Homeless people sleeping on buses is caused by, wait for it, homelessness. Not free buses.

Sex workers turning tricks in public bathrooms is caused by, wait for it, prostitution being illegal.

Crazy stinky people accosting people in public are caused by, wait for it, kicking mentally ill people to curb to fend for themselves.

Freeride zones and public toilets are currently impractical. Because they're being sabotaged by larger issues. But they're still good ideas, both empirically and morally.

No doubt we could do more to aid societies issues, but it's unlikely that we'll ever fully resolve many of them.

If comedy central has ever taught me anything, it is that there is still illegal prostitution in Reno, Nevada. ;)

Which probably increases the amount of illegal prostitution in those areas.

I'm sure the Reno Sheriff's department hears that a lot...

Legalizing prostitution allows its workers to fall under police protection.

Illegality also leads to money hiding endeavors and tax fraud. Illegal sex workers are wary of setting up a real shop where they could implement security methods, or a guard to stand at the door in a brothel type operation.

Legalizing prostitution allows for better taxation, and less in the way of illicit venues.

I'm sure you're right in that every woman wouldn't turn to prostitution just because it became legal, but at least part of that should be attributed to the inherent danger of working in an illegal market with zero marketplace or police protections. We (hopefully) wouldn't see a huge spike in legitimate prostitution if it were legalized, but we would almost certainly see an uptick.

Prostitution is legal where I live (Australia) and I can confirm that not every woman has turned to prostitution.

Indeed! It's the same in New Zealand.

As attractive as it may be (in terms of income) there are always inherent risks that come with every occupation.

It even stimulates tourism. I wonder what would happen to the Amsterdam economy if legalization of softdrugs and prostitution becomes the global norm.

Obviously, this should be solvable through better regulation enforcement - but there doesn't seem to be the political will to pay for that...

Maybe in the short-term; it would probably somewhat increase the rate of entry. But removing the powerlessness that comes from illegality would probably also make it much more common for people to be able to move up and out of it and one to other things once they'd entered.

  many people also choose to be homeless; whether or not this is 
  a result of another issue like drugs or mental illness 
  is irrelevant. 

  Many mentally ill people would rather deal with the disease than the treatment.

Mental illness is not a lifestyle choice. No-one who has experienced mental illness would choose to live with it. Those that do live with it often don't live for long.

Many mentally ill people are incurable. Many mentally ill people are too ill to find treatment.

Nobody chooses to live on public transport. The mentally ill are vastly more likely to be the victims of crime: assault, battery, rape. If you were confused and persecuted and in fear for your life: where would you go to seek safety?

Seeking refuge from persecution and violence is not my idea of 'choice'.

They use this free housing as their "business premesis".

Both people need to be over the age of 18.

There needs to be no element of coercion. The paying person is guilty of an offence if the sex worker is coerced even if the payer is not aware of any coercion.

There needs to be no trafficking. The UK uses a stricter definition of trafficking, which can include someone voluntarily coming to the UK. It also includes travel within the country.

There's some other stuff too about premises used as brothels and about pimps.

Your comments about use of Housing Benefit are weird and wrong and not worth responding to.

Others points I believe are correct.

Most HB fraud is criminal gangs using fake id, or individuals who are cohabiting but claiming as singles.

If you operate a cash only business with no paperwork there will always be a temptation to under report earnings.

True it's legal to pay for sex, but it's illegal to offer sex for payment, or to live off immoral earnings.

It's certainly not illegal to respond to an advert offering paid sex or to place such an advert. I have no idea what the law would be regards propositioning people at random.

Edit: Paying for the services of someone who is coerced into prostitution against their will is also illegal.

Source: http://sw5.info/law/punters/

I know. A shocking concept: law has underlying moral values like "it's bad to kill people" and "stealing people's cars is wrong" and so on.

You can wax on about how what we really need to solve is homelessness itself, but I am not hearing any solutions to that. We need solutions, not platitudes. Dissolving the free-zone was a solution.

Dissolving the free-zone was a solution to the problem of having to deal with homeless people, not the problem of homelessness itself. I agree we need solutions and not platitudes, but we also have to be cognizant of how our "solutions" merely decrease the salience of pervasive ills rather than attempting to tackle them head-on.

Agreed. You do not need to be in "Save the World!" mode at all times.

> Homelessness is a problem for the homeless. Homeless people sleeping on the buses are a problem for commuters.

Disagreed. Homelessness is a problem for everyone. While homeless people exist, they will necessarily cause problems for the rest of the society. Here are my takes on it:

1. Homelessness is a spot in society. If you take all the non-homeless people in your community and move to a brand new piece of land that is completely isolated from the rest of the world, new homeless people will appear. This is because being homeless is inherent to certain societal setups and the percentage of homeless population can be determined "at compile time" via static analysis of the rules and initial state of the society.

2. The homeless/poor/hungry are a problem for everyone and everyone pays the cost. It is rarely direct (e.g.: not everyone gets mugged), but often indirect. For example, your car or renter's or homeowner's insurance is higher. You have to pay for a security guard in your apartment building. You have to pay for your bus ticket. You have to buy a more expensive bike chain.

3. Given #1 and #2, it is in everyone's best interest to solve the problems of homelessness/poverty/hunger.

I am not saying that we should drop everything and not stop until it is solved. I am saying that it should be a pretty high priority and that the question of whether we tackle it should be "yes".

That is a matter of opinion. Other people think it is a problem of society.

I'm going with what @scarmig says:

"confined space with a homeless person who is likely unhygienic, drugged up, or (non-exclusive) mentally unstable." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5907142

Countless times I have seen homeless people harass commuters (particularly women), straight up threaten people, "soil" the bus seats, leave unsanitary waste and debris on buses, and occupy more space than a single person requires. Resolving situations typically involves the bus driver pulling over and waiting for a police officer to arrive, though typically situations go unresolved. This is not merely a matter of aesthetics; pervasive abuse of transit systems by homeless people interferes with a transit departments ability to do their job (which is providing safe, clean, and effective transportation to people with places to go).

By all means, dedicate all the effort that you want to solving homelessness. Just don't use transit as your tool, it is preoccupied trying to be transit.

It may reassure you to know that a local social services group now operates a free "Downtown Circulator" bus which runs in a loop around the area of the old ride free zone. Any homeless or impoverished people who actually need to travel around the downtown area for free can still do so.

I run a small website where I am trying to put together ideas on how the homeless can solve their own problems. I am not looking for a handout. I think one of my biggest problems is the Othering of the label I have. But I had that problem long before I had this particular label. Anyway, I think on that a lot and learning to "behave normally" after a lifetime of never managing that looks to me like one of the big things I most need.

Edit: The homeless website whereof I speak: http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/

The people on the streets say they'd rather be there than in the shelter. Some of it is because the shelters don't let you bring in weapons and don't allow people in who are under the influence. But some of these guys are homeless because they're an extreme case of a person who doesn't like to be told what to do.

edit: http://www.npr.org/2012/12/06/166666265/why-some-homeless-ch...

> But they're still good ideas, both empirically and morally.

No. They're bad ideas because they don't work, for reasons you mentioned!

Certainly we should strive to resolve all of those issues!

However, until we do, we should be mindful that they are issues and deal with the problems that they cause like adults. For now, free buses are a terrible idea. Once we take care of the issues you mentioned, they might be a wonderful idea. Sadly, we live in the now, not in the future.

One stark contrast between these busses and the ones that charge is the time it takes to get people onto the bus. After getting used to the free version, getting on a paid bus feels glacial when it's busy. Seeing queues of busses feels wrong. I can't help but wonder how much better the transport system would be if you took out the time it takes to take payment and give tickets to people and just let them on.

I wonder what the numbers are.

UK: about 10K USA: about 650k

USA has about 6 times UK population, so if their populations were equal the UK would have about 60K, or one tenth of the problem.

Note: This is just guesswork just perusing that article and taking guesses at populations(60mil and 330mil). Also, it looks like countries define homelessness slightly differently, but I don't have time to read through that part of it now, so I'm bookmarking it for later.

Homelessness is a moral as well as practical problem. How can more than half a million people have no home in the richest country on earth?

Saying "free would work much better if there weren't homeless people" is probably true, but that is a pretty big supposition in lots of cities. Those cities without a homeless problem should feel free to experiment with free transit.

Homelessness and poverty are related, but you are right in that stigma against the homeless and/or the poor makes a barrier in people's perception of taking mass transit. Some places with robust mass transit have better outcomes than others, so this is something that has to have available options to combat that in culture.

> Saying "free would work much better if there weren't homeless people" is probably true, but that is a pretty big supposition in lots of cities. Those cities without a homeless problem should feel free to experiment with free transit.

I'm not saying its a either or proposition, but making free mass transit needs to be coupled with other actions and policies that also help to deal with homeless by providing more stable shelter, facilities, economic opportunity, etc. Of course, there is no city in the US that does not have a homeless population, so that is always going to be a factor.

But seriously -- I think the visibility of homelessness on mass transit is a great reminder personally that there is a massive need for policy shifts that continually aim to decrease homelessness, which is otherwise just a statistic to many.

We have this in Perth, Western Australia—we call them "CAT" (Central Area Transit) buses. Any bus within the CBD is also free though ("Free Transit Zone"; FTZ), which is great if you're heading to a client's office and want to take the bus down the Terrace.

Our CAT buses and FTZ have existed for years and have not become makeshift homeless shelters. My evidence is only anecdotal (across ~10 years), but I've never seen any homeless people setting up shop on a bus.

There are obviously other factors at play here (transport police, better welfare system, 1.9m vs 3.9m people) that are likely making it different from Seattle, however (and these also reinforce your argument).

As someone who used the free ride busses in Seattle almost every day.... that's really not true. Yes, sometimes homeless people were on them. But you know, sometimes there are homeless people in the subway in NYC - that doesn't really stop people from using it.

And the 358 is a great example of a bus that isn't free, but has lots of homeless/druggies on it.

It definitely did not drive away commuters from using the bus.

Even the dirtiest line in the free-ride zone was cleaner than your average SF MUNI line. Maybe that's not a fair comparison, but it's fairer than suggesting that free buses are bad simply because someone might abuse them.

Also, a $2 fare isn't a huge impediment to someone who wants to turn the bus into a shelter. In fact, the worst buses in Seattle for that sort of thing tended to be the airport lines, because you could hop on one of those, and sleep for an hour or two for only a few bucks. By comparison, the free-ride lines were always packed, and made for poor places to sleep. Cost isn't the only consideration.

Providing basic hygiene would go a long way to helping homeless and poor.

Finally, if you're going to provide these amenities, you need to staff for them appropriately - and have them maintained and supported with rules of use enforced.

Given the massive amount of financial waste we have, I don't accept "that's too expensive to do something like this". If it costs money, for things we need, take the money from the damn defense budget.

In the context of NYC: as it is there is little stopping a homeless person from jumping a turnstile and spending all day or night on the 24 hour subway system. But it's fairly rare to see this (I believe it used to be much more common). I imagine on a bus, where there is always a city employee monitoring things, it would be even more rare.

The homeless aren't scared of a bus driver. Nor are passengers - on some routes in the evenings people would jump on via the back doors and refuse to pay fare. The bus driver would refuse to move the bus until they came forward and paid the fare. The bus driver always lost.

The reason why these problems aren't endemic in NYC is because NYC has actual enforcement via the NYPD. The police is widespread and available enough that no one tries to fuck around with the system too hard. In Seattle the SPD never show up to these things unless violence erupts.

The NYPD also has, for better or worse, a traditionally less soft stance on vagrancy and fare jumping.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory#New_Yor...

As someone who grew up in a very liberal part of the west coast, it's hard to admit, but authoritarianism and ubiquitous police presence has done wonders for this city. It certainly unseats some assumptions.

The trouble with the success of broken windows in NYC though, is that it has created a culture where increasingly authoritarian policies are tolerated, and results proving their efficacy often not provided.

Bit more detail: http://blogcritics.org/policing-urban-crimes-the-broken-wind...

Even more on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory#Criticism...

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/05/nyc-homelessness-ri...

You say "homeless people", I say "George Bush", I guess.

Anyway, although other cities have homeless problems, in Seattle it often seemed like public places would be swamped with virtual armies of them, and dealing with that is a real issue.

[Disclaimer: I haven't actually lived in Seattle for 20 years, and have only visited since.]

Why are only self-cleaning toilets a bad idea? Again, policing would have solved that. Or a door timer. Or blue lighting.

(http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2006/10/28/a-vein-atte...)

As a side note, the wait time for paying was reduced drastically once the Orca Card system (rfid based bus pass) went into use. From my experience, with the Orca Card the wait times for paying aren't that much longer compared to the free bus method. It's only when a group of tourists get on the bus and pay with coins is it noticeable.

An alternative solution, of course, is to incentivize use of RFID bus passes (already in heavy use), install RFID readers at all doors, and speed up boarding all-around.

My former professor, who specialized in developing public relations campaigns for social causes, used to say that it's best to avoid words like "public" and "free" because it makes people think of lower-quality things — public rest rooms, for instance.

It's better for campaigns to use language that doesn't conjure these associations — or, in some cases, charge a nominal fee.

For example, a nonprofit whose mission was to give away condoms in Africa ended up charging a small price for each condom; message testing showed that the audience didn't trust free contraception, so, ironically, charging for the product made it more accessible.

You then put sharps bins in some other toilets in less nice areas of the city.

Ownership=>care

Downtown SLC is quite different in size from Seattle; you could walk the ride-free area in SLC in about 30 minutes, the ride free area in Seattle is much larger, more like 1.5 hours. Also, SLC didn't have many homeless people, while Seattle attracted most of the homeless people from the PNW, including lots from the nearby reservations and even Alaska (Alaska exports their homeless problems to us and LA).

That McDonalds though --how did you survive?

I worked there in '94 when it was more rundown than it was today. The smell (malt liquor, unwashed clothes, urine) was difficult to handle at first but I got used to it, my coworkers were also pretty cool (mostly filipino/a immigrants) so it wasn't so bad.

My mom (a Ketchikaner) told me this, but I can't find any references; my experiences are also about 20 years out of date now.

[0] http://justice.uaa.alaska.edu/forum/26/2summer2009/b_homeles...

Search for "blue ticket", it might not be practiced anymore, I'm not sure; but I believe there was still something like that going on in the 80s at least, and it was definitely a thing while my mom was growing up.

I remember some of the homeless in Seattle were from Alaska, how they got there...I'm sure if you ask a charity you can get a bus/plane ticket in winter easily enough, even if the gov doesn't do it for you.

Seattle has relatively affordable airfare to Anchorage.

To go from ANC to SEA by bus you'd be taking 3 different bus lines, for a total price of ~$425 and probably a week of travel time.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+portland+...

Buses out of Alaska aren't cheap, its much cheaper to fly these days. You can get a ticket to Seattle for < $300. "blue tickets" seem to be ingrained in Alaskan culture, its a word that is understood very well up there; people like Palin use it to trash talk others they want to go. You are right the overt practice is probably not acceptable today, but the philosophy still holds.