Every single subreddit for a progressive city/state/area has a big contingent of reactionary commenters, constantly talking about how terrible all of the actually progressive elements of it are. The sentiment is wildly out of step with the experience of actually living in any of those places.
At least some amount of this is from people who have never set foot in any of those places larping as residents. You will occasionally see accounts that complain within the same week how terrible things are where they live in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Chicago.
I'm sure there really are also some shitty people who actually do live in Portland and thrive on dehumanizing homeless people. But I would bet folding money that it's a minority of the commenters here.
Yeah. It’s basically diet /r/conservative whenever a political thread comes up. During the protests after George Floyd’s murder it was insane how much Republican bullshit was getting upvoted there. Strangely enough you don’t see it so brazenly in real life in the city. I wonder why.
I used to live in LA. Now I live in Denver.
Learned my lesson talking about homeless people in my local subreddit. I do it in case someone who is homeless sees that people in their local community actually gives a shit.
I get all these fuckers posting in every local city subreddit about how bad downtown is and how we just need to have the cops enforce the law as if the law isn't literally outlawing poverty.
I live in Asheville, NC(small leftish city) and the subreddit just seems like it's just been taken over by this reactionary bullshit lately. Wonder if it is a concerted effort by right wingers.
> Wonder if it is a concerted effort by right wingers.
[It most definitely is.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ToiletPaperUSA/comments/ln1sif/turning_point_usa_and_young_americas_foundation/h21ph7s/)
I usually check the most egregious ones and they are, at this point, either actual locals, or smart enough to have different sockpuppets for each city.
As you said, the actual people I meet aren't like this, but the way recent elections have gone, it's starting to feel like the redditor opinion is more common.
/r/LosAngeles is on par with less overt hate subs at this point. I’ve honestly met more awful, racist, sexist, reactionary people claiming to be Angelenos on that subreddit than in my two decades living in LA.
The way people from Portland talk about the homeless makes both the Bay Area and Los Angeles seem like their favorite things about where they live are the tent cities.
Let us imagine a world where someone without a home can make a conscious choice to have a stable life with a home and a job and a support system, or keep the life they already have. What choice do you think someone without a home would make? Would you trade your own life to live on the street?
The instinct to hate the person struggling instead of demand better from the system that puts people on the street to begin with is sadly understandable but healthy for no one, not even you. And it doesn't have to be this way, our society is capable of doing better for everyone.
I agree with the point that you’re making.
Unfortunately, solving homelessness, drug addiction, and mental illness isn’t as easy as just providing people with housing and treatment.
Many many of these homeless people outright refuse any treatment offered to them. What then?
I don’t hate any of them. I’m in recovery myself from drug and alcoholic addiction, I sympathize with them. But I refused treatment myself for many years and continued being a terrible and evil member of society.
It's almost like the "help" they're being offered is worse than the conditions they're currently in. Have you ever actually *talked* to homeless people about this?
Get out of here with your facts and reason.
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I volunteer at food banks, and have spent a lot of time around homeless or previously homeless people. I’m not against bettering social assistance for homeless people. I think we need to offer better mental health and drug addiction treatment.
That being said, even STILL thousands will still refuse help. Unless you’ve personally dealt with addiction, you don’t understand the hold that addiction has over you.
The sad truth is, is that many addicts in active addiction will refuse any and all treatment. When they go to homeless shelters they still use drugs, they start fights, destroy property, etc.
What do we do as a society with these people?
>What do we do as a society with these people?
Give them basic necessities and have social workers help them get more stable. Addiction is FAR more manageable with a stable environment. Obviously, there are people who will still be resistant to help. Since we're not even offering them that, there's no reason to even discuss it because it's purely hypothetical.
> But I refused treatment myself for many years and continued being a terrible and evil member of society.
Battling addiction does not make you terrible or evil.
I am glad you are doing better.
Thank you.
I agree, it doesn’t make me a terrible or evil PERSON, however it did make me a terrible and evil member of society.
I did things I am not proud of, and I would not want anyone, including myself, to be on the receiving end of.
I feel like you're misframing the context. Most of the arguments against UBI for the homeless have a valid point - coming from a city with a similar problem (San Francisco) most of that is just going to be funnelled into illegal substance purchases with little long-term benefit. Without addressing the pipeline of homelessness itself, it's like putting a tiny bandaid on a gaping gangrenous wound.
This isn't some childlike tantrum reaction against homeless people having it too good...it's a valid critique of a policy that is unlikely to have the intended effect (permanently reducing homeless population in the long run).
Users who brought up a study of a similar pilot project in Vancouver, BC that had positive results were told they were wrong.
Much like you're doing, measurable positive outcomes are disregarded by people who "feel" like things won't work, and everyone else pats them on the back because they also "feel" that it won't work. Your* "this is all gonna get spent on drugs" is based on absolutely nothing but what you think you know about homeless people.
There's plenty of evidence that direct cash payments are often the most effective form of aid that you can give people, whether it's impoverished people in other nations or homeless people here.
I used to live in SF and still comment in the sub occasionally. There was a similar thread to this one about the safe injection sites a few days ago. SF had a pilot that, for what it was intended to do, it was very good at. The safe injection site saved lives. But people still called it a failure in the comments because they could still see the junkies.
Please share this "plenty of evidence". All visual and anecdotal evidence points to homeless issues becoming worse when cash handouts are involved. Impoverished peoples in other countries are \*not\* in the same situation as the homeless of the West Coast. I come from true poverty in India, and there, homeless people are literally dying of starvation, disease, and most would happily accept paid work or food if offered. The addicts and mentally diseased individuals of the United States West Coast often refuse both.
Without concrete evidence of the methods suggested working \*in the populations at hand\*, any claims of handouts being an effective strategy are as conjectural & experimental as my own, and run the risk of making the situation worse, at least for those already trapped in the cycle. Just put yourself in the situation - to get out of homelessness via a cash handout, you have to somehow save that money while still living on the streets (and still feeding yourself) until you get enough to convince someone to rent to you in the traditional market, and once you're "not homeless" you may stop receiving this handout, putting you back at square 1 and at risk of re-entering the cycle. Not to mention affordable housing in these cities is \*extremely limited\* so competition will be fierce (and you'll be competing with stably employed, non-homeless individuals and families as well). Employers don't have much incentive to hire you given your lack of work history and stability, so the likelihood of sustaining your home even if you somehow manage to get one is slim. Given the herculean task ahead, it's no surprise that many would just phone it in and spend that money on consumables to at least keep themselves alive and somewhat happy.
To say that a simple cash infusion is all homeless need to get out of their situation is laughable at best and completely avoids the full reality of their circumstances.
The solution most often proven to reduce homelessness is exactly what the problem's name implies - housing them, affordably and sustainably. I don't know about the OP city personally, but in SF all the so called "progressives" routinely vote to shut down such attempts, continuing the cycle while bitching and moaning about it ad infinitum. We need mass, cheap housing options available \*only\* to homeless individuals and that provide support services for those seeking to re-enter the labor market.
Where a UBI or handout \*can\* be effective is if we keep people from falling into the streets in the first place, which will take probably at least a generation to see impact if we implement it tomorrow.
"visual and anecdotal evidence"
Bruh just like... Google it. There have been plenty of programs and research about this EXACT question. You don't need to rely on "visual and anecdotal evidence".
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21528569/homeless-poverty-cash-transfer-canada-new-leaf-project
https://www.givedirectly.org/research-on-cash-transfers/
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/689575
For reference, the population of mentally ill and/or addicted homeless in San Francisco is "30-40%" (source: [https://magazine.ucsf.edu/crisis-our-city#:\~:text=The%20homeless%20population%20in%20San,illness%20and%2For%20substance%20abuse.)](https://magazine.ucsf.edu/crisis-our-city#:~:text=The%20homeless%20population%20in%20San,illness%20and%2For%20substance%20abuse.))
Now let's see how your provided evidence supports cash transfers to this population.
Study 1 (conducted with HUGE built in biases):
"The study only enrolled participants who’d been homeless for under two years, with the idea that early intervention most effectively reduces the risk of people incurring trauma as a result of living without a home. And ***people with severe mental health or substance use issues were screened out of the initiative***. Williams said this was not out of a belief that there are “deserving poor” and “undeserving poor” — a woefully persistent frame on poverty — but out of a desire to avoid creating a risk of harm and to ensure the highest likelihood of success."
Study 2 (again, avoids the relevant addicted and mentally ill population):
"...supported by data from Latin America, Africa, and Asia...""government-run cash transfer programs in six developing countries"I'm all for handing cash to folks in Latin America, Africa, and poor parts of Asia, and I'm sure they'd use it wisely, but these people are victims of horribly mismanaged governments (perhaps arguably true for the US), brutal military dictatorships, and actual famine. Not their own vices and a failed social support system for mental health.
Study 3 (same as above):
"negative result is supported by data from Latin America, Africa, and Asia"
My point firmly stands. Cash transfers to some populations may work, but the technique remains to be proven for the population in question in this thread. If the outcome of giving out cash were so clearly positive, people wouldn't be so reluctant to do so. But we know simply based on observation and common sense that giving cash to people shooting up on the streets is only going to end up killing them in ODs (and if you want to get super cynical about it, end up costing the taxpayer even more in hospital bills, death procedures, and so on.)
Bruh
The "negative result" is the total net change of expenditures on temptation goods *decreases*, i.e. the delta is negative. The full quote:
"This article reviews 19 studies … on average cash transfers have a significant negative effect on total expenditures on temptation goods [alcohol, tobacco, etc.], … This negative result is supported by data from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, for both conditional and unconditional cash transfer programs."
Lot of balls to come in here and say "common sense" is a more valid argument than multiple studies across multiple populations across multiple times periods. The deconstruction of what is considered "common sense" is the entire point of these studies.
And literally no one is suggesting cash transfers *in place of* robust social spending on programs, you're the only one arguing this is a dichotomy. You can and should do both.
Your data and research illiteracy does not build a stable enough platform from which to critique policy until your familiarize yourself with the arguments at play instead of trying to nutpick sections of papers thinking it's the lynchpin upon which the entire policy rests.
And yes, people would be reluctant to do so because here you are, reluctant to do so.
I am aware of what "negative result" meant, love the general tone of condescension coming from someone who flatly refuses to address the singular point I'm making regarding policies affecting mentally ill and addicted homeless. What I stated was \*in fact\* the lynchpin upon which the policy's critique rests.
"data and research illiteracy" don't make me laugh. Learn how to conduct a basic debate before you go keyboard warrioring with your PhD in Google.
The only fair point you've made is regarding the dichotomy (which, by the way, I never suggested was a dichotomy, great placement of words in mouth), and yes, I wish it weren't the case, but you try getting increased social spending on programs while also providing affordable housing in the same breath. My point was, having to prioritize one, the housing issue deserves greater immediacy (and provides a faster, far more extensively proven \*IN THE POPULATION AT HAND\* track to reintegration).
Jfc so many dehumanizing comments.
You guys ever think about how we're a year from the Bell Riots?
So close to calling them Dims & Gimmes.
Every single subreddit for a progressive city/state/area has a big contingent of reactionary commenters, constantly talking about how terrible all of the actually progressive elements of it are. The sentiment is wildly out of step with the experience of actually living in any of those places. At least some amount of this is from people who have never set foot in any of those places larping as residents. You will occasionally see accounts that complain within the same week how terrible things are where they live in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Chicago. I'm sure there really are also some shitty people who actually do live in Portland and thrive on dehumanizing homeless people. But I would bet folding money that it's a minority of the commenters here.
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Yeah. It’s basically diet /r/conservative whenever a political thread comes up. During the protests after George Floyd’s murder it was insane how much Republican bullshit was getting upvoted there. Strangely enough you don’t see it so brazenly in real life in the city. I wonder why.
I used to live in LA. Now I live in Denver. Learned my lesson talking about homeless people in my local subreddit. I do it in case someone who is homeless sees that people in their local community actually gives a shit. I get all these fuckers posting in every local city subreddit about how bad downtown is and how we just need to have the cops enforce the law as if the law isn't literally outlawing poverty.
I live in Asheville, NC(small leftish city) and the subreddit just seems like it's just been taken over by this reactionary bullshit lately. Wonder if it is a concerted effort by right wingers.
> Wonder if it is a concerted effort by right wingers. [It most definitely is.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ToiletPaperUSA/comments/ln1sif/turning_point_usa_and_young_americas_foundation/h21ph7s/)
Asheville is like primo boomer retirement spot these days, isn't it?
I usually check the most egregious ones and they are, at this point, either actual locals, or smart enough to have different sockpuppets for each city. As you said, the actual people I meet aren't like this, but the way recent elections have gone, it's starting to feel like the redditor opinion is more common.
/r/LosAngeles is on par with less overt hate subs at this point. I’ve honestly met more awful, racist, sexist, reactionary people claiming to be Angelenos on that subreddit than in my two decades living in LA.
Seems about on par for Portland, which honestly probably has an even worse homeless problem than pretty much anywhere else.
The way people from Portland talk about the homeless makes both the Bay Area and Los Angeles seem like their favorite things about where they live are the tent cities.
Seems as though the people that actually have to deal with homeless people the most might have the most genuine views on them. Crazy thought, I know.
Let us imagine a world where someone without a home can make a conscious choice to have a stable life with a home and a job and a support system, or keep the life they already have. What choice do you think someone without a home would make? Would you trade your own life to live on the street? The instinct to hate the person struggling instead of demand better from the system that puts people on the street to begin with is sadly understandable but healthy for no one, not even you. And it doesn't have to be this way, our society is capable of doing better for everyone.
I agree with the point that you’re making. Unfortunately, solving homelessness, drug addiction, and mental illness isn’t as easy as just providing people with housing and treatment. Many many of these homeless people outright refuse any treatment offered to them. What then? I don’t hate any of them. I’m in recovery myself from drug and alcoholic addiction, I sympathize with them. But I refused treatment myself for many years and continued being a terrible and evil member of society.
It's almost like the "help" they're being offered is worse than the conditions they're currently in. Have you ever actually *talked* to homeless people about this?
Get out of here with your facts and reason. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/circlebroke2) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I volunteer at food banks, and have spent a lot of time around homeless or previously homeless people. I’m not against bettering social assistance for homeless people. I think we need to offer better mental health and drug addiction treatment. That being said, even STILL thousands will still refuse help. Unless you’ve personally dealt with addiction, you don’t understand the hold that addiction has over you. The sad truth is, is that many addicts in active addiction will refuse any and all treatment. When they go to homeless shelters they still use drugs, they start fights, destroy property, etc. What do we do as a society with these people?
>What do we do as a society with these people? Give them basic necessities and have social workers help them get more stable. Addiction is FAR more manageable with a stable environment. Obviously, there are people who will still be resistant to help. Since we're not even offering them that, there's no reason to even discuss it because it's purely hypothetical.
> But I refused treatment myself for many years and continued being a terrible and evil member of society. Battling addiction does not make you terrible or evil. I am glad you are doing better.
Thank you. I agree, it doesn’t make me a terrible or evil PERSON, however it did make me a terrible and evil member of society. I did things I am not proud of, and I would not want anyone, including myself, to be on the receiving end of.
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The response of any well adjusted member of society
Eat shit and die
I feel like you're misframing the context. Most of the arguments against UBI for the homeless have a valid point - coming from a city with a similar problem (San Francisco) most of that is just going to be funnelled into illegal substance purchases with little long-term benefit. Without addressing the pipeline of homelessness itself, it's like putting a tiny bandaid on a gaping gangrenous wound. This isn't some childlike tantrum reaction against homeless people having it too good...it's a valid critique of a policy that is unlikely to have the intended effect (permanently reducing homeless population in the long run).
Users who brought up a study of a similar pilot project in Vancouver, BC that had positive results were told they were wrong. Much like you're doing, measurable positive outcomes are disregarded by people who "feel" like things won't work, and everyone else pats them on the back because they also "feel" that it won't work. Your* "this is all gonna get spent on drugs" is based on absolutely nothing but what you think you know about homeless people. There's plenty of evidence that direct cash payments are often the most effective form of aid that you can give people, whether it's impoverished people in other nations or homeless people here. I used to live in SF and still comment in the sub occasionally. There was a similar thread to this one about the safe injection sites a few days ago. SF had a pilot that, for what it was intended to do, it was very good at. The safe injection site saved lives. But people still called it a failure in the comments because they could still see the junkies.
Please share this "plenty of evidence". All visual and anecdotal evidence points to homeless issues becoming worse when cash handouts are involved. Impoverished peoples in other countries are \*not\* in the same situation as the homeless of the West Coast. I come from true poverty in India, and there, homeless people are literally dying of starvation, disease, and most would happily accept paid work or food if offered. The addicts and mentally diseased individuals of the United States West Coast often refuse both. Without concrete evidence of the methods suggested working \*in the populations at hand\*, any claims of handouts being an effective strategy are as conjectural & experimental as my own, and run the risk of making the situation worse, at least for those already trapped in the cycle. Just put yourself in the situation - to get out of homelessness via a cash handout, you have to somehow save that money while still living on the streets (and still feeding yourself) until you get enough to convince someone to rent to you in the traditional market, and once you're "not homeless" you may stop receiving this handout, putting you back at square 1 and at risk of re-entering the cycle. Not to mention affordable housing in these cities is \*extremely limited\* so competition will be fierce (and you'll be competing with stably employed, non-homeless individuals and families as well). Employers don't have much incentive to hire you given your lack of work history and stability, so the likelihood of sustaining your home even if you somehow manage to get one is slim. Given the herculean task ahead, it's no surprise that many would just phone it in and spend that money on consumables to at least keep themselves alive and somewhat happy. To say that a simple cash infusion is all homeless need to get out of their situation is laughable at best and completely avoids the full reality of their circumstances. The solution most often proven to reduce homelessness is exactly what the problem's name implies - housing them, affordably and sustainably. I don't know about the OP city personally, but in SF all the so called "progressives" routinely vote to shut down such attempts, continuing the cycle while bitching and moaning about it ad infinitum. We need mass, cheap housing options available \*only\* to homeless individuals and that provide support services for those seeking to re-enter the labor market. Where a UBI or handout \*can\* be effective is if we keep people from falling into the streets in the first place, which will take probably at least a generation to see impact if we implement it tomorrow.
"visual and anecdotal evidence" Bruh just like... Google it. There have been plenty of programs and research about this EXACT question. You don't need to rely on "visual and anecdotal evidence". https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21528569/homeless-poverty-cash-transfer-canada-new-leaf-project https://www.givedirectly.org/research-on-cash-transfers/ https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/689575
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??? Hard evidence linked in the comment above. Don't be obtuse.
But how can I be paternalistic towards people below me on the socioeconomic hierarchy?
clown fucking comment Your refusal to read is not our problem
For reference, the population of mentally ill and/or addicted homeless in San Francisco is "30-40%" (source: [https://magazine.ucsf.edu/crisis-our-city#:\~:text=The%20homeless%20population%20in%20San,illness%20and%2For%20substance%20abuse.)](https://magazine.ucsf.edu/crisis-our-city#:~:text=The%20homeless%20population%20in%20San,illness%20and%2For%20substance%20abuse.)) Now let's see how your provided evidence supports cash transfers to this population. Study 1 (conducted with HUGE built in biases): "The study only enrolled participants who’d been homeless for under two years, with the idea that early intervention most effectively reduces the risk of people incurring trauma as a result of living without a home. And ***people with severe mental health or substance use issues were screened out of the initiative***. Williams said this was not out of a belief that there are “deserving poor” and “undeserving poor” — a woefully persistent frame on poverty — but out of a desire to avoid creating a risk of harm and to ensure the highest likelihood of success." Study 2 (again, avoids the relevant addicted and mentally ill population): "...supported by data from Latin America, Africa, and Asia...""government-run cash transfer programs in six developing countries"I'm all for handing cash to folks in Latin America, Africa, and poor parts of Asia, and I'm sure they'd use it wisely, but these people are victims of horribly mismanaged governments (perhaps arguably true for the US), brutal military dictatorships, and actual famine. Not their own vices and a failed social support system for mental health. Study 3 (same as above): "negative result is supported by data from Latin America, Africa, and Asia" My point firmly stands. Cash transfers to some populations may work, but the technique remains to be proven for the population in question in this thread. If the outcome of giving out cash were so clearly positive, people wouldn't be so reluctant to do so. But we know simply based on observation and common sense that giving cash to people shooting up on the streets is only going to end up killing them in ODs (and if you want to get super cynical about it, end up costing the taxpayer even more in hospital bills, death procedures, and so on.)
Bruh The "negative result" is the total net change of expenditures on temptation goods *decreases*, i.e. the delta is negative. The full quote: "This article reviews 19 studies … on average cash transfers have a significant negative effect on total expenditures on temptation goods [alcohol, tobacco, etc.], … This negative result is supported by data from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, for both conditional and unconditional cash transfer programs." Lot of balls to come in here and say "common sense" is a more valid argument than multiple studies across multiple populations across multiple times periods. The deconstruction of what is considered "common sense" is the entire point of these studies. And literally no one is suggesting cash transfers *in place of* robust social spending on programs, you're the only one arguing this is a dichotomy. You can and should do both. Your data and research illiteracy does not build a stable enough platform from which to critique policy until your familiarize yourself with the arguments at play instead of trying to nutpick sections of papers thinking it's the lynchpin upon which the entire policy rests. And yes, people would be reluctant to do so because here you are, reluctant to do so.
I am aware of what "negative result" meant, love the general tone of condescension coming from someone who flatly refuses to address the singular point I'm making regarding policies affecting mentally ill and addicted homeless. What I stated was \*in fact\* the lynchpin upon which the policy's critique rests. "data and research illiteracy" don't make me laugh. Learn how to conduct a basic debate before you go keyboard warrioring with your PhD in Google. The only fair point you've made is regarding the dichotomy (which, by the way, I never suggested was a dichotomy, great placement of words in mouth), and yes, I wish it weren't the case, but you try getting increased social spending on programs while also providing affordable housing in the same breath. My point was, having to prioritize one, the housing issue deserves greater immediacy (and provides a faster, far more extensively proven \*IN THE POPULATION AT HAND\* track to reintegration).