lawliness in CA on th rise

Well, bless Mayor Bass' heart but she's going to learn that chronic homelessness is way more complicated than subsidized housing. More Section 8 funding would be a very good thing. Public housing is also useful. But for the chronic hard core, the guys you see tripping out on the city's sidewalks and shooting up in the parks, those people cannot be housed without tailored treatment of some sort. Even if they don't continue to commit criminal acts the combination of substance abuse (particularly meth) and varying degrees of mental illness makes them impossible to live around in a community setting. A good many have families that can no longer allow them to visit.

 

My point is, tackling homelessness as if you mean it is expensive. Really, really expensive.

 

Homelessness is a multistage problem.
Stage 1 are people who can be helped and are down on their luck, with some help can get on their feet. Stage 2 are a layer of people with levels of disability, people with criminal record, and undocumented migrants who's opportunities are significantly lower then Stage 1.
Stage 3 is hardest one, with drug addictions and
more severe medical, and BH conditions.
All require multidimensional approach, treatment and funding on local, state, federal and faith based charitable institutions.
From law inforcement to social work and Healthcare organizations, vocational and general education.
Healthy and strong society/ nation prioritizes the welfare of different layers of the people.

LA Mayor Bass can help reduce the stage 1 and 2 with help from mentioned above sources.
And help with improving Stage 3 and beyond.

 

It's actually less expensive in the long run. Actually helping homeless people as if they were people ultimately reduces overhead costs.

But a lot of people don't want to have that conversation because the homeless "don't deserve" help.

 

Housing First policies are much cheaper than paying for the police, EMS, and all the other ancillary social services required to keep unhoused people alive.

At the same time, you really need investment at all 3 levels of government to make those policies and work - to get both the funding and the support services in place - and I don't know that America will ever get her act together in this way.

 

Housing First is considered best practice and for the most part I agree but for the chronic homeless housing has to come with services from the very start or it will fail.

 

Much easier.

 

It's pretty often, at least in the US, that the reason why people "go crazy" is because they're going broke. They no longer have money for doctor visits, for time to pick up prescriptions, etc. because they've also still got to eat and they're trying to hold things together long enough to crawl back up the ladder.

A good safety net would catch (most) people long before they hit rock bottom. The current safety net is some distance below bedrock.

 

I don't actually buy that as a general rule. Competent people either find a way, which might well include a housing subsidy, or they leave and find a more workable place to live. The ones that stay on the streets year after year are most likely dealing with what the doctors politely call "dual diagnosis", mental illness and substance abuse. Now I'm no psychologist so I have to rely on the training I've received over the years but one thing I've found to be true is that you MUST treat both conditions AT THE SAME TIME and all of this must happen at the start of the project.

FWIW.

 

Some of this depends on what definition or type of homelessness we use. Marginally housed people who are sometimes counted as homeless, sometimes not will include those competent people finding a way when the way is sleeping in irregular circumstances at work, in a vehicle, etc.

By definition, "the ones that stay on the streets year after year" might exclude people who stay in a homeless shelter as long as possible. They're competent to deal with the (often difficult, I hear) rules and interpersonal dynamics of the shelter, and they're not street-sleeping-homeless at that time, but they're certainly homeless.

 

Yes, they're difficult and often violent. That's what makes housing them so difficult. Methamphetamine does that and homeless encampments are stuffed with it. Don't believe me? Go count discarded syringes. Go watch the buys and shootings up. Seattle had an actual meth lab explode recently in one of their tent cities. To make things even worse meth makers are now adding fentynal to their products in order to make the drugs even more addictive.

And lethal.

It's a commonplace that alcohol does more harm than meth. In the aggregate that's probably true but on an individual basis there's no comparison. Meth is far worse.

 

And? Same thing applies. If you're working 3 jobs just to get by, you're going to have a hard time getting to a doctor or a pharmacy to get your medication needs met. Then things start slipping. All of a sudden, you're doing something like talking to yourself on the street in your underpants because you have no home and absolutely can't go to the doctor even if you wanted to in this state of mind.

One of the most insidious things about mental illness is that it tricks people into thinking "I'm doing so well; it won't matter if I skip my medication for a day or two until I can XYZ". But then that day turns into two, then a week, then a month... and so on.

And then you start drinking or turn to hardcore drugs because you don't have any other options while on the street.

Meanwhile, if they'd had housing/money/health options in the first place, there's a good chance that they wouldn't have "gone crazy" because their existing mental illness would still be well-managed. Or at least managed well enough for them to live a decent life.

 

Indeed. With some shelters, it works out that you're literally not allowed to have a job that pays a living wage. You have to be lined up and back at the shelter by as early as 4pm or you lose your spot. 6 or 7pm and they lock the shelter doors for the night. Add in that, in many places, these shelters are out of the way and nowhere near any places of decent employment, you might be lucky if you can work 20 or 30 hours a week. Especially if you have kids. If you find a job that wants you to work the night shift, too bad. Now you have nowhere to sleep because the shelter is closed between 8am and 4pm.

If you somehow manage to find a job that will work for this, you might be limited to something like having less than $500 in cash or bank accounts to be allowed to stay there. Whatever the limit is, it's usually nowhere near enough to put a deposit down on an apartment anywhere. So you wind up stuck at the shelter indefinitely, unless you somehow catch a lucky break and a friend or relative allows you to crash on their couch temporarily.

 

The problem with meth is that we have pretty extensive medical treatments for alcohol and opiate abuse. For meth there's nothing but talk therapy. Just nothing. And the way meth works is singularly vicious. The new user experiences extremely pleasant long lasting highs (that over time become less and less pleasant and less and less high) and at the same time he loses the physiological ability to derive any pleasure sensation from the usual nice things in life. Deprived of meth, the user's life becomes an empty, unremitting grind. It can take months to years for normal pleasure to return.

 

The meth user's life is dedicated to one thing only, getting more methamphetamine. And that's how they die.