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>Lack of affordable housing is the number one cause of homelessness Homelessness isn't a monolith. Treating someone who gets evicted after job loss the same as

>Lack of affordable housing is the number one cause of homelessness Homelessness isn't a monolith. Treating someone who gets evicted after job loss the same as mentally ill drug addicts is making the problem worse. Homeless assistant programs are successful at helping people who accept the help. The drug addicts you see on the streets are engaging in destructive antisocial behavior. Sadly the only effective remedy for this behavior is to be roughed up by police and thrown in jail.

DoreenMichele 2y ago
No, homelessness is not a monolith. But lack of affordable housing is still the number one cause. We only claim someone's problems are entirely due to drug use when they hit skid row. We don't predict homelessness for millionaire rock stars who go to rehab repeatedly. Drug use doesn't cause homelessness. Lack of housing causes homelessness. The real solution is: We need to fix the housing crisis.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  Lack of affordable housing is the reason people might fall into despair and then drugs, but the people who get into drugs are basically a lost caused compared to the ones that don’t. The drug addicts…you can throw millions at just one case and make no progress in getting them back in their feet, the non-drug addict just needs housing. At that point, isn’t a moral judgement, just an effective use of limited resources (do we burn money trying to treat drug addicts who try to cook meth in the housing you give them, or do we spend $2k/month getting that non addict an apartment so they can get a job).
  - DoreenMichele 2y ago
    A. I think that's a vast oversimplification. B. I would like to address the housing crisis per se as a first line of defense rather than wait until people are homeless and then try to decide who merits help and what the cost-benefit ratio is and etc. For many people, if there was enough affordable housing, this whole argument about their merits and defects and etc wouldn't happen at all. There would, no doubt, be other arguments but my research indicates lack of affordable housing is the primary issue here.
    - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
      You would discover two very different problems between those where housing costs too much but were functional otherwise, and the other problem of completely non-functioning people where even cheap housing is too expensive since they can’t hold even a minimum wage job. The only debate right now is whether the first category mostly leads to the second category (and vice versa if the second mostly comes from the first). That is should we just treat the categories the same or not, then more affordable housing would help if most people in category two are coming from one. If the assumption is wrong, we will still see people on the streets even if housing is affordable. The other part of the debate is whether these problems are local or national, which has implications in how homeless programs are funded and where the affordable housing should be built. If all of the country’s homeless decides to move to SF, Seattle, LA for their affordable housing, the program will obviously fail.
      - DoreenMichele 2y ago
        Let me try this one more time and then I give up: You: "Let's throw a bunch a people off a cliff and then assess who is worth saving afterwards!" Me: "Let's stop throwing people off a cliff. If we stop doing that, we can stop arguing about who is too broken to save and whether or not it's a personal character defect that they ended up more broken than others who got thrown off the same cliff."
        seanmcdirmid 2y ago
        You didn’t even read my comment, so I give up. Ok, everyone just come to Seattle for their affordable housing, because DoreenMichele doesn’t want to think about the problem and would rather just throw half baked solutions at it.
        alephnullshabba 2y ago
        Oh you don't understand? It's simple--BC's lawmakers were presented with the option of either making housing affordable nationwide or criminalizing drug use in their city. Darn lawmakers always picking wrong!
- YZF 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure a lot of the people on the street doing drugs have other issues. I live in Vancouver. People have mental health and other problems that aren't related to their housing status. The problem isn't simply housing costs. The problem is the lack of a social support structure. Shelters, access to (mental) health care of various forms, addiction treatment etc... Even in "socialist" (ha) Canada you're mostly on your own. BC used to have more money for those things and at some point in the early 2000's those budgets were cut with pretty immediate impact on the homelessness situation. That said housing should be part of the solution but it all boils down to the attitude that you don't need to take care of ($$$) your neighbor. Each to their own. Worse in the US ofcourse but still. When I came to Vancouver ~23 years ago I was absolutely shocked by the homeless situation. I've never seen anything like that. It's much worse now. Again, boils down to are members of society willing to take care of each other- or is it each to their own and ignore the people who are down. House prices were 1/8th of what they are now but there was no shortage of drug addicts on the streets. North Americans seem to generally be ok with having a mix of worse than the 3rd world alongside middle class and well off. Nobody cares about what goes on in their city. I guess not trending on TikTok.
zztop44 2y ago
Often the mentally ill drug addict you see today was the person evicted after a job loss yesterday. Homelessness hurts people.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  I’m calling bullshit on this one. Too many examples on YouTube of folks interviewing homeless folks en mass and finding that the overwhelming majority of them were not “normal people down on their luck who end up on drugs”. Rather, mostly folks who had terrible home lives and were basically screwed up from the beginning. The “functional” heroin users you may claim exist are almost always functional enough to not be homeless. Houston for example simply throws your ass in jail if you’re doing drugs and houses you if you aren’t. They claim to have solved homelessness, and they have in that the actual folks you’re talking about end up housed or in shelters every night. Being married to an immigrant who actually had to struggle in a third world country with almost no social or economic mobility has left me with almost no sympathy for the homeless in America. Folks in far shittier situations than them play their hands far better.
  - aaplok 2y ago
    > Rather, mostly folks who had terrible home lives and were basically screwed up from the beginning. > Folks in far shittier situations than them play their hands far better. Aren't you contradicting yourself here? If these folks were screwed up from the beginning doesn't this mean they had no hand to play from the start? There are many, many folks in third world countries that don't make it through life too well either. Life is pretty doomed for you if you're just born in Sudan right now for example. Yet some, very few, of them will succeed in extirpating themselves from the situation. Statistically there will always be people who fare better than others, through a combination of sweat, blood, and luck. I don't know if it's fair to have "almost no sympathy" for the ones who were too stupid and unlucky to be winners.
    - vasco 2y ago
      TIL extirpating is a word! Still I think you meant extricate.
squigz 2y ago
> Sadly the only effective remedy for this behavior is to be roughed up by police and thrown in jail. As clearly evidenced by decades of this very successful strategy.

DoreenMichele 2y ago

No, homelessness is not a monolith. But lack of affordable housing is still the number one cause. We only claim someone's problems are entirely due to drug use when they hit skid row. We don't predict homelessness for millionaire rock stars who go to rehab repeatedly. Drug use doesn't cause homelessness. Lack of housing causes homelessness. The real solution is: We need to fix the housing crisis.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
Lack of affordable housing is the reason people might fall into despair and then drugs, but the people who get into drugs are basically a lost caused compared to the ones that don’t. The drug addicts…you can throw millions at just one case and make no progress in getting them back in their feet, the non-drug addict just needs housing. At that point, isn’t a moral judgement, just an effective use of limited resources (do we burn money trying to treat drug addicts who try to cook meth in the housing you give them, or do we spend $2k/month getting that non addict an apartment so they can get a job).
- DoreenMichele 2y ago
  A. I think that's a vast oversimplification. B. I would like to address the housing crisis per se as a first line of defense rather than wait until people are homeless and then try to decide who merits help and what the cost-benefit ratio is and etc. For many people, if there was enough affordable housing, this whole argument about their merits and defects and etc wouldn't happen at all. There would, no doubt, be other arguments but my research indicates lack of affordable housing is the primary issue here.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    You would discover two very different problems between those where housing costs too much but were functional otherwise, and the other problem of completely non-functioning people where even cheap housing is too expensive since they can’t hold even a minimum wage job. The only debate right now is whether the first category mostly leads to the second category (and vice versa if the second mostly comes from the first). That is should we just treat the categories the same or not, then more affordable housing would help if most people in category two are coming from one. If the assumption is wrong, we will still see people on the streets even if housing is affordable. The other part of the debate is whether these problems are local or national, which has implications in how homeless programs are funded and where the affordable housing should be built. If all of the country’s homeless decides to move to SF, Seattle, LA for their affordable housing, the program will obviously fail.
    - DoreenMichele 2y ago
      Let me try this one more time and then I give up: You: "Let's throw a bunch a people off a cliff and then assess who is worth saving afterwards!" Me: "Let's stop throwing people off a cliff. If we stop doing that, we can stop arguing about who is too broken to save and whether or not it's a personal character defect that they ended up more broken than others who got thrown off the same cliff."
      - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
        You didn’t even read my comment, so I give up. Ok, everyone just come to Seattle for their affordable housing, because DoreenMichele doesn’t want to think about the problem and would rather just throw half baked solutions at it.
        alephnullshabba 2y ago
        Oh you don't understand? It's simple--BC's lawmakers were presented with the option of either making housing affordable nationwide or criminalizing drug use in their city. Darn lawmakers always picking wrong!
YZF 2y ago
I'm pretty sure a lot of the people on the street doing drugs have other issues. I live in Vancouver. People have mental health and other problems that aren't related to their housing status. The problem isn't simply housing costs. The problem is the lack of a social support structure. Shelters, access to (mental) health care of various forms, addiction treatment etc... Even in "socialist" (ha) Canada you're mostly on your own. BC used to have more money for those things and at some point in the early 2000's those budgets were cut with pretty immediate impact on the homelessness situation. That said housing should be part of the solution but it all boils down to the attitude that you don't need to take care of ($$$) your neighbor. Each to their own. Worse in the US ofcourse but still. When I came to Vancouver ~23 years ago I was absolutely shocked by the homeless situation. I've never seen anything like that. It's much worse now. Again, boils down to are members of society willing to take care of each other- or is it each to their own and ignore the people who are down. House prices were 1/8th of what they are now but there was no shortage of drug addicts on the streets. North Americans seem to generally be ok with having a mix of worse than the 3rd world alongside middle class and well off. Nobody cares about what goes on in their city. I guess not trending on TikTok.

zztop44 2y ago

Often the mentally ill drug addict you see today was the person evicted after a job loss yesterday. Homelessness hurts people.

Der_Einzige 2y ago
I’m calling bullshit on this one. Too many examples on YouTube of folks interviewing homeless folks en mass and finding that the overwhelming majority of them were not “normal people down on their luck who end up on drugs”. Rather, mostly folks who had terrible home lives and were basically screwed up from the beginning. The “functional” heroin users you may claim exist are almost always functional enough to not be homeless. Houston for example simply throws your ass in jail if you’re doing drugs and houses you if you aren’t. They claim to have solved homelessness, and they have in that the actual folks you’re talking about end up housed or in shelters every night. Being married to an immigrant who actually had to struggle in a third world country with almost no social or economic mobility has left me with almost no sympathy for the homeless in America. Folks in far shittier situations than them play their hands far better.
- aaplok 2y ago
  > Rather, mostly folks who had terrible home lives and were basically screwed up from the beginning. > Folks in far shittier situations than them play their hands far better. Aren't you contradicting yourself here? If these folks were screwed up from the beginning doesn't this mean they had no hand to play from the start? There are many, many folks in third world countries that don't make it through life too well either. Life is pretty doomed for you if you're just born in Sudan right now for example. Yet some, very few, of them will succeed in extirpating themselves from the situation. Statistically there will always be people who fare better than others, through a combination of sweat, blood, and luck. I don't know if it's fair to have "almost no sympathy" for the ones who were too stupid and unlucky to be winners.
  - vasco 2y ago
    TIL extirpating is a word! Still I think you meant extricate.

squigz 2y ago

> Sadly the only effective remedy for this behavior is to be roughed up by police and thrown in jail. As clearly evidenced by decades of this very successful strategy.