I live close to Los Angeles so here’s my take. Even where I live an hour away there is a sizable homeless population.

Most people who enter homelessness leave it within a couple of weeks. That’s because these are people like you and me who due to unlucky bad circumstances are out on the street. They want to get back on their feet so they take advantage of social services, don’t have drug addictions or mental illnesses, and maybe have broader support structure through friends and family.

Then you have about 40% of the chronically homeless who are unfortunately not served well by the public services. These folks have mental illness that is left untreated and it’s sad to see them die slowly on the streets. These are fellow humans who are mentally incapable of making decisions, and they need full time care or something that puts them in a safer environment. We have ignored mental illness in this country.

The remainder is basically people who willingly want to be homeless and do drugs. They won’t enter shelters because you can’t do drugs there. They won’t take up temporary housing because the hosts ask for basic decency like no raging inside.

I think we need to make a clear separation between mentally ill/addicts and those who want to just do their own thing. Ultimately I’m paying A LOT in taxes and I feel that I have a right to access the public parks and not have to deal with belligerent people who pose a safety threat to the community. I can excuse the folks with mental illnesses or drug addiction as I believe we have an opportunity to help them - but if some folks adamantly refuse help then I’m not going to settle for letting public places just become dumping grounds.

> Most people who enter homelessness leave it within a couple of weeks.

I'm a bit skeptical of the "Most" claim but it's based on anecdotal evidence from recent years of interacting with our sizable homeless community. I haven't seen any stats.

> They want to get back on their feet so they take advantage of social services

While the first part is undeniably true, the latter depends on the availability or existence of social services. Southern US states are openly hostile toward folks with long term vulnerabilities. Where services exist, politicians here proudly trim them back where they can.

>and maybe have broader support structure through friends and family.

My mom rescued me from homelessness when I was a teenager. The odds of escaping homelessness without help are ~0.

you are interacting with the chronic permanently homeless population, what gp is talking about is the fact that there is an even larger population of temporarily homeless. although the statement is true, i don't think it is a useful distinction, because what most people mean by 'homeless' is those chronic cases, anyway, and that is the problem society, government and homeless charities are trying to solve. acknowledging there is another set of people with similar problems is great, but as pointed out, these people generally are getting the support they need, and are a 'solved' problem (in some sense) unlike the people you have been interacting with, who still need some kind of help and are not receiving it...

the skepticism is justified by simply defining homelessness as being without a home for more than a few weeks (the 'usual' definition, tbh) thus making gp's statement obviously false, i suppose.

San Francisco is on track to spend about $1.1 Billion dollars on homelessness this year, and $600M next year.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-has-an-unpre...

So it's not for lack of spending. But 40 years ago, we decided to downzone the city because we don't like even mid-rise buildings, and then we got a massive jobs boom.

Combine a huge amount of wealth creation, with a very constrained housing supply, and you're going to have price shocks, which will push the most vulnerable out on the streets. That's what we see.

And I happen to live in the neighborhood that that used to be much more light industrial, and happens to have the most shelters and services for anyone experiencing homelessness. Generally the others parts of the city fight against any kind of shelters or services... so it all ends up here.

> Because I'm pretty sure that the people going through the trash would stop in an instant if they were offered a better alternative.

Mostly, yes. Having been homeless myself for an extended period, I saw just how much mental illnesses impact so many people experiencing homelessness.

In my completely unscientific lodgings with them, I'd say its probably around 30% of the people have some sort of debilitating mental illness. I had other reasons for homelessness (lost job, eviction) which are much more mechanical and easier to fix.

I've talked with my SO about the mentally ill on the streets, and the only plan that seems to might work is to forcefully treat them, get them mentally sound, explain their whole situation, and have them choose. It would be in writing, and sealed with a palmscan. And I get that forcefully treating them once may be considered abhorrent, but they are not able in their state of mind to make decisions for themselves.

Once they're of sound mind, they should then have complete agency to choose to remain on the streets, or to obtain emergency services to get out of homelessness.

There are very few mentally ill people wandering the streets in Oslo, Norway. I have seen one guy with unkept dredlocks who seems to enjoy hanging around and chatting to passers by, but he almost certainly has a public-funded apartment and generous disability pension.

The difference is very striking compared with Boston (a city with similar climate to Oslo) where there are many obviously mentally ill people wandering around talking nonsense, begging for money, carrying their things in plastic bags, and sleeping on the ground.

I was homeless for less than a year. In my case, my mom (term cancer) and I were tossed from our long time family home.

The way - the only way - my homelessness ended is I had help.

Or maybe just offer them some basic food for free, so they don't need to dig in trash cans for it? At least the western societies (I don't know and have no opinion on others) are producing enough food that there is no reason not to offer some basic nutrition to everyone.

> At least the western societies are producing enough food that there is no reason not to offer some basic nutrition to everyone.

I live in one of the southern US states that tends to be hostile towards people in need. My kids and I had on-and-off hunger 2008-2018.

(created alt cause of HN's idiotic "posting too fast" - how dare I have a conversation with people online)

I don't understand what I said somehow excludes helping in other ways.

My views are probably a bit more radical, in that I think that everyone should have free food. Homeless, homeful, working, unemployed, citizen, foreigner. Everyone. No exceptions. And, we already have a basis to maintain this system - SNAP.

So when I talked about how to help those whom are experiencing homelessness combined with debilitating mental illnesses, I'm talking of making that program... Not by destroying other programs.

My 1 second old idea is for their psych clinic to offer free food in trade for checking their blood levels. It the meds are insufficient, they get Rx food.

Can't tell if I'll offer that idea again, once I think about it.

No one is really looking for food in the trash cans in the Bay Area. They are looking for recyclables that they can turn in for cash. Or other things that have some value that they can turn in for cash.

In the Bay Area there are plenty of ways to get fed. Happy to be shown I'm wrong, but I don't think it's common to be lacking for food.

AFAIK, it is kind of cycle. Being mentally ill makes you more likely to be homeless. Being homeless makes all your mental health issues much much worst.

> AFAIK, it is kind of cycle.

For folks who need meds, getting them to stay on them can be hugely difficult. It's even harder when that person lacks shelter and support.

I know it is a tempting idea, but forced treatment is an oxymoron. You can't force anybody to get healthy, unfortunately. As usual, prevention is worth a metric shit ton of treatment. Apart from that, all you can really do is reduce harm and marginally improve quality of life through housing, etc. Not that a marginal improvement in QoL is anything to scoff at.

This isn't true, and the fact that you call it forcing people to get healthy shows you're missing the point.

It's not about getting someone healthy, it's about getting them to a point that they are of sound enough mind that they can make rational decisions.

If you hear voices that tell you that antipsychotic medication is going to kill you, you won't take it. The idea that you're choosing to not take medication of your free will is wrong - your free will is compromised by a mental illness so severe that your perception of reality isn't even correct. How can you possibly decide what's best for yourself if you can't accurately understand the world around you?

The point of this kind of forced treatment is to get people into a state where their brain isn't lying to them and they have a basic understanding of what's happening, so that they can then make decisions.

The folks who say it's unethical to force this kind of treatment sound like they're sticking up for folks with severe mental illness, but they're really just condemning them to suffer from that mental illness for life, because without some kind of outside help they simply can't take the actions needed to stop suffering from it, because it prevents them from doing so.

there are no "people who structure society" in a meaningful sense. no one sat in a meeting and said " ok lets design it so some people have to eat out of the trashcan"

yes some people have more pull than others, maybe a lot more, but even the president doesnt have that kind of ability to "structure" the day to day reality of average people ina generalized way

> there are no "people who structure society" in a meaningful sense

That is ridiculous. Our society is governed by laws and social norms. Those are not handed down from heaven by the gods, they are made by people. Yes, it's true that "the people who structure society" is not a small or easily-identifiable group. That doesn't mean that this group of people does not exist. It most assuredly does (and if you are on HN you are probably a member of that group).

If all of HN is in this group than the group is so large as to be meaningless. 1% of all Americans is more than 3 million people.

I certainly don't wake up in the morning and ordain where people get there food from even if I'm an incremental part of structures that have some influence on the economics of America (all voters are)

> That doesn't mean that this group of people does not exist.

This logic sounds a whole lot like what a moon landing denier would say. I'm not saying you are in that group but the line of reasoning is the same.

That is equally ridiculous. A group does not become meaningless once it gets beyond a certain size. The Republican Party is very large. That does not make it meaningless.

righ which is exactly my point. the republican party as a structure has influence. that does not mean being a member of it gives you any meaningful influence. the collective has distributed power. this is in the same way as how the government as a collective determines a lot of how our society runs without their being people who "control society" even though the government is made up of people.

It’s not quite distributed though, it’s concentrated into a few hands, and we can name those individuals. Those hands passed a tax bill in 2017 that sent 80% of benefits to corporations and the top 1% of Americans. It was the only major piece of legislation they passed after getting into power between 2017 and 2019. That was a choice as to how they used their power, and they used it to help the richest Americans. That’s what people mean when they say “the people who structure society”.

>> no one sat in a meeting and said " ok lets design it so some people have to eat out of the trashcan"

What are panhandling ordinances if not exactly that?