. Places that tolerate a high degree of abuse.

The general term for those places is jail.
Tom

No, jails also have the function of acting as a place of forced work, without freedom to come and go from the place being abused, without privilege to do any of the many things that people who are otherwise law-abiding would be allowed to do.

The conversation is specifically about people whose social behavior is reasonably acceptable, but whose ability to maintain a living space is not (for whatever reason).

These people are not guilty of any crime.

There is a very big difference between someone who just needs a place they can throw down a futon mattress, drop a deuce, and run some water over their bodies, and someone who mugs folks.

 

[Emily Lake]

I will return to my demand, therefore, for homeless encampment sites that will tolerate a high degree of abuse.

Why should ANY site be expected to tolerate a high degree of abuse?

Such abuse doesn't affect only the abuser, it affects everyone else. Why should victims be expected to tolerate abuse?

 

[Jarhyn]

Wow. Reading comprehension fail x2.

The context is structures for homeless people.

Structures do, in fact, have to endure a certain degree of abuse to remain functional.

Expecting accomodations to not be able to take any abuse is a very quick way to find yourself with dysfunctional or non-functional accomodations.

The only question I have is whether the failures to read the original post are real or feigned.

 

[Emily Lake]

I got your context, but you clearly have failed to grasp what I was saying. The context was destruction and mistreatment of the facility, by a subset of people who will not reasonably care for shared living spaces.

Yes, the facility should be able to withstand normal wear and tear. But when the facility is being abused - being subjected to wear and tear beyond what a normal person would consider reasonable, the structure is not the only thing affected. Everyone else who shares that structure is also affected. When someone breaks out windows, the building doesn't suffer; it's everyone else who is now exposed to the elements who suffers. When someone leaves trash and detritus and discarded needles around, it's not the building that suffers; it's everyone else who is exposed to unclean and dangerous environments.

Acknowledging that a disproportionate number of homeless people have severe mental health issues (not the anxiety and depression caused by being homeless, but actual schizophrenia, psychosis, and PTSD presenting with hallucination and delusion) and a disproportionate number of severe drug addiction that doesn't qualify as functional addiction is a problem in this discussion. But don't make the mistake of thinking that recognizing those problems precludes anyone from also understanding that many homeless people are victims of predation.

Hyperbolic? Yes, my response was hyperbolic. No more so than yours generally are, but still.

 

[scombrid]

Car dealership tried to steal $959 from me yesterday with a fraudulent repair on top of the fake fuel induction service they pushed. Why isn't there any hand-wringing over the common fraud business model of car dealership service departments and some other service industries like lawn pest management and such (I have some good stories about Save-A-Tree up in New Jersey).

I guess it is because conservatives and conservolibertarians are fine with fraud as a business model with "buyer beware" as their rationalization. Fraud is legitimate business because people that fall for it deserve to be robbed.

I reckon we can say the same about people that fail to lock their cars and lose items to drunks and addicts. I forgot to lock my car and lost a cheap pair of sunglasses and toll change to a neighborhood bum. That's way worse than if the car dealership fools me.

 

[scombrid]

As for facilities of varying scales to house street people, we need to get the huge companies that come to town and pay no property tax and get other breaks to pick up some of the tab. Otherwise the bill falls on residential property owners, local and state sales and personal property taxes, but that's what happens when you turn South Carolina and Alabama into third world countries to attract automotive assembly plants.

 

[scombrid]

Oh I have another rip off story. Big corporate bought out a very respected local heating/air/plumbing company. Pushed them into the upsell model of work. I let them come out and do annual service on our AC because it was in the rotation and I figured that they couldn't fuck that up. I figured they'd at least behave themselves for a year or two to try to retain the clients they inherited from the prior owners. Nope, they found some fatal problem in the air handler and were trying to talk me into buying whole new system (our system was 6 years old and well maintained). I told them to fuck off and got another company in. Did not need a new system or even a very costly repair. But hey, I should really turn my ire toward the bums that are currently living under the causeway bridge and out on the sail boats in the harbor.