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> I guess if you don’t have a massive population of antisocial people who destroy the public facility, you can provide them. It’s a shame we in the west surrend

> I guess if you don’t have a massive population of antisocial people who destroy the public facility, you can provide them. It’s a shame we in the west surrendered that. What a weird way of stating the problem. There is too large a population of homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicts wandering the streets. We didn't surrender anything, at least not during the last half century in the United States. We did as little as possible to deal with homelessness and mental illness and discovered there's good money to be made incarcerating drug addicts.

ElProlactin 23d ago
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deleted 23d ago
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b0rtb0rt 23d ago
in japan the homeless people clean up after themselves and don’t destroy everything what’s the difference here?
- gfosco 23d ago
  They are Japanese.
- deleted 23d ago
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- justin66 23d ago
  My first thought is, I'm not certain their homeless are different in their behavior, but based on what little I know, I'm rather certain their non-homeless are. I'd expect disruption or damage to a public space of the kind that sparked this discussion to be dealt with swiftly as a high priority.
  - TonyStr 22d ago
    I don't know much about this, but when I visited Japan, I walked aimlessly in the outskirts of Tokyo (Sumida city) until I ended up in a homeless area. They had used old palettes and tarps to build square houses with functioning doors, and it was surprisingly clean. Their shoes were neatly lined up against the walls, they used trash bags and the ground was clean. It was quite a culture shock, because it was cleaner than non-homeless streets at home.
    - mrguyorama 22d ago
      You can't build that kind of shanty town in the US because the cops will come and steal all your shit. Otherwise it's exactly what homeless people in the US want to be able to do. Often times, these "sweeps" just trash everything. Imagine if you were trying to put your life back together. You got an Obamaphone so you can call state assistance programs and email job prospects. You have some basic clothes, maybe some food, maybe some few possessions you have saved from your past life. Then the cops come and take all of it and throw it away. Gee, I wonder why it's so hard for people to escape homelessness in the US? Imagine trying to live any life in a world that rejected your right to property?
- annzabelle 23d ago
  Japan will lock people up for a long period of time if they show the sort of anti-social behavior that the most visible homeless people in North America are famous for.
  - Brian_K_White 23d ago
    The trains run on time sure enough.
  - cortesoft 23d ago
    The US “locks people up” at a much higher rate, and for longer, than Japan does. About 1% of the adult population is in jail in the United States, and it’s about 0.03% of the population in Japan. The US puts people in jail at 30x the rate Japan does. It is not because the US doesn’t lock people up enough.
    - annzabelle 23d ago
      Japan has one of the highest numbers of psychiatric beds in the world. That's what I'm referring to. If you're experiencing psychosis in public in Japan, you will be removed from public spaces. This is not true in the US.
      - mikelitoris 23d ago
        Thank “One flew over cuckoos nest” for that.
    - anon48293 23d ago
      Yes it is. It’s because they let them out again.
      - cortesoft 22d ago
        That is 1% of adults being CURRENTLY locked up, not people who have ever been locked up in their life. That means the stat already factors in how long they are in for.
- ajmurmann 23d ago
  How many of their homeless are addicted to drugs or nectary ill? It seems in the US almost all visible homeless fall into at least one of those groups. Fentanyl and meth seems to be largely a North America issue. I previously was curious how other countries dealt with it. The only country I found that had previously had a meth issue was Estonia or Latvia (not sure anymore). It apparently was really bad for years. They fixed it by finding the single meth lab. Not a solution that's viable for us. No idea what Japan does with its homeless but my money is that it's something like forced admission which isn't gonna fly in the US.
  - dspillett 23d ago
    > Fentanyl and meth seems to be largely a North America issue. I previously was curious how other countries dealt with it. It isn't a particular drug: if it isn't Fentanyl or meth it will be something else, whatever is available. In the UK it is a mixed bag, but for many the problem substance is alcohol which isn't controllable the way other drugs are because of it being legal and so commonly used in a non (or at least less) problematic manner. The problem hits from two directions: many homeless people start the path to addiction by needing an escape and that escape method spirals and takes control, and a lot (not the majority by any means, but a sizable segment) end up destitute because of spiralling substance problems to start with. Of course many homeless do not have a substance problem, or at least not one that would be insurmountable on its own. Financial issues (that wouldn't go away if you strip the cost of the illicit substances out, accommodation is not cheap and suitable jobs are not readily available, etc) and mental illness (separating this from drug issues is complex: "self medication" is of course a major complicating matter) are probably far more common. > curious how other countries dealt with it Not well, for the most part. From an outsiders PoV (sat in my small but comfortable flat with the paid mortgage and no drug issues, though the mental health thing needs work) it doesn't seem to be a bad as it has been in the past (maybe in part due to efforts to make it less visible rather than fixing the issues?) but is growing again and I suspect will do so more rapidly if AI does what it promises to the job market.
    - ajmurmann 22d ago
      I was under the impression that the more recent type of meth leads to symptoms indistinguishabl from schizophrenia that last many month of abstinence. Source: https://www.econtalk.org/sam-quinones-on-meth-fentanyl-and-the-least-of-us/ https://www.econtalk.org/sam-quinones-on-meth-fentanyl-and-t...
- TurkishPoptart 23d ago
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    We've banned this account. We've asked you multiple times to observe the guidelines, and a comment like this, shitposting or whatever else you're trying to do here, is obviously a step too far. If you don't want to be banned, you can email us (hn@ycombinator.com) to discuss ways of demonstrating your intention to participate earnestly in future.
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- singsingsing323 23d ago
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- talon8635 20d ago
  That’s my exact point. Our culture in the west breeds isolation and antisocial chaos in a not insignificant percent of the population. Part of it os undoubtedly the vast differences between Japanese and American culture
mvdtnz 23d ago
We in the west have surrendered with weak punishments and lax enforcement for anti social behaviour. In many cases even abolishing laws or putting in place public policy that prevents the imprisonment of people who commit "low level" crimes. There's a certain segment of the population who will (largely unsuccessfully) try to shame you if you promote a tough on crime approach. In my country the entire justice system has been hijacked by activist judges who are hell bent on promoting these whacky ideas and letting serious criminals go virtually unpunished.
- UncleOxidant 23d ago
  I'm just not sure that stronger punishment and enforcement is going to be the answer here. It seems like many of the Asian cultures have a much higher level of social cohesion even without the threat of punishment. How do we get (back) to higher social cohesion in the West? I recall seeing a film of a shanty town somewhere in the US during the Great Depression. It was very neat and tidy. What happened between then and now?
  - ipaddr 23d ago
    America has a low social cohension because of global immigration instead of targeted immigration compare to China. America use to share a culture because people came from the same places and shared the same religion and had a common history going back to the Romans.
    - dripdry45 23d ago
      ....sadly more true than anyone here would probably like to admit. I love having Indian coworkers and there’s a large Indian population where I am at, but they are just completely separated in every single way from everyone else. and they keep it that way. my Pakistani coworkers are absolutely wonderful. Sweet, hard-working, very enjoyable to talk to, but their families and lives are just a totally different universe and they don’t share it. The honestly very poor black community around the area? they fucking hate us white people. like actively, all the time, no what no matter what you have or haven’t done they don’t like your ass one bit. i’ve seen inside some of the homes, and they are filled with independent black power movie posters about shooting Whitey. No kidding. I know it takes a village, but when people are so very different and forced to be near each other, it doesn’t mean that they will socialize or help each other; it’s like living on two different planets. there’s all kinds of social research showing this now, and what you get is micro segregation along income lines, rather than everyone helping each other and lifting up the community together. I wanted for most of my life for people to get along and the world to be a better place, thinking that education and modern access to information could somehow make things better. It seems that was entirely and completely wrong. when people have any kind of discomfort at all about new culture or new person or new idea? They pretty much just run away. The people here on hacker news are probably an exception, because we are here searching for commentary and interesting ideas and new information.
socalgal2 23d ago
> We did as little as possible to deal with homelessness and mental illness SF would beg to differ. They have a budget of $100k per homeless person. They can't solve the problem because the problem is not money
- geysersam 23d ago
  The problem is money, but for preventing homelessness and mental illness in the first place.
- sroussey 23d ago
  And still once I was ina small restaurant that let a homeless guy use the toilet and they forced the door open after hearing crashing sounds, and he had painted the walls with his poop and jumped up and down on the sink until it broke off. Days later I saw a sign in their window saying the bathroom was for customers only.
- ericd 23d ago
  Something to keep in mind is that that figure includes homeless people who have been homed and are being supported, it's not just the ones currently on the streets.
- justin66 23d ago
  Spending money is necessary but not sufficient to fix this sort (or literally any sort?) of big problem. I hope you don't think San Francisco having spent a lot of money on the problem (the $100k per person figure in isolation is deceptive, but let's not dwell on that) means we've expended more than a really minimal amount of effort as a nation on the problem. Consider how little the problem of homelessness was discussed during the last presidential cycle, or how often it's discussed in congress, and I think you'll see what I mean. (consider the words used when debating it and you'll really understand what I mean)
- vkou 23d ago
  I assure you, if they stopped spending that money tomorrow, things would get dramatically worse, as all the people that money keeps off the streets would be on them.
remarkEon 23d ago
Anti-social people as a group is a larger population than just the homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicts, though these subsets are obviously a significant portion. The superset includes people who are genuinely anti-social in their nature, may be nominally employed, have a mailing address, and a place to sleep at night. These are the people we actually surrendered to when we changed enforcement priorities in major US cities to, ostensibly, have some grace and compassion toward the subset of homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicts. This is a demonstrably true statement. For me, and many like me, I know it's true because I can do something like "walk around in a neighborhood from my youth" or "visit a downtown corridor I used to frequent as a young adult" and simply observe the difference between the then and now. It's not always about the homeless, and the oft tiring debate around what to do about them. In many US cities, larceny is de facto legal as long as you are stealing goods valued under a certain amount. This is what people are talking about when they use the word "surrender".
CalRobert 23d ago
I dunno, this could be it but living in rural Ireland showed how many obnoxious teenagers will completely destroy a playground just for kicks. I'm sure a public toilet would fall prey to the same impulse.
fallingbananna 23d ago
It's not just homeless, mentally ill or drug addicts. In Europe it's frequently teenagers (even those whom parents provide good lives), football fans, drunk people, etc. Some people are antisocial and destroy public stuff just for laughs, not because they feel resentment towards society.
- 59percentmore 22d ago
  And sometimes it's not even active destruction, just neglect. Public use amenities are subject to large amounts of wear-and-tear. Sometimes a thing just breaks, from someone being careless or not knowing how to operate it. You have to have the wherewithal for follow-through with upkeep.
  - Libcat99 22d ago
    One day a bridge collapsed, and no one came to fix it. This is how an empire dies. One toilet/park/swing at a time.
    - grehbies 22d ago
      About a half a dozen who were nearby when the bridge collapsed, and, of those, only two actually missed seeing it happen. *Everyone* heard it, though: a great roaring waterfall of concrete and steel that echoed across the derelict plains for minutes and miles. The local folk would have told you that it was the river flooding a month earlier what had done it; that, and the heat of that summer havign roasted the old tarmac to pieces. But that wouldn't have been the truth; not entirely. Their hindsight failed to reach past a few preceding seasons, the road's slow degradation after years of use and somewhat fewer years of maintenance as far beyond the horizon as the sea. The columns that supported the span, plunging deep into the river below it, had had great, sweeping cracks for as long as the youth who periodically swam out to tag them could remember. The chain link fence that ran along the bridge's sides had rusted through to a twisted ragged heap even before then. The river the bridge had spanned was the _____, and the bridge itself - part of an interstate, from back when there had been states - had linked the northern and southern portions of Jefferson County (which still existed). Thankfully, no one was on it when it finally gave up the ghost. (For a few days, the Hughes of just south of the old rails were worried for their son, Kurt, who had failed to return home that evening; but he eventually turned up a week later, having spent the time with his girlfriend.) The loss of the ancient connector meant 50 miles extra travel for anyone who wanted to get from Dodge to Shelley, already a 70-mile trek. With gas so hard to come by, that was no small thing. Rebuilding it would have been ideal, but the fact was that there was no one around who could possibly manage such a project; most of that expertise was locked up in Atlanta, New York-Jersey, Charlotte, and St. Louis, and not one of the territories so mentioned was on good terms with small, flyover, Sep-sympathizing Jefferson County. Besides that, there were scant funds for construction equipment and materials anyway; the curse of Jefferson's self-sufficiency knocking unwelcome on the doors of Jeffersonian hearts more often than any stranger. The bridge would not be rebuilt. So, after the commotion of the actual collapse had died down, and the locals had ceased stopping by to gaze at the ruins and shake their heads and scowl, the structure, half-submerged stone monolith, lay placid and abandoned. None of this is really important, except for the part about the 50-mile detour. That... that is actually very important. --- The Biker learned of the bridge's collapse well before reaching Jefferson County. For all that had broken down from neglect or sabotage or accident in this land over the years, it seemed that the grapevine was as resilient as ever. The proprietor of a public house - the one he'd stopped in at when it came time to transfer some of his precious fuel from an emergency tank to the hot rod proper - was the bearer of the bad news. He'd thanked her, pulled out the Handspring loaded with a bootleg map app, and started searching for a new route. This one wouldn't do, it was likely to be more of a still-glowing crater than a road; and that one, that one ran right through hardcore Sep territory. And this one... No, he'd definitely run out of fuel. ...Maybe the second, again? If he could be quick, go at the right time of day... Too risky, his common sense told him. Nonsense, said the impulsive part that had gotten him out of (and, admittedly, into) many a hairy situation. T could outrun any trouble he might find. And he wouldn't find any, because he would be very, very careful. 'You don't got a choice, bub. Gas isn't cheap OR plentiful.' "Shit." He hit the Handspring's power button and gingerly slid it back into his leather side saddle, and delayed his oncoming foolishness by taking the moment to glance around like he was looking for someone who was looking for him. Other than the pub, a converted vinyl-sided colonial, there was nothing but the coiled curves of cracked suburban roads and sidewalks; the mounded plots that lay along them, where the foundations of dozens of long-dismantled domiciles had once stood; and each building's replacements, bunches of grass and scrub, waving occasionally in the odd and rare breeze, which were staking out their own homesteads.
gambiting 22d ago
Over here where I live(UK) it's neither the homeless nor mentally ill people, it's groups of teenagers who have literally nothing else to do and they will destroy every single piece of public infrastructure that isn't solid metal and welded down. Even keep them out of children play parks is a challenge the local police can't manage effectively, I love finding that every single swing and seesaw has been ruined because of bored teenagers.
devilbunny 22d ago
Whatever other issues they may have, they are overwhelmingly mentally ill, largely schizophrenic, and the surrender in the US happened just outside your fifty-year window when the Supreme Court decided that it should be much harder to institutionalize someone against their will. The timing was similar in the UK, from what I have read. Don’t know about the EU. The problem with severe schizophrenics is that they don’t like and won’t take their meds if left to their own devices [EDIT: regardless of how much social support you provide, even though we certainly didn’t provide enough]. Institutions are in no way perfect, but One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is not a documentary.
- WorldMaker 22d ago
  The causation arrow isn't unidirectional, though. Mental illness causes some homelessness, particularly often because in the US healthcare system medications are expensive and can lead to bankruptcy. (And it is certainly not the only path to bankruptcy in the US either.) But more and more studies are showing that the biggest problem with homelessness in the US is that it causes mental illness. (Same thing is being found with drug addictions: some cause bankruptcy and then homelessness, but to cope with homelessness many find new addictions after becoming homeless.) Most homeless shelters are run by religious charities. The majority of them treat homelessness as a sin, either by intentional policy or accidents of attitude. These "charities" often require a lot of work to keep being allowed to use their housing at their shelter from regular job hunting to regularly attending worship sessions to "zero tolerance" policies on everything from curse words to keeping private possessions to having pets to sometimes taking/keeping necessary medication. It's hard to keep your mental health in good shape when the groups that are housing you in the worst weather are berating you for being terrible sinners and treating you like prisoners. Outside of shelters the most common interactions between homeless people and the cities around them are interactions with cops, who very rarely have mental health training or social work experience, and treat homeless people like criminals because their job is sometimes to treat everybody as would be criminals. You ever really talk to a homeless person? The ones that really survive become very organized. They have a list of shelters memorized, which months they prefer to be at each one, what things they need to fake about themselves they need to do to survive in that shelter for a few weeks, how much "rent" they need to raise before they get there (some shelters often cost pennies per day just to show that the homeless person is "working" somehow; some homeless panhandle just to afford shelters), and exactly how long they can stay before they inevitably get kicked out (most shelters are "short term", intentionally). Just listening to all the rules and regulations and requirements makes me think I would go schizophrenic dealing with that world. It sounds like being stuck in a middle school that never ends, if that middle school's "classrooms" were all in entirely different parts of a city and all had deeply different rules. I can easily see why homelessness often causes mental illness in the US. Institutions are close to the right answer, but for an entirely different reason than you assert. We do need better secular institutions (in the endowed place of learning sense, not the mental hospital sense) with mental health as one goal among several such as long-term support in charge of dealing with the homeless. The numbers keep showing that the greatest fix we've found for homelessness is making sure that everyone has a home where they feel safe and private and don't have to do anything to "earn" much less keep that home.

ElProlactin 23d ago

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b0rtb0rt 23d ago

in japan the homeless people clean up after themselves and don’t destroy everything what’s the difference here?

gfosco 23d ago
They are Japanese.
deleted 23d ago
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justin66 23d ago
My first thought is, I'm not certain their homeless are different in their behavior, but based on what little I know, I'm rather certain their non-homeless are. I'd expect disruption or damage to a public space of the kind that sparked this discussion to be dealt with swiftly as a high priority.
- TonyStr 22d ago
  I don't know much about this, but when I visited Japan, I walked aimlessly in the outskirts of Tokyo (Sumida city) until I ended up in a homeless area. They had used old palettes and tarps to build square houses with functioning doors, and it was surprisingly clean. Their shoes were neatly lined up against the walls, they used trash bags and the ground was clean. It was quite a culture shock, because it was cleaner than non-homeless streets at home.
  - mrguyorama 22d ago
    You can't build that kind of shanty town in the US because the cops will come and steal all your shit. Otherwise it's exactly what homeless people in the US want to be able to do. Often times, these "sweeps" just trash everything. Imagine if you were trying to put your life back together. You got an Obamaphone so you can call state assistance programs and email job prospects. You have some basic clothes, maybe some food, maybe some few possessions you have saved from your past life. Then the cops come and take all of it and throw it away. Gee, I wonder why it's so hard for people to escape homelessness in the US? Imagine trying to live any life in a world that rejected your right to property?
annzabelle 23d ago
Japan will lock people up for a long period of time if they show the sort of anti-social behavior that the most visible homeless people in North America are famous for.
- Brian_K_White 23d ago
  The trains run on time sure enough.
- cortesoft 23d ago
  The US “locks people up” at a much higher rate, and for longer, than Japan does. About 1% of the adult population is in jail in the United States, and it’s about 0.03% of the population in Japan. The US puts people in jail at 30x the rate Japan does. It is not because the US doesn’t lock people up enough.
  - annzabelle 23d ago
    Japan has one of the highest numbers of psychiatric beds in the world. That's what I'm referring to. If you're experiencing psychosis in public in Japan, you will be removed from public spaces. This is not true in the US.
    - mikelitoris 23d ago
      Thank “One flew over cuckoos nest” for that.
  - anon48293 23d ago
    Yes it is. It’s because they let them out again.
    - cortesoft 22d ago
      That is 1% of adults being CURRENTLY locked up, not people who have ever been locked up in their life. That means the stat already factors in how long they are in for.
ajmurmann 23d ago
How many of their homeless are addicted to drugs or nectary ill? It seems in the US almost all visible homeless fall into at least one of those groups. Fentanyl and meth seems to be largely a North America issue. I previously was curious how other countries dealt with it. The only country I found that had previously had a meth issue was Estonia or Latvia (not sure anymore). It apparently was really bad for years. They fixed it by finding the single meth lab. Not a solution that's viable for us. No idea what Japan does with its homeless but my money is that it's something like forced admission which isn't gonna fly in the US.
- dspillett 23d ago
  > Fentanyl and meth seems to be largely a North America issue. I previously was curious how other countries dealt with it. It isn't a particular drug: if it isn't Fentanyl or meth it will be something else, whatever is available. In the UK it is a mixed bag, but for many the problem substance is alcohol which isn't controllable the way other drugs are because of it being legal and so commonly used in a non (or at least less) problematic manner. The problem hits from two directions: many homeless people start the path to addiction by needing an escape and that escape method spirals and takes control, and a lot (not the majority by any means, but a sizable segment) end up destitute because of spiralling substance problems to start with. Of course many homeless do not have a substance problem, or at least not one that would be insurmountable on its own. Financial issues (that wouldn't go away if you strip the cost of the illicit substances out, accommodation is not cheap and suitable jobs are not readily available, etc) and mental illness (separating this from drug issues is complex: "self medication" is of course a major complicating matter) are probably far more common. > curious how other countries dealt with it Not well, for the most part. From an outsiders PoV (sat in my small but comfortable flat with the paid mortgage and no drug issues, though the mental health thing needs work) it doesn't seem to be a bad as it has been in the past (maybe in part due to efforts to make it less visible rather than fixing the issues?) but is growing again and I suspect will do so more rapidly if AI does what it promises to the job market.
  - ajmurmann 22d ago
    I was under the impression that the more recent type of meth leads to symptoms indistinguishabl from schizophrenia that last many month of abstinence. Source: https://www.econtalk.org/sam-quinones-on-meth-fentanyl-and-the-least-of-us/ https://www.econtalk.org/sam-quinones-on-meth-fentanyl-and-t...
TurkishPoptart 23d ago
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- 48484848n 23d ago
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- tomhow 23d ago
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  - willbebanned 23d ago
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singsingsing323 23d ago
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talon8635 20d ago
That’s my exact point. Our culture in the west breeds isolation and antisocial chaos in a not insignificant percent of the population. Part of it os undoubtedly the vast differences between Japanese and American culture

mvdtnz 23d ago

We in the west have surrendered with weak punishments and lax enforcement for anti social behaviour. In many cases even abolishing laws or putting in place public policy that prevents the imprisonment of people who commit "low level" crimes. There's a certain segment of the population who will (largely unsuccessfully) try to shame you if you promote a tough on crime approach. In my country the entire justice system has been hijacked by activist judges who are hell bent on promoting these whacky ideas and letting serious criminals go virtually unpunished.

UncleOxidant 23d ago
I'm just not sure that stronger punishment and enforcement is going to be the answer here. It seems like many of the Asian cultures have a much higher level of social cohesion even without the threat of punishment. How do we get (back) to higher social cohesion in the West? I recall seeing a film of a shanty town somewhere in the US during the Great Depression. It was very neat and tidy. What happened between then and now?
- ipaddr 23d ago
  America has a low social cohension because of global immigration instead of targeted immigration compare to China. America use to share a culture because people came from the same places and shared the same religion and had a common history going back to the Romans.
  - dripdry45 23d ago
    ....sadly more true than anyone here would probably like to admit. I love having Indian coworkers and there’s a large Indian population where I am at, but they are just completely separated in every single way from everyone else. and they keep it that way. my Pakistani coworkers are absolutely wonderful. Sweet, hard-working, very enjoyable to talk to, but their families and lives are just a totally different universe and they don’t share it. The honestly very poor black community around the area? they fucking hate us white people. like actively, all the time, no what no matter what you have or haven’t done they don’t like your ass one bit. i’ve seen inside some of the homes, and they are filled with independent black power movie posters about shooting Whitey. No kidding. I know it takes a village, but when people are so very different and forced to be near each other, it doesn’t mean that they will socialize or help each other; it’s like living on two different planets. there’s all kinds of social research showing this now, and what you get is micro segregation along income lines, rather than everyone helping each other and lifting up the community together. I wanted for most of my life for people to get along and the world to be a better place, thinking that education and modern access to information could somehow make things better. It seems that was entirely and completely wrong. when people have any kind of discomfort at all about new culture or new person or new idea? They pretty much just run away. The people here on hacker news are probably an exception, because we are here searching for commentary and interesting ideas and new information.

socalgal2 23d ago

> We did as little as possible to deal with homelessness and mental illness SF would beg to differ. They have a budget of $100k per homeless person. They can't solve the problem because the problem is not money

geysersam 23d ago
The problem is money, but for preventing homelessness and mental illness in the first place.
sroussey 23d ago
And still once I was ina small restaurant that let a homeless guy use the toilet and they forced the door open after hearing crashing sounds, and he had painted the walls with his poop and jumped up and down on the sink until it broke off. Days later I saw a sign in their window saying the bathroom was for customers only.
ericd 23d ago
Something to keep in mind is that that figure includes homeless people who have been homed and are being supported, it's not just the ones currently on the streets.
justin66 23d ago
Spending money is necessary but not sufficient to fix this sort (or literally any sort?) of big problem. I hope you don't think San Francisco having spent a lot of money on the problem (the $100k per person figure in isolation is deceptive, but let's not dwell on that) means we've expended more than a really minimal amount of effort as a nation on the problem. Consider how little the problem of homelessness was discussed during the last presidential cycle, or how often it's discussed in congress, and I think you'll see what I mean. (consider the words used when debating it and you'll really understand what I mean)
vkou 23d ago
I assure you, if they stopped spending that money tomorrow, things would get dramatically worse, as all the people that money keeps off the streets would be on them.

remarkEon 23d ago

Anti-social people as a group is a larger population than just the homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicts, though these subsets are obviously a significant portion. The superset includes people who are genuinely anti-social in their nature, may be nominally employed, have a mailing address, and a place to sleep at night. These are the people we actually surrendered to when we changed enforcement priorities in major US cities to, ostensibly, have some grace and compassion toward the subset of homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicts. This is a demonstrably true statement. For me, and many like me, I know it's true because I can do something like "walk around in a neighborhood from my youth" or "visit a downtown corridor I used to frequent as a young adult" and simply observe the difference between the then and now. It's not always about the homeless, and the oft tiring debate around what to do about them. In many US cities, larceny is de facto legal as long as you are stealing goods valued under a certain amount. This is what people are talking about when they use the word "surrender".

CalRobert 23d ago

I dunno, this could be it but living in rural Ireland showed how many obnoxious teenagers will completely destroy a playground just for kicks. I'm sure a public toilet would fall prey to the same impulse.

fallingbananna 23d ago

It's not just homeless, mentally ill or drug addicts. In Europe it's frequently teenagers (even those whom parents provide good lives), football fans, drunk people, etc. Some people are antisocial and destroy public stuff just for laughs, not because they feel resentment towards society.

59percentmore 22d ago
And sometimes it's not even active destruction, just neglect. Public use amenities are subject to large amounts of wear-and-tear. Sometimes a thing just breaks, from someone being careless or not knowing how to operate it. You have to have the wherewithal for follow-through with upkeep.
- Libcat99 22d ago
  One day a bridge collapsed, and no one came to fix it. This is how an empire dies. One toilet/park/swing at a time.
  - grehbies 22d ago
    About a half a dozen who were nearby when the bridge collapsed, and, of those, only two actually missed seeing it happen. *Everyone* heard it, though: a great roaring waterfall of concrete and steel that echoed across the derelict plains for minutes and miles. The local folk would have told you that it was the river flooding a month earlier what had done it; that, and the heat of that summer havign roasted the old tarmac to pieces. But that wouldn't have been the truth; not entirely. Their hindsight failed to reach past a few preceding seasons, the road's slow degradation after years of use and somewhat fewer years of maintenance as far beyond the horizon as the sea. The columns that supported the span, plunging deep into the river below it, had had great, sweeping cracks for as long as the youth who periodically swam out to tag them could remember. The chain link fence that ran along the bridge's sides had rusted through to a twisted ragged heap even before then. The river the bridge had spanned was the _____, and the bridge itself - part of an interstate, from back when there had been states - had linked the northern and southern portions of Jefferson County (which still existed). Thankfully, no one was on it when it finally gave up the ghost. (For a few days, the Hughes of just south of the old rails were worried for their son, Kurt, who had failed to return home that evening; but he eventually turned up a week later, having spent the time with his girlfriend.) The loss of the ancient connector meant 50 miles extra travel for anyone who wanted to get from Dodge to Shelley, already a 70-mile trek. With gas so hard to come by, that was no small thing. Rebuilding it would have been ideal, but the fact was that there was no one around who could possibly manage such a project; most of that expertise was locked up in Atlanta, New York-Jersey, Charlotte, and St. Louis, and not one of the territories so mentioned was on good terms with small, flyover, Sep-sympathizing Jefferson County. Besides that, there were scant funds for construction equipment and materials anyway; the curse of Jefferson's self-sufficiency knocking unwelcome on the doors of Jeffersonian hearts more often than any stranger. The bridge would not be rebuilt. So, after the commotion of the actual collapse had died down, and the locals had ceased stopping by to gaze at the ruins and shake their heads and scowl, the structure, half-submerged stone monolith, lay placid and abandoned. None of this is really important, except for the part about the 50-mile detour. That... that is actually very important. --- The Biker learned of the bridge's collapse well before reaching Jefferson County. For all that had broken down from neglect or sabotage or accident in this land over the years, it seemed that the grapevine was as resilient as ever. The proprietor of a public house - the one he'd stopped in at when it came time to transfer some of his precious fuel from an emergency tank to the hot rod proper - was the bearer of the bad news. He'd thanked her, pulled out the Handspring loaded with a bootleg map app, and started searching for a new route. This one wouldn't do, it was likely to be more of a still-glowing crater than a road; and that one, that one ran right through hardcore Sep territory. And this one... No, he'd definitely run out of fuel. ...Maybe the second, again? If he could be quick, go at the right time of day... Too risky, his common sense told him. Nonsense, said the impulsive part that had gotten him out of (and, admittedly, into) many a hairy situation. T could outrun any trouble he might find. And he wouldn't find any, because he would be very, very careful. 'You don't got a choice, bub. Gas isn't cheap OR plentiful.' "Shit." He hit the Handspring's power button and gingerly slid it back into his leather side saddle, and delayed his oncoming foolishness by taking the moment to glance around like he was looking for someone who was looking for him. Other than the pub, a converted vinyl-sided colonial, there was nothing but the coiled curves of cracked suburban roads and sidewalks; the mounded plots that lay along them, where the foundations of dozens of long-dismantled domiciles had once stood; and each building's replacements, bunches of grass and scrub, waving occasionally in the odd and rare breeze, which were staking out their own homesteads.

gambiting 22d ago

Over here where I live(UK) it's neither the homeless nor mentally ill people, it's groups of teenagers who have literally nothing else to do and they will destroy every single piece of public infrastructure that isn't solid metal and welded down. Even keep them out of children play parks is a challenge the local police can't manage effectively, I love finding that every single swing and seesaw has been ruined because of bored teenagers.

devilbunny 22d ago

Whatever other issues they may have, they are overwhelmingly mentally ill, largely schizophrenic, and the surrender in the US happened just outside your fifty-year window when the Supreme Court decided that it should be much harder to institutionalize someone against their will. The timing was similar in the UK, from what I have read. Don’t know about the EU. The problem with severe schizophrenics is that they don’t like and won’t take their meds if left to their own devices [EDIT: regardless of how much social support you provide, even though we certainly didn’t provide enough]. Institutions are in no way perfect, but One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is not a documentary.

WorldMaker 22d ago
The causation arrow isn't unidirectional, though. Mental illness causes some homelessness, particularly often because in the US healthcare system medications are expensive and can lead to bankruptcy. (And it is certainly not the only path to bankruptcy in the US either.) But more and more studies are showing that the biggest problem with homelessness in the US is that it causes mental illness. (Same thing is being found with drug addictions: some cause bankruptcy and then homelessness, but to cope with homelessness many find new addictions after becoming homeless.) Most homeless shelters are run by religious charities. The majority of them treat homelessness as a sin, either by intentional policy or accidents of attitude. These "charities" often require a lot of work to keep being allowed to use their housing at their shelter from regular job hunting to regularly attending worship sessions to "zero tolerance" policies on everything from curse words to keeping private possessions to having pets to sometimes taking/keeping necessary medication. It's hard to keep your mental health in good shape when the groups that are housing you in the worst weather are berating you for being terrible sinners and treating you like prisoners. Outside of shelters the most common interactions between homeless people and the cities around them are interactions with cops, who very rarely have mental health training or social work experience, and treat homeless people like criminals because their job is sometimes to treat everybody as would be criminals. You ever really talk to a homeless person? The ones that really survive become very organized. They have a list of shelters memorized, which months they prefer to be at each one, what things they need to fake about themselves they need to do to survive in that shelter for a few weeks, how much "rent" they need to raise before they get there (some shelters often cost pennies per day just to show that the homeless person is "working" somehow; some homeless panhandle just to afford shelters), and exactly how long they can stay before they inevitably get kicked out (most shelters are "short term", intentionally). Just listening to all the rules and regulations and requirements makes me think I would go schizophrenic dealing with that world. It sounds like being stuck in a middle school that never ends, if that middle school's "classrooms" were all in entirely different parts of a city and all had deeply different rules. I can easily see why homelessness often causes mental illness in the US. Institutions are close to the right answer, but for an entirely different reason than you assert. We do need better secular institutions (in the endowed place of learning sense, not the mental hospital sense) with mental health as one goal among several such as long-term support in charge of dealing with the homeless. The numbers keep showing that the greatest fix we've found for homelessness is making sure that everyone has a home where they feel safe and private and don't have to do anything to "earn" much less keep that home.