Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for the Week of July 13, 2020OT/LE

submitted by rwkastenBring on the dancing horses from self.CultureWarRoundup

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[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

San Francisco reporter details 'disaster' of city's 'hotels for homeless' program: 'It is pandemonium'

"It's solving exactly nothing and as a matter of fact, it's making all the problems worse," said Sandberg, who described the scene inside the hotels as "about as bad as you can imagine, only exponentially worse."

"You are talking drug-fueled parties, overdoses, deaths, people are being assaulted. You have sexual assaults going on, it is pandemonium," she said. "It is extremely bad and it needs to stop."

[–]BothAfternoon 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

To which my reply is "well, duh".

You will never solve the problem of homelessness by simply scooping up people and putting them in a room of their own. Some people who are temporarily homeless due to bad luck? Sure, give them a place to stay where they have a permanent address to put down on job applications and where they can wash themselves and their clothes and have a bed to sleep in without fear of being robbed or worse, that will definitely work for them.

Most homeless people have other problems, often a shit-ton of problems not limited to alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and mental illness. They need supervision and intervention and somebody there to make sure they don't overdose, stab one another or the rest of it. Why the fuck do you think hostels have rules on drink and drugs and women-only and so forth? But social workers and mental health counsellors and probation officers and all the rest of it cost money, which is the fly in the ointment of these grand plans. Dump a load of homeless on their own with nobody in charge to make the rules stick or have the authority to boot them out for breaking them, and this is exactly the outcome you are going to get. Institutionalisation is its own real problem, but doing away with the old-style mental hospitals and other places and letting people free for 'care in the community' requires that you do support them with care, not cut services because the budget is tight.

And there's the small but persistent minority who are just petty criminals and/or shiftless who will take advantage of any do-gooder, private citizen or public servant, and break open the walls to strip out the copper piping to sell. What those need is jail not hotels or hostels.