(11-06-2022, 10:38 PM)mikesez Wrote:

(11-06-2022, 09:20 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote: https://www.city-journal.org/seattle-homelessness

Another good read. Probably a good counter to whatever progressive nonsense that took you in the wrong direction.

Should I do Vancouver next?

From your link:
"The stubborn reality is that Seattle is expensive. The local government should encourage the creation of more affordable market-rate housing by increasing density and changing zoning laws, but for those not employed full-time—and that describes 92.5 percent of the homeless—it’s utopian to imagine that Seattle will become the city of Housing for All."

So we agree?
I never said more housing was a complete solution.  I said it was the best solution.  There is no complete solution.  The article agrees with me, but that author is spending most of his time arguing against a socialist strawman rather than advocating for the simple and non controversial solution that he actually agrees with. 
Instead the author starts talking himself out of it.  "Over 90 percent of the homeless don't have jobs" he says.  Of course they don't! If you tend to come into work without getting good rest, and without showering, and wearing the same clothes you wore the day before, you tend to lose your job! Changing and showering in the public bathroom is dicey, not always an option.  It starts to feel like the whole world is against you, which can be the starting point for depression and/or schizophrenia.  What he doesn't ask is, "what fraction of that 92.5% would be able to get their old job back if we got them a place to live?"

No. We don't agree, because most times I don't read things with the hope it will fit my world view. That is his solution to high housing costs, which, while an issue in Seattle, is not the driving factor behind their problem. In what world are part time workers going to be able to afford rent? Even if I accept your premise that people can't get work because they are homeless (which isn't true according to the article), you still have to get them in housing to clean up to get a job. That's ALREADY being rejected by the vast majority of the homeless there. 

Quote:O’Brien and his supporters have constructed an elaborate political vocabulary about the homeless, elevating three key myths to the status of conventional wisdom. The first is that many of the homeless are holding down jobs but can’t get ahead. “I’ve got thousands of homeless people that actually are working and just can’t afford housing,” O’Brien told the Denver Post. But according to King County’s own survey data, only 7.5 percent of the homeless report working full-time, despite record-low unemployment, record job growth, and a record-high $15 Seattle minimum wage. The reality, obvious to anyone who spends any time in tent cities or emergency shelters, is that 80 percent of the homeless suffer from drug and alcohol addiction and 30 percent suffer from serious mental illness, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

The second key myth is that the homeless are “our neighbors,” native to Seattle. Progressive publications like The Stranger insist that “most people experiencing homelessness in Seattle were already here when they became homeless.” This assertion, too, clashes with empirical evidence. More than half of Seattle’s homeless come from outside the city limits, according to the city’s own data. Even this number might be vastly inflated, as the survey asks only “where respondents were living at the time they most recently became homeless”—so, for example, a person could move to Seattle, check into a motel for a week, and then start living on the streets and be considered “from Seattle.” More rigorous academic studies in San Francisco and Vancouver suggest that 40 percent to 50 percent of the homeless moved to those cities for their permissive culture and generous services. There’s no reason to believe that Seattle is different on this score.

The third myth: O’Brien and his allies argue that the street homeless want help but that there aren’t enough services. Once again, county data contradict their claims: 63 percent of the street homeless refuse shelter when offered it by the city’s Navigation Teams, claiming that “there are too many rules” (39.5 percent) or that “they are too crowded” (32.6 percent). The recent story about a woman’s “tent mansion” near the city’s Space Needle vividly illustrated how a contingent among the homeless chooses to live in the streets. “We don’t want to change our lifestyle to fit their requirements,” the woman told newscasters for a KIRO7 report, explaining how she and her boyfriend moved from West Virginia to Seattle for the “liberal vibe,” repeatedly refusing shelter. “We intend to stay here. This is the solution to the homeless problem. We want autonomy, right here.”

The homeless mythology is not merely anti-factual; it’s also a textbook example of what sociologists call pathological altruism, or “altruism in which attempts to promote the welfare of others instead result in unanticipated harm,” as engineer Barbara A. Oakley explains. The city’s compassion campaign has devolved into permissiveness, enablement, crime, and disorder. Public complaints about homeless encampments from the first three months of this year are an array of horrors: theft, drugs, fighting, rape, murder, explosions, prostitution, assaults, needles, and feces. Yet prosecutors have dropped thousands of misdemeanor cases, and police officers are directed not to arrest people for “homelessness-related” offenses, including theft, destruction of property, and drug crimes. As Scott Lindsay, the city’s former top crime advisor, reported to former mayor Ed Murray: “The increase in street disorder is largely a function of the fact that heroin, crack, and meth possession has been largely legalized in the city over the past several years. The unintended consequence of that social policy effort has been to make Seattle a much more attractive place to buy and sell hard-core drugs.”

This is what is being argued by conservatives here. Democrat policies, from rent control to permissiveness and enablement, have created this problem. You want to dance in circles to avoid admitting it. You want to ignore what you can see with your eyes.

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