As nice as these structures are, and as much as I appreciate the skills it takes to roll up your sleeves and build something like this, ultimately it is an illegal annexation of public land that belongs to the taxpayers and has other intended uses (even if that use is just greenspace or empty land). The act of building on this land is a crime, and should not be allowed. The West Coast cities need to enforce the law and protect the interests of actual residents, who legally reside in those cities and pay their fair share of taxes.
As for the vagrants in these encampments - my experience has been that most are not locals, despite what surveys say, because the surveys always rely on volunteered answers about origins, rather than proven identity. Regardless, everyone must show personal responsibility and people need to realize they are not entitled to a life in the most attractive and expensive locations on the planet. There are TONS of open jobs across the country and lots of places that are great to live in and affordable. They don't have the same 'brand' as the Bay Area or other West Coast locations, but as the saying goes, beggars can't be choosers. What I do think we can band together to provide is a service that matches those in need with jobs in other locations, along with bridge funding to move locations and get settled in.
>ultimately it is an illegal annexation of public land that belongs to the taxpayers and has other intended uses (even if that use is just greenspace or empty land).
This is exactly how I feel seeing the homeless camps in Austin. Primarily, the first question I had was: what happens when one homeless person wants to spot of another? Neither has a legal right to it; are we not encouraging interpersonal violence by refusing to enforce the property laws that separate us from the state of nature?
>my experience has been that most are not locals, despite what surveys say, because the surveys always rely on volunteered answers about origins, rather than proven identity
Right. Why would anyone tell a volunteer they're from out of town? Seems like the first rule of being homeless: get a story that appeals to people. "Born here and down on my luck" is much more compelling than "Where I came from is worse than this place so I hopped a ride here."
Basically, we can spend all the money in the world and build all the housing that people need, but the personal liberty that this country espouses -- personal liberty I agree with! -- means that no one is obligated to take it. There is already a myriad of excuses I hear in these threads for why the homeless don't go to the shelters, participate in the programs, etc. "They don't allow my dog." "They would make be get sober", etc. Until we accept that there is a significant population of unhoused that prefer it that way, and then decided what we want to do about that, all the little villages and things won't scratch the surface of the problem.
Simple solution is enforce the law.Remove the housing and charge those who build or assist in building on public land with a criminal offense - same as would happen to anyone else who illegally builds on public lands.
It's past ridiculous that this behaviour is applauded and endorsed by elected officials.
There are no simple solutions here. I do believe the homeless ought to be assigned housing by making California’s Project Room Key permanent and national. If you can prove some connection to the location where you’re sleeping rough, you get first crack at local housing. Otherwise it’s back to where you have that connection — could even be where you were born.
These motels will be slums. There will be prostitutes, and drug dealers, and crime. But it will also be a central location for service outreach without the prerequisites of other places.
What is the reasoning for giving them a criminal offense? Not “because they broke the law” but like, what are we hoping to get out of sending them to jail/giving them a fine? That they choose to stop being homeless? That being in jail makes them not homeless anymore?
I think it’s a fools errand to jail homeless people. It seems like a waste of money to me but I don’t have a better solution or idea on how to spend my tax dollars so am really interested in hearing more on the positive side of jailing them.
My anecdote is that people that are homeless are not really disincentivized by these things. They’re shitting in the street and sleeping in an underpass. I don’t think three hots and a cot is really an issue they want to avoid with any serious meaning.
Similarly, any fine will not get paid because, how would it?
I think we might disincentivize the “hippies” that are choosing to be homeless and care about these things. For sure that is possible. Do we think that the % of people that are choosing that lifestyle is high enough that it will be cost effective to tax payers? I don’t think so but it’s definitely something to look into more closely.
Putting them in jail prevents them from doing things that the taxpayers don't like: building fires under overpasses, leaving needles and human waste in the streets, harassing passersby, etc. It also puts them in contact with social services, in some cases.
It's not a perfect solution, or even a good one. We can and should develop a more compassionate alternative.
Ah, so it’s not about directly a consequence to them for their actions but a way to appease people/clean up where tax payers live? I disagree that’s a good move but it makes sense that we would need to do something similar.
> It's not a perfect solution, or even a good one. We can and should develop a more compassionate alternative.
I'm guessing you don't see providing cheap shelter in empty areas that have no other good use (like a highway underpass) as a more compassionate alternative then?
Jail costs 80k a year per prisoner in California on average. That's a hell of a lot of money, and it clearly doesn't work to keep people from being homeless.
I think a more compassionate alternative really just is a cheaper shelter for homeless than what Jail costs us, and programs that actually show some level of success at reentrance into society.
I'd be willing to change my tune if good data showed that Jails were both cost effective, and actually acted as a deterrent for homelessness, and was a good pathway to reentrance, but everything I looked at seems to indicate it's terrible at all of these, and ends up just being a very expensive shelter.
> a criminal offense - same as would happen to anyone else who illegally builds on public lands
Are you sure this is the case? Any lawyer out here?
Is building on public land a criminal offence? What kind of penalty can you be looking at for doing so?
I assume this must often happen where one building potentially extends slightly beyond it's lot lines, so could you get criminally charged in those cases?
If you build over your lot lines, or build more than allowed by a conservation agreement, or build without securing permits, or violate local building laws in any number of other ways, your local government (when they find out) will ask you to tear it down. If you don’t, you will be compelled (fines, probably). If you refuse, your structure will be torn down, and you might go to jail.
> are we not encouraging interpersonal violence by refusing to enforce the property laws that separate us from the state of nature?
The tradeoff is that we definitely have to use violence to evict people from these spaces and force them back onto the streets or into other open spaces. And with fewer places to camp, they'll likely be exposed to more physical disputes than before. It's not as if the residents of these camps will go "well, time to buy a condo". They'll still need somewhere to live.
> Basically, we can spend all the money in the world and build all the housing that people need, but the personal liberty that this country espouses -- personal liberty I agree with! -- means that no one is obligated to take it.
The east bay has hundreds of people on a waiting list just for shelter space. There aren't enough beds for the night, let alone supportive housing, so we haven't even come close to trying the "build all the houses that these people need" (and make they available) strategy.
>The east bay has hundreds of people on a waiting list just for shelter space. There aren't enough beds for the night, let alone supportive housing, so we haven't even come close to trying the "build all the houses that these people need" (and make they available) strategy.
That's because people come from all over the country, since the bay area is homeless friendly. The best solution is to make project room key permanent.
I listened to that too, and in the final episode, you hear exactly what I'm talking about. In the interview with K.C., the narrator mentions that she had been in a shelter, but they didn't allow dogs and she didn't like the lack of privacy. Some people won't take the help you give them, and not preferring the solutions offered doesn't give you an absolute right to public land.
"annexation of public land that belongs to the taxpayers"
It's worth considering why people are more sympathetic to:
A) Restaurant owners who, under San Francisco's 'Shared Spaces' scheme, have been given the right to construct outdoor dining spaces on public land (i) without any payment for use of the land, and (ii) with the right to exclude/eject members of the public from that land, unless they pay the restaurant.
Than:
B) People who would otherwise be homeless living on public land.
Because the former is sanctioned and the latter isn't. Being sanctioned means it went through an approval process where the residents have representation and can reject the proposal. If restaurants decided to unilaterally annex roads for their own private use they'd get in trouble as well.
This doesn’t have much to do with who owns the land. California won’t allow affordable housing to be built anywhere in the Bay Area.
The result is that you get buildings that somehow cost 4-5x more to build than they would elsewhere (even adjusting for seismic costs) and you get dangerous squatter villages, but you get nothing in between.
> my experience has been that most are not locals, despite what surveys say
I'm curious what that matters for? States don't have borders no? So it's not like being born in a particular state grants you anything special, I don't think you can deport people from one state to another on grounds of not being born in the state no?
> What I do think we can band together to provide is a service that matches those in need with jobs in other locations, along with bridge funding to move locations and get settled in
That's a good idea, but are there employees willing to participate in such program? And are all homeless really able too? Lots of them have mental illness or addiction issues that might prevent them from keeping a job or make them unattractive to employers.
> The West Coast cities need to enforce the law and protect the interests of actual residents, who legally reside in those cities and pay their fair share of taxes
I think this is where the "ideal" breaks appart. Enforcing the law in those case seems to be a dead end. It costs 80k per inmate on average to jail someone in California, which seems like a stupidly high cost solution, and jail doesn't seem to work to deter homelessness. So what else can be done? And that's the million dollar question right here, and nobody has found the sure fire solution yet.
Stuff like this is good while it lasts, then it quickly becomes apparent why modern cities exist like they do today. Sanitation, housing built to code, fire protection, permits, inspections, real construction materials, garbage disposal and pickup, official mail delivery, tenant protections etc. aren't all done just for kicks. Solutions like this should be seen as a complete failure of the system rather than celebrated. In any other country this would be called a slum.
It's a common trope for stories from USA to sell something that's clearly evidence of severe disfunction of the system as something uplifting, down to earth and heartfelt.
Like a story about a kid working to earn money to pay off lunch debt of even younger kids.
Don't act llke there aren't slums in EU or elsewhere. Some major cities in Europe hide the homeless for the night - great, but doesn't really help them get back to normal life.
There are homeless people sleeping under bridges in Germany too, they're just expelled from the cities. Prague is full of homeless people - I see 5 from my window right now, and there are several slums too. Visit rural Slovakia or Romania and you'll see that the EU is just full of propaganda.
I wouldn't be surprised if the relative number of homeless people was actually larger than in the USA, the EU just doesn't bother to count properly and allocates a very minor amount of money to hide the problem.
You’re probably being downvoted because of how you started your comment, directing the person above to not “act like” there aren’t slums elsewhere, despite that being not at all relevant to their comment.
I guess you missed my point. My point was about selling people heroically dealing with some results of systematic failures as uplifting stories. And that it's something I noticed about US news.
Some systems fail everywhere. In some places more than others.
There are, they are also not celebrated. I agree with parent poster that it's a systemic failure that people have to literally build slums to live even among all that wealth.
If this is NOT taken down by local authorities, I will surprised, but also I will be confused why it is being allowed now, after decades of having this problem. This is the most straight forward way to solve the problem, by allowing people to settle in big open spaces that would be empty otherwise, and just offering basic, cheap shelter. Oakland had this problem for decades and NOW they allow this? The lack of problem solving skills by the government there is incredible.
>This is the most straight forward way to solve the problem, by allowing people to settle in big open spaces that would be empty otherwise
except, that the big open spaces were used for something (eg. parks/greenspace/recreation), so letting homeless people camp there denies other residents from using that space for those purposes. it also ignores the externalities associated with such encampments. finally, it's not really a solution and more of a band-aid. the amount of parks we have is finite, so eventually we're going to run out of space.
I agree, but in these cities it's such a problem that you can't use these spaces anyway because people set up their tents there. I also agree it's a band-aid, but it's a much better band-aid than the existing attempts, as far as my understanding. And to be clear, had the local gov. considered this, they could have provided the solution themselves, which would have made it safer and better, and in theory, faster.
Agreed, but solutions to that also exist. In my opinion, it's solving for shelter, hygiene, and water, in a safe and scaleable way. This provides reliable temporary solution for people, to then get their options sorted out, and eventually I think people would try and get out of that themselves, with exception of the ones that really need personalized assistance.
Favelas are definitely not the answer. Sewage, electricity, code, safety, fire etc. and also solid guarantees on attracting some incorrigible types.
What would be interesting however are much smaller 'regular' housing units made available in more urban environments.
One of the problems in the US is that you have to 'go way out there' to get really cheap housing ... but you cant walk to anything ... you need a car. Which is a pain.
Smaller, denser towns would be nice.
That said - nothing works at all unless people have some kind of access to reasonable employment.
> One of the problems in the US is that you have to 'go way out there' to get really cheap housing ... but you cant walk to anything ... you need a car. Which is a pain.
Couldn't agree more. I also think this is the root of many problems in American culture. Everyone has social pressure to own a car and live that lifestyle, but it just raises the bar for poor people needlessly when towns and cities could be structured differently.
Wow, this article seems to glorify this behavior "beautiful structures". Except this is not their land. It belongs to the city and thus associated taxpayers. What gives them the right to squat on land? They know Oakland and furthermore the bay area won't do anything about it, so they continue. This is just like when I used to live in downtown San Francisco and people would just setup piles of rubble right in the middle of the sidewalk (exposed needles came along with it) on downtown streets. Police and city officials won't do anything about it. I eventually decided I'd had enough, and left San Francisco and the state of California three years ago.
So many responses here are focused on just the acts of these people building the village. They're making a sane choice in an insane environment and there are selfless elements in their build.
Technically it's illegal, certainly. But the "insane environment" needs more attention and things like this wouldn't get built.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 95.0 ms ] threadAs for the vagrants in these encampments - my experience has been that most are not locals, despite what surveys say, because the surveys always rely on volunteered answers about origins, rather than proven identity. Regardless, everyone must show personal responsibility and people need to realize they are not entitled to a life in the most attractive and expensive locations on the planet. There are TONS of open jobs across the country and lots of places that are great to live in and affordable. They don't have the same 'brand' as the Bay Area or other West Coast locations, but as the saying goes, beggars can't be choosers. What I do think we can band together to provide is a service that matches those in need with jobs in other locations, along with bridge funding to move locations and get settled in.
This is exactly how I feel seeing the homeless camps in Austin. Primarily, the first question I had was: what happens when one homeless person wants to spot of another? Neither has a legal right to it; are we not encouraging interpersonal violence by refusing to enforce the property laws that separate us from the state of nature?
>my experience has been that most are not locals, despite what surveys say, because the surveys always rely on volunteered answers about origins, rather than proven identity
Right. Why would anyone tell a volunteer they're from out of town? Seems like the first rule of being homeless: get a story that appeals to people. "Born here and down on my luck" is much more compelling than "Where I came from is worse than this place so I hopped a ride here."
Basically, we can spend all the money in the world and build all the housing that people need, but the personal liberty that this country espouses -- personal liberty I agree with! -- means that no one is obligated to take it. There is already a myriad of excuses I hear in these threads for why the homeless don't go to the shelters, participate in the programs, etc. "They don't allow my dog." "They would make be get sober", etc. Until we accept that there is a significant population of unhoused that prefer it that way, and then decided what we want to do about that, all the little villages and things won't scratch the surface of the problem.
It's past ridiculous that this behaviour is applauded and endorsed by elected officials.
These motels will be slums. There will be prostitutes, and drug dealers, and crime. But it will also be a central location for service outreach without the prerequisites of other places.
sounds like a refugee camp to me.
- Roll back the changes that gutted mental health care in California.
- Modify the planning process, codes and zoning so people can build houses.
I think it’s a fools errand to jail homeless people. It seems like a waste of money to me but I don’t have a better solution or idea on how to spend my tax dollars so am really interested in hearing more on the positive side of jailing them.
disincentivizing them and/or others from doing the same? As GP argued they're basically annexing public land for their own use.
Similarly, any fine will not get paid because, how would it?
I think we might disincentivize the “hippies” that are choosing to be homeless and care about these things. For sure that is possible. Do we think that the % of people that are choosing that lifestyle is high enough that it will be cost effective to tax payers? I don’t think so but it’s definitely something to look into more closely.
It's not a perfect solution, or even a good one. We can and should develop a more compassionate alternative.
I'm guessing you don't see providing cheap shelter in empty areas that have no other good use (like a highway underpass) as a more compassionate alternative then?
Jail costs 80k a year per prisoner in California on average. That's a hell of a lot of money, and it clearly doesn't work to keep people from being homeless.
I think a more compassionate alternative really just is a cheaper shelter for homeless than what Jail costs us, and programs that actually show some level of success at reentrance into society.
I'd be willing to change my tune if good data showed that Jails were both cost effective, and actually acted as a deterrent for homelessness, and was a good pathway to reentrance, but everything I looked at seems to indicate it's terrible at all of these, and ends up just being a very expensive shelter.
Are you sure this is the case? Any lawyer out here?
Is building on public land a criminal offence? What kind of penalty can you be looking at for doing so?
I assume this must often happen where one building potentially extends slightly beyond it's lot lines, so could you get criminally charged in those cases?
The tradeoff is that we definitely have to use violence to evict people from these spaces and force them back onto the streets or into other open spaces. And with fewer places to camp, they'll likely be exposed to more physical disputes than before. It's not as if the residents of these camps will go "well, time to buy a condo". They'll still need somewhere to live.
> Basically, we can spend all the money in the world and build all the housing that people need, but the personal liberty that this country espouses -- personal liberty I agree with! -- means that no one is obligated to take it.
The east bay has hundreds of people on a waiting list just for shelter space. There aren't enough beds for the night, let alone supportive housing, so we haven't even come close to trying the "build all the houses that these people need" (and make they available) strategy.
EDIT: FWIW I learned about the waitlist problem while listening to this podcast: https://99percentinvisible.org/need/
That's because people come from all over the country, since the bay area is homeless friendly. The best solution is to make project room key permanent.
>EDIT: FWIW I learned about the waitlist problem while listening to this podcast: https://99percentinvisible.org/need/
I listened to that too, and in the final episode, you hear exactly what I'm talking about. In the interview with K.C., the narrator mentions that she had been in a shelter, but they didn't allow dogs and she didn't like the lack of privacy. Some people won't take the help you give them, and not preferring the solutions offered doesn't give you an absolute right to public land.
It's worth considering why people are more sympathetic to:
A) Restaurant owners who, under San Francisco's 'Shared Spaces' scheme, have been given the right to construct outdoor dining spaces on public land (i) without any payment for use of the land, and (ii) with the right to exclude/eject members of the public from that land, unless they pay the restaurant.
Than:
B) People who would otherwise be homeless living on public land.
1. The scheme would be open to all affected businesses (including offices) and not just restaurants.
2. There SF govt would not be trying to make the scheme permanent.
The result is that you get buildings that somehow cost 4-5x more to build than they would elsewhere (even adjusting for seismic costs) and you get dangerous squatter villages, but you get nothing in between.
I'm curious what that matters for? States don't have borders no? So it's not like being born in a particular state grants you anything special, I don't think you can deport people from one state to another on grounds of not being born in the state no?
> What I do think we can band together to provide is a service that matches those in need with jobs in other locations, along with bridge funding to move locations and get settled in
That's a good idea, but are there employees willing to participate in such program? And are all homeless really able too? Lots of them have mental illness or addiction issues that might prevent them from keeping a job or make them unattractive to employers.
> The West Coast cities need to enforce the law and protect the interests of actual residents, who legally reside in those cities and pay their fair share of taxes
I think this is where the "ideal" breaks appart. Enforcing the law in those case seems to be a dead end. It costs 80k per inmate on average to jail someone in California, which seems like a stupidly high cost solution, and jail doesn't seem to work to deter homelessness. So what else can be done? And that's the million dollar question right here, and nobody has found the sure fire solution yet.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/oakland-fire/
Like a story about a kid working to earn money to pay off lunch debt of even younger kids.
There are homeless people sleeping under bridges in Germany too, they're just expelled from the cities. Prague is full of homeless people - I see 5 from my window right now, and there are several slums too. Visit rural Slovakia or Romania and you'll see that the EU is just full of propaganda.
I wouldn't be surprised if the relative number of homeless people was actually larger than in the USA, the EU just doesn't bother to count properly and allocates a very minor amount of money to hide the problem.
Some systems fail everywhere. In some places more than others.
except, that the big open spaces were used for something (eg. parks/greenspace/recreation), so letting homeless people camp there denies other residents from using that space for those purposes. it also ignores the externalities associated with such encampments. finally, it's not really a solution and more of a band-aid. the amount of parks we have is finite, so eventually we're going to run out of space.
> allowing people to settle in big open spaces that would be empty otherwise, and just offering basic, cheap shelter
It has to be something that isn't a huge fire or safety hazard, to avoid another Ghost Ship warehouse fire.
What would be interesting however are much smaller 'regular' housing units made available in more urban environments.
One of the problems in the US is that you have to 'go way out there' to get really cheap housing ... but you cant walk to anything ... you need a car. Which is a pain.
Smaller, denser towns would be nice.
That said - nothing works at all unless people have some kind of access to reasonable employment.
Couldn't agree more. I also think this is the root of many problems in American culture. Everyone has social pressure to own a car and live that lifestyle, but it just raises the bar for poor people needlessly when towns and cities could be structured differently.
Technically it's illegal, certainly. But the "insane environment" needs more attention and things like this wouldn't get built.