Canada has these problems not due to lack of social welfare spending, but due to institutional barriers to taking drug addicts off the street and into long-term care homes.
Vancouver used to have a mental institution where the patients worked a farm. When it closed, its DTES district swelled with drug addicts whose condition rapidly deteriorated from drug use.
Involuntary commitment and forced labor are not exactly amenable to liberal democracy, so it's understandable why there was such pressure to close the institutions and repeal vagrancy laws, but now the pro-leniency movement has gone too far, and all across liberal cities it's become a free-for-all that is absolutely devasting all parties involved: the ordinary citizens who become victims of rampant property crime, the vulnerable who are predated upon by drug dealers and who themselves commit vast amounts of crime to feed their habits, and the taxpayer whose hard-earned resources are thrown into a money pit with worse than neutral effects.
Currently this is compounded by the outrageous cost of living in any city and the heavy discrimination towards the homeless. Further away but still canada Ontario is $1200 cad for a 2 bedroom and $900 for single, that's at it's cheapest point. However If you're paying for it by welfare be it disability or Ontarios version of unemployment - you'll be denied. Doesn't matter if you have the money upfront and guaranteed, landlords don't want people who are homeless. Government housing is a 2-5 year waiting list. There's people right now on disability whom can have rent covered in its entirety, apartment complex landlords refuse. Yet some wonder how homelessness continues.
Quite frankly it is not worth the pain and expense of leasing housing to people who are on section 8 or similar welfare programs, if you are an independent landlord. Margins are not great to begin with, and a tenant that trashes the place or refuses to pay, quickly wipes out any profits. It's not a very good risk to take in the current market.
If I remember correctly the government pays you to house the tenants. But yes, they trash the premises and speaking to someone that does this, the only way the margins work is if you do all the fixes yourself.
There was heavier discrimination towards the homeless in the past, with vagrancy laws for instance. The situation has gotten much worse as society has become more tolerant of homelessness/drug-use while providing far more services to those in that lifestyle.
Housing costs are indeed a problem however. The largest cities in Canada, as in the US, have seen rental rates increase as a share of average income. One study looking at the US blames this on rising restrictions on land-use since the 1960s, which has prevented housing supply from expanding to the meet the growth in housing demand:
Sadly yes. There are usually thousands of reason, why they became scum in the first place and it is important to ask those questions and find ways of improvement - but those are not helpful for the present situation at hand, when others have to deal with actual fear.
* the vulnerable who are predated upon by drug dealers
* who themselves commit vast amounts of crime
* feed their habits
* the taxpayer
* hard-earned resources
* thrown
* a money pit
* worse than neutral effects
This reads as a list of right-wing scare phrases used in any political campaign to motivate conservative voting. This doesn't read as apolitical to people who actually live in the places these phrases are applied to and it seems to be characterizing the people in these places, "liberal cities", as either fools or sub-human villains. Also, if you are one of the people demonized you don't recognize yourself in the description.
I'm a big fan of liberal democracy, so this was an argument against involuntary commitment and forced labor, not an argument against liberal democracy.
The 'liberal democracy' reference is not using 'liberal' in the same context as the 'liberal cities' I referred to later.
>>the vulnerable who are predated upon by drug dealers
I wouldn't characterize that as a talking point associated with the right at all. The left is known for displacing blame for the misbehavior of drug addicts onto external forces, and this particular point does the same. Though it does sound critical of drug dealers, which is a right-ish argument.
Anyway, it's impossible to not sound political, when the problem is political. And it's impossible to not be critical of the left, when it is mostly the left that is to blame. Left-wing run cities are much worse off than right-wing ones with respect to homelessness, violent crime, drug-abuse, etc, by any metric you look at, and they got that way, from a starting state of much greater social order and more functional civic life, under decades of left-wing policies that gradually became more extreme.
Why compare the US to Europe, and not leftist cities in the US to right-wing ones in the US?
That removes a huge number of potential confounding factors that could explain differences in outcome, letting the effects of differences in policy be better revealed.
The point isn't that "liberal" is a dirty word. It's that when you throw all those things together it sounds not like a dispassionate description of reality but propaganda meant to motivate action against domestic political opponents -- not to help people in the city and heal society but to demonize them. The "law and order" platform has been around a long time and has always sounded like this.
It should be also mentioned that HN leans left, so when similar left-wing scare phrases, such as comparing Trump/GOP to Nazis comes up, or similar "the opposition are fools" topics such as anti-mask/vax, global-warming etc; It's seen as correct and acceptable.
It's the same kind of thing as right-wingers acting hostile to any negativity towards police/military, even if criticism is valid. Criticise lenient policies in cities with vagrancy problems, and it's touching a nerve.
Stalin had a much better idea: ship the mental defectives off to gulags in Siberia.
It's important to consider the criteria used when we select individuals for internment.
One should also well consider the quantity of dog-whistles one embeds in a neutral-appearing comment. Using 'liberal' as an epithet, using the term 'ordinary citizens' to distinguish from those who need to be deprived of rights, bringing the idea of those who pay taxes as being especially worthy of government protection... these are all talk radio jingo.
A governing institution that interns individuals based on being different, or not morially aligned, of not thinking the correct thoughts has been tried often in the past and indeed there are many regimes around the world who still do so today. If society feels the need to institutionalize people for their thoughts it should at least formalize the crime in law and open the process to justice instead of relying on the fiat of those who hold the reigns of power.
Alternatively, maybe a neutral-appearing comment is indeed neutral, and doesn't contain "dog-whistles" just because you disagree with it. By saying it contains such things you are assigning a sinister motive to the comment without requiring evidence, because it's a "dog-whistle", so we have to trust you that 'liberal' is being used as an epithet, or that using 'ordinary citizens' to distinguish the homeless is something sinister.
> governing institution that interns individuals based on being different, or not morially aligned, of not thinking the correct thoughts
You are talking about what? apartheid? communist regimes?
Homeless people aren't being treated differently for "not thinking the correct thoughts", or "not being morally aligned". They are treated differently from ordinary people, but if any ordinary person did the same they would be treated that way too. Being treated differently based on behaviour is not necessarily wrong.
> Homeless people aren't being treated differently for "not thinking the correct thoughts", or "not being morally aligned".
Homeless people who hear voices or are delusional are treated differently precisely because they are not thinking the correct thoughts.
Homeless people who indulge in self-mediation with alcohol or other drugs are treated differently precisely because those behaviours are not considered morally aligned.
> They are treated differently from ordinary people, but if any ordinary person did the same they would be treated that way too.
Plenty of people with homes are addicts. Plenty of people with homes suffer from depression or other conditions. I don't read a lot about how they should be rounded up by the authorities and reformed or institutionalized.
> Being treated differently based on behaviour is not necessarily wrong.
In the 1930s Soviet Union under Josef Stalin, political opposition was considered a mental illness just like schizophrenia and hysteria. You were considered crazy of you did not support the regime. Thousands of these crazies were rounded up, often in the middle of the night, and institutionalized in an attempt to cure them. The fresh air and honest labour of camps in Siberia were considered just the thing to help.
Sure, it's not necessarily wrong to treat someone differently based on behaviour. We consider it reasonable to isolate an individual who demonstrably poses a danger to others. The line is poorly drawn when it comes to differentiating between danger and inconvenience. Is seeing someone in a park smelling like urine and talking to someone you can't see enough of a threat to be isolated and force-fed mind-altering drugs? Does making unproven accusations demonstrate enough possibility of danger that we should "lock her up"?
Where does the line get drawn, and who has the privilege of drawing it?
"not thinking the correct thoughts" would usually mean not subscribing to conventional opinion, not literally a euphemism for mental illness. And ones "morality" is usually considered to be a persons sober opinion, not things they do while on drugs.
Twisting the terms to fit the homeless means it applies to historical examples less - the persecution of certain demographics for their beliefs was not based on drug-induced anti-social behaviour.
> Plenty of people with homes are addicts
what kind of addict? What are they addicted to that they manage to keep a home?
If they are to hold on to that resource they maybe their situation isn't comparable?
> Plenty of people with homes suffer from depression or other conditions
What "other conditions"? depression isn't at all comparable to antisocial behaviour, but in fact if your depression leads to mania, self-harm, or self-neglect you may well be institutionalised.
> political opposition was considered a mental illness
And this was a determination made by doctors or medical professionals comparable to todays medical professionals?
How many of the politically opposed refused to take care of themselves as a result of their opposition? Is self-neglect difficult to distinguish from political motivation?
> differentiating between danger and inconvenience
The "inconvenience" of political opposition isn't at all the same thing.
laws and regulations exist guaranteeing political freedom, vagrancy shouldn't be crime itself, but anti-social behaviour shouldn't be excused on the basis of vagrancy.
> Is seeing someone in a park smelling like urine and talking to someone you can't see enough of a threat to be isolated and force-fed mind-altering drugs?
No, but where was that suggested? And by "force-fed mind-altering drugs" do you mean in all cases, or after a medical professional evaluates the person and promotes that as the best course of action (in which case its no longer based on the initial scenario you describe).
> Does making unproven accusations demonstrate enough possibility of danger that we should "lock her up"?
What are you responding to? What "unproven accusations"? I feel like you are making broad counterpoints to points never made.
Hepatitis A seems to have resurged in San Diego, California a bit over three years ago. It traveled north from there and reached Washington state I think like over a year ago.
In the meantime, I've seen articles about "the return of Medieval diseases" to California on the front page of HN.
The reason this stuff should concern you is not simply compassion for the poorest of the poor but because disease can be caught by anyone. If you create conditions that serve as a breeding ground for serious illness in some people, you create conditions that put everyone at risk.
This is also why more developed countries need to be concerned with what goes on in less developed countries: We are breeding antibiotic resistant infections in some places due to a lack of adequate hygiene and then sometimes those people get medevaced elsewhere for treatment.
The issue here is not "Wow, we treat homeless people like crap!" Yeah, we do. The issue is "And even if you don't care how we treat homeless people, you should care that we are breeding diseases that we see as in the past and this puts everyone at risk."
Social justice issues are public health issues a la "The life you save may be your own."
Modern western mentality in general, and HN hivemind in particular has completely embraced the societal explanations behind success or failure. If you're a millionaire, it's just luck and people around you; if you're homeless, it's the opposite. Nothing that you personally do really matters, and people deep down are all the same.
This may be a reaction to the opposite viewpoint that was popular in the old, WASP US, but I do think that it's been taken a bit too far now. If you think that "we treat homeless people like crap", ask yourself: would you wanted your own success or failure to be wholly attributed to circumstances out of your control? Would it feel good to be so stripped of agency?
For me personally, to respect a person also means to treat him more like a responsible adult and less than a mindless child.
>> If you're a millionaire, it's just luck and people around you; if you're homeless, it's the opposite.
I don't know what "the hivemind" says, but being homeless is, indeed, "just luck"; in particular, misfortune- the kind that can befall anyone. If I understand correctly, in the US for instance, having a serious accident or falling seriously ill can lead to bankruptcy and homelessness, through no obvious fault of one's own (except perhaps people should not partake into dangerous activities like sports for recreation).
That doesn't apply to the chronically homeless. The majority of homeless people at any given time are 'down on their luck' and relatively quickly get out of homelessness. You also have to factor in the role drug use and mental illness play into homelessness. Many of the chronically homeless fit into one of those two categories, and a subset of those people do not want or will not accept help.
You're mixing two different things in your argumentation: what can theoretically happen, and what typically happens. Majority of people have to completely alienate their friends and family with their asocial behaviour to become homeless.
I've only been technically homeless and only slept on the street once in my entire life, but I have some time volunteering, talking and interacting with them, and in my personal experience, overwhelming majority of them are not just normal people who felt on hard times. I'm completely sure that if they took rational decisions and controlled their impulses, majority of them would not be where they are.
However, and this is a very important point: division between mental illness and bad decisions is very murky, so I'm not making any moral judgements here. But if a person suffers from a mental illness which leads him to make irrational decision, it is a tragedy, and this person is not at fault, but society doesn't become responsible for this awful situation either. It is moral and commendable to help these people — that's why I do it, for example. But there's a pretty huge gap between doing something out of kindness and having an obligation to.
Coincidentally, I just posted a piece two days ago that spent substantial time on the front page about people who grow up in upper class circumstances and wind up on the street at some point:
There is the notion that most homeless people are just poor people, otherwise rational but only in need of a little support and sympathy and they'll bounce back - usually a view informed by cherry-picked examples of people who did bounce-back, and therefore don't represent the majority of the chronically homeless population - this is the "it could be you" angle.
The other notion is that of a lifestyle-choice, treating the homeless as if they are their own indigenous demographic, choosing to live a life outside the western method, and harmed only by western cultures insistence that everyone needs to fall in line. This argument usually skips over the dependence on western societies for basic needs, and whether anyone should get to just "opt out" of society in general, while still benefitting from societal supports.
Both are true to a limited extent, but absolutely false if used as a broad defence of the homeless, or the basis of policy.
There has to be a link between the autonomy a person is allowed, and the responsibility they bear for wielding that autonomy - this applies everywhere else too, from trust within communities, to authority within institutions.
The homeless are often treated differently, but sometimes they are treated more leniently the the norm as well. If they where treated the same as everyone else, they'd still find it difficult to get a job, or loan; but they'd also end up in jail a lot more too.
>> The issue is "And even if you don't care how we treat homeless people, you should care that we are breeding diseases that we see as in the past and this puts everyone at risk."
I don't think this is an issue, or rather the preferred solution for that seems to be to close borders and keep all the poor people out. Reminding the proponents of this "solution" that e.g. the people immigrating from Africa to the EU to ask for asylum may be carrying diseases that are not found in the Western world is likely to cause a hardening of the anti-immigration and anti-asylum stance, rather than any support for better hygiene in developing nations.
From a national point of view, it's simpler to keep homeless people away from rich peoples' homes than to make sure they don't get sick. So the self-interest argument is not really going to work with people who are already doing fine in their self-interest, they thank you.
I was thinking more about international travelers who deem the world to be their inexpensive playground only to come home sick with things that "should" be easily fixable but often no longer are:
Increasingly we are also seeing antibiotic-resistant bacteria from overseas reaching Australia through returning travellers.
Antibiotic resistance is also intricately linked to travel health and has many implications for travellers. Overuse of antibiotic medications for ailments such as traveller’s diarrhea has contributed to the spread of antibiotic resistance. In Southeast Asia, for example, ciprofloxacin and other fluoroquinolone antibiotics are no longer effective in treating traveller’s diarrhea since they are resistant to Campylobacter, Escherichia coli, Salmonella, and Shigella bacteria.
In Pakistan, extensively drug-resistant Typhoid Fever is growing since antibiotics such as ampicillin and ciprofloxacin no longer work. Cases have been reported in returning travellers from North America, the UK, Denmark and Australia. Travellers can be at the forefront of antimicrobial resistance – we are sentinels that can provide clues or alert researchers to developments on the ground.
As the article states, this is somewhat common in homeless populations. It should have clarified that it's spread by body lice [1], not head lice, which cause millions of infestations in the US elementary schools, but otherwise are relatively harmless [2].
Trench fever is a clinical syndrome caused by infection with Bartonella quintana; the condition was first described during World War I. Contemporary B quintana disease, commonly referred to as urban trench fever, is typically found in homeless, alcoholic, and poor populations.
The human body louse Pediculus humanus var corporis is the major vector involved in trench fever transmission.
In the United States, infestation with head lice (Pediculus humanus capitis) is most common among preschool- and elementary school-age children and their household members and caretakers. Head lice are not known to transmit disease; however, secondary bacterial infection of the skin resulting from scratching can occur with any lice infestation.
Head and body lice used to be designated Pediculus capitis and P. corporis but they are now known to belong to the same species, P. humanus x[16, 17]. Fifty years ago Levene and Dobzhansky [18] showed that head lice could be trained or adapted to become the rather larger body lice by attaching them to the body in small pill boxes.
[...]
Body lice, and occasionally head and pubic lice, transmit bacterial diseases: typhus (Rickettsia prowazekii) [29], trench fever (Bartonella quintana) and relapsing fever (Borellia recurrentis). The lice themselves succumb to typhus infection but pass the Rickettsia in their feces, which the human then scratches into the skin. Typhus is known as 'war fever' and 'jail fever' because it appears in conditions where lice thrive. At the end of Rats, Lice and History Zinsser [1] wrote "Typhus is not dead. It will live on for centuries and will break into the open whenever human stupidity and brutality give it a chance." Sadly, Zinsser's words were prophetic. Within a few years, typhus became the major slayer in the Nazi concentration camps; typhus broke out among Rwandan refugees in Burundi in 1994, in Bosnia in 1995 and most recently in Goma.
Anyone surprised? We're seeing occurrences of 'the plague' and TB in skid row. This is what happens when we allow people to living in squalor.
At some point we as a society need to make a statement that living outside, even seemingly by choice, especially in context of mental illness or drug addiction is not something that should be respected or tolerated.
We're at the point where cities (spurred on by activists) have exempted homeless population from all municipal regulations and decided that allowing people with drug addiction and mental illness to live in squalor, and filth is a basic human right that trumps forceful institutionalization. I really don't understand why forced institutionalization into highly regulated institutions, staffed by clinical professionals is so evil.
Worse, a social worker friend of mine in the homeless space, highlighted one issue that I wasn't even aware of. She says she sees young people who are 'homeless' as a lifestyle choice, using (and draining) resources earmarked for the chronic homeless (typically those suffering from mental illness). She is convinced that this group is at least partially responsible for the large part of the waste in this space.
That started to disappear long before Reagan. The deinstitutionalization movement was a left-wing one that started in the 60s. It was also not entirely without merit. The abuse that still happens in these types of institutions is obscene. Even elderly care homes, where the patients are not confined to the facility against their will, are rife with abuse.
The alternative to that abuse we now see is much worse, with thousands upon thousands of the drug-using homeless dead from overdoses.
But I think we can do better than abusive institutions, and the current activist-spawned free-for-all, where the mentally ill have no boundaries imposed on them.
>The abuse that still happens in these types of institutions is obscene.
I would like to see some good studies on this. I do wonder if the scale of the problem was really as large as you make it out to be. I suspect not.
It also raises the question why not simply implement better policy and better oversight, instead of wholesale closure, which as you argued, is much worse.
Two issues with that. Deinstitutionalisation was not just an American phenomenon, with similar movements in other Western countries. Second, the timeline doesn't line-up. By the 1980s Deinstitutionalisation was well underway, and it wasn't necessarily a federal driver because the states were the ones running the system.
Deinstitutionalisation was a combination of changing attitudes by public (hollywood movies certainly did not help with movies like 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'), activism, courts strengthening rights to the point where institutionalization was not possible, and yes, cost cutting by States.
> have exempted homeless population from all municipal regulations and decided that allowing people with drug addiction and mental illness to live in squalor, and filth is a basic human right
The people that take such a view often get hysterical over non-homeless people refusing to wear masks. I think it implies an build-in double-standard.
>> “We all deserve the opportunity to build a healthy life for ourselves, so it is only right we make sure this is a reality for people facing homelessness too.”
We all deserve the opportunity to not be homeless, first and foremost. We'd nip the problem of homeless people catching ancient diseases in the bud if we made sure they're housed and have access to clean water and two proper meals a day, like.
That's not to say that the homeless should be left to rot in sickness, quite the contrary. But we already let them rot in homelessness and I'm saying that this should also be taken care of.
58 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadVancouver used to have a mental institution where the patients worked a farm. When it closed, its DTES district swelled with drug addicts whose condition rapidly deteriorated from drug use.
Involuntary commitment and forced labor are not exactly amenable to liberal democracy, so it's understandable why there was such pressure to close the institutions and repeal vagrancy laws, but now the pro-leniency movement has gone too far, and all across liberal cities it's become a free-for-all that is absolutely devasting all parties involved: the ordinary citizens who become victims of rampant property crime, the vulnerable who are predated upon by drug dealers and who themselves commit vast amounts of crime to feed their habits, and the taxpayer whose hard-earned resources are thrown into a money pit with worse than neutral effects.
There was heavier discrimination towards the homeless in the past, with vagrancy laws for instance. The situation has gotten much worse as society has become more tolerant of homelessness/drug-use while providing far more services to those in that lifestyle.
Housing costs are indeed a problem however. The largest cities in Canada, as in the US, have seen rental rates increase as a share of average income. One study looking at the US blames this on rising restrictions on land-use since the 1960s, which has prevented housing supply from expanding to the meet the growth in housing demand:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201117212350/https://eml.berke...
What kind of guarantee is provided?
Entire extended family was begging police To arrest him. They absolutely would not do anything. I personally spent thousands on efforts to assist him.
Some people are just scum.
Oh and he always had some sweet girlfriend that he abused like crazy. Each one would take a couple of years to wake up that he was just using them.
Sadly yes. There are usually thousands of reason, why they became scum in the first place and it is important to ask those questions and find ways of improvement - but those are not helpful for the present situation at hand, when others have to deal with actual fear.
His sister was raised by a strict dad.
She has her own problems from it, but can function in society.
Yeah well, that sounds like the reason. Pretty much Eric Cartman stereotype (from south park).
* not exactly amenable to liberal democracy
* the pro-leniency movement
* has gone too far,
* all across liberal cities
* it's become a free-for-all
* absolutely devastating all parties involved
* the ordinary citizens who become victims
* rampant property crime
* the vulnerable who are predated upon by drug dealers
* who themselves commit vast amounts of crime
* feed their habits
* the taxpayer
* hard-earned resources
* thrown
* a money pit
* worse than neutral effects
This reads as a list of right-wing scare phrases used in any political campaign to motivate conservative voting. This doesn't read as apolitical to people who actually live in the places these phrases are applied to and it seems to be characterizing the people in these places, "liberal cities", as either fools or sub-human villains. Also, if you are one of the people demonized you don't recognize yourself in the description.
I'm a big fan of liberal democracy, so this was an argument against involuntary commitment and forced labor, not an argument against liberal democracy.
The 'liberal democracy' reference is not using 'liberal' in the same context as the 'liberal cities' I referred to later.
>>the vulnerable who are predated upon by drug dealers
I wouldn't characterize that as a talking point associated with the right at all. The left is known for displacing blame for the misbehavior of drug addicts onto external forces, and this particular point does the same. Though it does sound critical of drug dealers, which is a right-ish argument.
Anyway, it's impossible to not sound political, when the problem is political. And it's impossible to not be critical of the left, when it is mostly the left that is to blame. Left-wing run cities are much worse off than right-wing ones with respect to homelessness, violent crime, drug-abuse, etc, by any metric you look at, and they got that way, from a starting state of much greater social order and more functional civic life, under decades of left-wing policies that gradually became more extreme.
QED
Unless of course you look at the generally much more left wing Western-Europe. But that doesn't fit your narrative.
That removes a huge number of potential confounding factors that could explain differences in outcome, letting the effects of differences in policy be better revealed.
It's the same kind of thing as right-wingers acting hostile to any negativity towards police/military, even if criticism is valid. Criticise lenient policies in cities with vagrancy problems, and it's touching a nerve.
I'm not about to downvote you for saying "crime against humanity" without reading whether or not you're advocating for one.
It's important to consider the criteria used when we select individuals for internment.
One should also well consider the quantity of dog-whistles one embeds in a neutral-appearing comment. Using 'liberal' as an epithet, using the term 'ordinary citizens' to distinguish from those who need to be deprived of rights, bringing the idea of those who pay taxes as being especially worthy of government protection... these are all talk radio jingo.
A governing institution that interns individuals based on being different, or not morially aligned, of not thinking the correct thoughts has been tried often in the past and indeed there are many regimes around the world who still do so today. If society feels the need to institutionalize people for their thoughts it should at least formalize the crime in law and open the process to justice instead of relying on the fiat of those who hold the reigns of power.
> governing institution that interns individuals based on being different, or not morially aligned, of not thinking the correct thoughts
You are talking about what? apartheid? communist regimes?
Homeless people aren't being treated differently for "not thinking the correct thoughts", or "not being morally aligned". They are treated differently from ordinary people, but if any ordinary person did the same they would be treated that way too. Being treated differently based on behaviour is not necessarily wrong.
Homeless people who hear voices or are delusional are treated differently precisely because they are not thinking the correct thoughts.
Homeless people who indulge in self-mediation with alcohol or other drugs are treated differently precisely because those behaviours are not considered morally aligned.
> They are treated differently from ordinary people, but if any ordinary person did the same they would be treated that way too.
Plenty of people with homes are addicts. Plenty of people with homes suffer from depression or other conditions. I don't read a lot about how they should be rounded up by the authorities and reformed or institutionalized.
> Being treated differently based on behaviour is not necessarily wrong.
In the 1930s Soviet Union under Josef Stalin, political opposition was considered a mental illness just like schizophrenia and hysteria. You were considered crazy of you did not support the regime. Thousands of these crazies were rounded up, often in the middle of the night, and institutionalized in an attempt to cure them. The fresh air and honest labour of camps in Siberia were considered just the thing to help.
Sure, it's not necessarily wrong to treat someone differently based on behaviour. We consider it reasonable to isolate an individual who demonstrably poses a danger to others. The line is poorly drawn when it comes to differentiating between danger and inconvenience. Is seeing someone in a park smelling like urine and talking to someone you can't see enough of a threat to be isolated and force-fed mind-altering drugs? Does making unproven accusations demonstrate enough possibility of danger that we should "lock her up"?
Where does the line get drawn, and who has the privilege of drawing it?
Twisting the terms to fit the homeless means it applies to historical examples less - the persecution of certain demographics for their beliefs was not based on drug-induced anti-social behaviour.
> Plenty of people with homes are addicts
what kind of addict? What are they addicted to that they manage to keep a home?
If they are to hold on to that resource they maybe their situation isn't comparable?
> Plenty of people with homes suffer from depression or other conditions
What "other conditions"? depression isn't at all comparable to antisocial behaviour, but in fact if your depression leads to mania, self-harm, or self-neglect you may well be institutionalised.
> political opposition was considered a mental illness
And this was a determination made by doctors or medical professionals comparable to todays medical professionals?
How many of the politically opposed refused to take care of themselves as a result of their opposition? Is self-neglect difficult to distinguish from political motivation?
> differentiating between danger and inconvenience
The "inconvenience" of political opposition isn't at all the same thing.
laws and regulations exist guaranteeing political freedom, vagrancy shouldn't be crime itself, but anti-social behaviour shouldn't be excused on the basis of vagrancy.
> Is seeing someone in a park smelling like urine and talking to someone you can't see enough of a threat to be isolated and force-fed mind-altering drugs?
No, but where was that suggested? And by "force-fed mind-altering drugs" do you mean in all cases, or after a medical professional evaluates the person and promotes that as the best course of action (in which case its no longer based on the initial scenario you describe).
> Does making unproven accusations demonstrate enough possibility of danger that we should "lock her up"?
What are you responding to? What "unproven accusations"? I feel like you are making broad counterpoints to points never made.
In the meantime, I've seen articles about "the return of Medieval diseases" to California on the front page of HN.
The reason this stuff should concern you is not simply compassion for the poorest of the poor but because disease can be caught by anyone. If you create conditions that serve as a breeding ground for serious illness in some people, you create conditions that put everyone at risk.
This is also why more developed countries need to be concerned with what goes on in less developed countries: We are breeding antibiotic resistant infections in some places due to a lack of adequate hygiene and then sometimes those people get medevaced elsewhere for treatment.
The issue here is not "Wow, we treat homeless people like crap!" Yeah, we do. The issue is "And even if you don't care how we treat homeless people, you should care that we are breeding diseases that we see as in the past and this puts everyone at risk."
Social justice issues are public health issues a la "The life you save may be your own."
Hey, do you have a specific source so that I can read further? I tried googling but to no avail.
He talks about it on his campaign website: https://joebiden.com/housing/
Do we? I thought the issue was homeless people are given total autonomy, even if it leads to a destructive lifestyle?
EDIT: make baseless allegation -> upvotes, challenge pessimistic moralising narrative -> downvotes.
This may be a reaction to the opposite viewpoint that was popular in the old, WASP US, but I do think that it's been taken a bit too far now. If you think that "we treat homeless people like crap", ask yourself: would you wanted your own success or failure to be wholly attributed to circumstances out of your control? Would it feel good to be so stripped of agency?
For me personally, to respect a person also means to treat him more like a responsible adult and less than a mindless child.
I don't know what "the hivemind" says, but being homeless is, indeed, "just luck"; in particular, misfortune- the kind that can befall anyone. If I understand correctly, in the US for instance, having a serious accident or falling seriously ill can lead to bankruptcy and homelessness, through no obvious fault of one's own (except perhaps people should not partake into dangerous activities like sports for recreation).
I've only been technically homeless and only slept on the street once in my entire life, but I have some time volunteering, talking and interacting with them, and in my personal experience, overwhelming majority of them are not just normal people who felt on hard times. I'm completely sure that if they took rational decisions and controlled their impulses, majority of them would not be where they are.
However, and this is a very important point: division between mental illness and bad decisions is very murky, so I'm not making any moral judgements here. But if a person suffers from a mental illness which leads him to make irrational decision, it is a tragedy, and this person is not at fault, but society doesn't become responsible for this awful situation either. It is moral and commendable to help these people — that's why I do it, for example. But there's a pretty huge gap between doing something out of kindness and having an obligation to.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25310779
The other notion is that of a lifestyle-choice, treating the homeless as if they are their own indigenous demographic, choosing to live a life outside the western method, and harmed only by western cultures insistence that everyone needs to fall in line. This argument usually skips over the dependence on western societies for basic needs, and whether anyone should get to just "opt out" of society in general, while still benefitting from societal supports.
Both are true to a limited extent, but absolutely false if used as a broad defence of the homeless, or the basis of policy.
There has to be a link between the autonomy a person is allowed, and the responsibility they bear for wielding that autonomy - this applies everywhere else too, from trust within communities, to authority within institutions.
The homeless are often treated differently, but sometimes they are treated more leniently the the norm as well. If they where treated the same as everyone else, they'd still find it difficult to get a job, or loan; but they'd also end up in jail a lot more too.
I don't think this is an issue, or rather the preferred solution for that seems to be to close borders and keep all the poor people out. Reminding the proponents of this "solution" that e.g. the people immigrating from Africa to the EU to ask for asylum may be carrying diseases that are not found in the Western world is likely to cause a hardening of the anti-immigration and anti-asylum stance, rather than any support for better hygiene in developing nations.
From a national point of view, it's simpler to keep homeless people away from rich peoples' homes than to make sure they don't get sick. So the self-interest argument is not really going to work with people who are already doing fine in their self-interest, they thank you.
Increasingly we are also seeing antibiotic-resistant bacteria from overseas reaching Australia through returning travellers.
https://www.news-medical.net/health/Global-travel-and-antibi...
Antibiotic resistance is also intricately linked to travel health and has many implications for travellers. Overuse of antibiotic medications for ailments such as traveller’s diarrhea has contributed to the spread of antibiotic resistance. In Southeast Asia, for example, ciprofloxacin and other fluoroquinolone antibiotics are no longer effective in treating traveller’s diarrhea since they are resistant to Campylobacter, Escherichia coli, Salmonella, and Shigella bacteria.
In Pakistan, extensively drug-resistant Typhoid Fever is growing since antibiotics such as ampicillin and ciprofloxacin no longer work. Cases have been reported in returning travellers from North America, the UK, Denmark and Australia. Travellers can be at the forefront of antimicrobial resistance – we are sentinels that can provide clues or alert researchers to developments on the ground.
https://www.iamat.org/blog/fighting-back-against-antibiotic-...
PS. This is confusing in light of [3].
[1] https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/230294-overview (https://archive.vn/NSqa8)
Trench fever is a clinical syndrome caused by infection with Bartonella quintana; the condition was first described during World War I. Contemporary B quintana disease, commonly referred to as urban trench fever, is typically found in homeless, alcoholic, and poor populations. The human body louse Pediculus humanus var corporis is the major vector involved in trench fever transmission.
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/lice/head/epi.html
In the United States, infestation with head lice (Pediculus humanus capitis) is most common among preschool- and elementary school-age children and their household members and caretakers. Head lice are not known to transmit disease; however, secondary bacterial infection of the skin resulting from scratching can occur with any lice infestation.
[3] https://jbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/jbiol114
Head and body lice used to be designated Pediculus capitis and P. corporis but they are now known to belong to the same species, P. humanus x[16, 17]. Fifty years ago Levene and Dobzhansky [18] showed that head lice could be trained or adapted to become the rather larger body lice by attaching them to the body in small pill boxes. [...] Body lice, and occasionally head and pubic lice, transmit bacterial diseases: typhus (Rickettsia prowazekii) [29], trench fever (Bartonella quintana) and relapsing fever (Borellia recurrentis). The lice themselves succumb to typhus infection but pass the Rickettsia in their feces, which the human then scratches into the skin. Typhus is known as 'war fever' and 'jail fever' because it appears in conditions where lice thrive. At the end of Rats, Lice and History Zinsser [1] wrote "Typhus is not dead. It will live on for centuries and will break into the open whenever human stupidity and brutality give it a chance." Sadly, Zinsser's words were prophetic. Within a few years, typhus became the major slayer in the Nazi concentration camps; typhus broke out among Rwandan refugees in Burundi in 1994, in Bosnia in 1995 and most recently in Goma.
At some point we as a society need to make a statement that living outside, even seemingly by choice, especially in context of mental illness or drug addiction is not something that should be respected or tolerated.
We're at the point where cities (spurred on by activists) have exempted homeless population from all municipal regulations and decided that allowing people with drug addiction and mental illness to live in squalor, and filth is a basic human right that trumps forceful institutionalization. I really don't understand why forced institutionalization into highly regulated institutions, staffed by clinical professionals is so evil.
Worse, a social worker friend of mine in the homeless space, highlighted one issue that I wasn't even aware of. She says she sees young people who are 'homeless' as a lifestyle choice, using (and draining) resources earmarked for the chronic homeless (typically those suffering from mental illness). She is convinced that this group is at least partially responsible for the large part of the waste in this space.
https://sites.psu.edu/psy533wheeler/2017/02/08/u01-ronald-re...
The alternative to that abuse we now see is much worse, with thousands upon thousands of the drug-using homeless dead from overdoses.
But I think we can do better than abusive institutions, and the current activist-spawned free-for-all, where the mentally ill have no boundaries imposed on them.
I would like to see some good studies on this. I do wonder if the scale of the problem was really as large as you make it out to be. I suspect not.
It also raises the question why not simply implement better policy and better oversight, instead of wholesale closure, which as you argued, is much worse.
Deinstitutionalisation was a combination of changing attitudes by public (hollywood movies certainly did not help with movies like 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'), activism, courts strengthening rights to the point where institutionalization was not possible, and yes, cost cutting by States.
The people that take such a view often get hysterical over non-homeless people refusing to wear masks. I think it implies an build-in double-standard.
We all deserve the opportunity to not be homeless, first and foremost. We'd nip the problem of homeless people catching ancient diseases in the bud if we made sure they're housed and have access to clean water and two proper meals a day, like.
That's not to say that the homeless should be left to rot in sickness, quite the contrary. But we already let them rot in homelessness and I'm saying that this should also be taken care of.