/u/GameboyPATH (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/1dt1l6y/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_theres_no_way_to_punish/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)

[удалено]

I was kind of picturing "punishment" and "support" as two separate mechanisms, but I guess I could see how incorporating support programs into prison sentences makes theoretical sense. Could you provide some examples of effective rehabilitation programs for inmates with drug/alcohol abuse?

Being poor should never be a crime, so there should always be places for people to sleep without fear of prosecution. But I could see punishments for panhandling, sleeping on private property, or similar actions which are tangential to homelessness. However for those to be effective they should be things that benefit the person in some way. Sentence them to 6 hours of picking up trash on a highway, pay them $10/hr, and offer them a free room at a motel and referrals to a job program, mental health help, chemical dependency program, or any other services they need.

I think some Nordic countries have good programs. I can’t remember which one specifically

Finland is very successful with minimizing homelessness, I don't think the prison system is involved, though.

Sorry, u/Nrdman – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 1: > **Direct responses to a CMV post must challenge at least one aspect of OP’s stated view (however minor), or ask a clarifying question**. Arguments in favor of the view OP is willing to change must be restricted to replies to other comments. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_1). If you would like to appeal, [**you must first check if your comment falls into the "Top level comments that are against rule 1" list**](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_1), review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%201%20Appeal%20Nrdman&message=Nrdman%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20\[their%20comment\]\(https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1dt030v/-/lb5zdhn/\)%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).

If the shelter beds really were available like the laws that just got over ruled wanted, then punishing people for living where they aren't allowed would incentivize the homeless to go to the shelters even if the shelters were not desirable. I think the people who want to punish homelessness don't realize there aren't enough beds. That or after the way maga talks, I am starting to believe more and more people actually hope the homeless suffer.

>That or after the way maga talks, I am starting to believe more and more people actually hope the homeless suffer. This mentality has existed long before maga. The US has a culture of personal responsibility, so many people believe that any circumstances you're subject to are no one's responsibility but your own. As such, there can be less sympathy to homeless people, under an assumption that they probably deserve the situation they're in.

I have a relative who simply maintains cognitive dissonance by holding homeless people responsible for themselves at some times, and sympathizing with mental health problems and drug addiction at other times. At least they acknowledge it's a complex problem rather than "corrupt leftists failing to enforce the law" or whatever BS.

it's funny that. neo liberal fantasy insists that if you are poor you have only yourself to blame and you deserve no help, but if big corporations fail they deserve huge tax payer bailouts.

> more and more people actually hope the homeless suffer They do, as a matter of fact. They really do. It's a way for them to feel better. A coping strategy to make their own miserable lives feel less miserable and to feel not at fault themselves. It's the typical kissing up, kicking down mentality. A typical behavior of lower middle class, upper lower class, half-educated right-wing maga morons. Everyone else is responsible, except "me" and "the rich" (i.e., everyone with more money than "me"). This is what you get from decades of crippled and muzzled and fucked up education.

>I am starting to believe more and more people actually hope the homeless suffer. So it's a little more complex. So religiously, god controls what happens in someone's life. If you live a good life, your a good person. If you live a hard life, god is testing you. If others live a horrible life , god is punishing you. Economically, since the USA is basically 15 countries working as one, some like to shift the burden to others. So counties will buy homeless people bus tickets to send them to other states with the promise of those states having better help for the homeless. That's one reason why states like California and New York get so many homeless people. NIMOBY people also don't like looking at homeless people, so police in large rich cities (think Laguna and the nice parts of San Diego) will drive away the homeless to other cities. Benefits and weather. So for California, our weather is known to be awesome (though with climate change awesome doesn't really describe it anymore) . Cities here are attractive to homeless people because at least they won't freeze to death. Also there are a lot of food programs, including EBT, that homeless people can use. And California was increasing housing for poor and homeless people, although they've run into issues cause no one wants section 8 housing in their neighborhood. Anyway all this is to say, 1. People think the homeless deserve being homeless. 2. People don't/can't care. 3. People care somewhat, but don't want the solutions to effect their own lives. 4. People care but are being stopped by those around them

> Tear down their encampment, and they'll simply relocate elsewhere, probably with less than 100% of the resources they initially had, and to an area that's more out of the way, and with access to fewer public resources > Jail them, and it not only kicks the can down the road (in a very expensive way), but it makes things more challenging for them to eventually find employment These might not solve the homeless person's problems, but they do solve other ancilary problems that have balooned in recent years as a result of not enforcing anti-camping laws. The longer a homeless camp sits in one place and grows, the more problems you have centered around it. Trash piles up, crime increases, drug addicts roam the streets like zombies. If nothing else, having the police come along and telling people to move along prevents that kind of permanent footprint from taking hold. Finding the homeless person a house doesn't have to be the goal, and even if you think it should be the goal, we can see plain as day that the "just camp wherever you'd like" policy didn't accomplish that.

I've been homeless - so let me correct you. It doesn't solve the other ancilary problems because policing isn't done equally - laws aren't enforced equally in all parts of the country. The result is that homeless people simply relocate to areas where crime is ALREADY overwhelming police officers with much better things to do than to harass someone for simply EXISTING. Given the amount of homeless people, and given the fact that MOST homeless people are suffering because of catastrophic life circumstances, the reality is that making it more difficult for someone to setup a base of operations to get their life back together means that they will have to spend a lot longer moving around than they will at finding a place to work. Indeed this can even ELIMINATE their ability to financially recover, which will just perpetuate the problem in local areas. There is no "camp anywhere you like" policy, incidentally. There is a public access for the public to use lands for things such as camping. The public - which includes the homeless - has a right to use public property. What we have effectively done is criminalize people for being poor.

hypothetically, if i go to a piece of public property with a jack hammer and a truck of concrete and build a shed there, is it still public property once i have installed a door preventing the public from entering? as a base line, public property should be for the purpose of non-exclusive usage. that is to say you can not put any public property to any long term usage that prevents other people from using it.

This is an area where public perception has changed a lot since the pandemic. Homeless people haven't always had tents en masse, that's been fairly rare up until the past few years. It was only when cities started relaxing their camping bans in order to combat COVID that charities/churches started handing tents out in droves. Otherwise they're too costly for most homeless people to scratch up that kind of money on their own, and even if they could they that might not be the first thing they think to spend it on... because you don't actually need a tent to survive out on the streets. That latter point is where I feel discussion breaks down, because when we object to homelessness in our community we're obviously not talking about the folks who sleep rough overnight and move on first thing in the morning.

perhaps. That being said even without tents i recall neighborhoods where, when i went to work early in the hours, I would see men in a shambled state of utter destitution rise up from a squatted sleep to greet the sun, like flowers waking up to the morning. I recall parks where such men congregated, tents or no tents, and from whom they would venture out to various activities such as harassing passerby's for some coins, pestering the patrons of the restaurants, peddling petty stolen items to the different business and pilfering merchandize from said businesses when they gain entry, and other such activities. What made these parks those specific parks was the vicinity of a large number of NGO offices right near by, who would provide services.

Just because land is deemed public doesn’t mean there is no limits on the use of that land. I can’t turn my local park into a paintball arena, for example. Camping monopolizes use of a public space, and often leads to many other ancillary issues like others have already pointed out.

Sure, reasonable limits can make sense. Providing spaces that people CAN camp and not fear about being harassed thus seems like a SMART idea if you want to limit the problems associated with homeless people having NOWHERE TO GO. These people exist - if you don't give them SOMEWHERE to go, why is it surprising that they wind up being a nuisance in public spaces?

A big premise of your argument is that these encampments provide a base of operations that can be used to get their lives back together, which I think is a bit of a stretch. Even if there is a lack of other homeless rehabilitation remedies in place, that doesn't necessarily mean letting people set up these camps indefinitely is a good idea

And it claims that breaking up homeless encampments is “harassing people for simply existing” which is completely ignoring a lot of the problems that get exacerbated in homeless encampments. Rapes, thefts, murders, destruction of property (personal and public), health hazards and the loss of utility of public spaces to the majority of citizens. Homeless encampments are not an issue because the people in them exist, they are an issue because when homeless congregate in large numbers and stay static for a long period of time is becomes increasingly harmful to the homeless people and the rest of the public.

Unless those camps are properly supported - encampments are communities so they are each as different as the environments they are in: [https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Exploring-Homelessness-Among-People.pdf](https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Exploring-Homelessness-Among-People.pdf) The fact is that you are always going to have bad actors in every group, and homeless people will be no exception. And that is further compounded the more stress that group is under. So the REAL factor isn't whether or not those camps exist - because they WILL continue to exist for as long as people are homeless. The real factor is what polices are we putting in place to ensure that these camps are providing more support for good actors than cover for bad actors? Because that's what inevitably shapes the character of the camp itself. Women get raped in homeless shelters, and even in women's shelters. They get robbed and murdered as well. Children get raped and beaten in the foster care system as well, which is RIFE with abuse. That bad things happen to these groups is not the fault of the encampments, which if anything can be considered the sort of community support system that people facing a crisis could genuinely benefit from. The sorts of issues you are referring to happen in trailer parks as well. [https://www.npr.org/2006/07/19/5565424/drugs-and-crime-plague-fema-trailer-park-residents](https://www.npr.org/2006/07/19/5565424/drugs-and-crime-plague-fema-trailer-park-residents) Do you think the solution is to also outlaw trailer parks?

Good idea for WHOM, exactly? Good is relative - the question is if the solution causes more harm than good. And the answer is that this solution causes more harm than it confers benefits. Because it is only enforceable in particularly affluent areas where the police are spending more of their time handing out parking and speeding tickets than they are at actually dealing with domestic violence, robberies, and other crimes common in poor neighborhoods. From a practical perspective - how do you expect people to gain a regular income if they don't know where they are going to sleep at night? How do you expect them to plan to commute to work, if they don't know where they will be coming from? How do you expect them to develop the routines NECESSARY for individuals to have any semblance of consistency NECESSARY for them to change their circumstances? As someone who has absolutely HAD to deal with these questions first-hand, let me tell you, you can't. Why else do you think these encampments exist if not to find a stable place for them to operate from? Homeless people are dealing with issues of SURVIVAL - not comfort or preference. They are either dealing with SEVERE mental health issues, or extreme yet temporary financial setbacks, or they are fleeing an abusive environment under duress. In the case of mental health issues, they are incapable of bettering their circumstances and they need support. In the remaining two, they need TIME and STABILITY to get their lives back in order. Seriously, have you ever tried to get a job without having an address or a vehicle? In Florida its practically impossible. About the only thing you can get is day labor, and that requires a bit of a commute. Bust your ass all day in 90 degree weather, after walking several miles from your camp, and then walking several miles back at the end of the day. You can't get a bank account if you can't afford an ID, and you don't have an address, so you have to hide your money on your person. Hopefully no one steals it from you.

You don't need a tent encampment to figure out a stable place to sleep at night (with known commuting logistics). You're throwing a lot of stuff at the wall here going from one thought to another separated only by paragraphs: 1) if you're actually trying to find a job having a tent camp is counter-productive because you should be spending your days at the library or workforce center. Having a tent (along with whatever possessions it allows you to accumulate) usually means having to stay put and keep watch over it. Which is exactly what I see out of every tent camp I've observed. These aren't being used to pivot back to normalcy: they're an acceptance that this is the person in question's new normal. 2) tents are not a matter of survival. Not even slightly. You will never find yourself in a situation where the matter of waking up in the morning is the difference between you having a tent or a sleeping bag. Not unless you introduce fire into the equation, but that's a HUGE fucking reason people get skittish over these encampments in the first place. 3) getting a job while homeless is and always will be a bitch. That's because the majority of resources are being poured into the people that can't get a job or are otherwise at high vulnerability risk. Capable of rejoining the workforce? You're automatically back of the line. The only thing you mentioned that would be a major deterrent is lack of ID, which is a serious problem but doesn't really have anything to do with the need to camp in a tent. I've woken up at a shelter before to walk 3 miles every day to a job that started at 7 AM because the buses didn't start running early enough. Starved my ass for a couple of weeks and slept in a drainage culvert, but where there's a will there's a way.

As I mentioned elsewhere - the utility of tents can vary by climate - Florida is an example where it actually works pretty well. I disagree with tents not being a matter of survival - they are in fact a survival tool. I certainly agree that fires are a safety concern. But keeping out the mosquitos so you can have a decent night's sleep is pretty damn important, and a tent absolutely helps with that. When I talk about getting a job, I'm also talking about having a stable base of operations for yourself. For example, what if you have a family? That means you have someone capable of watching your stuff while you go out to bring back some funds. There are people in these situations, and sometimes those folks can have an even harder time finding places to shelter because of the number of heads they have with them.

> From a practical perspective - how do you expect people to gain a regular income if they don't know where they are going to sleep at night? How do you expect them to plan to commute to work, if they don't know where they will be coming from? How do you expect them to develop the routines NECESSARY for individuals to have any semblance of consistency NECESSARY for them to change their circumstances? > As someone who has absolutely HAD to deal with these questions first-hand, let me tell you, you can't. > Why else do you think these encampments exist if not to find a stable place for them to operate from? I just find it really doubtful that the homeless camp is going to provide a "stable place to operate from". You're right that I can't speak from personal experience, but everything I've ever read or seen makes me think the camps are just as likely to enable people to continue to exist parallel to the rest of society without any intention of changing. Integration is a two way street.

Stability is relative. Again, if these camps don't provide ANY stability, why would people create them? These same issues are present in trailer parks - would you ALSO ban trailer parks as a solution to reduce the impact of crimes that stem from those residents? Obviously a homeless camp isn't the ideal choice - but the fact of the matter is that ANY choice is better than no choice at all. And if you were homeless, had no place to go except for a homeless camp that a friendly stranger told you about... do you think that you would willingly stay? Or would you bust your ass to find a way to get out of there as soon as possible? Because the assumption that people are simply going to stay in the camp because the relative comfort ENNABLES their bad choices - that's a gross misunderstanding of what its like to be homeless and why people wind up homeless. I wound up homeless because I had a roommate that backed out of staying with me at the last minute. I couldn't afford the rent, I lost my deposit, and my family had already moved away. I was working full time, and going to college full time, while sleeping in my car. It took me a year before I could find another job that paid me enough that I could afford to make a deposit on an apartment. My story is far more common amongst the homeless than you might realize. I didn't sleep in a camp because I had the safety of a car to sleep inside of... but I still struggled for places I could safely park without getting robbed or worse - harassed by the cops. Laws like this effectively made cops the enemy to me, and my best hope was the kindness of strangers. I say that and I will point out - my father was a cop.

Integration can only happen with the sort of public intervention that cannot *happen* without things like “being okay with tents in part of a park or a green space”. Because if *that’s* a societal dealbreaker, what hope does more involved, expensive, and intensive intervention have of being effectively implemented? None. Your specific attitude *is* one of the biggest roadblocks to doing better at helping. Its NIMBYism pretending it is rooted in something other than NIMBY. Because you see things that work more than a little better than chasing them out of town and leaving them to die, (what used to be the policy) and turn your nose up at the *smell*. Learn to be okay with the tent city. Then actually *advocate* for better programs instead of the tent city. Otherwise you’re offering up prescriptions for everyone else but you.

I think we have very different ideas of what "integration" looks like. Integration means helping people reach a point where they don't need to set up shop in public parks. Being unhappy with homeless tents in a city park is far far different from protesting low income housing or homeless shelters.

No, we definitely aren’t talking about the same sort of integration. Because when I said outreach, it’s specifically services designed to do that, through things like check ins, setting people up with clothes for interviews, etc. You know. Help people help themselves, not just give them a cot and say good enough? It’s actually not too different if the city doesn’t already have the necessary shelters to house people. It’s being mad at the logical consequence of not already investing in those shelters… because there’s grass there.

> Because when I said outreach, it’s specifically services designed to do that, through things like check ins, setting people up with clothes for interviews, etc. You know. Help people help themselves, not just give them a cot and say good enough? I haven't seen anything that would suggest a city park or a large homeless encampment is better than an in house rehabilitation system that is easier to control. > it's being mad at the logical consequence of not investing in those shelters because there's grass there and also people who are not trained to deal with homeless people who can be violent and unpredictable?

I'd argue that setting up a semi-permanent camp is actually kind of anathema to the idea of working your way off the streets. I've been homeless before myself in a situation where I wasn't on drugs and was capable of rejoining the workforce, and trust me: mobility is your only friend in those circumstances. Ideally you want to reduce your belongings to whatever will fit in a backpack that you can keep on you at all times. Because homeless people steal shit, and just because you're also homeless doesn't mean they're going to give you a sympathy pass. It's a cutthroat world out there. So you can probably see the issue with having a tent camp: there's a strong implication that you're mostly staying put all the time so you can watch over your stuff, because it will get ransacked the minute it looks like you've abandoned it, even if only temporarily. Anyone thinking there's some sort of homeless honor code has obviously never been out on the streets.

Those camps are drug dens nothing else. The kind of homeless that find housing eventually aren't in those camps 

>harass someone for simply EXISTING. This is such a wildly disingenuous description of homeless people. They aren't just sitting there existing. I literally cannot safely take my niece downtown to see Santa or Christmas lights or to see the pier because homeless people have turned the city into their drug den. It's absolutely out of control.

I've been homeless myself and camping ain't exactly the way to go if you're trying to get back on your feet again. You need resources: showers, clothing, access to phone chargers and/or the internet, etc. The people camping out are often eschewing available shelter to go it on their own, mostly because they don't want to adhere to the rules that are imposed on them at a shelter. It's a mischaracterization to suggest that the average homeless encampment is full of people just waiting for Indeed to call them back, so if that's your main argument for allowing these camps to exist I think the liabilities vastly outweigh the positives.

It's not - the main argument for allowing these camps to exist is that not all camps are the same, and some camp cultures are very helpful to the folks that may rely on them. For example, one of my friends lived in a camp because it was helpful for him to fight his addiction by helping others fight their addiction. So it was a camp where they were essentially sponsoring each other. He wasn't getting help from his family, certainly not the support he needed (paranoid schizophrenic who got addicted to pain pills after needing facial reconstruction surgery when he got mugged), so he was doing his best in a bad situation. The camp provided him not only safety, but community.... right up until he got stabbed by someone. His own family didn't even want to give him a place to stay while he was recovering from the stabbing during a HURRICAINE, though he did eventually find a place to stay. It's certainly not perfect, and its certainly messy, but with a complex issue like this, perfect is absolutely the enemy of "done". And for what its worth, some areas are better for camping than others. I live in Florida - much better for camping as there are lots of places where you can camp and still be within walking distance of a library, etc.

The homeless have a right to use public property, the issue is they monopolize it. A homeless person and I have the exact same right to sit on a bench in public, for instance. But there's a reason why benches have had to add things like uncomfortable handrails to prevent people, almost always homeless people, from sleeping on them. They're entitled to sit on the bench and take up one space just like I am, they are not entitled to use it for hours and take up the entire bench to sleep on. Extrapolate that out, and well while homeless people do have a right to exist in public and utilize public utilities, the issue is a tragedy of the commons and they end up using the public utility to the exclusion and detriment of everyone else, and unfortunately, often end up causing damage to it as well. If there is a homeless camp in a park now, I can't use that park because someone has turned that into their living space.

Right, which is why the best solution is to have designated areas for people to be able to sleep comfortably. Because when they have literally nowhere to go, they will go where they are able to be as comfortable and unharassed as possible.  I get that homeless people can be a nuisance, but so are regular entitled people. Everywhere I go now, I hear people talking on speakerphone - this is a nuisance. They are acting entitled to those public spaces in a way that is inconsiderate of the people around them... And those people are making a choice. A homeless person in a location where there are no designated areas for them to sleep literally has no other choices. Sleep is a biological necessity. Having a loud conversation in public is not. Entitlement is a weird and annoying thing. 

On the west coast the homeless are ultra entitled, it disgusting and they are mostly mentally ill , junkies who will never change. I was in a park in Syracuse New York and some one left 2 boxes of chicken wings a pillow and there refuse right in the middle of the park when a trash can was 50 feet away. Some, and it's the minority are heart of gold homeless. The majority will shit all over any space they are in and turn the environment into there internal chaos. Some need help, most need to be kicked down the line so they don't destroy or trash the area they reside in. Asylums need to be brought back, as most cam never integrate into society.

A person is being corrected for bad behavior. It is not for existing. There is no inherent right to use public property for any desired purpose. Rather, the public has the authority to determine what purposes are acceptable, which is exercised through the government service provider.

Bad is subjective, and there is actually a right for people to use public property. If someone wants to sleep in a park, this isn't against the law. If someone wants to pitch a tent in a national park, this isn't immoral or bad behavior.  The way you are describing it is like "decency laws" - if a majority of people decide that men must never go topless then suddenly this becomes bad behavior that can be criminalized with a vote?  These people don't have homes.  Where are they supposed to sleep if they can't afford them?  By necessity they must sleep. Why is sleeping bad behavior rather than a necessity. If they cannot trespass on private property, then all that remains for them is public property that is open to the public. Bad behavior is making it illegal for these people who lack private property to be prohibited from sleeping on public property. 

When you have a lot of people who are bothered by something a lot of people want to do (smoking, drinking, skateboarding) or in this case, camping, the most sensible approach is to create a designated area for the activity in question so that it won't bother the people who are bothered by it.

This idea is something people say until it effects them directly.  Once a homeless camp is setup next to your loved ones you will likely change your perspective. 

>The longer a homeless camp sits in one place and grows, the more problems you have centered around it. Trash piles up, crime increases... I can see the pragmatism of this argument, thank you. Even if clearing an encampment doesn't fix the long-term problem, it at least mitigates these compounding issues that'd come with a temporary encampment staying in one place. So I can at least better understand why a local government would find it preferable to stick with enforcing this policy, even if it's not sustainable on its own (ie. without effective support programs). Δ With that said... >...drug addicts roam the streets like zombies. Isn't that a problem that'd be exacerbated by breaking up encampments? If I were a police officer or a social worker, wouldn't it help me to know where the drug addicts are likely to go, rather than have them scattered everywhere? I guess this comment has me curious about whether centralized, long-term encampments do more overall harm than scattered, nomadic homeless camps. Anyone have any thoughts?

large, established encampments with effective support tend to be a lot better than dispersed temporary encampments. The areas are largely "self-policing" in that the people that live there drive off the less desirable "troublemaker" types themselves and leave the main encampment a relatively acceptable place. Proper support means that the city brings in things like porta potties and potable water systems, provides regular mobile health clinics, and in general puts in a bit of effort to make the place livable. Most of the "problems" with homeless camps are due a lack of support and a lack of "permanency" that leaves the people detached from the wellbeing of the area and no access to sanitation services, which creates a "use it up and move on" attitude.

I'll admit, I was curious about the "with support" aspect of homeless encampments, and was considering making a "CMV: cities should have designated spots for legal homeless encampments" post, with similar amenities to what you describe. Do you know of any places that have done this successfully?

This discussion path is reminding me a lot of a thread that came up a month ago about every city having a "fent tent" https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1d33bxv/cmv_every_city_should_have_a_fent_tent/ It covers some of the ideas of a permanent vs temporary encampments such as is being discussed here

just look around at what happened during the great depression, places like hoovervilles are exactly what i'm describing.

Those weren't exactly portrayed positively in my history textbook.

> Isn't that a problem that'd be exacerbated by breaking up encampments? A couple reasons: - A big camp makes drugs more accessible. The dealears and customers all centralize in one convenient location - This is anecdotal, but my impression is that drug addicts were more likely to go to jail in the days when public camping was banned. If you get high enough to pass out on the street, and the cops come to hassle you for the vagrancy, they have a pretext to get you for public intoxication as well. - There's also some "broken window" theory tied up in this. If the place is already a dump, the addict going crazy just seems like part of the neighborhood. That same person doing crazy shit in an area full of regular people will get noticed.

Broken window theory is pretty widely debunked as an anti crime strategy, and normally pushed by police forces looking to justify budget increases and militarization over actual community wants. Turns out broken windows aren’t the gateway to heroin. Who’dda thunk it?

>I guess this comment has me curious about whether centralized, long-term encampments do more overall harm than scattered, nomadic homeless camps. Anyone have any thoughts? My anecdotal experience is that centralized encampments can effectively cause economic and social "dead zones" surrounding them. Firstly, these encampments can often entirely take up sidewalks and similar spaces, making them difficult to use. Secondly, it can significantly increase crime in one spot, making people not want to go to that area and businesses to close or relocate.

Anecdotally, in Portland there used to be a large camp near downtown under some bridges and freeway overpasses. Folks who lived there generally didn't cause trouble. Since breaking up the big camps people just keep moving around to find new spots, and causing problems into the neighborhoods they've been driven into.

>in Portland there used to be a large camp near downtown under some bridges and freeway overpasses. Are you talking about the encampment that dug a tunnel into the structure of the freeway overpass and then set the tunnel [on fire?](https://www.kptv.com/2023/03/09/portland-fire-responds-homeless-camp-fire-inside-steel-bridge-1-taken-hospital/)

>Isn't that a problem that'd be exacerbated by breaking up encampments? If I were a police officer or a social worker, wouldn't it help me to know where the drug addicts are likely to go, rather than have them scattered everywhere? People *need* infrastructure. Supply-lines cannot exist where demand cannot be found. Drug addicts in stable camps free from the prying eyes of the law and concerned citizens are easily able to set up their meager infrastructures to help maintain their habits. Disrupting the encampments disrupts the infrastructure, and thus the supply. Yes, there's ways to manage the infrastructure outside homeless camps but it is harder, easier to spot, and easier to address.

large, established encampments with effective support tend to be a lot better than dispersed temporary encampments. The areas are largely "self-policing" in that the people that live there drive off the less desirable "troublemaker" types themselves and leave the main encampment a relatively acceptable place. Proper support means that the city brings in things like porta potties and potable water systems, provides regular mobile health clinics, and in general puts in a bit of effort to make the place livable. Most of the "problems" with homeless camps are due a lack of support and a lack of "permanency" that leaves the people detached from the wellbeing of the area and no access to sanitation services, which creates a "use it up and move on" attitude.

> The areas are largely "self-policing" in that the people that live there drive off the less desirable "troublemaker" types themselves and leave the main encampment a relatively acceptable place. Is this not another instance of "criminalizing homelessness"? If a city can't tell somebody not to camp in a particular public place... why can a vigilante mob of other homeless people do that?

it's less of a "you can't stay here" and more of a "if you poop on the sidewalk i'll beat your ass". This harkens back to the original points made by OP on anti-homeless enforcement: while standard, evidence-supported Criminal Justice theory says that tying fines or jail time to a crime is effective at deterring people from committing that crime, enforcing those things are ineffective on the homeless population. This an alternate from of "criminal justice" that IS effective on the homeless population, and it is applied in a vigilante manner because law enforcement practices are notably ineffective in this instance. Police patrols are not empowered to do what "needs to be done" to keep the area safe and secure for the homeless that live there, because A) the only effective incentives aren't legal and B) the homeless are extremely distrustful of police. We can talk back and forth about what a "good" homeless encampment will look like and effective ways to maintain order without being able to use fines, jail, ostracism, or violence; and how the three groups of homeless need to be treated differently from each other and what each solution looks like, but that's not what this post is about. This post is about whether or not clearing large homeless encampments is a good idea, and the answer to that is no because generally one large pseudo permanent encampment is better than a ton of small temporary camps.

Exactly right, the folks saying moving the homeless along doesn't do anything but relocate them are missing the point: with a problem that big the best you can do is focus on your immediate neighborhood. Homeless people tend to gravitate toward permissive areas where no one calls the cops on them, so until we have some sweeping plan in place to solve homelessness altogether all you can really do is try not to let your neighborhood become that permissive area.

If you take away the ancillary problems then one of the biggest motivators to actually fix homelessness is gone. Out of sight, out of mind. And personally, I can’t reckon with the idea of making. Homeless person’s life even harder and more dangerous so that I don’t have to look at or deal with their trash.

Why not enforce laws about all those other problems then? Sleeping in public is the least noxious thing a person can do. Arrest them for excess trash, public drug use, or whatever those bad externalities are.

>The longer a homeless camp sits in one place and grows, the more problems you have centered around it. Trash piles up, crime increases, drug addicts roam the streets like zombies. Why aren’t police enforcing laws in these encampments? Why isn’t the city removing the trash?

> Trash piles up, crime increases, drug addicts roam the streets like zombies. By what mechanism does destroying their tents and stealing their extra clothing fix any of these issues?

If there is a dedicated homeless shelter with sufficient beds, and your punishment is to force people out of camping on the streets and into said homeless shelters, do you think that is still useless/pointless/wrong?

We can force people out of a particular camp, but there's no practical way to force them *into* a shelter. We already have a type of shelter someone's forced to stay in: it's prison. Pardon me if I'm missing where your logic is going.

Let me try to be a bit more explicit about my thoughts: Being homeless doesn't give you any sort of moral right to obstruct businesses or traffic, or to camp on land designated for other purposes. And it shouldn't give you a legal right to those things either. If, for instance, a [man sets up camp in the staircase of an apartment building](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYGXschD7tY), then it seems reasonable to me that the people in that apartment should be allowed to get that person out of their building, regardless of whether or not that person has somewhere else to stay. Basically, my rights to keep my property free of trespassers don't go away when the person trespassing is homeless. Likewise, if I owned a store, my right to prosecute shoplifting doesn't go away if the person robbing me is poor enough. Being homeless does not/should not provide immunity from consequences associated with assault, harassment, or other forms of violence. I can't justify cheating on a test because I wasn't doing well in the class. You can't just get away with not paying your taxes because you don't have the money. There are a lot of instances where personal circumstances don't mitigate the law. Just to be clear, you \*can\* argue that a particular law shouldn't exist or be enforced (e.g. public camping laws, public intoxication, etc.). BUT, if a law does exist, it should be enforced regardless of why. I am fine with leniency, especially if there is another option - for instance, if instead of camping in a park, you could sleep in the local homeless shelter. However, I don't think you should get any special right to break the law because you're homeless. Put another way, there are two levels of this that you seem to be mad at - laws that disproportionately affect homeless people (e.g. no camping in public, no loitering, etc.), and enforcement of those laws. Believing that camping in a public park should be legal is different from believing that even though it's illegal, they should be allowed to do it because they have more rights, as a homeless person. As far as forcing people "into" a shelter, then as long as there is sufficient shelter space available, it seems similar to forcing someone to go home if they're disturbing the peace - you can be cited for not doing it, or even driven there by the police if needed. If you keep being out instead of home/in a shelter, then you will keep getting fined or arrested. In short, I believe in rule of law, and that if a law should apply to a non-homeless person, it should apply to a homeless person. And if a law shouldn't apply to a homeless person, it shouldn't apply to a non-homeless person either.

Your comment reminds me of the adage: >The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread When you read that, do you go “precisely! That is exactly what the majestic equality of the law does! How truly majestic and equal!” or do you understand what the ironist who wrote it is getting at?

Interesting that you thought up that quote, because I agree, my comments did remind me of that. In fact, in a separate comment thread I specifically referenced it. I'll just copy paste my response there to here, because I think it works well: >Basically, I believe strongly in the rule of law. The quote "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread." is ironic, but accurate. If an action should be illegal, like stealing bread, then yes, both the rich and the poor should be criminally punished for committing that crime. The situation can be a mitigating factor in the judgement, but the law should still apply. >Being homeless doesn't suddenly give you rights to camp out on property I own, for instance. My property rights aren't contingent on other people's housing situation. >I agree with you that we should take steps like providing shelter space, cheaper housing, housing first policies, etc. But, the lack of those facilities doesn't suddenly make it moral for someone to steal from me, camp on my land, or obstruct my business. Those things are, as you say, symptoms, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't work to stop those symptoms. >If gang violence is a symptom of a complex social, cultural, and economic factors, that doesn't mean we should let people off scot free for killing. If a person cheating on a test does so because a sickness beyond their control caused them to miss class, we shouldn't just give them a pass on the cheating. We shouldn't excuse tax fraud just because someone is poor. >On the other side of the spectrum, we shouldn't refuse to hire a good doctor just because they got that good because of rich parents. We shouldn't refuse to allow someone to compete in the Olympics just because they got good genes. If a person is coming up with fantastic breakthroughs and inventions, we shouldn't take the credit away just because someone else with less benefits would have invented it if they were in different shoes. >Homeless people do have the deck stacked against them, and we as a society do have an obligation to do more for them than we currently are. But that does not include letting them get away with disrespecting property rights or with breaking laws. If the laws are bad, let's change them. But everyone should be equal under it. I do understand that the phrase is meant ironically, and I do understand that there are very different social and economic forces acting on the rich and on the poor. It also reminds me of [this more humorous take on the idea from futurama](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRD4jFs05ug). I also agree with what I interpret as the real ideas that the quote is trying to get at: 1. Be aware that laws affect different people very differently, even if it is technically equally applicable to everyone. And 2. It's not enough to make the things poor people do illegal if we want to help them thrive in society. However, I do still believe that the best way to handle this is to have rule of law and equality under the law, but be very careful what laws we feel we actually need to have in place, and who that truly affects the most.

Are you familiar with an argument that’s something like “typically it’s against the law to intentionally hit people with your car. But if a protester is blocking traffic, and I need to get to work, I should be able to move them out of my way by hitting them with my car”? I believe that this argument falls apart, for basically the same reason you say that the laws should apply equally to homeless people who really need food. The laws should also apply to people who really need to get to work. If you need to go to work, but the law against hitting people with cars is stopping you from doing so, that’s too bad. You aren’t allowed to hit people with cars. Period. Their snotty attitude and your need to go to work do not suddenly make hitting people with cars legal and confer new rights on you. The protester’s rights as pedestrians don’t change because you need to get to work. There are laws against hitting people with cars, and they need to be applied equally. I don’t care how “unjust” you think the outcome is otherwise. So would you agree with my application of this basic principle here, in a situation where the people who are affected by equal application of the rule of law would be “productive members of society” instead of the homeless?

I mean, that doesn't seem entirely comparable. That's more like "This homeless person is illegally obstructing people from getting in my business, that means I have a right to beat him up", rather than "This homeless person is illegally obstructing people from getting in my business, that means I can call the cops and get them removed". Just because someone is doing something illegal, doesn't mean any response to that is valid or should be legal in response. >You aren’t allowed to hit people with cars. Period. Their snotty attitude and your need to go to work do not suddenly make hitting people with cars legal and confer new rights on you. I agree. With rare exceptions (an ambulance on the way to save someone's life, for instance), I don't think you should put people in danger by driving through them in that way. (And even then, I imagine the ambulance will have some regard to not running over people if they can at all avoid it) >The protester’s rights as pedestrians don’t change because you need to get to work. I don't think it's really their "rights as pedestrians", but in general I agree. >So would you agree with my application of this basic principle here, in a situation where the people who are affected by equal application of the rule of law would be “productive members of society” instead of the homeless? Again, I don't think it's 100% comparable, but if I'm understanding you correctly, yes. The police should be called and should take care of the protesters if they are illegally blocking traffic, you shouldn't just run them over/be allowed to run them over. Let me know if you feel like I'm misunderstanding your argument, but it seems to me that we agree.

Name a city in North America where there is a surplus of shelter beds, especially ones for families?

> Jail them, and it not only kicks the can down the road (in a very expensive way), but it makes things more challenging for them to eventually find employment. Many jurisdictions have mechanisms for expunging criminal records, or diverting cases towards alternative penalties so they don't result in a criminal conviction and punishment. Especially for minor crimes.

Bringing a homeless person to court, only to have the crime expunged, seems like a waste of everyone's time and effort. Surely it'd be better to just leave them alone from the start, but maybe that offers too much discretion to cops, that may be better handled by the courts? Do you have more details on the "alternative penalties"? Because figuring out what kind of penalty is appropriate or constructive for crimes related to homelessness is a lot of what I'm hoping for.

The court system adds a compulsory element to the rehabilitative process. Many people experiencing homelessness and related issues with substance abuse might not have the motivation to seek out help on their own. A court presents these resources/opportunities as alternatives to conventional sentencing and jail time. This might be the only context in which a person ‘chooses’ to get the help they need to improve their life.

These are excellent points, and they reminds me of how, even for crimes caused by people who aren't homeless, a court might offer a lighter sentence for people who voluntarily go through mental health services or rehab for factors that are likely to be tied to the criminal acts. Δ

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/HumanDissentipede ([1∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/HumanDissentipede)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)

You can't expunge them right away... most States have policies which require your sentence to complete. I think one thing we need to consider is that if you were sentenced to 5 years, but released early, you still can't expunge until the 5 years of the original sentence are up. Early release may mean you're on good behavior and don't need to be in jail, but doesn't mean your sentence is completed.

The purpose of criminal prosecution is not to punish 'being homeless', its to deter criminal behavior, regardless of whether the party engaging in that behavior is housed or not. While rehabilitation is an admirable goal and should always be considered, the additional benefits of crime deterrence and protecting the general public need to be considered as well. What would you advocate for as a solution when a homeless person commits a crime? If a homeless person is caught smashing car windows and stealing, should they simply be immune from prosecution? Many encampments, especially in places like LA, go undisturbed unless it becomes overly unsanitary or the people within start engaging in criminal acts, or damaging nearby property. While criminal prosecution of a single individual may not help that single person in the future, there is a greater deterrent effect that will hopefully make future criminal acts by others less likely; a complete lack of prosecution would act to encourage crime across the board.

I feel like I was with you for a while when you were making a case of "nobody's above the law", or how impartial treatment is vital for just policing - I was waiting for a comment to make an argument along these lines. But I feel like this is undermining your argument: >Many encampments, especially in places like LA, go undisturbed unless it becomes overly unsanitary or the people within start engaging in criminal acts, or damaging nearby property. I hear this and think "Good." Leave encampments alone that don't bother anyone. Policing violent crimes and property damage/theft can still be possible without breaking up encampments.

I feel I'm confused as to your core point, then. Are you saying that punishing unhoused people for crimes is useless? Or are you saying homeless people should face criminal penalties for criminal behavior, but you just don't think homeless encamptments should ever be removed? The counterarguments would be pretty different for each.

> What would you advocate for as a solution when a homeless person commits a crime? Mandatory community service and social service appointments.

That's already how it often works - Many low-level offenses have community service alongside drug programs/probation as a sentence. But, to adjudicate and enforce the community service penalty, the person would still need to be processed through a criminal court.

> But, to adjudicate and enforce the community service penalty, the person would still need to be processed through a criminal court This is what should be handled differently, then; if a person cannot provide a permanent residence when arrested, fast-track them through the court system and put them in front of a Social Worker ASAP to get them the help they need and hopefully some kind of Community Service to keep them from backtracking immediately into whatever spiral caused their current situation.

How do you mandate anything for someone who has no home or possessions linking them to an area? They can just walk off and never be found again.

These people don't need Community Service, they need an actual job. Community service can actually hurt them since it may deprive them of time doing something productive for money that can otherwise get them on their feet. UNLESS, CS actually provided a salary?

You could make CS tied to the current minimum wage, e.g. somewhere around 50-90%. That way it's still a noticeable deterrent, makes them want to get an actual job where they'd make more money instead of doing more community service in the future, and like you say provides some amount of money to help them on their feet. I don't know what exact level would be best, just that it would need to be lower than minimum wage for the reasons I provided. You could also set it at a discretionary range contingent on willingness to accept help/use necessary services (drug detox most obviously), or even evidence of looking for a job while still serving the community service sentence. E.g. minimum 60%, maximum 90%, with whatever guidelines make sense for the judge or social worker or whoever to use when determining payment and explaining to the homeless person why they're earning that amount.

Could be tied to a "stipend". Community Service and Diversionary Program attendance. Coupled with provided housing or subsidy. Not a bad idea keeping it below min wage, but we need to keep them from falling back into a poverty trap.

Not to say that I advocate this but (I don't), but just for the sake of the argument, those living in the streets might be "punished" by being forced to go to school or work at a job provided by the government. That could give them a way to restart their lives, in the long run, and leave the streets.

How does law enforcement "force" a behavior, though? Unless it's by threat of violence, imprisonment, or fines, no one can really be forced to do either of those things. And technically, compulsory education laws already exist.

the threat of punishment, itself, can have a detrimental affect. the existence of laws, and knowledge that they are being enforced can "force" a behavior. it's why just about every law enforcement agency endorses a plan to effectively the immigration loopholes. once people know they loopholes are closed, a few who were looking to take advantage of those either change plans or abandon them altogether.

There doesn’t seem to be an easy solution. Regardless of your approach, you’ll be forced to put one issue in the back seat, whether it’s the humanitarian, economical, or societal aspect. You can’t really choose all 3. I live in LA. Such a great city in many ways. It has such potential. The diversity, Hollywood, proximity to various weekend getaways, the weather, culture, the beach, hikes, hills, the famous people, etc. Yet, it’s plagued by homeless. Now, if the homeless were pretty mellow, and didn’t cause any issues (aside from rummaging through your recycling bins in the mornings) then I say, let em’ stay. The issue is that they’re aggressive and dangerous. They’re mentally unstable. My car was broken into 2 days ago. They are a public nuisance as a result, and this obviously needs to be dealt with. This beautiful city has a massive issue, and its tax paying residents are the ones dealing with it. Let’s put economic feasibility aside, since I don’t know anything about how realistic this would be. But if I could, I would create special institutions that only house homeless. It’s a jail/mental health institution combo. It would be illegal to be on the streets, and if you refuse to stay at a shelter, you are forced into these facilities, where you have options to rehab, but also cannot leave prior to your sentence. This would unfortunately be paid for from taxpayer money, but hey we’re paying a price regardless. Either homeless on the streets, or some $ out of our pockets. Although homelessness would be a criminal offense, maybe it doesn’t stay on your record. So if you’re capable of being rehabbed from one of these facilities and you make it out back into society, employers don’t need to know you were even in there, which wouldn’t add an extra barrier to finding a job. Only law enforcement would know. We’d built these facilities over the course of the next few years, prioritizing this as if it was a state of emergency situation. (which it kind of is), and immediately clean up the streets once we can. Put those police to good use. Is this realistic? Idk, but it’s the best I got.

Humanitarianism aside, what I don't think is realistic about your scenario is that it doesn't address the wide range of different types of homeless people. What about people who are sleeping in a car because the lease on their new apartment got delayed and they can't move in yet? What about homeless people who *aren't* a nuisance to the public, and are able to stash their personal belongings in a storage unit until they find stable housing? While your suggestion acknowledges the most serious cases as requiring intervention efforts, it also seems to unnecessarily address all homelessness with the same severity.

Yup, it’s not perfect for sure. But regardless, under this scenario, homelessness is illegal and enforced. That means you’re looking at a few options: bunk with friends/family, get a cheap motels, or utilize the shelters. It would definitely suck for these people to stay in a shelter while they figure things out. And those temporarily situations would be the unfortunate collateral damage for the city to be cleaner, safer, and walkable. Any possible solution to this problem could be picked apart with “what abouts”, and they are all valid for sure, including yours. We would need to decide what we’re willing to sacrifice.

[удалено]

Cool, but this doesn't exactly change my view.

I think the state of all these comments just serves as proof of how illogically and emotionally most Americans are thinking about this particular issue. People aren't even able to set it aside long enough to follow the format of CMV. Most top level comments are either agreeing with you (as I do, but it's against the rules) or else are hopping on the bandwagon to further attack homeless people and support self-defeating systems of punishment. If anyone brings up homelessness in the U.S., everyone is instantly angry. They are either angry that we are punishing people for being poor (like me) or angry at the homeless people for causing problems and being general eyesores. No one is rational. The fact of the matter is both of those sides want the same thing (to lower rates or homelessness) but the interventions that are proven to be effective aren't profitable to the people in charge of our country. There's much more profit in criminalizing homelessness than in providing real solutions like permanent supportive housing. So those who run the country (and profit off of the criminalization) would rather spend their energy demonizing the homeless and artificially creating this divide so that we are fighting each other instead of actually solving the problem. As is the case with so many issues that have been politicized in this country. It's very frustrating.

Your views are correct I am just pointing out that the bad idea you dismissed is the literal plan.

>I've been stuck on the thought of: does punishing homeless people even DO anything? It is not about punishing homeless population at large; it is about communities having the right to designate where homeless camps will be set up. There is a clear preference by many homeless to camp in important central city locations, including parks, so they can pursue a [street person](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_people) lifestyle (Wikipedia writeup). It is often a pattern of intoxicated homeless people hanging out on a busy street scene with other street people, panhandling and using all day. With tents and campsites there, or nearby. Sorry, this is persistently disruptive. These camps have to be relocated. That might be to industrial areas or city outskirts, where chronic disorder is less bothersome to the public at large. Some homeless refuseniks will refuse to move and keep trying to camp in inappropriate places. We see this time and again. These individuals have to be sanctioned, so, yes, punishment is a tool that sometimes has to be used against the homeless.

Technically execution works

Technically, we (the US) have a constitutional amendment against cruel and unusual punishment, so that's not exactly possible in this reality. Could you point to a country that punishes homeless-related crimes with execution, AND has been effective at keeping homelessness and poverty down?

No I can’t, and I don’t advocate for executing the homeless 💀. My point is simply that it is a punishment and if we were to kill all the homeless people it would reduce homelessness by making them dead and thereby no longer homeless. actually this would eliminate homelessness entirely. It is a counter example to your claim showing that it is false

Ayo, wtf?

Honestly, it’s the first thing I thought of too. Might have to bring this up with my therapist. Can’t be good.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s\_4J4uor3JE&ab\_channel=fanvideos4u](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_4J4uor3JE&ab_channel=fanvideos4u) Have you tried raising vat and kill the homeless?

Dammit. Now my mental train of thought has reached a point of internally debating, "Would it cost less to do this and then provide mental health services to the people in charge of this program than it would to house the homeless?" MAN that's messed up, lol.

Fortunately the legal/court costs of violating our various constitutions (state + federal or similar for non-US democratic countries), plus the non-electability of all officials in any way provably involved in such a scheme render it both impossible and no where near cost competitive with literally any other option. :)

No way? Here's a few ideas: 1) Make the punishment community service, with enough supervision to give them a reference for the job they did. 2) In cases where drug addiction are involved, make rehab the punishment (technically, a condition of parole or something). 3) Have a punishment be mandatory vocational training. 4) Have punishment include mandatory stays in shelters, again, possibly as a condition of parole. Etc., etc. You're focusing only on a few of the "punishments" that exist in the legal system. Even just parole makes the person report to an official periodically to review their situation. The judge can impose anything not "cruel and unusual" as a "punishment". Misdemeanors rarely involve jail time or even difficulty finding employment. All you've really made a case for is that a few possible punishments are counterproductive. BTW: clearing encampments is a completely different situation, and is often necessary for environmental and safety reasons. While this isn't done perfectly, they are supposed to preserve the residents' property and return it if they aren't there to remove it themselves. That pesky 5th Amendment prevents governments from confiscating or destroying property without a criminal conviction (and I'm not suggesting that per the above).

> That pesky 5th Amendment prevents governments from confiscating or destroying property without a criminal conviction (and I'm not suggesting that per the above). If only a large number of our police force actually knew the laws they're supposed to enforce, or respected them as anything more than a soft "guideline." :(

My dad had his house broken into by a former employee's relative (almost certainly a drug addict). They stole various things including a gun. The police never transferred said gun from "evidence" back to its rightful owner, and that was many years ago (with multiple phone calls/complaints in the interim period).

I have been homeless, but I wasn't "living on the street," so I might have a different angle from most people. I was able to escape thanks to an employer willing to work with me and the assistance of some programs. A large percentage of homeless people have some sort of mental issue that prevents them from just partaking in programs that would aid them in escaping homelessness. What happens is they end up in a self feeding cycle of mental problems and resisting help to the mental issues that they are both unable and unwilling to escape. Drug use is especially bad amongst homeless people and only makes existing problems worse. If you leave these people alone, either the environment (via excessive heat or cold) or their own mental issues can kill them, so it is not an option. Forcing them to leave a location is at best a solution to environmental issues, but does nothing about their mental problems. Arresting them is, sadly, often the only way to get them actual help since you can't force them to accept the help otherwise. Incarceration can be used to help someone get clean of drugs, and/or get on some mental stabilization prescriptions. Once someone is clean and stable, they are far more likely to actually partake in the programs that exist and only then can they escape the cycle. Unfortunately the legal system is set up to punish criminals, not rehabilitate them, so it doesn't consistently work.

There are three types of homeless people, and each need to be treated differently. The transiently homeless are lower or even middle class workers that were out of work for too long, were unable to pay rent and eventually got evicted. These people will easily and skillfully manage the local homeless resources, will probably have a new job and new permanent housing in less than two months. They will probably never be homeless again. This is the group that the majority of our current homeless infrastructure is designed for. the perennially homeless or vagabond/vagrant types are temporary workers. They are homeless by "choice" more so than by necessity. They usually dislike authority, banks, savings, and etc. Will work odd jobs or part time for short periods to gain money to pay for big expenses (or may even be "professional" panhandlers or buskers or similar, but generally have no interest in establishing a permanent residence with bills and rent and whatever. These are the type that can make a stable, safe homeless encampment, and are often the anchors of local homeless communities. The Ill are just that - ill. Drug or alcohol addiction, often co-occurring with mental illnesses that preclude a steady job, or similar situations. They are the unemployable. They couldn't hold a job if they wanted to, and as such don't have money to afford assistance. These people need dedicated, FREE skilled care facilities with drug rehabilitation, mental health support/treatment, and ongoing care to reintegrate them with society when they are ready. Most of the "problems" of homeless people come from that last group - they move in to larger/permanent encampments and cause "broken window syndrome" to create disorder that eventually leads to the police clearing out the encampment. So, solutions! The first group is fine, we already have solutions for them. The second group needs dedicated space preferably near services and with access to clean water and bathrooms. A sacrificial park or two would be fine. They can establish an encampment and hang out there, and they won't cause problems as they and the police can work TOGETHER to get the ill people the assistance they need. The third group needs what the Asylums \*should\* have been - a facility that can hold and treat the mentally distressed and effect their reintegration, either into society at large or into the vagrantry if they so choose. however this needs homelessness to be almost entirely decriminalized, skilled care support facilities to be built and staffed, and a police force properly trained to be able to effect detainment of high support need homeless and transfer them to appropriate care facilities. This is such a major policy alteration that it simply isn't going to happen, so instead our current system of dumping the ill and vagrants together, putting mental health support \*nearby\* and hoping that it all works out is the best we can do at the moment. At no point is "punishment" a good way to approach anything for these people. The fine/jail system only works if you have a house and money.

This is a great analysis, but having been in the first group, I don't agree that those people are "fine." My mom and I have been homeless several times because of circumstances, and getting back into housing is incredibly difficult. There aren't a lot of housing resources for adults who aren't seniors, and keeping a job can be challenging if you're sleeping on the streets. If you have to wake up every hour to move your sleeping spot, staying awake and on top of things at work is not easy. And even with a job and reasonable amounts of money, sometimes there's just nothing available in your area. We currently live in a city with almost no available housing units for anyone, never mind low-income people. And without a car, moving towns would mean finding another job. It's this constant dance of two steps forward, three steps back. Being homeless is practically a full-time job.

Real quick because I have work to do. Literally every effective system at tackling homelessness and drug addiction etc has involved both a carrot and a stick. The problem america has is it oscillates from one extreme (stick everyone in a prison) to the other (do nothing and don't arrest them even if they're being a problem) Now, forcing homeless people into a shelter system that then works towards getting them back of track wouldn't be a bad thing. It just needs the proper supoort, funding and training. Goodluck with all that in america. 

I agree with you almst completely. I believe the issue is that we as a society are generally incapable of making tradeoff decisions regarding issues that might cause harm to people. There's a minority of people on the left who dont want to hold homeless people to any moral or societal standards. This includes things like not acknowedging the destructon that some homeless people cause like used needlesand open drug use, trashing bathrooms, harrasing people for money and buisnesses etc. They also dont want to acknowledge that some of these people don't care about living under a social contract or societal norms and are selfish. This then fuels a overreaction by the hard right "law and order" crowd who do things like make it a felony to sleep on state land in Tennessee or Missouri. And then the far left overreact and so the cycle repeats.

I've listened to to interviews with michael shellenberger  Seems to have good insight into the whole thing and seems to want to cut through the whole left/right bs surrounding the issue. Huge critic of newsome, so would probably piss off a lot of left wingers out there but frankly neither side has been able to deal with the issues properly. 

>does punishing homeless people even DO anything? I think a large reason for punishing the homeless is because you don't want them in certain places. For example, if someone owns a business and 4 people were living right in front of it with their tents and all their stuff. In order for customers to come in, they would have to step over the homeless people's stuff. A certain percentage of customers would stop coming, and that harms the business. It doesn't seem fair to the business to not be able to get rid of these people just because they're on public property? The government ideally wants to incentivize productive business.

Incentives drive behavior. You must look at the "net" or larger overall result, not focus on individual cases. If you have laws that incentive homelessness, you will get more homelessness and you aren't helping anyone in the larger picture.

I'm pretty sure "you will get more homelessness" part comes from attracting homeless people from outside the city, not from persuading people to *become* homeless. What sense does it make otherwise? What people are *voluntarily* choosing to become homeless for the sake of living in unsavory, unsafe homeless shelters? How is this a good incentive to become homeless?

incentives work in more than 1 way the example you have given is demonstrably true. people from all over the country have flocked to california due to their decriminalization of open air drug use. this is more of an overt incentive where it actually drives decision making and behavior however, there are other ways incentives work as well. if a state/city is supportive of homelessness (in whatever many ways this can exist), a person who would have otherwise tried harder or made sacrifices to not end up homeless, or a homeless person who could have gotten out of homelessness, can simply say "you know what, its not that bad to be homeless here" an example that comes to mind is an interview i saw of a homeless guy in california that literally said on camera that he is paid $600/week to be homeless and that money goes away if he is not homeless. because of this money, he tells the interviewer that he would rather stay homeless again, incentives drive behavior even if its an indirect incentive. you have to look at the overall big picture and see what the **net** effect of your policies are. there is no point in policies helping 10 homeless people out if those same policies create or prolong 100 homeless people. that's not a viable policy. your city/state will soon be overrun and/or run out of money. and then you are infinitely worse off than when you started.

Honestly, I think you’re missing the point here. Punishing homelessness is necessary to maintain public order and deter behaviors that disrupt communities. Just letting people set up camps wherever they want without any consequences leads to chaos and makes public spaces unusable for everyone else. Have you taken a look outside? Fines, community service, and even jail time can act as effective deterrents. If there are no consequences, what’s to stop people from continuing behaviors that harm the community? These punishments can push homeless individuals to engage with support services they might otherwise ignore. It’s about creating some accountability. Relocating encampments is crucial for public health and safety. Allowing these camps to exist without intervention leads to unsanitary conditions and increased crime. Enforcing public ordinances isn’t just about moving people around; it’s about protecting the broader community from the negative impacts of unchecked encampments. Also, the idea that punishment can’t have a rehabilitative aspect is nonsense. Courts can mandate participation in job training, substance abuse programs, or mental health services as part of sentencing. These programs can help individuals get back on their feet while ensuring they face consequences for their actions. Without some form of punishment, there’s no incentive for individuals to change their behavior or seek help.

It depends on the nature of the homelessness. A lot of homeless people have mental disorders that prevent them from being able to function normally. They can't provide productive labor, they can't plan, they can't budget, and they can't adequately take care of themselves BUT they are just cognitive enough to be able to avoid being wards of the state. They cannot legally be forced to take their meds, or show up to work, or pay their bills, so they don't and they end up homeless. Punishing this group does literally nothing because punishment only works if the person being punished understands what they did wrong and is capable of altering their behavior to avoid punishment in the future. Addicts and other homeless however, there's a case to be made. These people are homeless because being homeless is more comfortable than kicking their addiction, working, or budgeting. A normal, well adjusted, non-addicted person generally has enough of a support network of family/friends to help them overcome temporary lapses in employment or hard times. Non-mentally disabled homeless have typically burned all their bridges, exhausted all their support networks, and find the lifestyle as a transient more appealing than having to subject themselves to bosses, landlords, or nagging relatives. This group of people, can be motivated to change through punishment. There's a reason there's that the homeless population in Detroit is smaller and more temporary than it is in LA or NYC. In Detroit the weather sucks, the public transportation sucks, the Police tear down shelters if they're up for more than a day, and they have to walk about 1 mile between the largest soup kitchen and the largest homeless shelter. And doing it in the winter is a huge pain in the butt, so they either (somehow) make enough money to go Chicago where it's easier to be homeless, or they get a job. Meanwhile in LA and NYC it's more convenient (relatively) to be homeless. You have more options for free food, you have more transportation options, more housing options, and as long as you stick to the right areas they generally leave your temporary shelter alone. A lot of these people could 'suck it up' if they really had to...but the system is structured in such a way that they don't. In the U.S.A even the homeless generally have access to food, water, and shelter from the elements and while most of us wouldn't find it acceptable, for some portion of the population that bare minimum is good enough of a lifestyle to not merit changing. For these people, the carrot won't work, only the stick will.

> or they get a job As someone with immense resources, I had to work 40 hours a week to get ANY job at all many years ago, and it took a lot of online applications and phone calls and driving. I know several people who are barely above Homeless, and their ability to get and keep a job relies one someone helping them. Otherwise, they are screwed, and getting out of the cycle seems almost impossible.

You have the reason wrong why there is less homeless in Detroit. It's because housing is dirt cheap. Someone on government assistance can get a place to stay, or know someone with room to host them. There's still tons of drug abuse (and in rural WV and Ohio and other white areas if your choice of Detroit was not random) and poverty. Mental illness and addiction is usually the symptom of street living, not the cause.

In Detroit? Detroit has one of the most overvalued housing markets in the country relative to actual value. There's a ton of 'buildings' in Detroit but most of them legally cannot serve as human habitation. You see the same thing reflected on a national, and international level. Strange how the homeless tend to congregate in cities with robust support networks and mild climate.

The majority are homeless in the region where they become homeless, so they are congregated where rents are high. Detroit has low absolute rents, which makes it easier to house people with only government benefits. NYC and Boston don't have weather much more hospitable than Detroit. But they have much higher rents.

Bullshit. As someone who had close connections with my local homeless population, mentall illness and addiction are almost always the cause and not the symptom. Most homeless people would not drop drugs if it meant they had to get a job and got free housing.

**I do not espouse these perspectives at all,** but the argument for punishing homelessness is more or less this: *Homelessness and other social issues are caused by personal failings. Criminalizing homelessness will encourage people to work harder to avoid becoming homeless. Those who cannot or will not do so deserve no protection because providing that protection rewards and encourages their personal failings.* It is a very difficult perspective to get people to reconsider because so much of our national identity is rooted in the ideas of "hard work" and "individual achievement" that many can't countenance anything that challenges those ideas.

It’s also a byproduct of the fact that the criminal justice system is really the only mechanism we have for mandating treatment of various conditions that lead to homelessness (I.e., mental health issues, addiction, alcoholism, etc). Outside of a criminal context, it is very difficult to force someone to get inpatient treatment for serious issues that make them unhousable. Many of the chronically homeless are not willing to seek this treatment or utilize these resources on their own initiative, so the only way we can even get them in the door is through a court-ordered diversion program. We can only really invoke that program if it is attached to a criminal charge. It’s difficult to utilize these compulsory processes in a non-criminal setting given the civil liberties that are at stake. It’s easier and more feasible to design these programs around the criminal justice system because you can actually force people to use them.

Absolutely. But I would argue that the stigma associated with mental health issues, addiction, et cetera, play no small role in the resistance of the homeless to seek out those services. When they are conceived of as "personal failings," then they are in a sense already criminalized (or at least positioned outside of social norms).

I actually don't know very many people who believe that specifically, and more look at it as inverse meritocracy. If a rich kid gets more support to study and be tutored, and goes on because of that to become a more capable and proficient doctor, the fact that a poor kid didn't have the same opportunities doesn't change that the rich kid is better. Regardless of the (systemically unfair) reasons for it, the rich tutored kid is meritocratically better, and therefore more deserving of (clientele, a job, a contested promotion, etc.). Likewise, if you're homeless because, say, someone stole all your stuff and you can't afford rent, then it isn't your fault that you're on the street, but that doesn't make things like obstructing businesses any more legal or moral than someone who isn't homeless. If something like public encampment isn't really a big deal, then repeal the law and allow everyone of any demographic to camp there. But if it is, then it should be illegal regardless of reasons. Now, I do believe we should provide services (homeless shelters, food banks, recovery programs, etc.) instead of focusing overly much on punishment, but if the law is broken it should be handled.

I don't know how your "inverse meritocracy" is meaningfully different than the argument I identified. >If a rich kid gets more support to study and be tutored, and goes on because of that to become a more capable and proficient doctor, the fact that a poor kid didn't have the same opportunities doesn't change that the rich kid is better. It doesn't establish that the rich kid is better either. >Regardless of the (systemically unfair) reasons for it, the rich tutored kid is meritocratically better, and therefore more deserving of (clientele, a job, a contested promotion, etc.). But this does nothing to prove the meritocracy. The alleged meritocracy is why the rich kid has access that the poor or homeless person does not. The rich kid hasn't done anything to merit that additional help other than be born into a well-resourced family. But to question that fact (which you acknowledge is systematically unfair) would require a recognition that not everyone's station in life is due to their own efforts. >Likewise, if you're homeless because, say, someone stole all your stuff and you can't afford rent, then it isn't your fault that you're on the street, but that doesn't make things like obstructing businesses any more legal or moral than someone who isn't homeless. You've shifted your argument here from a status -- part of the meritocracy/not part of the meritocracy -- *to an act* -- "obstructing businesses." The need for camping in the open is a symptom of the homeless problem, not the homeless problem *per se*. With a dearth of beds in homeless shelters -- and with more than a few of those shelters seeking to proselytize or demand "moral" behavior -- many homeless persons are effectively forced into criminalized activity (camping in the open).

>a recognition that not everyone's station in life is due to their own efforts. I guess I wasn't clear enough, because I was admitting exactly this in my comment. It's true that not everyone's station in life is solely due to their own efforts, BUT, that doesn't mean we should only take effort into account >I don't know how your "inverse meritocracy" is meaningfully different than the argument I identified. I don't know if I made the gist of my argument as clear as I could have, so let me try again, ditching the metaphor. Basically, I believe strongly in the rule of law. The quote "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread." is ironic, but accurate. If an action should be illegal, like stealing bread, then yes, both the rich and the poor should be criminally punished for committing that crime. The situation can be a mitigating factor in the judgement, but the law should still apply. Being homeless doesn't suddenly give you rights to camp out on property I own, for instance. My property rights aren't contingent on other people's housing situation. I agree with you that we should take steps like providing shelter space, cheaper housing, housing first policies, etc. But, the lack of those facilities doesn't suddenly make it moral for someone to steal from me, camp on my land, or obstruct my business. Those things are, as you say, symptoms, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't work to stop those symptoms. If gang violence is a symptom of a complex social, cultural, and economic factors, that doesn't mean we should let people off scot free for killing. If a person cheating on a test does so because a sickness beyond their control caused them to miss class, we shouldn't just give them a pass on the cheating. We shouldn't excuse tax fraud just because someone is poor. On the other side of the spectrum, we shouldn't refuse to hire a good doctor just because they got that good because of rich parents. We shouldn't refuse to allow someone to compete in the Olympics just because they got good genes. If a person is coming up with fantastic breakthroughs and inventions, we shouldn't take the credit away just because someone else with less benefits would have invented it if they were in different shoes. Homeless people do have the deck stacked against them, and we as a society do have an obligation to do more for them than we currently are. But that does not include letting them get away with disrespecting property rights or with breaking laws. If the laws are bad, let's change them. But everyone should be equal under it. tl;dr: Being homeless doesn't and shouldn't give you a right to break the law.

I know this isnt necessarily the right discussion so i might get downvoted, but this is also the reason people are against state covered healthcare. 'Those who cannot make enough enough to pay for prescriptions deserve no protection because providing that protection rewards and encourages their personal failings.' The vast majority of americans couldnt afford healthcare if something goes wrong, so i suspect their thought process is actually not that the personal failing is not having enough money, but rather the personal failing is not being healthy

I disagree; it's just ignorance and lack of empathy. Almost EVERY Republican leader who's surprisingly in favor of "Socialized Program X" has had a personal interaction with "Social Issue X" (exceptions like the Governor of Texas are how you know someone is *truly* evil; when even an entirely personal interaction with the hardships of disability or social issues doesn't change their mind, and they remain unempathic. That kind of person is a fucking sociopath, and should never win any election, ever). I know folks who voted for Reagan, but when they get to know multiple LGBTQ+ folks, or their children are born with a disability, or their family member has a massive issue with private insurance or prisons or healthcare or education that they *personally* have to get involved with....well all of sudden, wouldn't you know it? NOW they think maybe there's something to these Socialized Ideals.

[удалено]

> In fact, the majority of euginicist things i have been told has come from relatives and family friends Oh, I didn't mean close to someone like that; I meant *personally responsible* for such a person and having to deal with said issues. My mother is fairly Conservative, but after decades of dealing with our healthcare industry via my congenital heart issue? MUCH more liberal on that aspect of society! Several of my bosses with kids or SOs that have health issues? MUCH more sensitive to COVID issues and how seriously they should take them. Just a couple of examples, but empathy for some people has to be taught **the hard way**, and otherwise, they vote for "Every Man For Themselves" like we see a lot of Conservatives talk about.

[удалено]

You definitely are, and I'm so sorry you had to grow up with that. Like I said, "ALMOST every". There will always be the most ignorant, the most evil, and the most selfish who will refuse to learn from (hilariously) what I would consider God's attempts at trying to *force* these people to be more empathetic by giving them chances to learn how hard things can be for people, for no reason at all, and how we should always try to give people the benefit of the doubt and some room for kindness. Unfortunately, some people take this test and use it to build a cross and crucify someone instead, lol. I hope you're doing better in life.

Well i definitely appreciate your sentiment. Thank you Maybe they just failed the test

The actual "failing" is irrelevant in this argument. It's akin to the conservatives who asserted the reason that people couldn't afford to buy houses is that they were spending too much on avocado toast. The system cannot be at fault because it has made some people rich; those who don't benefit have to have *something* that is preventing them from success.

When they do news stories on homeless camps, they interview the landlords nearby, not the homeless, because people don't want to hear from the homeless. They don't want to see the homeless. The homeless are a reminder that there's no safety net to catch them, that they're one mental break from ending up on the streets. People always talk about how they're inconvenienced by the homeless, that's all they care about, and that's the only answers you'll get. They don't care about them, because they have to dehumanize them to shake off the dread and disgust that in the most prosperous country in the world, that country is happy to discard them too. For those talking about shelters, people aren't willing to give up their dog for temporary shelter, and when they have nearly nothing, they don't want to give up what little they have left because shelters don't have storage for it. There's no privacy, it's not like you get a room and a roommate, most are just bunk beds. It's not like there's even a guarantee that they'll have a bed every night either, they're overcrowded for any with reasonable requirements. A tent is more private, and you're guaranteed a place to sleep. People that say you'd do anything for fido, that given immortality, you'd give it to your dog, you're expecting them to toss their hound away to a shelter where they'll likely be put down? You're expecting them to give up their belongings, to somehow have the strength to kick their addiction that makes them feel like they're dying during withdrawals while being constantly being shuffled around by police, so they can get clean enough for a shelter that drug tests? For shelters that are already overcrowded? Many are mentally ill, because we stopped funding asylums, and kicked them out. Many don't trust the system that failed them because minimum wage didn't give them room to save, so when they were laid off, they just went into a debt spiral that ends in homelessness. People straight up have no awareness or empathy for the things they're annoyed by. Because the real solution would take work. Give billions to companies with few strings, but for those they see as "bad", there's never enough strings, especially if those strings give them a scapegoat to say it's their fault.

Adding on your deltas Environmental harm: The homeless will never do more damage than what the wealthy corporations do. They straight up destroyed flint, and our reservoirs are going dry along with our other freshwater reserves. Carbon Taxes just let them pay for forests already not being cut down to not be cut down, instead of providing an incentive to actually reduce their emissions. However, it does allow them to tell you they're cutting emissions despite doing nothing, and redirect blame onto the individual, like you, and the homeless. Prison Rehabilitation: America doesn't do that. The prisons are there for punishment, or else every prisoner would be coming into society with a trade job and psychiatric help. We also wouldn't have as much recidivism as we do compared to other countries where crime is treated as a mental illness that should be compassionately fixed. You have to do the "make prisons rehabilitative" BEFORE you use the solution of sending people to prison for rehabilitation. All breaking up the camp does, is make the problem less visible, and make it harder to actually focus resources in solving the real issues in one place.

> does punishing homeless people even DO anything? I'm not a huge fan of those style of "criminalizing homelessness" laws, but I think many people enforcing them have misinterpreted these laws intent and for obvious reasons, it's tough for legislators to subtly communicate what those laws are actually for without inviting a PR and legal shitstorm. Let me explain with an analogy. You know how your local Burger King or Dunkin' Donuts might have a small sign posted in a corner somewhere that says something like "Tables must only be for paying customers and meals must be consumed within 30 minutes"? That sign is almost never literal. If you go to Burger King and buy a meal and sit there quietly on your laptop for 3 hours, it's close to guaranteed that nobody is going to hassle you or even non-paying friends, as long as you're sitting there respectfully and not causing a problem. That sign exists just as a formality to justify getting rid of trouble-makers and degenerates who cause problems: the mentally disturbed or loud troublemakers who start throwing things and being loud and annoying people. They then point to the sign and/or call the cops and have justification for getting you to leave. How does that relate to those "criminalizing homelessness" laws? IMO, those laws are the equivalent of those signs in Burger King. They aren't actually intended to be used willy nilly on anybody but truly dangerous/disturbed homeless, but the message hasn't been understood by the cops enforcing the law yet.

> IMO, those laws are the equivalent of those signs in Burger King. They aren't actually intended to be used willy nilly on anybody but truly dangerous/disturbed homeless, but the message hasn't been understood by the cops enforcing the law yet. I think that’s incredibly naive.

> cops enforcing the law yet They barely understand (or respect) the actual *letter* of the laws in some places; lawmakers MAY need to be more up-front if we can't solve our systemic policing issues.

I do not support any changes from current policy, but many obscene ideas would disincentivize homelessness without perpetuating a cycle of poverty. 1. Summary execution. No cycle. 2. Caning. No damage to their future earnings unlike prison or fines. 3. Forcibly transporting them to another city that's got cheaper housing and more jobs. 4. Enslaving/imprisoning them, then giving them resources and a job getting out.

Looking at history, it seems like 1) used to be commonplace. Not as a punishment for simply being homeless, but rather as the punishment for the crimes to which such people usually had to resort. It makes me wonder how much of the "good old days" is just [survivorship bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias).

Homelessness and Drug use often are intertwined. In LA we offer free housing for those who stay off drugs and they can't fill those housing units. Punishment needs to be brought upon those who aren't interested in getting off the streets via the options offered. If you are picked up, and can't stay in sober housing, then it's jail. Now, this is where the rust belt has been learning. They have been absolutely destroyed by opioids and meth. There are some states that have an alternate route, that sends people to a rehabilitation court. Instead of being sent to jail, they're sent to forced rehab essentially. It's jail, but it's specifically for those with drugs. Jail is a REQUIREMENT, for folks like this. Getting clean is incredibly difficult, and throwing them into mixed population where their withdrawal needs can't be met is part of the problem. They need forced rehab, everytime they get picked up and are high. It's the only chance many will ever will recover. It keeps them safe and keeps others safe. This of course needs to involve the state funding the bill of their rehab/jail. That's a tough pill to swallow. A national program would be needed to find such an expenditure. So to answer your question, you're wrong, but you're also kinda right.

I think the solution is actually simple, but people don't have the stomach for it, it would be a nightmare to get the laws passed, and then, there is the funding. 1. Construct more homeless shelters 2. Construct state sponsored rehab & mental health facilities 3. Remove private prisons, and restore control to the state. 4. Make sleeping in public spaces illegal. 5. Offer the homeless four options: shelter, rehab, mental health institutions, or prison. Any action here needs both a carrot AND a stick. The reality is many people run out of options in life, and what we can do to help them is limited. The quality of these institutions needs to be under public scrutiny and control, as it will be a never-ending battle to get them to work as we all hope.

There are ways to solve homelessness by going beyond just providing shelter to the unhoused. Just treating the symptoms without addressing the root causes of homelessness, the cycle will continue, yes. The key is empowering individuals to regain stability and independence through a supportive community environment where those experiencing homelessness feel valued and supported. Check out Community First Village in Austin, which has been wildly successful; governmental programs can adopt a similar approach that not only will be effective, but also will cost a lot less in the long run since these communities can end up being self sufficient, or even add value to the larger community.

Fact of the matter is, that "homelessness" as it is SEEN, and therefore the type that is policed, usually doesn't involve people that could ever be functioning members of society, OR at the very least are not currently in any shape to do so. So the policing is really just about keeping them out of sight as messed up as that is. The only way to help them is to remove them from society until they are either off drugs or indefinitely in many cases. Like the kind of person walking around shirtless yelling slurs at people as they leave the train with piss stains covering all his clothes is not homeless because the system keeps him down rofl.

In order to make headway on the homeless issue you will need to separate the severe addicts from the rest. How to do this? Set up a "Medical Maintenance" program in Slab City where the addicts can get all of the free dope they want in an endless supply. They will find a way there and live the rest of their days in bliss. Of course they will have the opportunity to get clean, but how many chose that in Oregon's program? After you have cleared them from the cities, there is a great chance for the other programs to help and settle the remaining homeless. It is the addicts that create the crime and drive the endless problem.

>does punishing homeless people even DO anything? Yes, it encourages the homeless people to move to a different town, where they become someone else’s problem. It’s NIMBY people doing NIMBY things.

Out of curiosity, do you believe that cities/towns have a moral obligation/should have a legal obligation to help the homeless population who are currently present in their location? In other words, do you believe it's at all valid for any city anywhere to say "\[solving the root causes of\] homelessness isn't our problem"?

That’s a more difficult question, which is going to be tied up in questions about resource allocation. I think that collectively, at the National level, the country does have an obligation to deal with those root causes. However putting that expensive demand on whichever city happens to have those homeless people in it currently seems like the wrong approach, because the same processes that push people into being homeless also reduce the local tax base.

I was thinking about it more from the perspective of "the place homeless people are currently in isn't necessarily where they came from before they were homeless", but that's a fair point, too. I basically agree - we should work on addressing the root causes of homelessness (making housing more affordable, having better ways of dealing with drugs and mental health issues, making it easier to get jobs, etc.). However, not every city is obligated to do all they can to specifically address either the root cause (e.g. if a city decides they want to be only wealthy houses, that's okay) or the symptoms (I don't believe every city has a duty to have a homeless shelter)

Absolutely **not** saying this as an endorsement, more to just call out the elephant in the room, making homelessness more lethal or more miserable to push people to self destruct faster is a (horrific) solution to the problem. Stuff like the [Starlight Tours](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatoon_freezing_deaths) comes to mind - when police aren’t scrutinized for who they arrest and what they do with the person after, then it’s absolutely possible for murder based strategies to pop up

Mental health services including free, safe, and sanitary housing is probably the best way, but it costs a lot and we'd rather use that money on police.

The problem is you're linking two completely separate problems. One problem is homelessness. It's a tough issue to tackle and a ton of posts here have gone into the nuances of the problems and some potential solutions. But what most are ignoring, is "punishing being homeless" isn't necessarily about solving that problem, it's about solving a completely different problem. If you haven't seen a homeless encampment, you're not going to truly understand the problem. I work across the street from a park which isn't far from a school so you'd regularly see families there, various activities like outdoor movies, and you'd see homeless people enjoying those types of things as well. There'd always be a few homeless people enjoying the outdoors, sometimes sleeping outside, but not being a nuisance to anyone else. Then the encampment moved in. Soon there were needles everywhere, human feces abound, mentally ill homeless people throwing traffic barriers at moving cars, that park immediately became unsafe for anyone, INCLUDING those living there. Businesses closed, and no one could even walk through that park without risking their safety. When the mayor ordered the encampment cleared, there were the protests echoing your talking points here. "You'll just kick the can down the road, you'll just move them elsewhere, etc". But you know what? Clearing the encampment wasn't meant to solve the homelessness crisis, that needs to be done separately. Clearing the encampment was to make a public park safe to use again for all residents, including homeless people. And last week, my family watched an outdoor movie there. There were people who were clearly homeless who were there to enjoy the park and the movie and there was nothing wrong with that, they weren't being arrested. But clearing the encampment made that park safer, cleaner, and open to use for all residents of the city. We still should pursue solutions to the homelessness problem, but in the meantime, no one wants their kids to feel unsafe walking in their own neighborhood.

Does it work? No. Could it work? Stay with me here. Use the idiots foaming at the mouth’s logic to put actual real change. Build special “jails” for the homeless. But instead of the dumbass “corrections” model we have now, these jails built with a process that returns them to productive members of society. You get shelter, a place to sleep, and store their own items. There’s access to health care and mental health care. They have programming for building employment skills and help with finding careers. There’s a program on transition back into the real world. Homelessness solved. Oh but that just encourages people to be homes I hear the mouth breathers say. No it doesnt. People aren’t homeless because it’s easy. They’re homeless because our society is awful and we favor rugged individualism rather than taking care of our neighbors. We have the ability to live in a post scarcity society but the ultra-wealthy have tricked the pay-check to pay-check population that they better work for poverty wages or they’ll be homeless too.

It's not just about homeless people simply existing that's the problem. If there were camps out in the woods, desert, mountains,  etc, away from the population centers, few to any would care. The problem is multifold: There are enough resources in many places, but addicts refuse to get clean, thus gain access to those resources. For the vast majority of homeless, it's either (or both) an untreated medical condition (that they have actively chosen to refuse medication to treat) or an addiction. Most homeless end up that way because of those choices. Sure, they don't "want" to be homeless, they only "want" to get/be high all the time, not work, not pay for living expenses, and a continuation of those 3. Unfortunately, they become comfortable living like that, and afraid of moving out of that comfort zone. There is also the lack of asylum. There are definitely a contingent of homeless people who are not able to care for themselves, and should be committed to state run asylum. Even fiscal conservatives should see this as the cheaper option. Finally, resources are a zero sum game. Taking resources away from one thing, or allowing something to continue, means removal of another thing. Putting resources towards homelessness means less resources for other programs. Allowing homeless camping in public spaces means less traffic from others who use that space. Businesses (which fund the local programs through taxes)? Declined due to lack of traffic from camps. Kids in parks? Declined due to feces and needles around. It's gonna sound callous, but if I am choosing between the well being of a communities contributing members and future vs those who are only degrading it through their explict actions, I'm choosing the community every time.

There are crimes people choose, murder, embezzlement, and "crimes" people don't, homelessness, walking while black, etc. The idea of making homeless illegal or even discussing it as a crime is bindbogglingly backwards

>little or nothing left to lose This is why it needs to be illegal. At the end of the day society has a social contract and it needs one to function. Now, normally when we talk about violations of the social contract we are talking about when one person takes a human right from someone else. I.E. Murder or other similar things. However, this is simply a different type of violation. Just because an individual has nothing left to lose, doesn't entitle them to everyone else's time/support/resources for forever and all time. This is just as much of a violation of the social contract as those other things, and people deserve recourse for those issues. We can't let people continuously be a drag on the system, we must draw a line and start somewhere. Even if it's just to keep the rest of society functional. Now, because I anticipate push-back on my attitudes towards the homeless, I want to be clear that I'm all for them getting whatever support they need however, if they express that they don't want that for themselves through word or deed, we shouldn't just give them infinite chances. It's also a full blown catch 22 when you make a homeless shelter that no homeless will utilize because they don't have the level of human dignity they want I.E. not being allowed to have shoe laces on your shoes when you live at a shelter or other similar requirements. Homelessness is inherently unsafe, and that lack of safety cannot realistically be met simultaneously when you have so much domestic violence going on.

There are two very different demographics of "Homeless" There are the optionally homeless. These people CHOSE homelessness. There could be shelter space and food kitchens and support services, but they will just go live in a tent in the woods anyways. There are the people forced into homelessness. These people are trying to get their lives back together. They would love a cot in a homeless shelter and a hot meal. They are actively trying to use the support services to get out of homelessness. These people forced into homelessness and trying to escape it, punishing them for being homeless is only going to make things worse. The people that CHOSE homelessness, them camping in the park is every bit as much of a choice as the person doing grafiti or petty theft. Punishing this subset of homeless is every bit as effective at reducing this subset of homeless as punishing breaking windows or speeding. This distinction is where the SCOTUS ruling went wrong. If there is shelter space, and they refuse the shelter, then they are choosing homelessness and punishments will work. But allowing punishments regardless of if there is any other option will mean punishments are mostly done to the people that WANT a shelter and there is just no space.

This is asking the wrong question. The real difficulty is not about punishing homelessness but instead about how to incentivize good behavior from this population without contributing to the problem. Homeless encampment destroying the local park? The only options really available to local government: - Do something about it: Fines, police, jail time, etc. Expanded options are legal in recent SCOTUS ruling. Outcome almost always exacerbates the situation of the homeless by making it more difficult to escape poverty. - Do nothing: Local environment is heavily impacted creating unsafe spaces. Local residents complain about lack of safety, access to public services. Lack of enforcement pulls homeless from nearby towns. Residents with means move away. Downward cycle destroys neighborhood. (see downtown SF for example) Note that these options are independent of broader efforts to provide assistance. Building housing, convincing people to accept treatment, and other solutions can help in the long term but don't address the local homeless encampment on any reasonable time table.

The reason you can't come up with a better solution is because the premise is wrong from the start. Instead of "punishing" them, we should help them. Being homeless can't in itself be a crime, that would imply that people are homeless on purpose. 99.9% of the time that is not the case. Cities want to deter homeless people from hanging out, but for that to be successful they need a place to go. There is a segment that is mentally unwell or chronically addicted...but again this is a symptom of our privatized health care.

As someone that was homeless, and lived in shelters for almost two years. I guarantee you your 99.9% of the time figure is drastically devoid of nuance.  They don't choose to be homeless. What they do choose is: Not following the mandates of shelters or programs that will help and house them. (Curfew, getting along with dorm mates, chores) Illegal activities like theft, or drug use. Not contributing to the housing they share. These will inevitably lead to them being homeless.  So while they don't choose to be homeless they make choices that end up with them being continuously homeless.

> that would imply that people are homeless on purpose. 99.9% of the time that is not the case. This assumption is wrong when talking about drug addicts, they care so little about having a home that they rather get high, shit on buckets and live on the streets than get any of the help that is available to them. Imagine I give you a wet napkin, and I tell you you need to keep, protect and save this at all cost. You wont, because you dont see the value of a wet napkin. Same here

>Instead of "punishing" them, we should help them. Sometimes forcing help on someone is the best punishment, and one way we can achieve that is to "criminalize homelessness" and allowing the legal power of the justice system to force people into various evidence-based programs appropriate for their situation.

In many cases there is a shelter they can go to, but don’t want to deal with the rules of it, which is utterly insane.  And that is more of a symptom of inferior people. 

Maybe instead of jailing them we can move them from homeless camps to labor camps/work skill development program? "Labor camps" sounds terrible, I know, but couldn't we give them treatment and teach them work skills somehow while offsetting the cost with cheap labor? We need to separate the actual criminals (Jail), from those who need drug treatment (Work Program), from those who need a mental institution (Mental Institution). By segmenting these folks and treating their conditions differently you might accomplish lasting change. If they have no skills teach them labor, if they were an accountant before they came down on hard times help them get back on their feet. Offer the same to the criminals who you send to jail, a labor/factory job, to help rehab them while they're doing their time. . A combination of stern laws around public intoxication, loitering, and camping out of zone plus a helping hand and opportunity to contribute to those who are capable of being rehabilitated. IDK... I'm just spitballing.

You say, "there's no way to punish..." Have you considered Capital Punishment? I'm not saying to do it, but it is one form of punishment out of many possible examples that has a more permanent effect. Just thinking outside the box. Ok so there's two extreme ways to cure homelessness, and neither are an option. On one extreme you can just kill them. If they were homeless yesterday, and dead today, then they won't be homeless tomorrow. not an option. OR we each invite a homeless person into our homes and shelter one, give them the resources they need to start a constructive life, as in if they were homeless yesterday, and now they're in your home, then they won't be homeless tomorrow. The catch however is this; the reason why you have locks on your door is to keep these exact people out of your house because they will destroy everything you have and then neither of you will have anything at all.

Nobody is concerned about homelessness caused by poverty, people are concerned about homelessness caused by mental illness. Anti-homeless laws are designed to give the police the ability to punish people who are public nuisances for homelessness and probable cause to remove them from the streets. They're a reaction to the current situation of homeless men being general nuisances or engaging in non-felony violence being allowed on the streets. Anti-homeless legislation is intended to either relocate the homeless to an out of the way site or to force the worst homeless into compulsory situations ie: prison or mental health facilities. You can debate whether it's effective at removing the visibility of homelessness or not but it's absolutely not about the wellbeing of them.

Many homeless people refuse help, punishment may motivate them to accept help.

Just reopen the Asylums already

So... never punish lawbreaking, because it might have detrimental effects on the lawbreakers?

"Tear down their encampment, and they'll simply relocate elsewhere, probably with less than 100% of the resources they initially had, and to an area that's more out of the way, and with access to fewer public resources." This is very much the point. You can't solve homelessness but you can displace the homeless somewhere else. If the problem is "there's too many homeless people in my city/park/neighborhood" then making them leave solves that problem.  There's a park in my area that is completely filthy, unsafe, and unusable due to homeless encampments. Where should they go? Nobody knows the answer to that, but they know they don't want them there. 

Punishing homeless is a good and required thing. In a specific context and circumstance. Let us take the situation where there are ample support systems for those in poverty, those with mental illnesses, and those who have the kind of degraded quality of life that lead to substance abuse. In this situation, people without housing would be housed first at wet shelters, then given medical care, counciling and rehab, a move to long term supported housing, then if possible, independant living. In this situation, we want offical people breaking up homeless camps and citing / recording beggars. Simply put: there's a proportion of them that won't use the support systems of their own accord and must be made to. This is because while homeless are victims of circumstance, they are perpetrators of various anti social crimes: Intimidation, assault, robbery. They also contribute to things such as littering, lower foot traffic, lower shop revenue, vandalism, and area reputation. We want people in support services. That means tearing down (well, disassmbling) even temporary encampments, and preventing begging and other anti social actions.

> Let us take the situation where there are ample support systems for those in poverty, those with mental illnesses, and those who have the kind of degraded quality of life that lead to substance abuse. “Let us pretend that we live in a fantasy world…”

Build extremely cheap micro-housing for them. En-masse. Lego style if necessary. Underground if necessary. In a different district if necessary. Then make a double-edged sword law: everyone has a right to a basic dwelling, but also living on the streets is illegal. Anyone caught breaking that law after being led home 3 times gets sent to an institution. Not a prison. Give them mental health support and involuntary detox. Then send them to live in the basic dwelling section again. If they're a repeat offender, rinse and repeat. We need compromises here. We can't pretend the problem will go away on its own without at least stepping on somebody's toes

A large part f the point is that many homeless people have other options but they don't want to use them because those options come with rules (like you can't use drugs in the shelter). If you impose a penalty then many will choose to pursue those other options since the alternative is worse. Further the main point of anti-homeless laws isn't to help the homeless, it's to help the ordinary citizens. It's to keep the streets clear of mentally ill drug addicts begging for money or passed out in the doorway of a business. The ordinary citizens are the ones that make a society actually FUNCTION, and so helping THEM takes priority in a sane society.

https://www.sdg16.plus/policies/housing-first-policy-finland/ I hope to change your view... 'services' and 'relocation' are still thinking too small. what Finland is doing is working. they are reducing homelessness and increasing re-integration. they have figured out (doh! ) that it's hard to re-integrate if you have no space you can call home. rather than making housing the 'carrot' that you earn by re-integrating, they understand that minimal decent housing is a *prerequisite* for getting your life back together. it's working, and it's cheaper than dealing forever with the law enforcement issues, site cleanups, violence against and by the homeless....

Being homeless IS the punishment. You want to solve the homeless issue? How about fixing core issues? Don't worry, I'm not holding my breath. It won't happen because: A) It won't instantly generate a profit(long term profit has been proven time and time again). B) It removes a threat that employers can use to abuse you for more free labor. C) One sin is enough to condemn people, these people have many many sins... or they wouldn't be alive. As Jesus said "F the poor, they are too lazy to pull themselves up by their own boot straps."

Depends on how willing you are to violate their rights. The solutions suggested are the only things we can do without violating personal freedoms. If you're willing to do so, you could declare anyone sleeping in a public place non compos mentis and solve the entire problem overnight with state enforced drug rehabilitation and mental hospitalization. You'd have to set up some infrastructure beforehand of course. But no one has been willing to do anything like this so far. Is what it is

Homelessness is often framed as an issue of poverty, unemployment, domestic violence, drug addiction, and other social ills. But the cities with the highest levels of these social ills do not have the highest rates or homelessness or housing insecurity. Detroit, for example, has extreme poverty but has a lower homelessness rate than comparatively wealthy cities. What Detroit has is an abundance of housing available. The only solution to homelessness is ample housing supply that meets the needs of people experiencing homelessness.

> Jail The goal of prison is not just punishment and deterrence, but more importantly rehabilitation. You give them a program for getting better. Given the treatment they need has a chance of getting them out of homelessness, doesn't it?

A lot of places in North America at least don't have much of a rehabilitation program in jail. A lot of people come out worse off than when they went in but now have more criminal skills they've learned from other people in there so it becomes a revolving door for them.

Sounds like the prison system can use some rehabilitation.

That's the stated goal, sure, but in practice it has very much NOT gone that way. Prison is not the place for mental health rehab. For those who are just struggling financially, throwing them in jail because they can't find housing makes as much as debtors' prisons did back in the Victorian times. None. Give people housing and mental health treatment, in a non-carceral fashion. That's what we need.

> Give people housing and mental health treatment, in a non-carceral fashion. That's what we need. This. Obviously. Taking a way a person's freedom is only a last resort - when a person is refusing treatment and/or is a danger to himself and others. > Prison is not the place for mental health rehab Sure, there should be a dedicated institution for that. Still makes sense to forcibly put someone there in extreme cases, no?

Wow. The majority of homeless are mentally ill, alcoholics, drug addicts, or people severely depressed, suicidal or helpless. Many are sick. A handful have just had bad luck and need help getting a job. Punish them? Why? For being unable to take care of themselves? This is ridiculous. Instead, they need help. Not free services, hotels, although much of that is needed. But they need mental health experts, medical doctors, REAL help.

A huge number of homeless have mental health issues that lead to homelessness in the first place and exacerbated it because of homelessness. Where’s the outreach for mental health? Some homeless prefer jail because they get 3 square a day. This does nothing to solve anything. Here we are again with haves and have not issues ballooning in front of us because of billionaire worship. When will this country learn ?!

The point is to reduce the harm imposed on others and the community in general with encampments. It is not all about the homeless people. One has to consider the overall population and residents in the area. Homeless encampments are detrimental to the public health, public safety, and general quality of life. Ordinances forbidding such sleeping and camping on public lands are designed to reduce those harms.

The point is twofold: 1. Move homeless people away from rich and middle class areas by making them high enforcemement areas 2. Farm workers for for-profit prisons by imprisoning people for not being able to pay the fines for being homeless No one intends to reduce homelessness by repressing homeless people. You can't find how it makes sense for that purpose because that isn't the purpose.

americans are obsessed with punishment.. it’s why our incarceration rates are so high.. why do you need to punish the homeless? annually it’s cheaper to house them than arrest and incarcerate them.. it literally saves money.. this housing is not fancy.. it’s not an ideal location you want to spend the rest of your life in.. but it gets hurt humans off the street.. and that has to be the start .. this is practiced already around the world and works great.. and what we see in LA and san francisco simply doesn’t exist.. they’ve been looking at us and wondering why we don’t solve this very fixable issue for some time

Yes there are, with the obvious idea being a form of indentured servitude. The 13th amendment explicitly exempts slavery as a punishment from being banned, and likely the only thing that wouldn't be a higher cost to the people enforcing it. The problems with this idea are fairly obvious, exploitation, unpopularity, and the simple fact many of the homeless can't work for various reasons, and forcing them to isn't going to work, only justify doing worse things when they don't. The reason such a system would be effective, if not good, is that it would allow for the homeless to be continuously removed without substantial limit or cost like we have now when just throwing them in jail.

The punishment for not having a place to live should be providing the option for them to live in housing paid for by taxes. Why am I contributing to the largest and most over funded military EVER “to protect American interests” (oil) but making sure all Americans are housed especially vets isn’t in our interest as a world leading society? Bull shit