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It may actually help to put people with violent tendencies in housing separate from other homeless people. Perhaps the violent people can be medicated. Of course screening and assessing the homeless like this would be extremely expensive, which is why it isn't current done. There's no morality behind this.
Sounds like a very good idea.
Also, there should be a database with fingerprints in it to keep out violent sex offenders and gangbangers.
We have plenty of panhandlers in Phoenix. I've been approached by some at convenience stores but I don't consider it threatening behavior, certainly not enough to warrant killing somebody, that's insane.
As for CCW, I'm sure there are plenty of people carrying here, I don't own a gun. We also average about 2 murders a day here, and have a serial killer at large. I question the whole more guns=safer city argument.
Less than Los Angeles. While Phoenix is a medium-high crime city crime is lower than Los Angeles. The homeless do not create problems in Phoenix to the extent that they do in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles with Phoenix' gun laws would be a safer place. Phoenix with Los Angeles' gun laws would be right "down there" with Chicago and Detroit.
Well the current situation in shelters is so terrible that people would rather rot on the street, so that should tell you something right there. I get that you want the federal government and the state to pay for massive new housing for the homeless, but taxpayers are against that. Honestly if these people were placed into high rise apartments, they would trash the buildings. Having visited people inside public housing in NYC, these types would urinate and defecate inside buildings. So wherever you put a bunch of garbage people together, it is going to be bad. So yes, don't bother with screening. They are all scum and let the current situation stand. Is that what you want to hear?
Let me try to explain something to you, the idea of helping the homeless is not altruism, it's just common sense. It's a way to clean up the streets and save money. So rather than cherry pick the homeless population and offer housing to the 'nice ones', you start by housing the most troublesome, obnoxious, recalcitrant and mentally ill because they are the ones who cost the most to leave on the street.
SLC's housing first program initally targeted the worst 15% of the homeless. You know, the ones who crap on the sidewalk and have psychotic episodes in public. Well, it turned out that just by giving them a private room and surrounding them with social workers who could provide for their physical and mental health needs their behavior changed and they stabilized. They remained in housing and followed the few simple rules, i.e. don't start fires or disturb your neighbors. The City saved money because it costs far less to house a person than to repeatedly arrest them or treat them in the ER. And no, they have not trashed the buildings.
The reality is that it is far cheaper to house the homeless than it is to leave them on the street:
My guess is that if it is properly explained taxpayers would be very much in favor of a program that not only dealt with the homeless humanely but also saved considerable amounts of money
Less than Los Angeles. While Phoenix is a medium-high crime city crime is lower than Los Angeles. The homeless do not create problems in Phoenix to the extent that they do in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles with Phoenix' gun laws would be a safer place. Phoenix with Los Angeles' gun laws would be right "down there" with Chicago and Detroit.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say, how about some examples of how the Phoenix homeless do not cause problems like they do in Los Angeles.? If you are trying to say they are less visible, I probably agree, I'm in Sacramento and in most of the county the homeless aren't obvious but they are still there. Violent crimes committed by a homeless person almost always involve a homeless victim.
Well the current situation in shelters is so terrible that people would rather rot on the street, so that should tell you something right there.
I get that you want the federal government and the state to pay for massive new housing for the homeless, but taxpayers are against that. Honestly if these people were placed into high rise apartments, they would trash the buildings. Having visited people inside public housing in NYC, these types would urinate and defecate inside buildings.
So wherever you put a bunch of garbage people together, it is going to be bad. So yes, don't bother with screening. They are all scum and let the current situation stand. Is that what you want to hear?
Again (and again and again and again and ...): the "people" are ALREADY paying for this problem. Massively. And terribly inefficiently and ineffectively.
As 2sleepy and I are constantly pointing out, housing the homeless, starting with the worst first, uses the public's money - already budgeted, collected, and spent - far more effectively and efficiently.
As to the rest of your post, successful homeless housing first programs disprove your admonition that "these people" "trash ... urinate and defecate inside buildings." In fact, for the most part, they are extremely grateful for the blessing of a private, safe room to retreat into with a lock on the door.
When you don't have real knowledge of a subject, it's best to ask questions or withhold comments that spread false information.
Let me try to explain something to you, the idea of helping the homeless is not altruism, it's just common sense. It's a way to clean up the streets and save money. So rather than cherry pick the homeless population and offer housing to the 'nice ones', you start by housing the most troublesome, obnoxious, recalcitrant and mentally ill because they are the ones who cost the most to leave on the street.
SLC's housing first program initally targeted the worst 15% of the homeless. You know, the ones who crap on the sidewalk and have psychotic episodes in public. Well, it turned out that just by giving them a private room and surrounding them with social workers who could provide for their physical and mental health needs their behavior changed and they stabilized. They remained in housing and followed the few simple rules, i.e. don't start fires or disturb your neighbors. The City saved money because it costs far less to house a person than to repeatedly arrest them or treat them in the ER. And no, they have not trashed the buildings.
The reality is that it is far cheaper to house the homeless than it is to leave them on the street:
My guess is that if it is properly explained taxpayers would be very much in favor of a program that not only dealt with the homeless humanely but also saved considerable amounts of money
The homeless are not that much of a problem in South America or the Caribbean where the police can KILL them and where they do not do mass incarceration (serious offenders would be killed by the police or the soldiers).
Now I am not advocating that be done here, but you do realize that people are not obligated to cater to the worst people?
The only reason why the US doesn't crack down harder on this population is because people hide behind race ,and the US hasn't solved it's racial problems. But in countries where the majority of the people are either Black or otherwise not white, the society has so little tolerance for this they would KILL the people you just mentioned.
The study advocating that it would cost taxpayers so much less to dramatically fund mass housing construction. Who funded it and who did the study? Was it people in the social services system? Of course they would say this, more funding of welfare equals more jobs for people in social services. Whether it's good for the rest of taxpayers is an entirely different matter.
Oh I take that back, let's go to the solutions we have in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Cherry pick the homeless, offer help to the nice ones, and the ones who cannot or will not behave can face the firing squad.
The problem is ENTITLEMENT. The more you let crackheads think they are entitled to everything for free, the more you encourage bad behavior. If we had easy welfare they way you want it, anybody could go out in the streets, drink some booze or do other drugs, not bathe for a week, act crazy and DEMAND an apartment! There's be no incentive for people to clean up, and in fact there's be an incentive for people to act like fools to get the free apartment. If anything people in California are too nice and too tolerant, and that's why they have the homeless problem that they have.
NYC has more people and more homeless people than LA, but the NYPD does not let homeless people congregate in large numbers like LA allows them too. The cops would seize their **** and destroy it, and force them to move along. You can even be arrested for loitering in NYC and they do indeed enforce that. So much of the homeless population here is in shelters.
adr3naline, your motivation for this thread is clearly well intentioned. Your own comments so far well balanced. But I'm not clear why you think such a complex issue can be well addressed, let alone "resolved" on an open internet forum populated by people who operate intellectually on myths and ideologies that have little to no basis in reality.
I don’t. I created this thread as a temporary repository for thoughts surrounding the topic in hopes it would reduce the blabber that infests other threads. Seems to have worked alright. We’ll see what happens when it falls to Page 2…
The homeless are not that much of a problem in South America or the Caribbean where the police can KILL them and where they do not do mass incarceration (serious offenders would be killed by the police or the soldiers).
Now I am not advocating that be done here, but you do realize that people are not obligated to cater to the worst people?
The only reason why the US doesn't crack down harder on this population is because people hide behind race ,and the US hasn't solved it's racial problems. But in countries where the majority of the people are either Black or otherwise not white, the society has so little tolerance for this they would KILL the people you just mentioned.
The study advocating that it would cost taxpayers so much less to dramatically fund mass housing construction. Who funded it and who did the study? Was it people in the social services system? Of course they would say this, more funding of welfare equals more jobs for people in social services. Whether it's good for the rest of taxpayers is an entirely different matter.
Oh I take that back, let's go to the solutions we have in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Cherry pick the homeless, offer help to the nice ones, and the ones who cannot or will not behave can face the firing squad.
The problem is ENTITLEMENT. The more you let crackheads think they are entitled to everything for free, the more you encourage bad behavior. If we had easy welfare they way you want it, anybody could go out in the streets, drink some booze or do other drugs, not bathe for a week, act crazy and DEMAND an apartment! There's be no incentive for people to clean up, and in fact there's be an incentive for people to act like fools to get the free apartment. If anything people in California are too nice and too tolerant, and that's why they have the homeless problem that they have.
NYC has more people and more homeless people than LA, but the NYPD does not let homeless people congregate in large numbers like LA allows them too. The cops would seize their **** and destroy it, and force them to move along. You can even be arrested for loitering in NYC and they do indeed enforce that. So much of the homeless population here is in shelters.
What your rant demonstrates more than anything is: total ignorance of every aspect of homelessness - and also zero grasp of human nature and crisis.
Some examples of things you've been told and ignore:
The "study advocating that it would cost taxpayers so much less to dramatically fund mass housing construction" - isn't a theoretical study. It's reporting of proven, operational programs existing in various cities.
Crackheads and other addicts don't become as they are due to any sense of entitlement. People aren't waiting for an opportunity to destroy themselves with failure and infirmity, pain, sickness and suffering, embarrassment and humiliation, and to live filthy and scared and hungry. They fall into it for individual reasons of disadvantage coupled with weakness and lack of other opportunity to thrive.
Race has very little to do with any of this.
Aside from any judgement of moral repugnance with regard to just killing off the chronic homeless - this IS the United States of America and not some sleazy third-world barrio country with little to no regard for ethics and human life. The laws do not allow euthanizing undesirable elements. Nor are they ever going to change in that regard. So the point remains: what are you going to do with these dregs? Leave them in their filth and crime and disruptive behaviors on the streets to interfere with everyone else? Or deal with them as effectively and efficiently as possible - in ethically humane ways as our culture respects?
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