5/8/2026 at 1:10:33 AM
I also like clean safe unobstructed sidewalks and parks but along with benches, we've made a decision. We've decided that putting the mentally ill in a facility and arresting people for public drug use is not something we're comfortable with at the expense of those other things. I don't personally ageee with this decision but it is apparently the consensus.by TheBlight
5/8/2026 at 1:35:41 AM
> it is apparently the consensusAnd what a strange consensus it is. The prevailing belief seems to be that preventing people from slowly/quickly killing themselves on the street (or, more accurately, dying from addiction) is somehow not "progressive" and the moral thing to do is to pretend like these people have made the choice of their own volition and that we cannot judge them for this choice.
In reality, the people who are just rotting away on our streets would be better served if they were brought somewhere against their will and kept there until they were better. Society would also be better served if we did this. The government choosing to involuntarily constrain people isn't something that should be done lightly, but sometimes it is the lesser evil. We've completely abandoned these people and somehow done so in the name of compassion. It's really depressing.
by strictnein
5/8/2026 at 1:52:14 AM
What a strange false dichotomy. Either we do absolutely nothing to help people, or we involuntarily incarcerate them?The actually progressive option is to provide meaningful public support programs, and also make housing affordable (by building enough housing). The US mostly doesn't do either of those, but it should.
by JoshTriplett
5/8/2026 at 2:08:31 AM
These programs exist, but they are underutilized to a significant degree.From a partner who used to work in one, people:
- didn't trust the program and wouldn't sign up
- didn't actually want to quit using so they avoided it
- wanted to get the benefits from the program without changing anything (i.e. showed up to get free food etc)
- tried but didn't like it and went back to using
Very few people actually went all the way through compared to the population in the city that could have used it.
The real question is: how do you help people who do not want your help. Do you let them waste away and die on the sidewalk, or do you institutionalize them?
by zdragnar
5/8/2026 at 3:04:45 AM
The answer to that question in a society that allows (mostly) autonomy of choice is that we let them die on the street.I'm not convinced that involuntary incarceration will actually fix the problem. I believe it will just take it off of the streets and out of the public consciousness.
by Loughla
5/8/2026 at 5:45:15 PM
I have a very good friend who was an addict, and I tried to help him turn his life around in many ways, but I couldn’t figure out a way. Professionals told me “he has to hit rock bottom.”Anyhow he wound up getting arrested and spent a couple of weeks in jail where he got clean and decided to turn his life around. He went on to get a couple of masters degrees, get married, have two kids, and has a good job. He credits his time in jail for saving his life.
by cameldrv
5/8/2026 at 10:31:50 PM
At the core of this is that your friend came to the realization that he wanted to change his life. He can credit his time in jail for this. However that doesn't mean it will be the same for everyone, or that there's only a single potential trigger to get someone to recover from drug addictionby ryoshoe
5/10/2026 at 5:09:05 AM
If the jail is properly run (and I will admit that this is a big if), there aren't any drugs in the jail. Some people, if they get clean for a little while, are in a position to reflect on what they're doing. The indignity of being locked up also puts a very fine point on it.Now I don't think that this would necessarily work for everyone, but it worked for my friend, and I've heard a number of other similar stories. Sometimes you need to get a very clear message from society/the system that your behavior is unacceptable, and you need to get that message sober or it may not get through.
by cameldrv
5/8/2026 at 7:58:25 PM
I have a friend who picked up heroin in jail, came out an addict and died of an OD in his basement. His daughter found him.If your anecdote can prove your point, then mine can disprove it.
by ratelimitsteve
5/8/2026 at 9:02:34 PM
I think I know that family. Didn't the daughter get beat up everyday by that father and that's why he went to jail. Her life is so much better now.by ipaddr
5/8/2026 at 7:00:55 PM
I knew somebody who turned his life around after surviving an attempted murder. I still don't think that means that trying to murder people whose lives are going awry is a rational solution.by pessimizer
5/8/2026 at 7:39:03 PM
You're saying that spending time in jail is roughly equivalent to being a victim of attempted murder.by 0xBA5ED
5/8/2026 at 7:45:19 PM
No, I'm saying that both things could have them same effect, so the existence of that effect isn't a proof that the solution makes sense.If I tell you that covering something in red paint and covering something in tomato sauce will stain them both red, I'm not saying that red paint is tomato sauce.
I also know people who have changed their lives after heart attacks. Am I saying that heart attacks are roughly equivalent to prison stays?
by pessimizer
5/8/2026 at 7:54:38 PM
[dead]by 0xBA5ED
5/9/2026 at 8:30:28 PM
Wow, it must be true if you said it!by potsandpans
5/9/2026 at 9:37:08 PM
> I'm not convinced that involuntary incarceration will actually fix the problem.Not to sound too crass, but doesn't that pretty much "fix the problem" (i.e. homeless people on the street) by definition?
by hn_throwaway_99
5/12/2026 at 11:27:32 PM
> society has decided to stop jailing (committing) the homeless> leaving them on the street is not helping them. committing them would give them access to (force upon them) care, and is the more humane thing to do
> I'm not convinced that involuntary incarceration will actually fix the problem
> doesn't that pretty much "fix the problem"?
Which problem? Every misunderstanding is someone replying to someone else without knowing who was replying to whom
by verall
5/10/2026 at 2:48:48 PM
Breathing problems? Stop the breathing. Solved, by definition.by cwmoore
5/10/2026 at 7:18:10 PM
That is a completely irrelevant analogy. I wasn't advocating for the Soylent Green solution.by hn_throwaway_99
5/8/2026 at 5:37:39 AM
>I believe it will just take it off of the streets and out of the public consciousness.If antisocial people do not exist in the public consciousness, then that means the problem is fixed. Even you never have to worry about locking your front door, then the problem of burglars has been fixed even if technically would be burglars may exist in prison.
by charcircuit
5/8/2026 at 6:58:13 PM
Drug addicts and the mentally ill don't have the problem of being "antisocial." They have drug addiction and mental illness. "Antisocial" is the problem that you have when you see them, and is the problem that is solved when you don't see them. It's a completely narcissistic way of looking at things.For example, putting you in prison would also solve the problem of your objection to them. You would still be surrounded by drug addicts and the mentally ill in prison, but we wouldn't have to listen to you complain about it, so our problems would be solved.
But that's also not a good solution.
by pessimizer
5/9/2026 at 2:22:54 AM
I think you are underestimating how few bad actors it takes to ruin a system, but I do agree with your point that you can also remove the people who think they are negatively impacted. For example in Counter Strike you can either ban the small percentage of cheaters or you could cultivate the community to not care if people are cheating.by charcircuit
5/9/2026 at 8:17:02 AM
Taking the problem of crazy severely-mentally-ill people off the streets and out of the public consciousness is strictly better than having that problem be on the streets and in the public consciousness because it's happening around the public all the time. If nothing else, it reduces the chances that a random commuter will get randomly stabbed on the subway by a severely crazy person.by JuniperMesos
5/8/2026 at 3:44:25 AM
Not a great solution, honestly. Long term drug abuse is almost never a victimless habit. I'm tempted to say never.by 0xBA5ED
5/8/2026 at 9:34:41 PM
This isn't the 1980s anymore. Using drugs is perfectly fine. A ton of people here on HN take drugs regularly, but few think it's worth to rock the boat against this kind of nonsense you're spreadingby mx7zysuj4xew
5/9/2026 at 12:08:06 AM
Have you ever interacted with a heroine or meth user?Sometimes using drugs is fine, depending on the drug, the reason, and the person. For example, I did cocaine once and immediately knew I needed to cut ties with those friends because if I had access to it regularly, I would ruin my life. Others can do coke recreationally and not have an issue. Others can't form the insight I had until their lives are in shambles, and maybe not even then.
by Loughla
5/9/2026 at 10:33:39 PM
> Have you ever interacted with a heroine or meth user?
by mx7zysuj4xew
5/10/2026 at 5:55:36 PM
> Crack?! I've got company!> Oh, relax! "Oh, I'm Mark, I'm in the '80s, I'm dying of heroin in a puddle in the corner in an advert!" Drugs are fine, Mark, everyone agrees now. Drugs are what happen to people, and that's fine, so shut up.
by Rendello
5/9/2026 at 1:16:14 AM
You actually changed what I said then declared it nonsense. I said abuse, not use.by 0xBA5ED
5/9/2026 at 10:35:45 PM
Because the word "use" and "abuse" are interchangeable for prohibitionistsby mx7zysuj4xew
5/9/2026 at 4:51:59 PM
How do you separate those legally? I ask, because we are discussing using the legal system here.by amanaplanacanal
5/9/2026 at 8:26:15 PM
I will admit, I didn't think it through super deeply, but I have a very simple (and possibly naive) proposal.We separate them legally the same way we separate alcohol use vs. alcohol abuse. The consequences of getting caught for speeding vs. getting caught for speeding while under influence tend to drastically differ in magnitude, so I suggest we do the same for other kinds of drug abuse.
Being under influence shouldn't be a mitigating factor while committing crimes, but for non-driving offenses it often ends up being such. So I suggest we treat it the same way for violent crimes as we do for driving offenses.
by filoleg
5/8/2026 at 5:48:00 PM
maybe the problem here is the gate that requires them to quit cold turkey before offering them any help? I know it offends people morally to 'subsidize drug use', but that's a really high barrier for an opioid or crank addict to meet. the other issues are that people complain that its very prison like, in terms of the volume and severity of rules. the other really unfortunate thing is that some fraction of the homeless population is _really nasty_. so no one really wants to get locked up with these people.but to say that the majority of them don't want any help is just wrong.
by convolvatron
5/9/2026 at 6:13:14 PM
West Virginia has much lower rates of homelessness and public drug use compared to liberal states despite having higher rates of drug addiction. Because housing is much more affordable.Homelessness rates increase and decrease in direct proportion to the cost of housing as a proportion of median income. When housing costs increase more and more people become homeless and the ones that end up on the street tends to be those already living at the margins so you see more drug addicts and mentally ill people on the street and assume it's the cause.
Its well understood that being homeless makes it much harder to provide treatment and services. Sweeps of encampments make it even harder as their belongings tend to be thrown out.
So we have places with lots of services, but extremely expensive housing or places with affordable housing, but no poor public services.
Imagine if people could have housing and services how much better it would be. Maybe we wouldn't even have to strip people of their freedoms to make improvements. Wouldn't that be preferable? Isn't it worth trying?
by breakyerself
5/9/2026 at 12:54:12 AM
Frankly, I think we need to bring back corporal punishment for specific crimes. The process to arrest, prosecute, and then imprison people for "public space crimes" is basically flawed.Arresting and prosecuting is slow and expensive, prisons are full. A prison sentence destroys whatever remaining support system a person has and a conviction like that makes getting a job in the future nearly impossible.
We should just have a quick path to short and non-damaging corporal punishment. A quick video recording, an instant review by a judge via zoom, then immediate punishment. This would deter theft, damaging public property, etc. while not costing a lot to taxpayers and not causing long term damage to the individual. Crime is never on the record at all so does not affect background checks. Treatment programs are always offered instead of the corporal punishment.
(Of course mental health conditions complicate this, it's difficult to solve that without forced institutionalizing them).
by KingMachiavelli
5/9/2026 at 4:06:34 AM
Too bad about that pesky “cruel and unusual” clause in the constitution for the bloodthirsty like you…by lobf
5/12/2026 at 5:15:36 PM
Birching minor criminals would not have been considered cruel or unusual to any of the men who wrote that clause.by linksnapzz
5/10/2026 at 2:54:26 PM
Nothing unusual or cruel about living locked in a concrete box overcrowded with unemployable men for weeks, months, or years, or is there?Prison is as medieval an institution as the mindsets of those that see it to be appropriate.
by cwmoore
5/9/2026 at 1:48:03 AM
I suppose you really enjoyed Leviathan…by CSSer
5/12/2026 at 5:11:55 PM
I've named servers Nasty, Poor, Brutish and Short before.by linksnapzz
5/8/2026 at 2:23:44 AM
Yes, exactly, there's a reason the term is "continuum of care." There is no one-size-fits-all approach to solving addiction because, to quote Ted Lasso, all people are different people. Maybe some people do need to be involuntarily incarcerated, but many, many others would be able to recover with far less intrusive interventions.Also we are chasing a lagging indicator by focusing exclusively on the homeless population. The vast majority of people who end up homeless because of addiction would have benefited from some far earlier, far milder form of intervention, or from the absence of something that actively drove them into addiction, e.g. some quack pushing oxycontin on them because Purdue Pharma promoted it as non-addictive. Or job loss because of offshoring pushing them into economic despair that then drives addiction, which they are unable to recover from because of the lack of affordable or accessible retraining or educational opportunities.
In many cases over the last 20-30 years, it was the combination of both job loss and careless opioid prescription that pushed people into an unrecoverable spiral, especially in the rust belt, where the opioid crisis hit the hardest. We may not have fixed the job loss side of the problem, but at least doctors aren't pushing pills the same way they were 10-20 years ago after Purdue's corporate downfall, so the number of people driven into addiction-mediated homelessness by that disaster should at least start tapering off soon. But if we don't help people before their lives fall apart with a continuum of support options that are accessible before they are in deep crisis, and are accessible to people who are beginning to spiral but don't yet appear to be in deep crisis, it will cost far more and be far more challenging to help them recover once they are on the street.
by stult
5/8/2026 at 2:05:27 AM
I'm not sure if you've had a drug addict in your life at any point, and if not that is a blessing.Drug addiction is a dark place and it's very common that the availability of free support programs is entirely rejected by the user, and the only hope at a normal life requires forceful intervention by family and friends.
The only way to solve drugs on the street is to look at the cities that have solved them and copy what works. And, at least with what I'm familiar with, arresting people tends to work and alternatives tend to not.
by Taek
5/8/2026 at 2:17:56 AM
You seem to be equating "homeless" with "drug addict". The article talks about taking away public benches because of homelessness.There are different programs needed for drug addiction than for homelessness. Not everyone who's homeless has a drug problem, and not everyone with a drug problem is homeless.
by JoshTriplett
5/8/2026 at 4:45:07 AM
We didn't eliminate benches in public spaces because we wanted to reduce the presence of the nice, respectful, and polite homeless. We eliminated benches to reduce the presence of the problematic homeless, which has a much higher rate of drug abuse and mental illness.by Taek
5/8/2026 at 12:43:19 PM
>We eliminated benches to reduce the presence of the problematic homeless, which has a much higher rate of drug abuse and mental illness.We eliminated benches to reduce the rate at which the problematic homeless cross paths with the complainers.
The DPW as an organization doesn't give a shit about how many commuter's asses a bench serves from 6am to 8pm. It just knows that every day when Karen sees a homeless man sleeping on that bench at 5AM she submits a complaint from the web form.
From their stupid "not my job, I just solve tickets" keyhole view of the situation removing the benches makes the problem smaller and they will iterate on that until complaint equilibrium is reached.
by cucumber3732842
5/8/2026 at 2:33:04 PM
When I was in San Francisco, I had a homeless man with one eye (the empty eye socket actively oozing) come up to me unprovoked (quite literally unprovoked, I was just on a walk and not interacting with anybody at all), get within 2 centimeters of my face, and scream at the top of his lungs "I WILL MURDER YOU". He then walked away and nothing else of note happened (aside from me spending the rest of the evening with my pulse at 140).Suffice to say, I don't think it's fair to categorize me as a Karen for asserting that San Francisco has a large number of problematic homeless people. I could give about 8 other stories (from SF, Boston, NYC, and Chicago) that happened to me, two of which (both SF) include grown men dropping their pants, exposing their genitals, and visibly pooping on public streets where children were present, with no attempt to obtain any degree of privacy.
These aren't stories from my friends, these are things that I personally witnessed and experienced. These aren't 'oh that guy is ugly and smelly' stories, these are 'if I did that myself I would be arrested' stories.
by Taek
5/8/2026 at 7:21:57 PM
> He then walked away and nothing else of note happened (aside from me spending the rest of the evening with my pulse at 140).Did you call the police after this person made a threat on your life?
by jancsika
5/9/2026 at 8:31:06 AM
What would the police do about it, arrest the homeless person? Would the local criminal justice system have the capacity to charge and convict them if the cops did so? Many of the cities where visible homelessness is a problem also have shortages of cops that cause them to triage what sorts of incidents they send an officer to respond to?I probably would not have called the police after this person if this happened to me, because I expect they would do nothing about it.
by JuniperMesos
5/9/2026 at 2:43:21 PM
Where do you live?In the U.S. police will show up, investigate, and absolutely arrest someone who made a loud, direct, threat to murder another human being in public.
by jancsika
5/9/2026 at 7:02:05 PM
Not anywhere being discussed here. Chicago it may or may not get added to a dispatch call. Chances of it ever being followed up on are slim. At best you might get a patrol car rolling through a couple hours later to mark the ticket solved.It’s a pretty common experience for anyone who is out and about using public transit in public spaces. They know nothing will be done to the suspect so what’s the point of bothering to respond at all?
by phil21
5/9/2026 at 8:28:11 AM
I assure you that problematic homeless people sleep on benches in public spaces at times during the day when normal people using the public transit system normally would like to use them (also sometimes people, reasonably enough, want to take public transit late at night or in the early morning). That's why the authorities remove the benches.by JuniperMesos
5/8/2026 at 7:00:08 PM
You use disparaging slurs ("Karen") to refer to a woman who just wants to ride the bus to get to work and earn an living, and you politely call a person who is a public nuisance a "homeless man".by fortran77
5/8/2026 at 11:54:20 PM
Karen isn't a name in the same way that Boommer isn't an age. It's a state of mind.We're not talking about the people who have been genuinly victimized. We're talking about the people who wring their hands over some smelly guy in some corner on the subway. Because they dominate the stats.
by cucumber3732842
5/8/2026 at 2:21:15 AM
That Venn diagram is pretty close to a circle, at least when talking about homeless people that don’t have a friend/relative they can stay with.by Auracle
5/8/2026 at 2:29:32 AM
> That Venn diagram is pretty close to a circleFalse, and harmful. US HUD says it's ~16% of homeless people, other sources give different numbers, but it's certainly not a majority, let alone anywhere near 100%.
The biggest problem, unsurprisingly, is housing cost. The US GAO states that a $100 increase in median rent correlates to a 9% rise in homelessness. Rents have gone up a lot more than that.
by JoshTriplett
5/8/2026 at 3:37:40 AM
> US HUD says it's ~16% of homeless people, other sources give different numbers, but it's certainly not a majority"Homeless people" is a broad category that includes people temporarily living in vehicles, bouncing between family members, or sleeping on a friend's couch. It also includes people who are about to lose their home, young people living alone.
But when everyday people use the term, they usually mean, specifically, visible homeless people - i.e. people who are homeless long-term, sleeping rough on the streets or in parks, etc.
The two groups are pretty different to each other. I would be very surprised if the rate of drug addiction in the second group was the same as the rate of drug addiction in the first group
by ipsento606
5/8/2026 at 5:23:29 AM
The people you think are "temporarily" living in vehicles are not doing so temporarily.by queenkjuul
5/8/2026 at 2:24:38 PM
I personally have close to a dozen friends who have spent between 2 and 6 weeks of their life (but not longer) living out of their car in a state of actual temporary homelessness. Almost always due to financial issues.Temporarily living in vehicles is absolutely a thing.
by Taek
5/8/2026 at 3:50:52 AM
> I would be very surprised if the rate of drug addiction in the second group was the same as the rate of drug addiction in the first groupBut that's a far far weaker claim than the one above.
If the rate is 90% or higher in the second group, then we get close to the claim being true. (Though still a subset rather than the circles being the same; lots of people with drug problems have homes.)
by Dylan16807
5/8/2026 at 7:23:27 PM
Walk down the makeshift tents on the sidewalks of downtown San Francisco and tell me with a straight face that only 16% of those people are addicted to drugs.by fourseventy
5/8/2026 at 2:49:14 AM
> False, and harmful.Sorry. But you're either misinformed or actively malicious here.
> US HUD says it's ~16% of homeless people
It absolutely is close to 100% of _unsheltered_ people. Some social workers helping the unsheltered homeless are now saying that they have not seen anybody who's _not_ on drugs or who is not mentally ill.
If you want authoritative source, here's UCLA study from the blessed pre-COVID era: https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Co...
> The biggest problem, unsurprisingly, is housing cost.
No, it's really really not.
> The US GAO states that a $100 increase in median rent correlates to a 9% rise in homelessness.
And the correlation disappears when you look at the states with cold climate.
by cyberax
5/8/2026 at 3:03:39 AM
> If you want authoritative source, here's UCLA study from the blessed pre-COVID era: https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Co...Which specifically leads with a page saying:
> Hundreds of studies - including our own - show economic pressures are the primary drivers of homelessness, that housing people ends homelessness, and that targeted financial assistance helps people at risk of homelessness stay stably housed
Also, the cited study blatantly does not show the numbers ("close to 100%") you claim it has, even leaving that aside. You're also now equivocating between drugs and mental illness, as well as between drugs and alcohol. And you're not taking into account the direction of cause and effect (e.g. which came first, the homelessness or the addiction).
I understand that you're also referencing anecdata from social workers. In those cases, there's an inherent bias: people with a drug problem are going to be harder and more memorable cases, which makes them feel like a larger proportion than they are. People homeless for economic reasons are likely to loom less large in people's minds than the times they dealt with someone who had a drug problem.
by JoshTriplett
5/8/2026 at 3:46:58 AM
[flagged]by cyberax
5/8/2026 at 4:46:11 AM
> Care to read it past the preface?I already read the entire thing. You may stop accusing me of bad faith or insufficient research at any time.
> Page 5, Figure 4.
Thank you for confirming that you cited a chart listing 75% of unsheltered people and called it "close to 100%". I gave exact numbers from the studies I referenced; you exaggerated yours.
A more relevant figure from the study is figure 2: 51% of unsheltered people (and 6% of sheltered) say that substance abuse is a cause of their homelessness. Also see figure 3 for other relevant causes.
That's leaving aside, again, that you are still equivocating between drugs and alcohol. I would suggest looking at statistics for how many people in the general population drink to excess, if you're going to cite statistics on how many homeless people do. But, of course, "drug addict" is the more evocative and stigmatizing phrase, which makes it harder to get people help.
And in any case: yes, of course there's a difference between sheltered and unsheltered, not least of which because we do a poor job of helping people who simultaneously experience drug addiction and homelessness. There's an obvious correlation there, but a major part of it is "drug addiction prevents getting help from shelters". (And I would venture a guess that homelessness makes it harder to get help with drug addiction, though I haven't specifically looked up numbers on that one.)
There are many attempted claims in this thread that people "don't want help", and none of that is supported. How many people refuse help, versus how many people can't get the help they need based on the structure of what we provide?
On top of that, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48057738 for a more nuanced point about lagging indicators: the right interventions happen much earlier in that downward spiral.
That is nowhere near the same as a claim that homelessness, in general, is a problem of drug addiction, or that the Venn diagram is a circle. That claim is actively harmful towards efforts to build systems that actually help people.
> You failed to do a basic search to verify your claims. Instead, you clutched at the first number that popped out in Google Search.
False. Stop assuming that people who come to different conclusions than you have have not done thorough research.
by JoshTriplett
5/8/2026 at 7:12:50 PM
And also to add to this: OK, assume that you won the point. 75-80% is totally not "almost 100%" and only 65% of people become homeless because of drugs.So what next? Building more housing won't help drug addicts that are _already_ addicts. Even if you believe that it might prevent future homelessness (spoiler: it won't), we _already_ have hundreds of thousand of hard-drug addicts.
by cyberax
5/8/2026 at 5:23:29 AM
> Thank you for confirming that you cited a chart listing 75% of unsheltered people and called it "close to 100%".I already said that the study is from pre-COVID time, and puts the lower bound due to its conservative methodology.
And yes, I consider it proving my point, even that conservative estimate shows that for the vast majority of unsheltered homeless the problem is not in housing availability. It's mental health and/or drug abuse.
> A more relevant figure from the study is figure 2: 51% of unsheltered people (and 6% of sheltered) say that substance abuse is a cause of their homelessness. Also see figure 3 for other relevant causes.
Self-reporting, again. It's also kinda beside the point. Right _now_ the unsheltered homelessness is a drug problem however it began earlier.
Unless you just want to wait until all the addicts just die of overdoses?
> There are many attempted claims in this thread that people "don't want help", and none of that is supported.
I cited another study. There is also the experience in Seattle or SF. I guess you live somewhere in a town where the worst substance abuse is someone getting a bit too much booze?
Portland tried to decriminalize drugs and add voluntary treatment options. Their drug treatment hotline apparently helped 17 to enter treatment. Not percent, people.
> On top of that, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48057738 for a more nuanced point about lagging indicators: the right interventions happen much earlier in that downward spiral.
Yes. We need absolutely relentless pressure. If you're caught doing drugs, you need to have only two choices: treatment or jail. You can then get into housing, but with random mandatory drug screening. Constant, unyielding pressure with 100% certainty of consequences.
For people who are NOT on drugs, I fully support emergency housing assistance, job training, and/or help with getting disability status.
> That is nowhere near the same as a claim that homelessness, in general, is a problem of drug addiction, or that the Venn diagram is a circle. That claim is actively harmful towards efforts to build systems that actually help people.
No. They are people who are actually not blinded by the ideology and CAN SEE THE FUCKING PROBLEM in the first place.
> False. Stop assuming that people who come to different conclusions than you have have not done thorough research.
Sorry. But not buying it.
by cyberax
5/8/2026 at 5:22:21 AM
[flagged]by queenkjuul
5/8/2026 at 5:20:29 AM
Oh yeah, 60 years of arresting people in the US for drug crimes has gone so well. Couldn't be better! Cities that decriminalized have better outcomes.I hope people like you lose every election for the rest of time.
by queenkjuul
5/12/2026 at 5:20:04 PM
People seem to not like stepping over fentanyl zombies. It's a vote winner.by linksnapzz
5/8/2026 at 1:44:51 PM
Which specific cities are you referring to that have better outcomes and which ones have worse outcomes?by 0xBA5ED
5/8/2026 at 6:17:05 AM
> arresting people tends to work and alternatives tend to notWhat I've read many times is that (essentially) the oppposite is widely accepted consensus: Arresting never works. The US tried the 'drug war' for decades and it was ineffective. Do you have evidence otherwise? It's also unjust to criminalize illness and medical problems for poor people (rich people get sympathy, rehab, and lots of second chances).
What does work is overdose prevention, including needle exhanges and safe injection sites, treating addition as the disease it is (which is how it's treated for rich people), and housing (people experiencing the great instability and stress of homelessness are much less likely to make other changes). Maybe some others I'm not thinking of, too.
by mmooss
5/8/2026 at 8:08:20 PM
At least in California, there are a lot of public support programs. I mean, a looooot of public support programs. A LOT. Like, to the point where the state is spending tens of thousands of dollars for each homeless person, and probably north of $100k per person per year for a subset. Talk to a firefighter or paramedic in a CA city sometime. They will tell you, there's "regulars" that they have to deal with every single week. The cops and firefighters know all of them by name.We're paying hours a day in overtime to basically have the cops, firefighters, and EMTs deal with the same small population of mentally ill people on the same street corner every week, for years. These people cannot get better because they choose not to stay in the mental hospital or substance abuse programs offered to them. Someone is 5150'd, placed on a 3-day hold, and 72 hours later they walk out of the hospital and back to the same street corner, where they have a mental breakdown again the following week. You can offer support -- they will basically tell you the same thing, I'm not sick at all, there's nothing wrong with me, I am not a danger to myself or others, and you are shit out of luck.
At the same time, there are way more homeless people who are silently and cleanly living in their cars and showing up to work every day at a low wage job. Most people won't ever see them unless they look closely. Visit /r/urbancarliving sometime to get an idea of what that population looks like. Those people might get a 15 minute "knock" from the cops once a month.
The actually progressive option is to involuntarily incarcerate people who need it, while not criminalizing car/RV living, offering work placement services, housing assistance etc. The most realistic thing would probably be to build subsidized mobile homes and clean, low-rent central places to park an RV.
You correctly identified the biggest thing here though which is making housing affordable. Unfortunately, that will never happen.
by mlsu
5/8/2026 at 8:23:37 PM
I mostly agree with your points, but I think the involuntary incarceration is a major rock and a hard place situation.There are definitely people for whom it would be a compassionate (and often societally optimal) thing to do. Giving the government the power to decide to take people away indefinitely is just a spectacularly bad precedent. Especially right now.
by showerst
5/8/2026 at 9:52:36 PM
Yes, you have to be very, very careful. Lots of abuse with involuntary commitment, that's part of why it was abolished so completely.I mean the reason this is a pipe dream and we all just opt to deal with it is that our state/institutional capacity has been eroded so completely. So, we just take away the public benches and call it a day.
The cruel way to do this is to just criminalize the behavior and then move all these people into the prison system. I think that would be a moral sin, but I see why people go there -- the alternative would be to construct a totally new, parallel mental health system with kinda like a jury/parole board type system, representation, and so on, and make it explicitly not part of the criminal justice system. Since the point is rehabilitation, not justice. All that would probably be insanely expensive, but a society focused on the humanity of its citizens would probably see it as worthwhile. Our society unfortunately, just does not see its citizens that way.
by mlsu
5/9/2026 at 8:37:02 AM
One of the benefits of institutionalizing the problematic homeless (either via incarceration or involuntarily mental health treatment, there's not a whole lot of difference between those two things from the perspective of the person subject to them anyway), is that it would allow the state to relax certain laws about simply being unsheltered without otherwise causing problems for people. Someone who is living silently and cleanly in their car is not a problem for me - I know more than one relatively well-paid, reasonably-intelligent person who is basically living that kind of lifestyle voluntarily - and I would prefer it if they weren't even getting a 15 minute knock from the cops once a month.by JuniperMesos
5/8/2026 at 11:13:40 PM
I live in a shelter, if you looked at the cost per person, it would probably be north 20k per resident to be housed here. This is the overhead of rent, utilities, salaries for case worker, security, maintenance, etc. When you include other parts of the system, it's easily another 5k; this isn't even taking in account of SNAP, cash assistance, medicaid, etc. There is a whole system and it ain't cheap.Now, this isn't to say living is great. You are living in a dorm with 20+ felons, you have bedbugs to contend with, and it's dirty. I still have a normal ass job as well. Being homeless fucking sucks.
by RAMJAC
5/9/2026 at 8:06:21 AM
Any meaningful public support program that actually keeps severely-mentally-ill visibly-homeless people from acting crazy in public will necessarily involve involuntarily incarcerating at least some of them, some of the time. A lot of very dysfunctional people genuinely do not want to cooperate with meaningful public support programs or are simply too out of it to meaningfully consent or not consent to participation in such.by JuniperMesos
5/9/2026 at 8:19:29 AM
That is going right back to false dichotomy. Something can be meaningful and not clean up the streets of all things uncomfortable.by ohnei
5/9/2026 at 7:27:52 PM
Sure, but if it doesn't specifically solve the problem of cleaning up the streets of visibly-homeless people, then it doesn't solve the problem of public transit authorities wanting to remove benches from public transit waiting areas.by JuniperMesos
5/8/2026 at 3:05:41 AM
I didn't create this "false dichotomy", nor did I say that those were the only two options. I'm just observing the fact that the current system that the major cities in the US seem to be employing is to treat homeless as a valid choice, even if much/most of it is a result of addiction and mental illness. The end result of that treating it that way is the death and suffering of people who actually need lots of help and who would be better served by more aggressive tactics.by strictnein
5/8/2026 at 3:17:14 AM
I don't believe it's a deliberate decision by (most) policymakers. I think it's a structural failure across several axes, including failure to make enough housing for it to be affordable, and attacks on every front by people who treat all social programs and public assistance as evil. Most places have one or the other problem, if not both.by JoshTriplett
5/8/2026 at 5:41:04 PM
A drug-addicted/mentally ill chronically unsheltered person is not going to be able to afford a home at any price. If they could hold down any kind of regular job and sustain an income they would find someplace to live.Also most "affordable" housing initiatives attack it by mandating "affordable" for new construction instead of just letting developers build what they can make the most money building. No developer wants to build "affordable" homes if they can build and sell high-end homes. So by imposing "affordability" mandates, they just encourage developers to go elsewhere.
New high-end homes make the older homes more affordable. New "affordable" homes simply don't get built, at least not in anywhere near the numbers that are needed.
by SoftTalker
5/8/2026 at 5:53:29 PM
To your first point: people don't typically start out that way, things spiral down. And it's much harder to get out of that spiral if homes are completely unaffordable. It also doesn't help that the most temperate places (where you won't die of exposure if unsheltered) are also the least affordable places (because they're prosperous and haven't built nearly enough housing).> Also most "affordable" housing initiatives attack it by mandating "affordable" for new construction instead of just letting developers build what they can make the most money building. No developer wants to build "affordable" homes if they can build and sell high-end homes. So by imposing "affordability" mandates, they just encourage developers to go elsewhere.
> New high-end homes make the older homes more affordable. New "affordable" homes simply don't get built, at least not in anywhere near the numbers that are needed.
Complete agreement that the current approach is not working, yes. The right approach is to build, and keep building, until everything is affordable. And the political challenge is the existing cohort of people who think a house should be an asset that appreciates rather than a necessity of life that everyone should be able to afford. People who are put in a particularly bad position by that (e.g. difficulty moving or retiring because housing prices went down) may need help.
by JoshTriplett
5/8/2026 at 7:30:49 PM
And once things have spiraled down, they won't recover just by giving them a home. My town tried that and the homes were quickly trashed to the point of being uninhabitable because nothing (or not enough) was done to address the addictions and other self-destructive behaviors or illness.Any kind of assistance has to be built on a foundation of mandatory rehab/treatment and staying clean or it will fail.
by SoftTalker
5/8/2026 at 2:42:52 PM
Unfortunately, framing the problem as this kind of dichotomy is something people are inclined to do because then the problem can be reduced to the unwillingness of the opposing side to face reality.Sometimes the dichotomy is correct, but the bias exists.
by Anvoker
5/9/2026 at 1:31:32 AM
You should read a little book called Games People Play. Focus particular attention on the section on the game "Indigent."This isn't a resource allocation problem, or rather, it isn't a resource allocation problem the way you seem to think it is.
by User23
5/8/2026 at 2:37:13 AM
Nothing?? What are you talking about? Go look up how much tax money the SF government spends trying to help the unhoused in their current budget. But no amount will fix the problem because if you ask a drug addict if they want help (and it’s not help getting drugs) they usually say “no thanks.” Many addicts are never ready to accept that kind of help. Sadly.by xp84
5/8/2026 at 3:04:35 AM
No amount of help will solve a housing problem in a city where people can't afford to live. Build more housing.by JoshTriplett
5/8/2026 at 3:19:10 AM
Super strongly agree with you on that. But unfortunately building tons of housing is quite politically unpopular as well, unless it’s wildly stupid housing, like the “affordable housing” that costs more (paid by the city) to build than market rate costs for some reason.by xp84
5/9/2026 at 2:36:08 PM
[dead]by jumpman_miya
5/9/2026 at 4:29:35 AM
I think a big part of this queasiness comes from the fact that a lot of the institutions we would put addicts and mentally ill people in really were nightmarish.And ignoring the whole issue of the sanitariums being full of abuse, I don't think you can argue that sticking a drug addict in a regular prison full of criminals is good for them either.
by AussieWog93
5/8/2026 at 8:03:43 AM
The main reasons those places lost support is they became convenient prisons without due process. Why do you think there are so many horror movies based on the setting of a sane person involuntarily put there?While not ideal you gotta admit now that those people that need help are in your face rather than conveniently disappeared you are thinking about their plight some.
Maybe try to think of something better than forever prisons and stop becoming a ghoul.
by citizenpaul
5/10/2026 at 5:47:25 PM
When a drug addict does not have an internal drive to be rid of their addiction, forced treatment will not help.Just putting them somewhere until the withdrawal symptoms fade will not change whatever drove them to use the drugs in the first place.
by jaapz
5/8/2026 at 8:11:23 AM
[flagged]by nextaccountic
5/8/2026 at 4:52:29 AM
They would be better if they were given support. Locking people away is not a solution to anything. You've been sold a lie about the mentally ill, and the homeless, which isn't true.by queenkjuul
5/8/2026 at 6:12:36 AM
'I think you would be better served by not posting to social media and studying personal liberty and ethics.' Should I be able to enforce it? I think people who make comments like those above are much more dangerous than people on the street - the people on the street can't really do harm.Thankfully, we do have liberty, and they can do what they want - and I can do what I want - and it's none of your business whether it's healthy or not. People also smoke, are sedentary (lots of people here), eat very poorly, use psilocybin (relatively popular here), drink too much, etc.
The only way to begin to approach it is, rather than making judgments on overused stereotypes (another reason to be banned from online comments), talk to each person and ask what they are doing and what they need. I know, I know - it's outrageous to ask the opinions of people you deem substandard, even about their own lives.
by mmooss
5/8/2026 at 8:00:21 PM
Yes the guy who screamed “I’m going to f*ing kill you!” Out of nowhere at my daughter and then chased us, or set fire to random trees in my neighborhood for fun, or cut the copper wiring off the side of my house, or took sledge hammers to local park statues, these people are definitely not a problem. No the problem is really the people who think it should stop. Those horrible, insensitive people.They’r being so selfish. Drug addicted should have every right to pull you down screaming by your hair because they’re tweaked out of their mind. And after seeing that, you should be welcoming every one you see to your home.
You’re really the problem for feeling uncomfortable walking by the man jerking off to passerby’s, so intolerant of you.
(Every one of these is a true example I have witnessed, along with too much other insanity to write down, from just the last year in Seattle. so don’t tell me im exaggerating)
by HEmanZ
5/8/2026 at 8:58:36 PM
You are describing actual crimes, not homelessness. Nobody is saying that people who are violent should just be left to their own devices.by InsideOutSanta
5/8/2026 at 10:51:02 PM
And no one is saying eat the homeless.My city is deadlocked on doing anything about the literal crimes I’ve described because acting against violent offenders is seen as oppressing the downtrodden. Building new shelter capacity is insanely difficult because no one wants concentrations of this near them, and concentrated homeless services turn the area into a waste land (like pioneer square) due to the amount of criminal and antisocial behavior. Raising enough money in taxes seems out of the question because everyone thinks someone else should pay.
So you get common crime and antisocial behavior in much of the city and no one can do anything about it.
by HEmanZ
5/8/2026 at 10:17:07 PM
> Every one of these is a true example I have witnessed, along with too much other insanity to write down, from just the last year in SeattleNow that you bring it up, it looks to me like you're exaggerating or extremely unlucky. It reminds me of the litany of crimes people claim happen with immigrants; weren't they eating the cats in one town?
Somehow in my experience in urban life, in many different neighborhoods, I haven't encountered a fraction of what you claim to have seen in the last year, and all the things you describe are so dramatic, while much of what I do know about, not experienced, is mundane and depressing. And of course, nobody would live in cities if things were that bad.
As someone else said, crimes are crimes; plenty of housed people commit them too. I see unhoused people every day and interact regularly, and I haven't seen a crime (of course, crime happens in any population).
Isn't liberty and human rights more important than whatever you're trying to accomplish? You diminish it for others, yours is diminished too.
by mmooss
5/8/2026 at 10:47:34 PM
What cities? You’re right that I never saw anything like this when I lived in Oslo, nor did I see anything like it living in Sydney.I’m reacting to a specific environment in two major west coast cities, Seattle which I now live, and San Francisco where I regularly travel for work. What I’m describing is not unlucky in these cities, it’s “I take the light rail to pioneer square for work every day.”
by HEmanZ
5/8/2026 at 1:45:23 AM
Yes, I don't think that arresting people for the crime of not having money is a good idea.We also cannot seem to fund any actual drug programs, because US citizens hate the idea of anyone getting something for free.
by wiskinator
5/8/2026 at 2:45:11 AM
SF spends ~$100k per homeless person.by socalgal2
5/8/2026 at 4:09:01 AM
Yes but critically none of this money is actually given to the homeless person. So we aren't giving them anything for free we are just dealing with the consequences of them not having a proper support system. Spending money to do that is okay, because it doesn't really directly benefit the homeless person.by lotu
5/8/2026 at 4:15:03 AM
Also the essence of ‘San Francisco has a lot of homeless’ isn’t really a logical argument against those policies since homeless will often migrate to where the functional support services are. San Francisco may well be doing amazing things with getting people back on their feet at a relatively lower cost than prison.You need to go many levels deeper on statistics to understand if it’s working or not.
by AnotherGoodName
5/8/2026 at 5:55:09 PM
> since homeless will often migrate to where the functional support services are.I've heard this a lot but I don't have any reason to believe it's true. Never seen a reputable study that asserts it. I've known a lot of homeless people but none that relocated for this reason. Most who moved were looking for work or trying to get closer to family. Most didn't move at all and were just where they had always been, or in the city they were living in when they became homeless.
by giraffe_lady
5/8/2026 at 7:16:20 PM
when I did homeless outreach in San Diego I was told around 40% of the people we were helping were from out of state that moved there but couldn't stay afloat for various reasons, leaving them homeless in the areaby throwaway-11-1
5/8/2026 at 6:08:30 PM
Drug tourists migrate to San Francisco because they can get free money to buy drugs.by nradov
5/8/2026 at 6:06:26 PM
Sorry this is very wrong. SF has so many homeless people because they come to SF to get free things.Most of that is not direct cash transfers but they absolutely receive more in services than in other places, that is why they attract homeless from all over the country.
by bpodgursky
5/8/2026 at 4:47:08 AM
> arresting people for the crime of not having moneySuch people are not arrested for not having money, but instead for being a pox upon the public by virtue of their behavior.
by gottorf
5/8/2026 at 5:59:26 AM
Aka "the behavior of having no money in public" i.e. laying on benches or sitting on trains etcby queenkjuul
5/8/2026 at 2:12:43 AM
[flagged]by zdragnar
5/8/2026 at 1:37:21 AM
Them staying in the sidewalk is free. Or the cost is so indirect that nobody is responsible for it.Facilities like asylums and jails are super costly though. And extra expensive to operate if you don't want to treat the inmates as cattle.
by artyom
5/8/2026 at 2:17:03 AM
I'll add that treating the inmates like cattle is actually the most expensive option of all in the long term. The USA has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world largely due to high recidivism due to the system not providing proper rehabilitation.So it's costing the USA 65k/yr per inmate on average right now with the 5th highest incarceration rate in the world. The 4 countries above it are not nice places to live contrary to the thought that locking even more people up would make the USA just like the other western nations of the world.
No other country is as stupid as the USA when it comes to homeless. They don't spend a lifetime $65k/yr repeatedly locking up such people. Instead they spend a fraction (when amortised over a lifetime of jail costs) on rehabilitation and public health programs.
by AnotherGoodName
5/8/2026 at 3:56:59 AM
> Them staying in the sidewalk is free.Disagree. When the tax-paying public doesn't feel safe around the people living on the sidewalk, they move and take their tax money with them. That means less money for services, roads, education... everything taxes pay for.
That's the cost.
by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS
5/9/2026 at 5:15:09 PM
That sounds correct in theory, but is it true? Are tax revenue down? Are vacancy rates up?by amanaplanacanal
5/8/2026 at 2:06:53 AM
The cost is not measured in dollars, but rather in the pollution of the pubic space. People feel less safe and more bothered. Stores nearby get less business, and suffer more theft. Passerbys get accosted.by Taek
5/8/2026 at 7:40:03 PM
> We've decided that putting the mentally ill in a facility and arresting people for public drug use is not something we're comfortable with at the expense of those other things.We've decided this about every kind of health care. Instead of providing treatment for people who can't afford its bizarre, artificial prices, we prefer to leave them on the street or warehouse them in prisons. After leaving them in prison for an arbitrary amount of time, we then release them into the streets again, with nothing, more screwed up than when they went in, to murder you.
I have no idea what the "tough love" advocates are advocating for. Locking them up in prison is like hiding rotting meat in a freezer; it only works if you're willing to do it forever. The only answer that seems compatible with the spoiled upper-middle class worldview is to shoot the homeless (which often happened* in a lot of South American countries through semi-official paramilitaries), or to drive them into the wilderness outside of town to hopefully die on their own.
As the layoffs of programmers continue, I predict there will be a lot of changes of heart that won't matter at all, because they will be coming from homeless people. Middle-class culture is all about only being interested in issues that harm you directly, even if that issue is somebody dying too loudly nearby.
-----
[*] Happens? My info is out of date.
by pessimizer
5/9/2026 at 1:30:28 AM
This postulates that policy is set by consensus.Now I haven't done any scientific polling, but my informal anecdotal experience is so overwhelmingly to the contrary that I'm comfortable believing that consensus isn't determining policy here.
by User23
5/9/2026 at 10:01:01 AM
This.Even an extremely small population of homeless/junkies is enough to "taint" benches.
The same with parks.
by NotGMan
5/9/2026 at 5:55:15 PM
There are other options that are more effective than either of the things you mentioned, but people's feelings get in the way.by breakyerself
5/8/2026 at 4:36:55 AM
but it is apparently the consensus.Not everywhere, fortunately.
by userbinator
5/8/2026 at 5:08:34 PM
This sounds like it's from someone who say a video on the two square blocks in SF or Philly and has let the propaganda make them believe this is common everywhere in every American city.by thinkingtoilet
5/8/2026 at 2:11:43 AM
What's wrong with both? Why can't we have public benches, and also not arrest drug users if they are sitting on the benches and smoking?by pocksuppet
5/8/2026 at 3:59:07 AM
Because sitting on benches quickly turns into living on benches. Then the drug dealers move in, because there's a ready customer base of drug users.Then the productive members of society move out.
by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS
5/8/2026 at 5:08:03 AM
So basically the problem is that productive members of society and drug dealers are incapable of existing near to each other?Why is that?
I pass by some drug dealers sometimes on the way to work. I don't see the problem. Occasionally I get asked if I want to buy some drugs. I don't want to buy drugs so nothing else happens.
by pocksuppet
5/8/2026 at 6:32:39 PM
> [why are] productive members of society and drug dealers incapable of existing near to each other?Drug dealers are criminals. Criminals commit other crimes and attract other criminals and crime. For example, rival drug dealers who want to take their spot and use violence.
by triceratops
5/8/2026 at 8:53:36 PM
Seems like something decriminalizing drugs would solve then.by InsideOutSanta
5/9/2026 at 5:20:51 PM
This only solves one problem (you don't get thrown in jail for using drugs), but there are other problems. Drug dealers and gangs still exist. The drug user doesn't know what he is actually buying. Overdoses are easy to do since you don't actually know what you bought.The way to solve these issues is legalization and regulation.
by amanaplanacanal
5/9/2026 at 3:14:47 AM
So the problem is that someone who does one crime is a criminal and being a criminal means someone does every crime? For example, someone who removes DRM from a video game is a criminal, and therefore he also shoots people, so we have to put DRM removers in jail to decrease shooting deaths?I have to admit, I'm not really following the logic there.
by pocksuppet
5/9/2026 at 1:40:30 PM
When you argue in bad faith like this you shouldn’t be surprised nobody takes you seriously.by joenot443
5/9/2026 at 3:39:24 AM
Because you made a strawman out of their point. Reasonable people avoid drug markets for good reason.Drug crimes and non-drug crimes (assault, robbery, x/y/z) commonly cluster[1], and citizens with working risk estimation skills move on and cede the space.
by 9x39