> San Francisco reportedly is set to spend nearly $280 million in its next budget fighting homelessness – an average of $37,300 for each of the city’s estimated 7,499 homeless residents
I live in a place where I don't see homeless people even on a monthly basis. Maybe a fuew time's per year when I've ventured an hour or more from home. So I'm sure there is a lot of nuance to the problem of homelessness that I don't understand. Still, considering these facts naively, I fail to see how such a large amount of spending can fail to address the issue:
1. $30k per year is more than enough to enable a person to be not-homeless. Rent them an apartment, buy them groceries and medical care, etc.
2. If they refuse to live in that apartment because they have itchy feet, schizophrenia, or just don't like the wallpaper, then perhaps we should suppose that they don't consider their homelessness to be much of a problem.
3. If any of those folks who don't take the city up on the free apartment do something illegal, like defecating in public, they can probably be incarcerated or institutionalized for $30k per year.
4. Some of the people from #2 might not be eliminated in step #3, because they don't break any laws. Being that that's the case, even if we consider them to be a nuisance, shouldn't we just get over it and ignore them?
[1]: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/07/19/san-francisco-continues...
If the "problem" was as simple as you assume, the solution pointed out would have already worked.
It's a complex problem, which requires complex solutions. In my experience, the major element is mental health. Many people are on the streets due to mental health issues, or develop mental health issues when on the street.
One take away note: most people are only two simultaneous life disasters away from being on the streets. One disaster (health / family / relationship / job) can typically be weathered, but two or more at once is typically catastrophic. There's many a PhD / CEO / father of four on the street.
Should a non-homeless person be institutionalized or incarcerated for defecating in public?
We'd need a very very good mechanism for deciding who gets institutionalized if we're going to start suspending legal rights. Far better than we have now. A Galaxy better than "staff at general recognizing" someone.
So then what happens? The homeless die? What solution do you want?
I'm sorry, but are these even people to you any more? Most might say "homeless people" at least.
The current thought is not to identify a person based on their primary characteristic at all any more.
These are not "homeless people."
These are "people who are currently homeless."
Not to point you out specifically as others in the discussion are using word choices like yours as well.
Lets put the person first.
Worse, you went for personal attack downthread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17787724). We ban accounts that do that, so please don't do that here.
When someone goes bankrupt most don't say "Oh this bankrupt person tried to [blah blah]."
It just seems weird to me with homeless we replace their entire personality with the trait.
The following sentences say the same thing but I feel they come across vastly different.
"The mentally handicapped person went to the store."
vs
"The person, who is mentally handicapped, went to the store."
With your examples about mental handicap, the same principle applies - it matters what's the topic of the discussion, what's the next sentence, and thus where the emphasis should be. If the fact that that person is mentally handicapped is irrelevant to the rest of the story, then "person" is the part that should be emphasised; but if the mental handicap is the key factor for what happens next, then that is the most salient information of the sentence and it should be emphasised.
Describe the man, don't define him.
First one is obvious, every person is ... a person. 2nd and 3rd are not determinable by looking.
Anyways, I can see this is pointless. I hope your day is as pleasant as you are.
Since we're firing off arbitrary primary characteristics, let's just choose "male" for me. Could be that I'm homeless. Could be I'm a billionaire. I could be a Nazi with heads in my freezer.
Dimunitive language dehumanizes. Why the effort to classify with a single word?
Reduce redundancy. Other "occupations" do this as well. You say "painter", not "people/person who paint(s)".
Two, if you really want to reduce redundancy just use "person/people." Everyone knows if you say "homeless person", that that person is, in fact, a person. Seems like an extra word there.
If you want to be precise and point out someone is homeless, use "person, who is homeless." If two words and a comma is too redundant for you, see my first point.
And at some point we have to accept imprecise language in service of useful abstraction (which is all language is).
Just that focusing on the fact these are people first, and that homeless is something they are experiencing and not something they are, is important.