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Homeless people are human beings. If we housed them, and had a proper social safety net, we wouldn't even be talking about it's. Homeless or not, they need a place to live.
I agree with you. That's why I pointed out that the only mandate was enforcement, aka, the stick, and no incentives, aka carrots, were required. If Newsom was serious about tackling this, the enforcement would be paired with incentives, and the cities would be getting help to set up alternatives to camping in public places, such as the supervised camping we use here in my neck of the woods.
But let's be clear. You still need the stick. It's perfectly OK to say "We'll do everything we can to get you off the streets, but you need to put in the effort yourself, and no, trashing public spaces is not an option."
No, we are not in agreement. I don't not think we should force people from where they live. You wouldn't need this so called "enforcement" if people had access to a safe bed. And if we don't have that, then these tent cities happen, and in my opinion we should do literally nothing about them being there.
There will be people who will, despite having the option to be moved into housing, refuse to move there because they prefer the freedom of panhandling for money, getting drunk and stoned, and being nuisances to people around them. If you think they should not be dealt with, then yes, we don't agree, and you're just as bad as the people that say no help for the homeless and just want them swept away. There is a reasonable position, and it's not either your position or Newsom's position.
Right...showing your prejudice. Just as i thought. Getting drunk and stoned is not the cause of homelessness. You're just blaming the homeless for a problem they didn't create. Funny how we never had a homeless problem back before housing prices started ballooning. Hell, go back to the early 19th century, and basically everyone had a place to live, even if it wasn't a great place to live.
Yeah. You got me. I'm prejudiced against the idea that people can do what they want, without consequence. How heartless of me, eh? Make it difficult for me to remain civil to you, why don't you?
Here's the difference between you, AnalogNotDigital, and me: You both have staked out opposite but equally extremist ends. Let me reduce your position to its core principles.
People should be allowed to do what they want, when they want, without any consequence for their actions.
No. No, a thousand times no. I am not going to sit by and let people walk over me, because I've already dealt enough with people walking over me. I have to get up and do my 9 to 5 every weekday, and moderate my drug and alcohol use to a level that I can function in my job, to keep a roof over my head and food on the table. In no world will "in my opinion we should do literally nothing about them being there" be a valid option to tent cities with rampant drug and alcohol use.
To make this more stark, you engage in the same duplicitous and dishonest debate tactics the Right uses. Because of course if I want accountability for people, I must want homeless people starving in the streets. Let me make this clear for you. I want housing to be available to everyone. Said so multiple times, in fact, in this thread alone. But that housing needs to be contingent on people getting clean and becoming productive members of society to the extent their clean selves can be. I do not support any demand that unhoused people be swept in order to partake of Proposition 1 funding. That's what I expressed in my second paragraph. I guess you skipped that in your rush to attack me for my first paragraph.
News flash, pal. I stand by what I said in that first paragraph. You do not have a right to society subsidising your drug and alcohol habit. You DO have a right to housing, but that right has a responsibility of putting your labour in for society. Your access to transitional housing should be contingent on you getting clean if you have a drug or alcohol problem. It should be clear that the alternative you are proposing, living a drugged, drunk life in a vermin-filled tent on public space, is not an option. If you put the effort in, we give you the carrot of subsidised housing to allow you to get back on your feet and make your way into the workforce. If you decide that's too much effort, then the stick comes out until you rethink your bad decision and go after the carrot. That's been my position all along, and I don't appreciate you putting words in my mouth and bald-faced lying (no homelessness in the 19th century?! History lessons for you). No solution is complete without both the carrot and the stick, because people are jerks and will take advantage of you the first chance they get. There are jerks who are looking to take advantage of homeless people with the Stick Only approach. Then there are gullible fools who will be taken advantage of by some homeless people because they want the Carrot Only approach. I'm advocating for both because I want to minimise being taken advantage here, and you're accusing me of being ... prejudiced and making bald-faced lies that only need a tiny bit of research.
So, in the spirit of launching personal attacks, I see your prejudiced accusation and call you both naive and an asshole. Good day, sir.
Good talk, glad we sorted that out.
Housing is usually not the issue itself. If I’m not mistaken California actually has enough shelter available to not have homeless people at all. The employed, high functioning, productive yet homeless member of society is a rarity and often remain homeless very temporarily. Most homeless people have mental and/or drug abuse issues, which leads them to decide to be homeless because they don’t like the rules, can’t stick to a schedule, have antisocial tendencies etc etc etc.
I definitely get what you're saying here, but I think you've overblown what you see as the issue.
Housing is DEFINITELY the issue itself. Many homeless people get started on the path to mental and drug abuse issues when that paycheque doesn't go far enough to pay the bills. Student Loans. Car Notes. Rent. Food. All get more and more expensive, making it harder to be a productive member of society, and meanwhile, pay stays criminally low. Until you watch as your landlord kicks you out, with a few dollars to your name and hundreds or even thousands of dollars of bills screaming for those few bills, and watch as everything you ever owned gets thrown out on the lawn and then stolen because you can't protect any of it, and then some shadowy figure offers you a hit of the good stuff to make you just forget the fact that society considers you a failure, you can't know how hard it is to deal with this situation unless you have a tiny bit of empathy.
I'm not saying we should tolerate this. I'm saying that we need to address the real root causes: costs are so high while pay is so low, and get people into housing again, with the understanding that drugging up and being a 'free spirit' on the back of somebody else's labour isn't an option. But saying housing isn't an issue shows you don't actually understand the problem. Please rethink that.
My city of Fresno does not have enough beds, so maybe that is true for wealthier cities with lower unhoused rates. The beds offered are sometimes less safe than the street: https://calmatters.org/housing/2025/02/california-homeless-shelters-purgatory/
Merced checking in, we made homeless camps functionally illegal while having HALF of the required beds to house everyone.
Many of those people don’t start out as drug user or being mentally unwell, that’s what you get in a system where you are not safe in shelters, building for homeless people means adding spikes to benches and now you will be driven from the location that is now closest to “home” like some lepers being run out of town.
Housing and the cost of it is definitely a big part of the problem.
They did a large study of homelessness in California that ended a year or two ago and it concluded that it was mostly the price of housing.
Exactly. People of all income levels struggle with mental health and drug issues. The drug use and mental health struggles of the homeless are just much more publicly visible.
Housing really is the main issue though. People get the cause and effect backwards. People don't become homeless because they do drugs; they do drugs because they're homeless. If you were stuck sleeping on the sidewalk, wouldn't you want to be high 24/7? I sure would.
This one gets it
Needing housing is unfortunately only part of the problem. Whether it's part of the reason they became homeless, or damage incurred in the course of being homeless, mental illness and co-occuring substance abuse go hand in hand with homelessness. (Though that majority dynamic may change with the way things have been going, it's becoming easier to fall through the entire net or what's left of it). If those issues aren't addressed simultaneously, the person ends up right back where they were, or even worse off.
This is one of those comforting lies people tell themselves. It's the just world fallacy.
Drug use and homelessness are mostly orthogonal issues, but people latch onto it as a quick and easy way to dismiss providing housing for the homeless. People of all income levels have mental illnesses and drug use issues. But for the homeless, we decide that their drug use issues are such a moral failing that it's OK to deny them housing as punishment.
Also, people confuse cause and effect. Being homeless causes mental health and drug abuse, not the other way around.
Maybe I miscommunicated my position. I'm not interested in withholding housing or support from anyone. As a previous recipient of such services, I will always advocate their value. I think we should be doing more, not less. I simply think the value of housing and mental health services is multiplied exponentially when they are combined.
You're saying this with authority as if it's some sort of universal truth when it is not. Speaking from experience having been homeless myself (2 years between Seattle and LA), both are true. Many people end up homeless because of how their mental illness has affected their ability to go about daily life. For these individuals specifically, housing alone is not a cure-all. If that person doesn't receive some other kind of support, their life is still unmanageable for them.
To treat the general problem of homelessness, both types of people in this binary have to be considered.