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A comment on What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining. Parent comment

Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by 8f2ab37a-ed6c on Monday December 13, 2021 @09:42PM (#29547561)
> Cities don't want loud drunk people on sidewalks, i.e., a bar scene on the sidewalk. Public alcohol consumption is generally banned in most places in the US, afaik.

Which is ironic, because if you sit down anywhere outside in SF for an hour, there's a rather high and predictable chance that a person suffering from severe mental illness and/or narcotics abuse will park themselves next to you, begin to scream unintelligible sentences, to hurl insults at the patrons and act in a generally threatening fashion. Everybody will try not to make eye contact or acknowledge their presence in any way, hoping they leave of their own accord in a few minutes. You do the usual dance of pretending that the screams aren't at all distracting to the conversation you're having, while also being barely able to pay attention to anything else, in the off chance you need to dodge something thrown in your general direction. Usually nobody gets hurt, but sometimes you get unlucky and lose the stab lottery. Life goes on.

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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by TedDoesntTalk on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @01:35AM (#29548884)
Why is this common in SF but not European cities, where outdoor dining and beer gardens are even more common than SF? (In other words, there’s more opportunity but yet it’s still not common).
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by krageon on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @08:37AM (#29551309)
Because the US has real drug problems and absolutely no interest in providing a humane solution to them.
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by perceptronas on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @05:59AM (#29550360)
In my opinion its due lack of enforcement. In bigger cities (EU) where there is not enough police or security guards - homelessness negatively impacts everyone around too
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by banannaise on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @02:09PM (#29555929)
Yes, the country that spends more money on police and incarcerates more people than anywhere else is having this problem worse than other countries because they don't have enough police and aren't incarcerating enough people. What?
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by 8f2ab37a-ed6c on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @03:49PM (#29557461)
You can't apply a blanket statement like that to a country of 330M people and half a dozen time zones. The US is not a homogeneous blob of identical humans, customs, cultures, and governance priorities. Even among "coastal elite" cities the difference in policing (and attitudes towards policing) you see between places like SF and Manhattan is stark to say the least.
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by perceptronas on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @01:41AM (#29562830)
I am not talking about incarceration, just simple policing. Not letting homeless build tents or sleep at entrances of business or buildings is a good start. Making sure people feel safe should be no. 1 priority of any government.
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by pydry on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @05:42AM (#29550262)
It's a function of rents / income.

High rents -> Homelessness -> Debilitating mental illness -> drug use -> even worse mental illness.

Nowhere has rents quite as absurd as SF but what you describe has happened to me in London.

Reducing homelessness and ever rising property values are not compatible goals.

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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by unsigner on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @06:35AM (#29550578)
Munich has outrageous rents and brutal housing scarcity, yet no visible homelessness.
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by pydry on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @06:42AM (#29550611)
https://www.goethe.de/ins/us/en/m/kul/wir/woh/21391992.html

It hasnt been going on as long and isnt nearly as bad in Munich as it is in SF but the same problem is there.

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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by wolverine876 on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @11:35PM (#29562137)
> no visible homelessness

A key word is visible. Some places solve the problem by hiding the homeless, chasing them to poor neighborhoods or into shelters, etc. (It's the same solution suburbs and small towns use, in a way: Bus them to the city. Then they criticize cities for the homeless problem.)

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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by TedDoesntTalk on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @08:21AM (#29551176)
Are you seriously saying that high rent leads to mental illness, or do I misunderstand?
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by nkrisc on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @08:36AM (#29551305)
Perhaps that homelessness and lack of a mental health support structure exacerbate existing mental illness that might otherwise be manageable.
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by pydry on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @01:52PM (#29555664)
Yes. Rent -> Homelessness -> Mental illness. Whats so hard to believe?
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by thatswrong0 on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @03:25PM (#29557075)
It could just as easily be Mental illness -> Homelessness
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by pydry on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @04:12PM (#29557846)
This is certainly the story told by people who own lots of property and media outlets.

It could be a coincidence that SF has an epidemic of mental issues and sky high rents.

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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by spinach on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @05:16AM (#29550114)
Perhaps because European countries have universal healthcare.
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by foobarian on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @07:32AM (#29550898)
You need more than that, you need legal basis and resources to be able to load up the crazy homeless person into a van and get them committed out of sight to an institution.
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by ehnto on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @08:43AM (#29551368)
Homelessness isn't in itself a mental condition, although it can lead to or be caused by it. Public healthcare can help people who are homeless maintain their sanity and health, which can get them back on their feet. It may even stop them from becoming homeless in the first place. It also gives both the individual, care services, and authorities all a point of contact to try and make sure they're being taken care of.
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by adam-a on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @08:47AM (#29551404)
European countries aren't dealing with these people by stuffing them in asylums; they have public housing programs, free healthcare, community support programs, health-workers and social-workers doing at-home visits, day-centres, and lots of other schemes to help.
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by alisonkisk on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @07:55AM (#29551021)
Or you need an economic environment that doesn't drive people to become "crazy" and homeless.
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by dagw on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @08:53AM (#29551466)
I lived several years in down town Oslo, and it had both universal healthcare and lots of visible homelessness.

(although it seems to have gotten slightly better over the past 5-6 years)

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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by Dig1t on Monday December 13, 2021 @10:25PM (#29547834)
Wow this is such an accurate depiction, I have had that experience nearly exactly in SF.
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by gunshai on Monday December 13, 2021 @11:09PM (#29548125)
Sounds like Seattle and Portland :( no longer the cities I once loved.
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by wolverine876 on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @02:12AM (#29549077)
This seems unrelated to the issue at hand.
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by 908B64B197 on Monday December 13, 2021 @09:46PM (#29547599)
What's the solution? 5'000$ per month tents for homeless residents. [0]

Care to venture a guess how much of that is salaries for government employees in charge of the program? Keep in mind government can only grow in size; never shrink.

[0] https://nypost.com/2021/06/26/san-francisco-run-homeless-enc...

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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by bobsmooth on Monday December 13, 2021 @10:27PM (#29547853)
Reopen the asylums Reagan closed.
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by haberman on Monday December 13, 2021 @10:58PM (#29548056)
I was shocked to come across this figure today:

> "If the United States still hospitalized its mentally ill at the same rate it did in 1955, its mental health institutions would house almost 1.1 million people any given day. Instead, they house fewer than 50,000 patients," - Michael Shellenberger.

https://twitter.com/sullydish/status/1470504513874403333

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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by oh_sigh on Monday December 13, 2021 @11:02PM (#29548076)
Or rather we house them, but just in jails and prisons.
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by dylan604 on Monday December 13, 2021 @11:46PM (#29548338)
They are probably experimented on less in prison.
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by glogla on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @06:56AM (#29550700)
They probably do more slave labor in prisons.
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Re:What a progressive utopia does to outdoor dining by mdoms on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @01:45AM (#29548935)
> What's the solution? 5'000$ per month tents for homeless residents.

What? No. Obviously not. What?

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