r/NoStupidQuestions • u/Garey_Coleman • 10d ago

Where are the homeless supposed to go?

Cities have been cracking down on homeless people so they can’t have encampments or stay on sidewalks. At the same time usually the shelters are full. So those who are unable to get into a shelter, where are they supposed to go?

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u/proudbutnotarrogant 10d ago

"It's not my problem that you have no money for food. You should have thought of that before becoming peasants."

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u/JPBillingsgate 9d ago

The chronically homeless, which is the homeless population that are problematic for cities, are not homeless because they have no money for food. It is mental illness, substance abuse, or a combination of both.

The second, larger, homeless population is much, much less of a problem and these are people who are much more able to seek and receive help. We should never stop being generous with these people as governments or as individuals.

For the first group, not only would it be hugely expensive to try and treat these people en masse, we would also have to be able to involuntarily commit many of them, which is something that is not legal in most cases now.

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u/proudbutnotarrogant 9d ago

This was a quote from a kid's movie. It's not meant to be taken seriously. However, I do agree with you. Unfortunately, the obvious fix is, in fact, to involuntarily commit certain people, which is a rabbit hole no one wants the credit for having us go down.

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u/JPBillingsgate 9d ago

It's more than political will, which I think the GOP might have. But there are two major roadblocks that would keep them from trying anyway. One, you have to have someplace to commit them to, and we have closed so much of our former infrastructure for this very thing and I doubt the GOP has the desire to fund it.

But the second is the courts. There is a reason why involuntary committals are tough to do, even sometimes even for those that pose a pretty obvious danger to themselves and others (a bar that few homeless people meet).

All that really leaves us is for one party to placate these people (to their political detriment as it happens) and for the other party to make their lives so challenging that, it is to be hoped, that they will just go away somewhere where few people have to look at them. This is not very compassionate, obviously, but probably not very effective either.

I used to date the director of homeless services for a major east coast city. She used to tell me stories about how many of their homeless were basically given one-way bus tickets there from other smaller cities in the region.

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u/bikinibeard 9d ago

In the end, we would save money with mandatory treatment. Think about how much we already spend on police, ERs, ICUs and jails. And then there’s the non-profits. While some do good work, many are just fly by nights with a good PR person or grant writer. San Francisco spent a billion dollars and most if it went to over 800 NGOs. Most of these NGOs don’t know the other NGOs exist, they don’t work together but in a blind parallel (if they work at all; there’s a lit of grift). SF estimated to spend between $200-400,000 a year PER homeless person. Not much to show for it.

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u/HOOPER_FULL_THROTTLE 9d ago

Totally agree with this take.

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u/AndWinterCame 9d ago

Fascinating breakdown, couldn't mention anywhere in it that you don't end up homeless by doing drugs or having psychosis go untreated, you actually become homeless by being unable to afford a home, that is by being priced out of the housing market. The problems you are attributing to the first group either start or dramatically worsen after months and years of being treated like less than human. It is a progressive, worsening circumstance, but saying that large swaths of the population are inherently homeless is wild.

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u/TonysCatchersMit 9d ago

You’re right give someone with untreated psychosis and addiction a home and they’re actually a true pleasure to live next door to.

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u/AndWinterCame 9d ago

Okay, well everyone here is acting like it's preferable to allow for government to permanently imprison these people (and any of us who succumb to medical debt while losing a job) than to even consider the validity of a system in which medical care and housing are universally guaranteed at the cost of offending billionaires.

Truly, what I am asking in this conversation is for people to consider what might one day befall people they know if not themself, and in doing so to ascribe the same humanity they would expect to the people already in that situation.

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u/TonysCatchersMit 9d ago edited 9d ago

There’s a man in my neighborhood in NYC that is not only mentally ill and an addict, but deaf and mute.

His favorite past time is getting loaded and assaulting, sometimes sexually, women in the neighborhood. Occasionally he’ll fight men but his preferred target is overwhelmingly women.

He’s been arrested and jailed, sure. Dozens of times. But he’s also been sent to alternatives to incarceration like drug treatment programs and mental health facilities all over the country. All at no cost to him, of course. He gets out, coping mechanisms and a pocket full of meds in hand, and quickly takes up his hobby again.

Surely, if this poor disabled man had a home he would take his med and stop smoking crack, drinking and groping and molly wallopping women?

Except, he does have a home. A government subsidized apartment with his father that the landlord can’t get him out of.

And now I’m sure you’re thinking; liar. Making hypothetical straw men up for internet points. But, alas, it isn’t so. Despite tax payer funded treatment he remained a violent menace.

While yes most of us are one medical emergency away from homelessness, maybe consider the possibility that dude with their dick in their hand shouting obscenities on the street corner might be there simply because he’s a fucking antisocial asshole.

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u/JPBillingsgate 9d ago

It's not just being forced out of the housing market. It often comes from mental illness and/or drug addiction causing unemployment, dissolution of families, estrangement of loved ones, and even evictions for behavior.

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u/AndWinterCame 9d ago

You exhibit what appears a strong desire to place yourself firmly and irrevocably in another category of person than the unhoused, all I ask is that you acknowledge that if only for an instant.

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u/JPBillingsgate 9d ago

You exhibit what appears to be a strong belief that our chronic homelessness problem is something that can readily solved, or even substantially ameliorated with just a little more compassion and a little more money. Yet, we have spent many, many billions of dollars on this issue with no real results at all.

The city of Los Angeles' annual budget for homelessness is almost a billion all by itself. How are things going there? Have they gotten better? It's been years and they have tried everything they can think of, have they not?

I was not and am not defending what Trump is doing in DC. I was merely pointing out that one, chronic homelessness and economic homelessness are two very different things and that two, chronic homelessness is an incredibly difficult, perhaps impossible, problem to solve.

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u/mewmeulin 9d ago

also, do people not realizing being homelwss is traumatizing as fuck?? of course i was an alcoholic the year i was homeless, i was living in shithole conditions and the only thing that helped me cope without having an entire breakdown was a four loko. poor decision?? yes, absolutely. was i already struggling on and off with alcoholism before this point?? yeah, but i was sober for a while before being homeless. also, it is MUCH easier to get back to working on sobriety when you dont have to worry about whether you'll have a roof over your head or food in your stomach.

but yeah, sure, according to a lot of this thread, i should be fucking institutionalized because i'm a mentally ill recovering alcoholic who couldn't get treatment because of the roadblocks of not having an address. funny enough, now that i'm housed, i'm doing just fine with outpatient treatment and being able to afford my medication.

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u/proudbutnotarrogant 9d ago

You're the poster boy for the argument. Had you been institutionalized, you wouldn't have had to worry about food or lodging. It IS "much easier to get back to working on sobriety when you don't have to worry about whether you'll have a roof over your head or food in your stomach."

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u/mewmeulin 9d ago

.....i think you dont understand what it means to institutionalize someone, otherwise you'd realize how insulting that actually is to hear. locking someone away from all of their support systems to be constantly monitored indefinitely is a nightmare. and what happens if you do release someone from these institutions? are you providing housing to them? if so, why go with institutionalization in the first place? and if not, do you genuinely expect those folks to be able to get housing and a job entirely on their own, especially with something like THAT on their record??

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u/proudbutnotarrogant 9d ago

There's a considerable difference between being institutionalized and incarcerated. It might be you who doesn't understand. A rehab center is an institution. A mental health facility is an institution. Heck, some university campuses are institutions.

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u/mewmeulin 9d ago

there's also a difference between going to rehab, going to an acute psychiatric ward, enrolling in college, and putting people in long-term mental institutions for an undefined period of time.

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u/proudbutnotarrogant 9d ago

True. The difference is the "going". You don't have a problem when you recognize that you do. You have a problem long before that. Unfortunately, between the time you have the problem and the time you acknowledge it, you can do a lot of damage to a lot of people. That's what we've been discussing here. If you're not willing to get help, others shouldn't have to pay the price.

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u/mewmeulin 9d ago

okay, fine. but my question here is where do these people go AFTER rehab, or a psych ward stay, or whatever your you mean by institutionalization? these people still have no money, no job, no home to go back to, and people aren't keen on hiring or renting to people who had a lapse in employment due to being in rehab or a psych hospital.

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u/HughHimbo33 9d ago

Rich people with dedicated families can't stay sober half the time. We expect sobriety from somebody whose name nobody even knows? The people who hand wave "just give them treatment" are mind baffling to me.

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u/SurviveStyleFivePlus 10d ago

But what about me and my family?

Hm. Don't know, don't care.

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u/Dangerous-Bit-8308 9d ago

Yeah. No money for bread?? Come on. Have they even TRIED making cake?

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u/elves_haters_223 9d ago

Why can't they just a buy a house?