Sorry, you don't know what you are talking about. There's report after report, from highly trusted sources such as Stanford, showing that up to 80% of the issue is mental health and 50% of those afflicted are addicted to drugs, with another 50% alcohol.
The ONLY way to improve this is to stop the flow of drugs. And then, yes, we probably need to rethink some of our laws so we can have the ability to force people into programs to help them.
Housing addicts and alcoholics or those with serious mental health issues does not fix anything at all. All you've accomplished it to make them invisible to society. Good job. They are still fucked.
It's like lots of other issues, people love to jump on a moral high ground that sounds great. Feels good, right? It helps nobody at all. Just like safe places for addicts to inject themselves and free needles, etc. Somehow the term "moronic" isn't enough to describe these ideas.
Talk to mental health professionals who actually work with the homeless --as I have, because we have many in our social group-- and you might just learn your ideas are not aligned with reality at all. Not even close.
> Sorry, you don’t know what you are talking about.
Yes, I do.
> There’s report after report, from highly trusted sources such as Stanford, showing that up to 80% of the issue is mental health and 50% of those afflicted are addicted to drugs, with another 50% alcohol.
Yes, there is lots of evidence that homelessness, addiction, and mental health issues are deeply intertwined (there’s a lot less clarity on root causation, and the evidence on solutions leans very heavily in favor of housing as key, but all of them needing to be addressed together. I wasn’t dismissing mental health and addiction as important areas to address, I was mocking the reductive, dismissive claim that spending money on housing and still having the problem proves that that is an incorrect place to invest; you could say the same thing just as much about mental health and addiction, because very large chunks of money have been spent on those things and…the problem persists. But, of course, that’s because the logic is bunk, and its just as stupid applied to housing as it is to behavioral health.
Spending money or how much is spent, as a metric, is meaningless. Ridiculous, really.
What matters are effective measures.
What also matters is what is attainable with the legal framework we have, not some fantasy land where you just put people in rooms for free and the problem is fixes.
Of course you have to house people who can't fend for themselves. Of course you have to feed them. Of course you have to treat them. Of course you have to provide training and counseling so they can rejoin society, get a job and have a life.
Of course.
Of course.
Of course!
And yet, the problem isn't housing. Do they need a place to live that isn't the streets? Duh! Of course. However, above all, what they need is effective treatment and training. Without that, no amount of free housing fixes the problem.
Years ago I had an employee who would occasionally not come to work for a few days here and there. We never knew what was goin on. He was a good guy. We dealt with it as best we could.
Three months later the police knock on our door. He was found dead behind a 7-Eleven in the neighborhood. Turns out he was an alcoholic. It also turns out he would go into a drinking spree with almost every paycheck he got from us. He was deeply addicted to alcohol and nobody had a clue.
Well, I later met his brother. He told me his family had been trying to help him for decades. Nothing they could do about it at all. Once again, the laws I refer to. We cannot force people into treatment of any kind. Or, for that matter, housing. This guy was in his early 40's. He made good money doing construction work. He had housing. He had a car. He did not lack resources at all. And yet he was found dead by the trashcans behind a 7-Eleven.
The root cause is mental health, drugs and addiction.
The problem is we lack the legal tools to be able to interdict and help people under the grip of these afflictions.
Therefore, the only potential solution is some form of severe clamp-down on drugs and alcohol as well as coming up with an intelligent way to deal with mental health issues.
These are very difficult problems to solve. Some more than others.
We can definitely be extremely effective against illicit drugs. Violently effective. That would help a lot of people. Yet, for some reason, politicians don't seem interested in doing a thing about it.
Alcohol is tough. We can't ban it. Not sure how you keep alcoholics from alcohol. Again, the legal framework just isn't there for this. I don't know. Also, I don't drink alcohol. Never developed a taste for it. So, I don't really understand the appeal.
some of the inaction is truly disconcerting. We are being invaded by all kinds of fentanyl-laced products through the southern border, and our government is doing nothing to shut this down in a decisive manner. I mean, literally shit disguised as candy is coming through in industrial amounts:
The problem isn't money. Or how much of it we might spend. It is not making the right decisions and not going after root causes of problems. The root causes are nowhere near to housing. Housing is a necessary tool for rehabilitation, of course. However, nothing will be solved unless the root causes are addressed with serious effectiveness first, or simultaneously.
I will remind you that my reply was to this statement (not made by you):
> Homelessness is caused primarily by a lack of homes
> Spending money or how much is spent, as a metric, is meaningless. Ridiculous, really.
I agree, that's why I’ve been mocking you for setting it up as a metric (and for misrepresenting the facts when you did so.)
> What also matters is what is attainable with the legal framework we have,
While I disagree with a lot of your rant, this is definitely true.
> Therefore, the only potential solution is some form of severe clamp-down on drugs and alcohol
We've tried, in both cases; neither is effectively attainable within anything like the legal framework we have, and even trying has massive adverse effects in other areas.
The solution is adequate housing (both quantitatively and with distributive support) [0] + much better health, especially behavioral health (which encompasses both what is usually known as mental health and substance use disorder prevention and treatment) support.
> The root causes are nowhere near to housing
The root causes are complex, but housing absolutely is one of them, and often preceds manifestation or significant deepening of health (behavioral and physical health) problems that make housing alone and inadequate solution for that individual. Adequate housing is not only necessary for other interventions for the currently homeless, it is an even more important preventive measure to reduce the rate at which people become homeless.
[0] And most of what has been seriously tried in CA is too little, too late on distributive support. Rather than actually achieving quantitatively adequate housing, though there are long-term measures toward adequacy finally beginning to exert some force.
The ONLY way to improve this is to stop the flow of drugs. And then, yes, we probably need to rethink some of our laws so we can have the ability to force people into programs to help them.
Housing addicts and alcoholics or those with serious mental health issues does not fix anything at all. All you've accomplished it to make them invisible to society. Good job. They are still fucked.
It's like lots of other issues, people love to jump on a moral high ground that sounds great. Feels good, right? It helps nobody at all. Just like safe places for addicts to inject themselves and free needles, etc. Somehow the term "moronic" isn't enough to describe these ideas.
Talk to mental health professionals who actually work with the homeless --as I have, because we have many in our social group-- and you might just learn your ideas are not aligned with reality at all. Not even close.