Solarpunk Urbanism

Yes. They should do it like NYC, where it's basically illegal to live on the street. The city is required by law to offer free housing at a certain quality level for anyone who needs it. It's not amazing but you get a door that locks and a security team, plus a bathroom.

If you don't want to sleep inside, you literally have to leave the city. It's not cheap but it works much better than letting people live in tents.

San Francisco infuriates me. There are activist groups that are made of actual literal unhoused people telling the city what they need and what they want. And the city could just give people the money they need for a fraction of the administrative costs it spins on its non-profits and its government agencies.

But the city says homeless people are drug addicts and criminals and can't be trusted to use money responsibly.

So they funnel millions of dollars to corrupt non-profits and government agencies who promise to use the money responsibly for the benefit of the homeless and they fucking don't. There was a $350K program run by the Salvation Army in partnership with the local public transit agency. One homeless person used their services.. One.

At least government agencies are, at some remove, responsible to the taxpayers and the voters. Non-profits dedicated to "helping" the homeless have a very strong incentive to make the problem worse. Because the worse the homelessness crisis becomes, the more money goes to the nonprofits. So they take government money, give it to their employees, make some sort of pathetic token effort to help unhoused people, and as the crisis worsens they go back to the government and say "the crisis is worse, we need more money".

And civilians look at the amount of money being poured into assistance to unhoused people, and look at the crisis getting worse, and say "more money and services won't help these people, we need to criminalize them". And fucking Newsom is all over that because he's angling for the Presidency and military style crackdowns impress the fascists in red states.

There's a homelessness crisis because of government corruption and incompetence. And the majority of Americans think the solution is to give the government more military power, more police power, and let those same corrupt agencies brutalize the homeless more. It's sickening.

you’ve got cities like San Francisco paying them something like 40 or 80 thousand a year to keep the homeless in a fenced off area in a tent grid

Star Trek DS9 predicting the future yet again

and honestly, I would like to sit on a bench at night without worrying im keeping somebody out of their bed. that would be cool. I would like to stop the streets smelling like piss. I would like too walk on the sidewalk without having to detour and step into the street to avoid people's homes at least twice a block.

clearly, armed neo nazi thugs, even if you LIKE armed neo nazi thugs (we should, um, have a chat separately. what the fuck is wrong with hypothetical you?) don't make that happen. and for the libs: you wouldn't even have to look at human tragedy beyond their full comprehension every time you go outside! yes, you would have to give resources and basic human dignity to the 'undeserving', and supply side jesus WOULD damn you to eternal hell (being homeless in san francisco but during extreme weather events), but the few years before you die would be substantially nicer.

Yeah? Well if someone decided to build affordable housing near my McMansion, then my precious house's market value will decrease. Also something about crime because of the poors

Eh ... There are literally millions of people who work and don't get to choose any of those things, and are forced into a small apartment and/or a roommate scenario.

I think the issue is that if the government offered tiny houses or apartments for anyone that everyone would want one.

The value of "free shit" is somehow larger than the value of owning a large mansion or something.

I appreciate the link!

The article, I think, is very clear on how those dollar amounts were measured, and I don't think they're bullshit at all, but everybody here can read the article and decide for themselves.

Also, they quote $10k for "supportive housing" and show a picture of San Francisco. I guarantee that's not accurate. The state needs to pay to house these people, but we need to be realistic about the cost.

Single small bedroom with shared kitchen and bathrooms is pretty cheap. You probably want to spend a bit more though to help the homeless into a position, where they can take care of themself.

And those shanty towns often get mass transit services so the people can get to work.

In America (and Britain), towns specifically avoid serving very poor areas for fear that they might actually use it.

We need to end slavery

https://www.npscoalition.org/post/fact-sheet-cost-of-homelessness

The savings/costs drastically change based on state/city. But the overwhelming majority of the time it is cheaper to do the morally correct thing of providing permanent housing assistance.

$10,000 a year to provide a single person housing? To put that in perspective. I'd assume that means a studio type apartment of some kind. Not high end, but a roof and place to live for $10,000 a year. I have a 1500sqft home in Washington state on 3 acres of land, and I pay $27,000 a year for my mortgage. So to me, $10,000 seems reasonable for a government funded studio for a year.

We're fine providing housing for these losers.

In prison.

We cannot allow these men a little wooden house with windows and an open door. Their housing must be a little part of a concrete and iron world attended by sadists, their neigbors and roommates should be mean, violent people.

And you have to let us enslave them a little bit and ensure they have no freedom to roam and no worldly pleasures, no intimacy or sex except that which the strong can take homosexually nonconsensually from their fellow man.

It's what Jesus would want us to do.

Yep, punishment must be part of the deal, even if it costs us 3 times as much. This is how we know that, for conservatives, the cruelty is the point.

The overhead goes to a bunch of stuff. The costs of housing inmates include the cost of hours of judges, lawyers, COs, etc. However the way it it profitable, beyond just collecting fines, and deciding your money is suspect, and taking it, is because of the corpratization of the legal system. Huge, but, often, not well known, corporations that run aspects of jails, and prisons. They make the food, run the inmate phone systems, control the inmate commissary, staff the medical departments, and more. These are just the ones that work with jails. There are third part corporations that provide bulk legal assistance work, editing services, services for a lot of the moving factors of the legal system.

These companies, in turn, give huge amounts of "donations" to politician's needs. Campaign funds being the most well known. This money, while paying for these costs, is also used to keep them living an exceptionally comfortable life. Many, after pushing through legislation favorable to a company, will be compensated in a number of ways. From them being able to take advantage of stock investment knowing how the law is about to change, and how that will affect their holdings, to exiting politics and being given a cushy, high paying, fluff job in the industry they helped out.

There isn't so much of the straight bribes, graft, and other forms of corruption people assume with politics. It is more abstracted than that, and technically legal. Obviously there are conflicts of interest that can easily be seen in this, however, since a company isn't just handing the official a bag of money, that they will keep as their own income, it is deemed legal.

Some of them it was for sure a preexisting condidtion. But how many homeless people developed addictions and assorted health problems because of homelessness?

A HELL of a lot more.

If they had had a home that they wouldn't lose to bullshit to begin with...

It's for a church honey. NEXT!