Because the country as a whole has been completely ravaged by opiate addiction. It's not just Portland and Seattle. West Virginia doesn't have anything like this, and it's just as badly afflicted. It may be less visible because it doesn't have the same population density.
Because just some cursory googling suggests that these cities do have less incidence of drug addiction/use per capita. But I don't really know how accurate that info is, and anecdata doesn't count.
Edit: to clarify, not trying to be an asshole, I have no idea what the answer is here, would be very interested to find out
I realize it is a drug, but not sure if that’s even supposed to be in the drugs.
Is this really a story of drug dealers cutting the drugs that people wanted.. into a lethal concoction?
(Sorry I really don’t know, are users looking for fentanyl?)
Some people do drugs to feel like a god, others to escape god.
Jack the Bipper by Channel 5 was pretty solid. I'd recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLGRGZTk51w
Absolutely phenomenal journalism that nobody is paying attention to unfortunately
We’ll never know if any of these policies stood a chance due to the USA viewing the west coast as a dumping ground for homeless people.
Next time you’re passing by these people, ask them where they are from originally.
Locals are like 20% of the problem.
Portland is better housing-wise, but not by much. Considering how most people who are both homeless and on drugs were homeless first, then turned to drugs, I think this is a strong confounding factor. It's hard to saw what effect decriminalization has had on drug use when it's adjacent to a housing crisis that is manufacturing more homelessness and drug use all on its own.
If you triple my rent over the next 10 years, without raising my income, then I'm gonna be homeless. No drug use necessary, batteries included, no assembly required.
Yes, I am aware
> raising it is mostly up to you
The rent? Or the salary?
> Doing drugs because you are incapable of matching society's dynamics isn't an excuse
Like I said, 3xrent creates a homeless me, no drugs involved
https://web.archive.org/web/20211022190558/http://allhomekc....
Rather I think the problem is that half assed decriminalization efforts simply aren’t enough and that drug overdose has become a much more severe issue because of the opioid epidemic and the proliferation of fentanyl. What needs to happen for decriminalization to work is much better social support for addicts, including safe use sites staffed with nurses, free health care for addicts including detox hospitalization and substance abuse treatments, social housing including housing specifically for recovering addicts and active addicts. In addition full legalization and regulated drug markets (preferably via pharmacies with a strict non-profit motive) wouldn’t hurt either.
What Seattle has done is basically just decriminalization without any of the support needed to go with it. Yes we support addicts and spend a lot of money on their care, however these are all suffering from austerity and are often just post-hoc measures (which often cost more in the long run).
So you have fentanyl, not much housing, not much treatment, not enough hospital space. People get addicted, at least some move here when addicted and then they are stuck.
It's also not just a seattle problem. Alaska has also been struggling with lots of deaths from drug abuse or overdose. Wasilla - https://alaskapublic.org/2023/04/10/troopers-warn-of-lethal-..., Anchorage - https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/anchorage/2023/07/27/anchora...
How many productive members of society does it take to support each drug addict? Should there be any calculation, or should we say "whatever it takes"?
More realistically smaller total staff than 20 dealt with 3,800 addicts in an 18 month trial a decade and a half ago with benefits to the community (reduced expenses from deaths, overdoses, central record keeping, etc) that were considered worthwhile to keep such centres going until the present day.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38608095
FINAL REPORT OF THE EVALUATION OF THE SYDNEY MEDICALLY SUPERVISED INJECTING CENTRE
https://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/5706/1/MSIC_final_evaluation_...
might be of interest to some.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
[0] https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/20/california-a...
The idea that we just need to invest more and more into this extremely corrupt industry has no merit.
Caveat: unemployment statistics don't count people who aren't seeking work. Which chronically homeless and/or drug addicted people usually do not.
> The unemployment rate measures the share of workers in the labor force who do not currently have a job but are actively looking for work. People who have not looked for work in the past four weeks are not included in this measure.
https://www.epi.org/newsroom/useful_definitions/
Basically what unemployment rate tells us is that USA has enough jobs for people who want to work. It says nothing about people who have given up looking.
That's a fair point. If people are not seeking work but claim benefits indefinitely, doesn't this require a different solution than blaming the society and expecting taxpayers to take care of that?
https://www.kqed.org/news/11668623/why-do-thousands-of-l-a-s...
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/san-f...
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/top-stories/story/2020-...
> wages are the lowest they have been in decades
This is an endless argument. Why can't a person with 0 skills rent an apartment in San Francisco? Some wages are very low. If you can't afford rent in one of the most expensive cities on the planet, move to a cheaper place, don't become homeless in SF.
Do you want me to solve this for you? Here you go:
- Find a job in Wallmart in Fresno (if you insist on staying in CA): https://careers.walmart.com/us/jobs/0619201885FE-cashier-fro... (Cashier, $16-$26 an hour)
- Find a cheap rental in Fresno: e.g. this studio is $800 https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/719-W-Hammond-Ave-Fresno-...
- Sign up for free health insurance: https://www.coveredca.com/
Most people are born and raised in the same city or area their whole lives. The adult illiteracy rate is 20% and less than 40% get any kind of 4 year degree. Options are limited. People will cling to hope and the life (and community!) they know, until they're broke and lost their job... and at that point, they straight up can't move to Fresno and start that Walmart job. Walmart wouldn't hire them without a local place to live, and cheap Fresno landlords wouldn't rent to someone without a local job. Neither Walmart nor the landlord has an incentive to change, they're doing just fine exploiting the local Fresno populace.
Low-skill/low-pay life situations are a completely different reality than what well-off knowledge workers know.
Respectfully, you misplace the responsibility. When people go through a rough breakup, we don't call for the person experiencing attachment anxiety to be housed with their ex just because it would make things easier for one party at least temporarily. Life is full of hard moments and challenging choices. The fact that something is hard doesn't mean giving up is the healthiest path that the society should encourage.
Talk to people who work in social services. The fact is, visibly homeless (street homeless, most often addicted people) are in this situation not because they have tried everything else and have no choices. They don't seek employment and often refuse help. They are not part of a community (unless you consider other homeless people they randomly ended up living close to their true community).
As usual, the discussion about homeless is kind of pointless without clarifying which segment we are talking about. Homeless families with children, disabled non-addicts, etc are not someone I include in this discussion, and I never see them living on the street.
> Do you want me to solve this for you? Here you go:
As if your list was anything close to a viable solution for someone already homeless and addicted.
With this post, you're right - it is absolutely more complex. There are absolutely families on the street, they're just more likely in cars or squatting rather than assaulting people.
Beds can be located in places that lock people out of employment or introduce them to toxic elements... and becoming unhoused by itself causes mental health issues in a society which does nothing but stigmatize that from birth to adulthood.
Even within treatment, skilled help is chronically burned out and mediocre help is worse than a rubber duck.
There's a need for structural reform, from policing through sentencing and voluntary/mandatory rehabilitation, as well as public education. Not to mention real estate bottlenecks that drive up prices for everone from low-income odd-job workers, to the city police force, to building new institutional facilities, to staffing social services.
To add an independent voice, here's ChatGPT responding to "summarize this article in one paragraph", for each article you linked to:
> https://www.kqed.org/news/11668623/why-do-thousands-of-l-a-s...
The article discusses the significant problem of empty beds in Los Angeles County's homeless shelters, despite a large homeless population. Investigations reveal safety and sanitation issues in many shelters, such as bedbugs, rats, foul odors, and lax medical care. Half of the LAHSA shelters had 78 percent utilization. Homeless individuals cite issues like theft, harassment, and violence within shelters, prompting some to prefer living on the streets. There's no unified oversight system, and the is much room for improvement to ensure humane conditions in shelters.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/san-f...
Approximately 7,800 homeless people in San Francisco, 2,100 have been approved for subsidized housing, yet challenges persist in moving them indoors. The city cites issues such as a shortage of case managers, complicated paperwork, and resistance from the homeless to certain unit conditions. Although efforts have been made to address the problem, including a $62 million investment in case managers, the average wait time has increased to five months, a significant delay considering the program's annual budget of $356 million. The article calls for an in-depth audit of the permanent supportive housing program and urgent action to house homeless individuals promptly.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/top-stories/story/2020-...
The article discusses California's Project Roomkey initiative, launched by Governor Gavin Newsom in April 2020 to lease 15,000 hotel rooms for homeless individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the program's progress has been slow, with only about half of the rooms occupied over a month into its implementation. Challenges include delays in preparing rooms for occupancy, a shortage of service providers, and difficulties in transitioning residents into permanent housing. While some counties, like Sacramento, have seen relative success, others, such as San Diego and Orange County, struggle to fill leased rooms. The initiative, funded by FEMA, targets homeless individuals aged 65 or older and those with health conditions susceptible to COVID-19, but the article raises concerns about the overall effectiveness and limited coverage of the program in addressing the state's homelessness crisis.
E.g. we have invested $62M in case managers to handle 2100 approved cases? With the program's annual budget being $365M? This shows a ridiculous level of bloat and corruption. Do we need to spend $30K per case, considering that this doesn't cover the shelter expense?
I am not opposed helping people in need, I am opposed the idea that we just need to spend more money. And then next year a little bit more. More taxes, more case managers, more street cleaning teams, more safe injection sites. None of that is solving homelessness, all of that is contributing to making the homeless industry bigger.
* show up
* not be high or drunk when showing up
* adhere to a schedule
* read
* follow instructions
* not cuss out his boss or customers
* count money
* not steal money
* operate a computerized cash register
A large number of homeless probably could not do these things.
Shelters have a lot of restrictions that keep swaths of homeless out. For instance most don't allow animals or carts. If you're homeless and don't want to abandon those you're stuck on the street. There might be reasons for restrictions but they exist and homeless are excluded from shelters because of them.
Hymns are a better opiate of the masses than fentanyl.
This is the same approach as we are seeing in the "far left" bubble in the context of this issue: street drug addicts have no responsibilities and agency, the society has to accommodate their every whim, including ignoring all illegal activities they are engaged in.
Until we acknowledge that benefits come with responsibilities we are not going to solve this.
That's not an issue that America has to solve (i.e. the government or the society). It's an individual need that every individual is responsible for.
You shouldn't be surprised then when vast amounts of people fail to fill a hole that for the vast majority of human history was filled for them.
I honestly believe most people simply aren't capable of making their on meaning or purpose out of nothing.
Being told as a child that if you take drugs you will go to hell is not a meaningful alternative. Not for incredibly complex thinking beings that we are.
Submitting to Jesus, being a part of the "right" religious group is not a benefit to the human race as a whole. It's poison, promoted by power hungry maniacs.
Social programs, education, keeping corporations in check - these are meaningful alternatives to the idea that we need to bring Jesus back to control the population.
Indifference is worse than extreme atheism or fundamentalism because those two options are actually concerned about others
The indifferent person could care less whether you believe or don't, it's your own "individual responsibility", they owe nothing to you and you owe nothing to them
Widespread indifference will bring about the slow dismantlement of society
I've really only witnessed such open drug abuse in countries with strong Christian influence, e.g. the US and Latin America. Might be worth investigating why widespread debilitating drug abuse stems from that background.
Finding purpose and our place in the world is our individual responsibility. Don't confuse it with the lies of eternal heaven at the cost of total submission in this life that your religion is promoting.
I think religion is declining because people are discovering there are many ways to perform self-discovery and practice fulfillment.
The only aspect of religion that has been beneficial to modern society is providing a social venue for others to interact. This can be achieved by building stronger neighborhoods and encouraging the development of more welcoming social venues -- something that I think is the cure to America's loneliness epidemic.
Let's suppose this were true. If, as you say, it's all about purpose and meaning, then we would expect that although everyone's conception of these things is different, it would still provide the same benefit. However, this is not what we find. Markers of purpose and meaning (such as suicide rate, depression, etc) are getting worse, not better.
So we're forced to come to terms with a few possible conclusions, none of which are very good for your point of view. Either the systems people are coming up with are insufficient to achieve the same goals or people are not coming up with their own system and are left to flounder.
> This can be achieved by building stronger neighborhoods and encouraging the development of more welcoming social venues -- something that I think is the cure to America's loneliness epidemic.
How is Europe doing on these indicators? Or anywhere else?
Can something be simultaneously true and patronizing?
Just looking at how humans in general behave worldwide, I'd say that yes, people are really quite stupid.
Surely there is another way? Stronger families, philosophy, sports, education? Humanism over religion - the only truly universal approach.
If it's a binary choice of opiate addiction vs. religious practice, sure. But for many, the hole that some fill with religion is filled with other sorts of meaning-giving practices. Not to take away from the comfort, stability and hope that religious affiliation provides for many; but for others the source of connection to the transcendent and to contributing to concerns beyond oneself comes in different forms.
I increasingly believe the same and I don't believe the vast majority are capable of filling it on their own in a healthy way, but there are a lot of other social factors at play too.
I find one of the biggest losses, especially in dense cities, is that the churches and community orgs there often lack local, long-term ties to said communities. Also, there are a number of religious institutions in big cities that are sometimes open only on (Friday, Saturday, or Sunday depending on their beliefs) and don't provide as much closeness and synomie for people as rural religious institutions do.
I wouldn't recommend that all things must attempt to recapture the 1950's apartheid and social conservativism in all regards, but a crucial linchpin of a functional society appears to be missing. It is not necessarily religion or faith, but it includes a lack of love for, and trust of, others where America went from community-individual balanced to hyperindividualism with a dysfunctional social safety net.
I don't think you can avoid this. If you bring back religion, you necessarily have to accept apartheid and social conservatism. The two go hand-in-hand.
Religion probably worked well for bonding communities back when communities were small and homogeneous and had little contact with the outside world. But in an era of global travel and communications, it doesn't work: we have to have huge wars to decide whose religion is the correct one. Just look at what's going on with Israel lately. Different religions can't peacefully co-exist, so devastating wars are necessary to maintain order.
Religion has been more impactful in spreading knowledge and connecting cultures around the world than the printing press, radio and the internet combined. Religion for a long time was the only contact with the outside world. Christianity today is more or less the culture and knowledge from thousands of years and countless different tribes and cultures, fused into one piece. Spread worldwide by preaching, manuscripts, monks, monasteries and by the sword. Compared to most ideologies that only spread by the sword, ancient and modern.
The default human condition is to spread by breeding among your own people, and exterminate other people. Sometimes just the men and the boy children, to breed with the women. Sometimes by exterminating everybody and even eating them. Cannibalism and human sacrifice was the default human condition for tens of thousands of years, or maybe even for millions of years, before the light came to man.
Thinking that religion is only war and oppression is like thinking math is only for calculating artillery. It's a limited perspective.
Consider video games as the opiate instead. At least they don't fuck up your health and you might come out with stronger problem solving skills.
There are legitimate causes for the blight in Seattle but lack of jobs and low wages aren’t one of them.
Median sale price in Seattle is $560/square foot, which is almost exactly $6000/square meter. With minimum wage at $18.69/hr, that's 320 hours of minimum wage work per square meter.
For comparison, average price per square meter in Paris is over 10 000 EUR ($10 700), whereas the minimum wage is 11.50 EUR, giving you a ratio of 870 hours of min wage work per square meter, almost 3 times more expensive.
When you compare them by median household income, Seattle is around $110k/year, which is $55/hour, giving 110 hours/square meter for median family. In Paris, for comparison, median household income is 44k EUR/year, which is 22 EUR/hour, resulting in 454 hours/square meter, which is 4 times more expensive than in Seattle for median family, even worse than for minimum wage.
These were before-tax figures, and doing after tax makes the situation even more lopsided: US tax system is much more progressive than European, and so taxes for median and below are extremely low compared to Europe. At Seattle minimum wage, the effective tax rate is around 15%, whereas in France, at minimum wage you're still paying 25% in income tax. To top it off, in France, the VAT is 20%, compared to 10% in Seattle.
You can do the same calculation for most of Europe, and you'll find the same: pretty much all large metros in Europe are almost universally less affordable than most expensive metros in US, including NYC and SF.
If anything, I'm stunned that the price for square foot in Paris is only 180% of that in Seattle.
Seattle is not a cosmopolitan global city, this is true, but Paris wishes it had Seattle’s economic dynamism by almost any measure. Like many European cities, its status is the accumulated capital of a prior era that is not being replenished at replacement rate. I have my qualms about Seattle but European cities are largely worse when looking forward.
How is this relevant to my point, which is that in Paris (and most of major European metros), the prices-to-incomes ratio is much worse than in Seattle, and pretty much anywhere in US? In what way it is a crown jewel, if, by US standards, 3/4th of the population barely makes the ends meet?
Marseille: 4300 EUR
Birmingham: 3000 GBP
Bremen: 3000 EUR
Liege: 3000 EUR
Antwerp: 2500 EUR
València: 2200 EUR
Poznan: 2000 EUR
These are all major, but not the biggest, cities in their respective country. I'm not saying they are representative (for what, anyway). You'll find major cities that are much more expensive (eg Munich) or cheaper.
As for income tax, at first glance, PWC disagrees:
https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/france/individual/taxes-on-pers...
https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/germany/individual/taxes-on-per...
However, this becomes much worse if you look at after-tax situation. In Poland, at this pay range, your effective tax rate is 27%, whereas in Seattle it's 16%, and you have to then apply 23% VAT to your purchases, compared to 10% sales tax in Seattle.
> As for income tax, at first glance, PWC disagrees:
What specifically does it disagree about? It is well known that the effective tax rate on lower half of the population is much lower in US than in almost all of Europe, as my example comparison between US and Poland or France shows. In Europe, the middle class pays the bulk of the tax burden, whereas in US, taxation is much more progressive, and it is the wealthy who pay most of the tax.
Unfortunately we still have a large portion of the population who believe that one must deserve to live a dignified life, and then apply all sorts of caveats on who is deserving. So we can't reshape the economy to support everyone because the people at the top need to feel like the work they did to get there somehow speaks to their character rather than merely their circumstances. They can't accept that they're not actually that special and so have some pathological need to draw lines between "us" and "them" (e.g. "taxpayer" vs "freeloader").
No we don't. This wasn't a problem 10 years ago. This isn't a problem in much, much poorer countries. This isn't a problem in fucking Houston or Tampa or NYC or Boston.
I get that you want to overthrow Capitalism, but the rest of us want to live a normal life without junkies shitting on our stairs
It would be nice if life wasn't so stressful all the time for so many people. Look at all the wild drivers, the lack of camaraderie in basic everyday life interactions, you can point to all manner of social ills and if you empathize with those who are struggling to get by -- which is most people according to every statistic released in the last 6 years about it -- you would easily make the connection between worrying about not having a bed and enough food and the kinds of shitty behavior people end up enacting.
Those cities don't have a problem with homelessness because their cities either suck to live outside in the winter or suck to live outside in the summer.
You'll also note the high proportions allocated to police in every city budget (NYC cops get something like $5 billion per year!). The difference between some cities and others is primarily the level of controls they put on police re: homeless people because of progressive policies. The cities with hardline positions look better because the homeless are pushed out, not because the homeless find homes there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_Drugs_Act_(Singapo...
It could be that portland is taking a huge number of people that would otherwise be a drain elsewhere. Maybe we shouldnt consider this an outright failure, but look at some federal support.
Like Portland, we've lived for decades with very progressive politicians who have lead successful decriminalization efforts and spent huge sums of public funds on treatment and harm reduction programs.
After several decades and many, many millions of dollars spent, the problem is, by every measure, absolutely the worst it's ever been. https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/dph/health-safety/safety-inju...