Conor here: The title of this piece mentions pushing out homeless people, but push them out to where? To sea? It’s hard to know after the Supreme Court effectively allowed for the criminalization of homelessness.
At last check, there are roughly 653,100 unhoused people in the US, although that is likely an undercount. About a third of them are in California where a report from the University of California, San Francisco released last year – the largest representative study of homelessness in the state in thirty years – found that economic factors were the main driver of homelessness, including low wages, a sudden unaffordable expense, and the rising cost of housing.
You could lock up all the homeless for “camping” tomorrow and that still wouldn’t effectively hide the problem. That’s because healthcare costs, low wages, rental housing cartels, etc make sure that for every homeless individual helped back into stable housing there are even more taking their place.
By Robert Rosenberger, currently serving as President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology. His research in the philosophy of technology explores the habitual relationships people develop with everyday devices, with applications in design and policy. Originally published at The Conversation.
If you have no shelter and are arrested for sleeping outside, are you being punished for something you did – or for being homeless?
On June 28, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the Oregon city of Grants Pass may prohibit camping, even if there are no free shelter beds in the area. Critics have argued that this policy was a form of “cruel and unusual punishment,” in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. A lower court agreed, saying it is unconstitutional to arrest people for a normal and necessary human behavior – sleeping – if there is nowhere else to go.
But Friday’s decision reversed that ruling. Such laws do not qualify as cruel, the court found, because they are not designed to inflict “terror, pain, or disgrace.” Nor are they uncommon. And they criminalize an action, the majority note, not the status of experiencing homelessness.
Advocates for unhoused people, however, argue these kinds of anti-camping laws effectively make homelessness a crime – and feared that a Supreme Court decision to overturn the ruling could intensify cities’ efforts to treat the unhoused as criminals.
As a professor of philosophy who studies homelessness, I believe it is important to understand camping bans as part of wider efforts to displace unhoused people. Cities do many things to assist people experiencing homelessness, providing everything from shelters to food pantries. Yet cities also use a variety of tactics to push unhoused people out of public view.
Perhaps the most revealing is “hostile architecture,” a focus of my research. This term is often used for public spaces designed in ways that discriminate against specific vulnerable populations. The most common examples are objects that present a physical barrier to everyday activities for people without housing.
Hostile Design
One common example are spikes added to ledges to deter people from leaning or sitting. Since spikes are often quite noticeable, however, and their purpose is obvious, they occasionally elicit controversy.
Another pervasive but less attention-grabbing form of hostile architecture are benches that have been redesigned to make them difficult or impossible to use as sleeping spaces. This is accomplished through a variety of design schemes that prevent people from lying down, from bucket seating or seat dividers to armrests.
Any number of other hostile physical obstructions can be found. Garbage cans are often fitted with hood designs, as well as external cases with built-in locks, to deter trash-picking.
Other designs alter the landscape itself. Bollards or boulders can be brought in to break up potential camping spaces. Fencing can be used to block off sheltered areas such as highway underpasses.
Hostile design isn’t always about objects; sometimes it involves actions, too.
Businesses and churches have been accused of regularly spraying water on potential sleeping spaces, sometimes via automatic sprinkler systems. Noise pollution can be another strategy, blasting loud music or annoying sounds to clear potential loitering places. Such was the case of a park in West Palm Beach, Florida, where the cloying children’s song “Baby Shark” was played along with other kids tunes each night.
Legal scholar Sarah Schindler argues that these kinds of hostile designs should be recognized as a form of regulation. As she puts it, “Regulation through architecture is just as powerful as law, but it is less explicit, less identifiable, and less familiar to courts, legislators, and the general public.”
Like the law, hostile architecture can have the effect of regulating people’s behaviors. But unlike the law, instances of hostile architecture are not subject to any kind of official oversight and often go unnoticed.
What’s There – and What’s Not
Once you learn about hostile architecture, you start to see examples everywhere. But perhaps even more importantly, you also begin to notice the absence of certain items and services in public spaces.
Rather than add armrests to a bench, the bench can be simply taken away. Trees can be removed to prevent loitering in the shade. Whole regions of cities are devoid of public restrooms, with options in private establishments available to paying customers only. Public space researcher Cara Chellew has come to refer to these conspicuously absent expected things as “ghost amenities.”
Hostile architecture, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. Just below the surface are the variety of laws that target particular behaviors: storing personal items in public space, loitering, panhandling and vagrancy. There are laws against sitting or lying down in public – so-called sit/lie laws. Anti-camping laws often apply not just to tents but to using any kind of covering at all, such as a blanket.
Even giving food to unhoused people is outlawed in some cities, if the individual or organization does not have a permit.
The National Homelessness Law Center has been charting the increase in these kinds of laws across the United States. In a review of 187 cities from 2006-2019, the center found a 78% increase in sit/lie laws and a 103% increase in laws against vagrancy, loafing and loitering. There was also a 92% increase in camping bans.
Informal policies can also serve as de facto bans on homelessness, such as when police pressure unhoused people to move along.
Many shelters, where they exist, are not open during daytime hours, leaving people without housing no choice but to loiter or continue moving throughout the day.
At times, shelters themselves present roadblocks that discourage people from using their services, such as patterns of discrimination against LGBTQ+ patrons or policies that ban pets.
Stakes at SCOTUS
On their own, many of these laws or objects may seem unobjectionable, or at least not a big deal. How much should we care about a bench with armrests, or a park with rules prohibiting sleeping?
When taken in the aggregate, however, these things can function together to exclude the unhoused from public space entirely. None of them literally make homelessness a crime – but in critics’ eyes, these laws and patterns of design have the same effect.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of three to dissent from the majority’s decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, raised a similar idea. The city’s camping ban punishes people for experiencing homelessness, she argued, leaving “the most vulnerable in our society with an impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested.”
61 comments
Comments are closed.
Why is it that the U.S. government can provide free missiles to Israelis and Ukrainians, but cannot provide free housing to Americans who have no homes?
Channeling my inner Lambert I conclude thusly:
1. Because markets
2. Go die
You forgot another, “Tis a mystery”.
Because providing inexpensive housing does not put any money in the coffers of the MIC. I’m sure you know that. We have to keep our weapons makers well fed. The rest of us can go die.
Because of NIMBYs who will fight tooth and nail against that housing being built, using the most sophisticated and cynical procedural tactics imaginable.
Here in Boston, there are suburbanites protesting because a prison is being converted into temporary shelter for migrants. No, they’re not protesting the optics of putting migrants in a prison, they are protesting that there will be migrants in their town at all. Not far away, in one of the absolutely least aesthetic suburbs in Boston, Braintree, there is uproar over plans to convert a mall parking lot into a modestly sized, mostly high-end apartment complex. And that happens over and over.
And new job creation is disproportionately in places like Greater Boston. The country is doomed. Our elites do not deserve to compete with China, Japan, India or any other semi-civilized country.
We are ruled at every level of government by a sociopathically selfish and short-sited gerontocracy.
You don’t even need to build any new housing. The model that works for fixing this problem is rental vouchers. There are plenty of places to rent; the rent being too high is the root cause of all of this.
That is a carefully cultivated liberal illusion designed to hide the problem. Using metro Boston as an example of a national problem, there is a severe shortage of housing relative to demand. A very common arrangement is for a three-bedroom apartment to house 3-12 total strangers, each one paying $800-$1800 per month per bedroom or $400-700 per bunk bed. And a lot of what housing there is, is dangerous slum-quality. The relevance of Boston and places like it to the rest of the country like it is that this is where the jobs are, and this is where there is the least resistance to the resettlement of refugees.
If the rent vouchers “work” it is because the social workers have done the hard work of finding landlords and then guaranteeing the tenancy of their clients using the state as a guarantor. The average person does not have anything like that kind of resource. I know a refugee who got a fully rent-paid apartment all to himself for one year, no credit checks or reference checks which he never could have passed. It made me wonder how I could become a refugee! By the way, now he is in the same horrible roommate situation as most other single people. Programs like this just displace everyone else out of the housing market. For most people, renting your own apartment is like applying to college or to adopt a child.
Social workers don’t find the rental properties. The clients who have received the vouchers do. Social workers (‘case managers’, actually) help with things like appeal letters.
I’m not sure if you’re talking about Section 8, which is not what I’m referring to, and at any rate is massively oversubscribed with wait lists. I am referring to targeted programs for refugees, veterans, youth who have transitioned out of foster care, some rough-sleepers and other groups who have attracted someone’s notice as being especially worthy. These programs tend to be ad hoc and state-by-state and even town-by-town.
In a tight market, very few of the people who are sleeping rough are in a position to pass a tenant screening even if they do somehow get Section 8. So yes, whatever the details of how the program is run, the state or the sponsoring organization are acting as guarantors and smoothing things over with the landlords.
Meanwhile, people are renting bunkbeds in deathtrap slums for what used to be the cost of a studio apartment. This is painful proof of a housing shortage on top of the numerous studies proving a housing shortage. How on earth could the solution be to take some of the few available studios and one-bedroom apartments off the market and give them away like Willy Wonka or Oprah?
I’m not talking about Section 8 vouchers. The simple fact is that the housing absolutely exists in my area, just few people can afford anything because landlords charge so much. The vouchers invariably cover much, though not all, of what is available.
Reading Connor’s question “but push them out to where? To sea?” I immediately thought of Gaza and West Bank… albeit First Nations were moved in reservations prior.
Many SciFy stories with reserves for homeless like characters, including Brave New World…
I always find it interesting to see the extremely one sided reporting on “homelessness.” After living for over a decade in the middle of dozens of meth camps in Austin, I can tell you that the issue is a lot more complicated that these articles let on. Once a city is identified as ‘friendly to homeless people,” and the full time drug abusers find out, they move in. They take over. They steal everything, attack people trying to be in public spaces, piss and sh!t everywhere (sorry family bloggers, the words are needed to make sure everyone understands). It quickly becomes something even a large city can’t cope with. Regular homeless people are no longer able to sleep safely anywhere because they are also being attacked by hardcore drug addicts. Business have to relocate. Families have to leave their homes. It can destroy a community in no time. And regular tax paying citizens who are lucky enough to still have housing pay a massive price because American politicians are so corrupt that the only thing in the future is more inequality, more drug addiction, and more cities turned into hell. I always voted for Democrats and even Democrat Socialists. Then I saw these people show up at community meetings and scream about criminalizing homelessness, telling me I hate homeless people and am probably a Republican. This one issue is going to kill support for the left. Once you have been terrorized every day, 24/7 for years by meth camps popping up anywhere people can squeeze one in, you start to feel like you are being punished for something you had nothing to do with creating. I didn’t create an unfair economic system, and I used to vote for politicians who pretended to care, but at this point I just want to be able to live my life without being terrorized by drug addicts and psychiatric cases 24/7. The supreme court decision was incredibly just and correct. You can’t decriminalize all crime for people who live on the street and expect positive results. The more this goes on, the more people like Trump will win elections.
Agreed. I spent 20 years providing services to the homeless, and know from experience that these types of policies enable the worst kinds of people. The predators that prey on the most vulnerable are given free reign .
Ironically, for the normal homeless, security of person is the most important thing. Basics, like a locker where they can safely lock their valuables while they go to work. Ability to safely sleep at night. If you are a woman, to be able to get away from the pimps. Our woman’s sleeping area was built like a fortress, and I was very surprised to learn that the woman viewed it as a fortress, not a prison. Housing is presented as the solution, but having an apartment is of no value, when the scariest person you know, knocks on the door and says “nice place you have here”.
If you are vulnerable, the rule of law justly enforced is very important. Something that the left completely fails to understand.
I don’t think it’s useful to frame it as a Democrats/Republican divide since both parties have no problem with people living on the streets as long as they’re out of sight and out of mind.
The issue at hand here is that Supreme Court said it is okay to prohibit camping, which effectively criminalizes homelessness since even the homeless must sleep.
If we’re saying that that decision is just and correct and that “The rule of law justly enforced is very important” what is the plan then? Lock them all up?
Does that apply only to the homeless who use drugs or all homeless?
Is it intended for only those who lost housing because of drug addiction?
What about those who started using as a coping device after losing their home?
Let’s say it applies to all homeless and you arrest them all.
Okay, what are you going to do about all the new people losing their housing everyday due to economic factors? A lost job and an eviction, a medical bill, a lack of support system, etc. How many more prisons must we build?
What about the increasing number of senior citizens becoming homeless? Are we going to put grandma on the chain gang?
Th drug issue might be complicated. But the economics issue is not, and adding more cruelty to already-cruel system seems like an unfortunate way to go.
As a first step, why don’t we provide housing for everyone who needs it. (That would reportedly cost a fraction of what the US has sent to Ukraine). As far as I know, using meth, stealing, and domestic violence are already illegal, so I’m not sure why we need to criminalize poverty in order to police all these activities you mention.
There have always been laws against vagrancy so the break with precedent was taken by the 9th circuit, not the Supreme Court. I agree it is unjust for people not to have a place to sleep but it is also unjust to say this is the problem of businesses or homes in front of which they choose to do the sleeping. It’s not unreasonable to say that local governments do have the right to make some rules.
Here in New England, they are mostly sleeping in very inconspicuous places under bridges, on riverbanks, highway off-ramps, etc. Some do still sleep at night in doorways of businesses that are closed but they are gone by morning. There are sometimes ugly encounters with addicts near treatment centers but relatively few of these people are street sleepers.
The level of street harassment described in these comments would not be allowed here. This was common in the 1990s-2000s but not now. The authorities rightly determined that that is a dangerous situation that does not do anyone any good.
And yet the authorities still keep rousting people from their hidden-away camp sites, supposedly to send them to shelters but the shelters are overflowing, so…? The goal is obviously to send them to other municipalities and even other states. And Uncle Joe just added thousands of refugees to the mix.
Have you ever seen the impact when someone for whom the law has always been the enemy suddenly finds the law on their side? I have, it was life changing for them. The Police and the courts are not always the enemy. People do not become police officers because they want to be assholes.
“Laws justly applied”
The solution lies in making the system work for them, not against them. Homeless people want to live good lives. They do not want to spend their lives worrying about who is walking down the street. Most homeless people have buddies, so that they can watch each others back. Reality is that life as a homeless person is very scary and they need the police more than other people do. They need them on their side, so that they are not constantly being robbed or worse.
By the way, I am not an American, so I have no interest in the Democrat / Republican divide.
People become police officers because they have a worldview which presupposes certain groups should be treated like vermin, dominated and deprived of rights, also that force and coercion is justified in and of itself (e.g. might makes right). In other words, you can’t become a cop unless you believe in authoritarianism and have a desire for control of others. And obviously if you derive pleasure or sense of power from inflicting unnecessary pain and suffering in others, you’re going to be attracted to the occupation for the same abovementioned reasons. And targeting the homeless is an easy, risk-free fix for your power trip, nobody is ever going to hold you to account for curbing some homeless.
I can’t see the police ever being a force for good except perhaps in another universe.
I am sorry that is your experience. It is not mine.
It’s amazing you can supposedly do something for twenty years and clearly have no idea what you’re talking about.
You have identified a real problem, Jake, but I didn’t see a solution offered there.
Why is it his Job to come up with a solution? There are a handful of people on this site who can come up with ideas and maybe he could comment on the a solution but he is a subject expert and it’s not his job to offer solutions only offer information on the subject that he knows and that is the effects of drug addicts on his life.
Homelessness is not about housing, and has never been about housing.
Homelessness is about community and belonging. People who are a part of a supportive community do not become homeless except short term due to circumstance. Building community is the solution. Community is about relationship with the people around you. It takes commitment and shared interest. Our society has spent the last 50 years destroying the community bonds and rebuilding communities is hard work. No magic bullet to be found.
I’d take it further. Our society has been successful in destroying the sense of community that existed in most places.
For a large portion of Americans, life has become a slow-moving mass casualty event.
The definition of “society” that the social system uses is the key. It is an eternal source of contention. Who controls the resources available and for what purpose. The complaints above about America’s wasting resources for a war overseas while the Homeland withers and dies is a good example of that question.
I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that Community is a manifestation of political will. Going further, I’ll note that politics in the West has become an economic activity. Money in Politics is the ultimate tool of the corrupt.
Replying to the question above about ‘solutions’ to the problem(s) I will only half facetiously suggest a replacement set of rules for the present day Neo-liberal ones.
1) Round up Financials and their minions.
2) Stand them up in front of convenient walls.
3) “Make them Redundant.”
Most ‘serious’ revolutions end up with a period of Terror of one sort or another. With this ruling, the Supreme Court has institutionalized a slow moving form of Terror. As a certain Financial Celebrity once said:
““There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” ― Warren Buffett
Heaven help us. We live in interesting times.
Stay safe.
Instead of shooting them why don’t we merely return corporate and individual tax rates to what they were in the 1950s. Then we’ll take the money and build more housing.
Of course historically speaking the rich and powerful tend to resist the reasonable solution with all their powers. That’s when the guillotines come out. But chaos can claim a lot of innocent victims.
I sort of agree, but I’ll contend that the present state of play is an institutionalized “chaos.” Chaos generally is the result of there being no reasonable solution to problems. The key word there is reasonable. As long as we allow the legal definitions to be made by apparatchiks beholden to the money interests, we should not be surprised to find that the ‘solutions’ imposed favour those money interests. Cynically thinking, “chaos” favours the extant power centres. It impedes and confounds efforts by the less powerful to organize countervailing political structures to the monied elites.
So, “chaos” is already claiming the lives of the innocent. It is almost as if the present-day Globalists are implementing an Anarchist Agenda.
Stay safe. Keep your Bug Out bag ready 24/7.
Completely untrue. The rate of homelessness perfectly matches the rate of rampant rent increase.
I’m not denying that there’s a connection, but if you look at a chart of the rise in opiate and meth use, it also corresponds with the explosion of homelessness.
The causal arrow points the other way. Economic desperation forcing people to drug abuse (to cope with pain to keep working because no one can afford months off of work to recuperate) and homelessness.
A prosecutor friend concurs. He said most people would wind up on drugs if they had to sleep on the street for a month. And he’s apparently seen that regularly among the cases in his county.
that was my experience knowing a lot of homeless people 30 years ago.
as well as a lifetime among the lower orders generally.
meth specifically is taken with more or less open eyes, in order to work that 3rd shitty job.
a lot of people manage to get into whats called maintenance mode…and are more or less functional and not crazy.
but many do not win that roll of the dice.
the economics come first.
huffing gasoline or taking fentanyl are symptoms, not causes.
even sort of satisfied and relatively stable people aint gonna start this sort of behavior…sans some unrelated biological or psychological issue.
and…about those seriously mentally ill people that are always the focus in these discussions…
has anyone taken a recent gander at the state of public mental health in this country…especially in red states(sic) like texas?
its even worse than ordinary healthcare system.
i aint saying the long ago assylums were virtuous…but damn…those folks need help…and we aint giving it to them.
and , like with the meth/fentanyl zombies, we blame them for being visible…to remind us of our failure as a civilisation.
That would contradict the narrative that the current opioid crisis is due to the wide spread adoption of Oxycontin as a ‘safe’ and effective pain killer. Fentanyl has become the black market equivalent of a low cost generic replacement for the now unavailable Oxycontin.
The opioid crisis parasitically feeds off of an underlying housing crisis.
I saw it first hand in Portland. Even the most compassionate ‘liberals’ change their tune when the street in front of their homes becomes choked with clapped out RV and tent dwellers having all night drug parties.
In Cape Town a lot of trashcans are padlocked ostensibly because of raiding baboons. It never occurred to me that this could be used against street people, but the Cape Town government — its mayor is a prominent property developer — is very anti-street-people as well as not terribly baboon-friendly (but prefers baboons to street people, definitely).
I admit that a lot of crime takes place among street people. But, pardon me for breathing, isn’t it true that when street people commit crimes, they can be arrested and jailed for committing those crimes? I mean, as far as I know making meth (we call it tik in my country) requires a fairly well-equipped and ventilated and stable lab, because some of the processes of cooking it up are damned dangerous. You probably couldn’t safely do it in a burned-out basement, and certainly not in a freeway underpass. Anyway, where are the street people getting the equipment and ingredients from? I think confusing drug-houses with all street-people is confusing kumquats with watermelons.
I didn’t realize that the case was brought by Grant’s Pass until reading this story.
Three or four years ago I worked a fire based out of there (I think the Slater fire, idk) and had to walk about 10 blocks from the ICP to my hotel each night.
Depending on the shift, that was sometime between 10 pm and 1 am. Then back between 5 am and 7 am.
It was pretty shocking in the number of drug addicts (my assumption) that were out wandering around. I’d have to pass a 7-11 store that was clearly an open air drug market. I can see why the locals wanted to do something.
Instead of criminalizing homelessness, how about re-crimimalizing open drug use, petty theft, public urination/defecation, etc. It addresses the real conflict.
It’s unfortunate that the criminal element in the homeless population is what people think of when they hear the term. Not the people with jobs doing the best they can to hide the fact that they’re homeless and trying to catch up.
I live an hour south of Grants Pass. Let me share an interesting anecdote about the place: it is rumoured to be the location of a large underground bunker to be used by the military in the event of a nuclear war.
Don’t know if this is true or not. But the Russians apparently think it is. One of those target maps which show up from time to time shows two destinations for Russian ICBMs in southern Oregon: Klamath Falls, where there is a National Guard air base… and Grants Pass.
That’s wild. If the fire was near the supposed underground bunker it was never hinted at. I would think there would have been some kind of anomaly, like a “no fly zone” for fire fighting aircraft or ground personnel that did not make sense. Don’t recall anything.
There goes southern Oregon on my fall-out free zone bingo card.
Yup. Maybe we shall push into DelNorte County, or not. Yikes, the Emerald Triangle is not, in my very limited world view, the place to hide out in said…Woods..
And, thus…I am your neighbor, Jackson, not Josephine County. Very intriguing; the bunker. Well, I do learn something new each and every day. No surprise. The “Woods” around these parts are filled with all sorts of mysterious objects, critters, happenings. Coffee on me, if you are up for a meet and greet in the Rouge Wild Lands. Be well💙🌎💦💙
Homeless get their meth lab equipment from the same cartels that are using Central American families to transport Fent across the border. For more on this unique and unlikely business plan, refer to Fox News, Prager U, and others who are entirely objective and guided solely by their love for you.
As cheap and potent as meth has become, the cartels have managed to pretty much ruin the economics of mom and pop meth labs. Another American industry lost to offshoring. We need tariffs on meth!
It doesn’t matter whether MIA, police state, markets, tis a mystery or go die, maintaining the current course logically and inextricably leads to the USA becoming the shantytown of the world. TINA. Solve the homelessness problem or the USA is done, end of story. And since the US has a chronic inability to solve any problem, I guess it’s done for and we should plan accordingly.
Speaking of which, you should see the big “farm” to the west of our Half Horse Town. It is owned and run by a retired big time NFL football player. It is seriously set up like a Latifundia in any Third World Country. It is big, well defended, semi-remote, self supporting, housing a “community” of like minded people. It appears that some of the wealthy are planning ahead.
In addition to the few wealthy fortifiying in anticipation, and probably cities too, how does it play out when the homeless become so numerous, widespread and treated so badly, are essentially an occupied people, that they become militant and organized, kinda like Israel and Gaza? Probably someone should see to it that the homeless never become occupied like the Palestinians in Gaza, but it seems to me that US geography does not favor Israeli solutions….
Well, if we take the collapse of previous Empires, the Roman Empire being the favourite example for Westerners, as our guide, the cities devolve into semi-governable regions, held in thrall by armed gangs and factions. See the history of Italy during the Late Middle Ages for examples.
The Israeli “Solution” relies upon a functioning centralized government and economy for support. Remove either and the “management problem” becomes impossible of solution. A Post Collapse America would probably lack both.
The rural Latifundias are a traditional response to civilizational collapse. They withstand the test of time.
City States are possible, but they require pacified agricultural hinterlands for basic needs.
Who says that History has ended? Fools, the lot of them.
Regarding pushing them out, they’ll be forced to move off of city land to places with county jurisdiction. As long as these are relatively out of sight and away from places like businesses, the city will likely be mostly satisfied. Policing the issue will become almost entirely the county’s problem, with the city only having to occasionally pay cops to run people off to county land.
Growth of U.S. Population Since 1900
Source: U.S. Census
1900: 76,212,168 +21.01%
1910: 92,228,496 +21.02%
1920: 106,021,537 +14.96%
1930: 123,202,624 +16.21%
1940: 132,164,569 +7.27%
1950: 151,325,798 +14.50%
1960: 179,323,175 +18.50%
1970: 203,211,926 +13.32%
1980: 226,545,805 +11.48%
1990: 248,709,873 +9.78%
2000: 281,421,906 +13.15%
2010: 308,745,538 +9.71%
2020: 331,449,281 +7.35%
Figure it out. When I was a kid in the ‘60’s and early ‘70’s there were Single-Room Occupancy flophouses everywhere. No more. I’m sorry, but people should not be free to “sleep rough” on our streets and in our parks — if for no other reason than disposing of their excrement, let alone that having to sleep on the ground every night makes drug-use a necessity.
But there needs to be an alternative and there is zero incentive for the “market” to provide it, because most of the unhoused are the discards of globalization/labor arbitrage and will never have sufficient income to pay market rents. Everywhere I have been, the resistance to building more housing, especially for the chronically poor and downtrodden throw-aways of de-industrialization, is vicious.
This is not a problem that is amenable to being solved by the justice system. The solution to homelessness is a home…
Indeed. That is the simple solution and true. I’ve been around addicts, and homeless, and lost good people too…in SF since 85. For all of them it was about a base to recoup, or still do drugs, but be safe, and try to restore pride as a human being…..and needing medical care!!! If you look at the HUGE CA budget for ‘homelessness’, you will find only a fraction that actually builds social housing. The rest is shelters, and subsidies to landlords so they can keep their rents high….The dem party is owned here, and in NY, by speculators and condo builders. This party would never do a massive working mixed middle class housing program, off market. Unless forced by people power. And that is on the agenda…here and elsewhere, in a more militant way, then….relying on NGOs. Way too late, and we will probably lose yes.
It’s important for real estate values to continue to rise so people can use their homes as ATM machines to keep consuming in the face of inflation and falling wages.
Sleeping on the ground doesn’t remotely make drug use a necessity. I know plenty of sober homeless.
Israel also has low cost higher education and a national healthcare system which I assume is helped made possible by US financial assistance.
Imagine the great things we could achieve if we only had a foreign Uncle Sugar subsidizing our war machine.
All those overseas wealth funds and central banks buying our Treasury Bonds are playing ‘Uncle Sugar’ for us.
Growing up in LA if you wanted to see homeless, why you went to Santa Monica… (‘home of the homeless’ as per Harry Shearer) where there were a few dozen that got fed regularly at the Rand building, and there weren’t any of them anywhere else who were visible, but now they’re everywhere.
What changed?
The price of homes for 1 thing, a house in LA in 1980 was $100k, now it’s a million…
Drugs back then were primarily to get you high-not kill you or leave you in a vegetative state, I remember when Len Bias overdosed on cocaine-it was big news!
Now homeless die every day from overdoses, and nobody cares all that much.
What’s the solution to it all?
Don’t know, but everything that has been tried has been pretty much a failure.
I work a lot with homeless advocates here in the East Bay Area of CA.
1. We see lots and lots of people who are addicts. It used to be that meth was not the hugely debilitating drug it has become today. I’ve read somewhere that there is a new way of making it that is way more powerful and addictive. It used to be made in mom-n-pop RVs that stank so bad that they would drive along freeways to air them out and not freak out the neighbors. Today I hear it is made down south somewhere and shipped in along with fentanyl. So lots more ODs, which prob is a plan somehow.
2. The other thing is the housing cost inflation. Many units sit empty cuz of “investments” that owners don’t want to get “dirty”. Berkeley has finally instituted a Vacancy Tax, but doesn’t know how to implement it as the city management has a 30% staff vacancy rate, and has a hiring freeze.
3. Jobs – low pay, etc. – why don’t people just tripe up in housing? Lots of immigrants accepting jobs that other people don’t want. Tis a mystery. The “shelter” hotels are hiring Africans who barely speak English. Don’t know where they are from yet.
“Don’t know where they are from yet.”
The Sahel via Libya and Southern Europe?
It’s hard, though not impossible, to OD on just meth. Most OD’s are from fentanyl, either because someone actually wanted fentanyl or because it’s contaminated something else, usually meth.
The fentanyl is added to the meth for a bigger high, but very sloppily done. My friend’s daughter died that way this last year. We think it was added to the meth, not sure of how and why.
It’s not a bigger high in the sense of the meth and fentanyl directly working together, like you get both highs at once, it’s that the meth keeps you awake to experience the fentanyl longer.
There’s also lots of unintended cross-contamination because there’s little quality control on how this stuff is being manufactured. Different things are often made in the same locations, with the same poorly cleaned equipment. Fentanyl can get into pretty much anything, even when it wasn’t meant to.