Comments on: How should cities cope with the homeless?

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 05:55:33 +0000

The thing about large organizations, governments included, is their desire to impose one size fits all solutions. Humans, however, aren’t built like that. Humans tend to want a variety of things, and when it comes to one group getting their way over everybody else, what eventually happens is strife, conflict, and war. What government is ostensibly supposed to prevent, is also what it essentially causes.

Humans live by order of their creative freedom, even if some believe in the freedom to adopt slavery for themselves.

By: Earl

Earl — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 19:22:57 +0000

I don’t know what the numbers are, although I suspect they’re bigger than any of us more conventional types suspect, but there are plenty of people who are “working the system” because it’s easier than working a job.

My wife was a nurse on the mental health ward of a hospital 30 years ago, and they had “regulars” who would come in, just like clockwork, when the rains started. They knew how to act just “crazy” enough so they could stay three or four weeks, and then they’d leave for another hospital and stay there a while. During the warm season, they’d live on the street, sucking on the government teat, and panhandling for drug and alcohol money. Many were on methadone – also at taxpayer expense – and they figured this was a better gig than reporting to work every day.

One guy, perhaps late 20s at the time, even bragged about all the different programs he signed up for and how much money he got from them. She asked him if he wasn’t just a little bit ashamed at some level, and his reply was “No, why should I be?” That attitude wasn’t terribly common among my generation, but it’s far more prevalent now.

I’ll mention again my two neighbors, both of whom are on disability, and both of whom seem fairly able-bodied to me….they live in a top-25% of this market house, just like I do, and they own property back east and drive a very nice four-seat pickup. It’s just that neither of them work….and last week the wife complained to me that she wants her own car.

This is what 40 years of socialism in public schools has produced, and it’s going to get worse.

By: Danny Lemieux

Danny Lemieux — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 17:27:14 +0000

Good question, Doug1943. Some countries just pretend that it doesn’t exist. Take France, the socialist paradise that Obama wants to emulate.

There are homeless people all over the place in Paris and other cities, even though they are supposed to have all the social programs to keep that from happening. These “clochards” have always been and always will be part of the Paris landscape. It’s a lifestyle.

By: Caped Crusader

Caped Crusader — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 17:24:06 +0000

Why would the Democrats not be in favor of very late term abortions on “non functioning” members of society/?

By: Doug1943

Doug1943 — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 11:26:17 +0000

Two thoughts in response to this excellent essay.

(1) How do other countries deal with this problem? Or rather, what are the contours of this problem in other countries? Do they have as many mentally-ill homeless as we do?

(2) A radical — but statist, sorry — solution: find someplace with fairly mild year-round weather and cheap [or better, federally-owned] land — New Mexico comes to mind.
Build a (federally-funded) “New San Francisco” there: free housing, food, alcohol, TVs in every room, clinics, policed just enough to keep the predators away. You could lower costs a bit by getting the various charities and religous groups to build all kinds of housing there, from little cabins to apartment buildings … and get them to send volunteers to live there for a period of time, ministering to these lost souls. Cities would see the benefit of making available free bus tickets to the New San Francisco.
The major disadvantage: if enough mentally ill people become concentrated there, it would become a Congressional District and reliably send yet another Democrat to Congress.

By: Spartacus

Spartacus — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 06:46:23 +0000

Bloody good post on a nasty, tough problem.

I love erring on the libertarian side of things when reasonably practical, but find myself getting increasingly permissive of requirements and prohibitions as the jurisdiction becomes more and more local, and thus people retain the right to live as they choose, or vote with their feet. At the municipal level, I tend to side with the right of the people to live as they choose, and draw some nice, bright, objective lines, for the good of everyone. Some might be invited to a facility, as they might be more comfortable there; some might be strongly encouraged toward a different facility, or to leave town; and some might be physically arrested and taken to yet a different facility, as they would certainly freeze to death before morning.

Two thoughts on keeping the help honest in the institutions come to mind. 1) In our church’s children’s ministry, security is intense, including a strict requirement that no one adult is ever to be alone with the children. Ever. Always two or more. In spite of all the windows into the classrooms that make it a pretty open place to begin with. And these are all folks who have had background checks just to be able to volunteer there. 2) Recording technology is now cheap enough that any facility for the homeless could have 24/7 surveillance in all public areas, periodically audited by a third party, for additional reassurance.

Still far from perfect, but like bkivey said, best not to make the perfect the enemy of the good.

By: Earl

Earl — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 05:26:55 +0000

I read a piece about Hillman that said in addition to his housing, the taxpayers were providing him with his food and other necessities, plus all the drug and alcohol rehab he wanted, which was nil.

So, like many “homeless”, he got his needs from the taxpayers, and he panhandled (or stole) to feed his drug and alcohol habits.

Why is this a good idea?

By: bkivey

bkivey — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 23:00:12 +0000

I lived in San Francisco during the mid-80′s when the effects of ‘mainstreaming’ policies for the mentally ill were starting to be realized. One woman spent her days digging up the paving bricks on the Market St. sidewalks. This presented a clear danger to pedestrians, as people could, and did, sprain their ankles after stepping in the holes she left behind. Despite complaints from the citizenry, the city authorities decided that taking the woman off the streets would violate her civil rights. Apparently the civil rights of taxpayers to use a sidewalk free of tripping hazards weren’t considered.

At the time, San Francisco had an unusual version of the ‘move along’ policy: on request, the city would supply a person with a one-way bus ticket to anywhere in the continental US. This was much cheaper than providing services, but as you pointed out, they just became someone else’s problem.

It seems to me that any serious discussion on problem solving for complex systems (homelessness, health care delivery) has to start with the realization that as systems become more sophisticated, there are increasing amounts of uncertainty. A fair chunk of engineering is figuring out when ‘good enough’ is good enough. A few years ago the director of a homeless help organization in Portland, OR (a city with a large number of homeless) told the city council that they’d reached the effective limit of whom they could help. It wasn’t that they needed more money, it was that the people who weren’t getting help were actually refusing it.

A lot of people operate under the mistaken assumption that a given system is a failure if it doesn’t operate with 100% effectiveness. That’s simply not true, and unless the system is very simple, impossible to achieve. The perfect becomes the enemy of the good. Economic laws are as immutable as the physical variety, and require that we look at what services can be provided at a price people are willing to sustain.

By: Danny Lemieux

Danny Lemieux — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 22:27:03 +0000

There are some problems in society (local and global) that are just so intractable, that it may be best to fight against our very instinctive human compulsion to meddle and just leave things alone so that resources can be directed toward more productive pursuits. I put homelessness and the Palestinian issue in the same category here.

Government intervention just makes things worse in both of these situations. However, local groups (churches, not-for-profits) are often in a better position to customize local solutions to a problem. We had a homeless man that was a regular sight in our upper-middle class neighborhood. He would often be seen bicycling along the bike paths with his belongings in all seasons. Truth be told, I suspect that he enjoyed sleeping in the woods. He had several “flophouse” churches that he could count on to give him a place to sleep in inclement weather. For meals, there were handouts and soup kitchens.

The problem that I have with much of the homeless is that there are many people that gravitate to that lifestyle. There are also some panhandlers that make quite a good living from that lifestyle. To the extent that we extend a “helping hand”, are we helping them…or enabling them. There have always been and there will always be homeless and hobos among us.

So my solution to both the Palestinian and Homelessness issues is…don’t meddle, do nothing!

By: Ron19

Ron19 — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 21:32:39 +0000

Two people I’ve known were in yet another category.

They are homeless in the sense that they live on the street. They are not sick. They are not crazy. If they are mentally ill, it’s only to the same degree as your depressed co-worker who comes to work every day and does productive work; but they are not depressed. If anything, they suffer a severe lack of ambition, or have just given up on trying to do it society’s way.

They do do productive work.

The guy (about 45-50) in the Riverside, CA, area will do handyman or yard work, $5/hr., maximum of 4 hours per day. I got so comfortable with him and the work he did for me that on my way home from work, I would ask him to mow my lawn the next day, and pay him $20 in advance. Then the next morning I would leave my electric lawnmower on the patio in back, with one end of the extension cord coming out of the locked patio door. I was living alone at the time, and believe me, I do hate to do yard work. When I got home that evening, the lawn was mowed, the lawnmower was left were I had left it, and the cord was neatly coiled up, except for the end locked in the house. Nothing was ever missing from the yard, garage, or house.

The woman (about 30-40) had a little permanent covered nest on a sidewalk in Santa Monica, CA, near where I worked as a computer contractor for a few months. She did volunteer work for a religious group about a mile or so away, in exchange for a place to clean up, a meal or two, and a little bit of money.

Both of these people are clean, reasonably well dressed, in charge of their own lives, and satisfied with their situation. They had figured out a way to live in enough comfort, and maintained their personal environment. In another time and place, they would probably live in a small cabin or farmhouse out in the woods near a small town. I’m not suggesting that you go out and look for people like this; these two are getting all the help they want.

I also know some other people who are crazy, off their meds, dangerous, and scary. I avoid them. There are also some people who are not crazy, don’t need meds, and are dangerous and scary.