The Supreme Court cleared the way for cities to enforce bans on homeless people sleeping outside in public places on Friday, overturning a California appeals court ruling that found such laws amount to cruel and unusual punishment when shelter space is lacking.
DB2
âThe law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.â
â Anatole France
I guess Gavin wonât be sleeping in the park.
DB2
I am reminded of the âCity of the Deadâ in Cairo, which we saw (from a bus) while on our tour. We were told there are thousands of squatters living among the mausoleums and graveyards, and there are, but in truth there are also mini-cities ramshackle built without codes and without planning which house the poor.
I wonder why, and bear with me here, a city canât just find some space outside the center zone and pile up 10,000 shipping crates and turn them into some sort of âhousingâ and decamp them there. Of course there would have to be basic utilities: water and sewer, and I suppose some way of feeding them (charity soup kitchen?) but just wading into the center and shouting âGo Away!â doesnât seem like it will be a very good answer.
This sensible suggestion would be stymied by the well-meaning folks who would demand zoning rules similar to existing housing.
In the early 20th century immigrants slept in boarding houses in 3 shifts. My grandfather told me of a Yiddish expression that meant âSleep fast, I need the pillow.â That wouldnât be allowed today.
In the mid-20th century there were SROs (single room occupancy hotels) which charged a low price for a room with a shared common lavatory on the floor. That wouldnât be allowed today.
Iâm always astonished by the current high cost of âtiny housesâ and residences built for the homeless. The cost of the projects are published in the local newspapers. They cost more than existing homes in the local town.
While I agree with you, @Goofyhoofy , that a collection of shipping containers with a centralized sanitary facility would be a lot better than the homeless have now, you can be sure that some kind-hearted people would insist that every container must have its own foundation, electricity and plumbing which would dramatically increase the cost. And âsome way of feeding them (charity soup kitchen?)â which is absolutely ridiculous and turns the bare-bones habitation into a summer camp.
I can also guarantee that the container city would immediately become a center of crime and drug-dealing.
Can you say NIMBY? The local residents would organize massively to prevent it.
Wendy
My crux move in establishing a sanely priced boarding house for students within walking distance of MIT Harvard back in 1973 was finding a âtroubledâ apartment building in Somerville with a biddable alcohol sodden owner and a âtraditionalâ Somerville building inspector who could be reasonably reliably cajoled and bribed.
I rebuilt the terrifyingly Edisonian era electrical panel myself, not to the then current code but to my own far more practical standard of safety, I invested in fire extinguishers, and I held fire escape practice for prospective tenants (involving a rope ladder out the window) to scare off the weak and enlist the âbest of the bestâ. Accepting only guys as tenants made sharing only three bathrooms for 20 - 25 easier, and I provided chamber pots and wash stands in each room (cheap cheap cheap at junk stores of the time because the pretty bygone things still existed, unwanted and unused, in the zillions).
That was hard to do back then. It would be next to impossible now (including finding competent tenants).
The Victorian/Edwardian age inflected a dictatorship of insane persnickity pseudo requirements on life, originally only for the mid class and above, but overtaking all through bureaucracies everywhere, and we have never recovered.
My Mexican neighbors have cousins working doggedly, essentially and illegally, all over the USA, and when I meet them at local social events (coming home for Weddings, Funerals, Quinceñeras at times 'cuz they DO expertly cross and recross the border) I have asked about living arrangements. One called what he did the âtres quatro ochoâ and said it was very common: three shifts of four guys crammed in four beds per room, each having the right to the bed for eight hours.
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Hereâs a photo of the âPallet Shelterâ used in Vancouver â cost $3,500 to $7,500 depending on options.
The only reason you rarely see this kind of cost effective solution elsewhere is because too much public policy in the United States is informed by racism, ignorance and innumeracy.
intercst
Paying for that would still âburdenâ the âJCsâ. When the US embraced âsupply side economicsâ in the 80s. I would listed to the advocates, and envision their plan for the poor to be shanty towns, like some Latin American cities are notorious for.
True. But at least around here, even the well-to-do figured out that having an unsupervised homeless camp across the street from your home was impacting both your property value and quality of life. And a few of them worked cooperatively on a cost effective solution.
Across the River in Portland, the wealthy seemed to regard homelessness as just a cost of doing business when it was limited to the less prosperous East side of the city and a few square blocks of downtown. It wasnât until the tents started appearing in front of the multi-million dollar homes on the West side of town that the elites considered it a problem in need of a solution.
intercst
The Chinese solution? Forced labor camps for the indigent? âThose people need structure and discipline in their livesâ, right?
Many of the homeless are drug addicts and/or mentally ill. Incapable of any work more complex than breaking rocks. Can you say âQuality Controlâ?
Many homeless people need long-term psychiatric inpatient care. OhhâŠsorryâŠmost of the mental hospitals were shut down in the 1980s. The few that are open are mostly short-stay for crisis care.
Wendy
Thatâs certainly true. But about 30% of the homeless population are just people being priced out of their homes with the rapid rise in rents and housing prices. Even the best of us are going to get feral after 6-12 months of living in a tent or sleeping in your vehicle. These âSafe Stayâ camps in Vancouver are bridge back to civilization for some.
It makes sense to spend a small amount of money to save the homeless people you can.
The âpulling yourself up by your bootstrapsâ crowd is a big part of the homelessness problem.
intercst
Yes to all this topicâs arguments and conclusions.
There are no simple answers to homelessness or innumerancy or broken families or crimes or addiction orâŠ
Unfortunately the individual problems can easily be listed (homelessness, crime, corruption, fraud, heedlessnessâŠ) but the cures are not only complex and numberous, but need to be integrated. That type of discussion, let alone the type of politics needed to engage with and really solve the problems, are not available to us now.
We need
more sensibly located and built housing,
much much more and higher quality education beyond reading riting rithmetic to
the practices of basic civility and citizenship;
integrated professional social intervention and provision of healthcare both physical and mental, to the poor homeless displaced;
protection of critical shared public and civil spaces such as parks⊠I grow tedious.
Hmmm, I know!
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Some years/decades ago, a âsolutionâ to wayward youth being pushed in Michigan was âboot campsâ, of regimentation and discipline. Part of the puritanical, punishment oriented, mind set that is so popular among certain groups. Wonder what happened to those programs?
Steve
Most shut down for various predictable failings, and those that survived longer moved to places where USA civil law did not reach.
There are numerous tales like these:
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So they are qualified to be Supreme Court JusticesâŠ
I like the sound of this so I looked it up.
âEach Safe Stay has 20 two-person structures that offer shelter for up to 40 residents. A nonprofit operator provides 24/7 onsite management and services.â
This is very nice but itâs also inefficient and expensive. As I said up-thread, well-meaning people are designing and building high-quality individual housing that costs a huge amount of taxpayer money for a minimal benefit. When considering total costs, taxpayers could support five times the number of family units by simply renting apartments at market rate for those who are unsheltered.
This wonât make a dent in the huge problem of homelessness.
In 2022, counts of individuals (421,392 people) and chronically homeless individuals (127,768) reached record highs in the history of data collection. [end quote]
If we shift the focus to harm reduction for as many people as possible within realistic budgets the whole paradigm will need to shift. Any shelter is better than no shelter at all. A large vacant lot with a roof, a water spigot, a sanitary trailer with a row of toilets and a foot patrol police officer will benefit more homeless people than a Potemkin Village of pretty mini-homes. But well-meaning people would reject the bare-bones approach.
Wendy
The "total costsâ are higher because these folks need more than just rent after being traumatized with 6-12 months of homelessness
The tax subsidized, for-profit apartments built by the real estate developers who own the City Council require an income at the 40th percentile and above (about $85,000/yr) Where are the people with incomes below that supposed to live?
For-profit capitalism with a big cut to Private Equity hasnât been a solution.
Section 8 Housing vouchers tend to be severely underfunded (2 to 3 year waiting lists for low-income senior housing) and many landlords discriminate against Section 8 renters. I suppose you could fully-fund the Section 8 program and eliminate the waiting list, but youâd just be funding Private Equity â kind of like the 20% skim rate in Obamacare and 15% plus in Medicare Advantage.
Iâve always thought Vienna Austria had the right idea on housing. About half the units in the City are Govât owned with rents based on income. That reduces the ability of landlords in the private market to price gouge.
In Vienna, public housing is affordable and desirable - Marketplace
intercst
Iâve always thought that Denmark has the right idea on just about everything since they have the worldâs happiest population.
Why donât we just imagine that we can franchise other countriesâ governments? /sarcasm
Wendy
What the other countries do is socialistical, therefore, unacceptable, by default, in Shiny-land.
Michael Moore had a similar idea, a while back. Funny. In the trailer he talks about the progress the US had made to that point, so further improvement was possible. Of course, he said that in 2016, before the US went even more retrograde.
