This is a great response.

One of the most under appreciated aspects of this is that the current policies actually hurt the homeless people who are stuck in a poverty trap and want to get out. They have to live daily with an ever increasing number of people who are allowed to engage in dangerous and uncivil behaviour. There are parents and children on the streets who want nothing more than to get off them - but until that happens, their quality of life has been made considerably worse by the policies presently in place.

>You are drowning. I throw $1000 at you. Are you saying I should have done more?

What if we apply your logic to your own scenario?

You are drowning. I will jump in and help you get to safety only after you have taken a blood and piss test. Are you saying I should have done more?

>> You are drowning. I throw $1000 at you. Are you saying I should have done more?

> You are drowning. I will jump in and help you get to safety only after you have taken a blood and piss test. Are you saying I should have done more?

I think his point was that if someone's drowning, you throw them a life preserver or jump in and save them. You don't throw them $1000, because that's not the solution to the problem they're actually having. It's not like the water will spit them out if you pay it.

And if your problem is addiction, $1000 might just make your problem worse. That $1000 might as well be considered a pile of drugs or booze.

When I was growing up I was friends with a kid whose Dad actually worked trying to help homeless people in a very cold climate. IIRC, one time they had a program to give out subzero rated sleeping bags, but stopped once they realized they were just getting pawned.

I'm with ya. My point is that his metaphor illustrates how even a helpful for the problem solution might not be helpful given the stipulations he's putting on the help.

You are drowning.

I jump in and help you to shore.

You immediately jump back in and start drowning again.

Someone else helps you to shore

You jump back in and start drowning again.

Eventually everyone who would help you wants some kind of evidence that this time you won't just jump back in before they help you.

You drown.

Are you saying they should have done more?

At some point you put up a fence, either around the drowning pond or around the jumper.

In this metaphor the pond is drugs and the jumper is an addict.

We've tried putting a "fence" around drugs, it doesn't work.

And we've decided that putting a "fence" around addicts (aka prison) is wrong.

So it seems like we really don't have options.

But a homeless person can easily take a drug test.

The real analogy would be that you have to consent to the would-be savior to verify you are actually drowning. Im not sure anyone drowing would think “no thanks ill take my chances”.

"Zoning and parking laws are ignored. Noise laws are ignored. Drug laws are ignored. There is zero effort to serve this population and get them out of the literal gutter. Pets are a massive problem. Children are living in the middle of this. "

How do you pay to enforce all of this? Do jails have adequate space? Are there enough judges, courtrooms, and public defender's to handle this efficiently? Where should the children go?

"It's not working"

What are your suggestions for aiding people to be able to afford rent and sustaining themselves?

> How do you pay to enforce all of this? Do jails have adequate space?

Well if you cant enforce it and jails don’t have adequate space shouldn’t you put more resources to those things? Or do you not actually think it should be enforced nor should people be put in jail?

I didn't say that. I asked a questions. Now go ahead and fund doing that and let's see what happens.

I don't think this is a fair response. Throwing a conditional means-tested $1000 to a drowning man wouldn't save them either. You are grouping in different policies and treating them as if you have to accept a package deal or nothing. The binary choice is a false illusion.

I'd be happy to argue about the value of means-testing. However people who are in favor of means testing can rarely point to a study validating the effectiveness of it, because the reality of means-testing is that it: a) Increases administration costs, making it rarely cost efficient b) Increases barriers to access, leaving people who need help behind c) Tends to create poverty traps and weird distorting incentives.

I'd also be happy to look at data in terms of what services the unhoused need most, and what is the most helpful in terms of ending long-term homelessness and reducing the impact on society as a whole. This is a separate discussion.

In reality though, I think most people on both sides think of it on a local scale, and therefore are struggling to actually come up with solutions that will fundamentally solve the issue. Communities have generally gone with one of two solutions to these issues: 1) Making it difficult for those who are unhoused. 2) Trying to improve the situation of those who are unhoused.

The first approach doesn't actually solve the problem, it just shifts it to other locations. At its worst you see it with cities and towns busing their homeless to other places, but you see it expressed most frequently with the criminalization of homelessness. If this was the approach everywhere we would quickly enter an arms race of who could make things worse, and you would almost certainly see the problem nationally become worse.

On the other hand, you have communities trying to improve the lives of unhoused folks, which is really just a bandaid on the core issue.

The root of the problem is the cost of housing, and unfortunately this is an area which California has struggled to solve. However, this is completely orthogonal to how you treat your homeless populations. You can treat the homeless with dignity AND lower housing costs at the same time.