Here is the full text of Trump’s order, titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” which I’ll be dissecting in this post.
A study from UCSF’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative last year was one of the deepest dives into California’s crisis in decades. It found that drug use and mental health problems are not the driver behind people losing housing; the primary reason is the increasing precariousness of the working poor.
The order does not mention the plethora of economic factors that are driving homelessness— low wages (between 40-60 percent of the homeless are employed)., no social safety net, and the astronomical house of housing aided by a national “information-sharing” cartel of mega landlords that dominate the market in certain cities and engage in price-fixing, homebuilder cartels constraining supply. the explosion of vacation rentals, a healthcare system in which we pay for insurance that denies us care and bankrupts the unlucky. That’s to name a few.
The study also showed how the homeless population is getting older and is often the result of just one bad break.
Move along people. Nothing to see here. Income inequality are just woke words.
Politicians are unified how to address the issue. Git em out of sight.
Democrats like California Governor Gavin Newsom were out ahead of Trump on the issue. He signed an executive order a year ago calling for cities to “humanely remove encampments from public spaces.” That order, of course, also did nothing to address the systemic problems behind homelessness, including a lack of affordable housing and Social Security benefits not coming close to covering rent leading to skyrocketing numbers of homeless senior citizens. How “humane” can Newsom’s policy be?
just had an incident in my town over the weekend. A homeless, mentally ill person stabbed 11 people in a Walmart. He was not from here, but lived in a homeless encampment in the woods just outside of town, in proximity to some very high dollar residential real estate. The Police rousted the encampment in May, help was offered to the people, but there were not enough beds for everybody to get placed. So this 42 year old white male was living on the streets, and he snapped. Luckily, he had a knife for a weapon, not a gun, or the bodies would have been piled up.
There used to be a hospital for the mentally ill in town, but that got shut down in the Reagan years. I bike, hike, and run a lot, and I see mentally ill people once in awhile. Seems like they are always having a loud conversation with themselves when I am passing by. Only once has one gotten aggressive toward me, in a wooded area of a trail, where the path is narrow, and a hill on 1 side and water on the other limit the ways to evade a problem. I did not back down when he came at me, and he actually broke off and went past me, all the while carrying on an argument with himself. It was pretty bizarre, and a little scary.
We all need to practice situational awareness, there are some unwell people amongst us. I am for paying more in taxes and reopening hospitals and homes for the mentally ill, but it would appear that there is zero chance of that happening in present day America.
I vaguely know someone who is a severe paranoid schizophrenic. Can snap in an instant and become violent. I’ve been told to never be in a room alone with the person. In a rural Texas town where there is no support for someone like this. People like this will end up in prison after a bad episode, then end up in a half-way house to “acclimate”. Then get kicked out. Do it again.
We have a society that claims it wants to help those who truly need the help. That is a lie.
Ayup. When the (L&Ses) in Lansing shut down most of the mental hospitals, the county jails became the default mental wards. That took the cost of the care of these people off the state’s budget, and onto the county’s. “mission accomplished”.
I’m for that too, in theory. Based on our current environment, I’m afraid that sweeps and the like will only end up locking people away, potentially in very terrible facilities. Sure, our streets might be clean and we won’t have to interact with the “undesirables”. But that doesn’t mean I want other humans subjected to a bunch of Nurse Ratcheds…or worse.
The move from institutionalism began in 1980. Many mental health facilities were h3llholes. It was hoped that many could be treated on an outpatient basis with medication from local health facilities. I assume local community facilities were overwhelmed plus likely suffered funding cuts. Not many politicians seek a mental ill constituency. Thus they are ignored like the homeless…until it is impossible to ignore them.
The current administration will treat this as a crime issue.
Public Mental Health care is very difficult, probably impossible, to accomplish without an actual pro-active Public Health Care system of some sort.
Pretending to rely on police, trash collectors, Public Park groundsmen, volunteers and etc to find, evaluate, and long term track and assist mentally ill folk is pure idiocy. That is what we are pretending to be doing, and, what a surprise, IT DOES NOT WORK!!!
Sweden has successfully decentralized inpatient mental health care, maintaining some inpatient beds in hospitals and specialized facilities while diverting resources to community based programs and services.
For every $1 invested in scaling up treatment for common mental disorders, there is a return of $4 in improved health and productivity,…
Thanks eldemonio! Exactly.
We USAians are stunningly arrogant and stupid on the health issue. It is a form of social blindness rooted in the lobbying wings of our “health industry”, led by the AMA for over a century but now mostly brought to us courtesy of United Healthcare and other fake “health insurer” parasitic leaches, including AARP as their sales pimp.
#43 proposed a mandatory, national, mental health screening program. His first targets were school children, and their teachers, which brought immediate screams of 'thought police". He had presided over a pilot program in Texas, a few years before. iirc, the conclusion on the Texas program was all it did was increase sales of psychoactive drugs.
Where do you put the line, between screening for mental health, and screening for “incorrect thought”?
This is highly disputable. Also, the optics of drug addicts occupying/ encroaching public areas like parks, freeways, city walkways are strong and you will not convince the people otherwise.
I am certainly sympathetic to homelessness. But democratic solution like low-cost housing should be part of any new development is not actually building low-cost housing, rather, in an development they allocate few houses for lower income people. While it may benefit few families it is truly not creating low-cost housing. When I lived in CA, a new housing development came on the hill behind ours. The average price on the houses are 1.25 M to 1.75 m, they allocated 5 houses on that for low-income people. It is a lottery for 5 households. But it is not a fix.
Zoning, allowing multi-family houses with smaller home sizes (e.g 400 sq feet) to various solutions exist. No one addresses them. You cannot build McMansions and giving it to low-income people will only create resentment even among supporters.
Using medical diagnoses for political purposes is a real danger, just like using police to maintain civil order can be done so as to advance evil objectives rather than done with civil sanity.
Goodness requires a virtuous educated healthy citizenry! Ooops, I am trapped in causative loop that seems to be in trouble….
Goodness gracious! You’re not the only one stuck in a causative loop.
A certain party unable to buck their leader + leader appointing incompetent / immoral people - public outcry for obvious corruption = we’re screwed for a lifetime.