
Boise is why L.A. can’t legally clear its streets of homeless encampments - jaredwiener
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-15/homeless-boise-martin-supreme-court
======
dv_dt
In the article, Boise is challenging a court ruling that cities cannot ticket
or arrest the homeless if there are no shelter beds available. This begs the
question how ticketing/arresting clears the streets? By shoving them elsewhere
for another city to ticket? Or housing them in jail (at a much higher
expense)?

Later in the article it does mention that LA (correction from Boise) is also
voiding millions of citations on the homeless, and that those citations were
keeping the homeless from accessing services, like housing. That brings even
more questions about the usefulness of ticketing for homelessness.

Edit: correction it is LA not Boise voiding citations.

~~~
drew-y
I think that is an error in the article. I live in Boise. The law allows
ticketing if there IS room in shelters. People would not be ticketed if the
shelters are full.

Not saying it's a good law. But the article is wrong.

Edit: Here is the relevant section of the actual code.

> Enforcement: Law enforcement officers shall not enforce this camping section
> when the individual is on public property and there is no available
> overnight shelter

[https://citycode.cityofboise.org/home/standard/7-3A-2](https://citycode.cityofboise.org/home/standard/7-3A-2)

~~~
notus
Hi Boise person, been thinking of visiting your city for the first time
because I hear so many great things about it (except for this mayor), when is
the best time to visit?

~~~
drew-y
Mid to late spring is my favorite time of the year. Perfect temperature and
lots too explore. Plus the waterfalls outside of town are at their peak.

------
alexbanks
It's an exhausting problem. I live in Portland, which is just another west
coast city having increasing trouble with a rising homeless population. On one
hand yes, they're people and they deserve help and support and appropriate
housing and access to rehab and structure. But on the other hand, if you buy a
house in Portland there's very little you can do to prevent your front
sidewalk from getting turned into a homeless camp. Having seen first hand how
frequently camps are also drug dens, it's really tiring stepping over hundreds
of dirty needles and needle-caps when you leave every morning. And the smell
of piss and shit in every offstreet doorway in the city. When my mom visited
we were driving over the Morrison bridge and a homeless man was pissing off
the side in broad daylight - not a care in the world.

So yes, help them. But also just do something, anything at all.

~~~
tppiotrowski
I have heard the hundreds of dirty needles sentiment from people but have
never encountered a neighborhood in LA where there are hundreds of dirty
needles on the ground. Is there any photos of this phenomenon online you could
point me to or is this mostly hyperbole?

~~~
tacotime
[https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/7n446x/everett_w...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/7n446x/everett_wa_needle_cleanup_behind_a_home_depot/?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=&utm_content=post_title)

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/q13fox.com/2017/10/23/ex-
addict...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/q13fox.com/2017/10/23/ex-addicts-
assisting-homeless-cleanup-the-only-way-i-can-stay-sober-is-helping-somebody-
else/amp/)

~~~
heavyset_go
These pics were taken out in the sticks of Everett, apparently in the woods
where no one lives.

Where are the the piles of needles people keep claiming they need to walk over
on their way out of their apartments in Seattle?

------
annoyingnoob
Woody Guthrie was on to something...

As I went walking I saw a sign there, And on the sign it said "No
Trespassing." But on the other side it didn't say nothing. That side was made
for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people, By the relief office I seen my
people; As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking Is this land made for
you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me, As I go walking that freedom highway; Nobody
living can ever make me turn back This land was made for you and me.

------
11thEarlOfMar
The article says 1,000 - 2,000 homeless in Boise, but at 2,000, a little quick
MATH shows that Boise's homelessness rate may be a tad higher than LA's:

Boise: 2,000 homeless in population of 227,000 = 1:113

LA: 36,000 homeless in population of 4,000,000 = 1:111

Given the difference in annual weather, it's not clear that Boise policy is
effective in reducing homelessness.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
> Given the difference in annual weather, it's not clear that Boise policy is
> effective in reducing homelessness.

They might winter in Portland or even LA.

Spokane is another city in that area with a huge homeless problem, and perhaps
even harsher weather (Boise is at least high desert). Though housing can be
super cheap, my granddad used to run what we thought became basically a flop
house that we nicked named the Empty Arms.

SLC seems to have focused more on housing the homeless, but even then I think
in recent years they’ve found that their success has mainly just led to a
larger problem.

------
olliej
Boise is a magical city with only 1600-2000 homeless people, as opposed to the
chaos of LA with its 36000 homeless!

Oh, except Boise has a population of 228000 to LAs 4 million.

So LA is 17 times larger. So basic scaling would be equivalent to 28-35k
homeless.

I think the reason Boise is having less difficulty with homelessness is solely
because it’s a small city.

------
carapace
Bucky Fuller had the idea that we should build houses in factories and deliver
them by helicopter. They were designed to fit onto a central mast that
supported them and had hook ups for utilities. Basically he wanted to apply
the automated assembly line to homes.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_house](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_house)

Everyone who wants one should have a home.

------
tehjoker
Brutal article. They're trying to conduct a violent purge/exile of homeless
while dressing it up as caring about them. Give them houses wtf

~~~
theNJR
This is not as much a housing issue as it is a mental health and substance
abuse issue.

See
[https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-07/homeless...](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-07/homeless-
population-mental-illness-disability)

~~~
coldtea
That's the way some politicians/media try to spin it, but it's not the whole
story.

Many homeless don't have mental health and substance abuse issues, but are
just forced out of their homes on debt, etc. And of course some develop mental
health (and sometimes substance abuse issues) after living homeless.

~~~
theNJR
I actually think there is a big spin by certain housing developers to promote
this as a housing issue.

------
throwawaysea
The actual ruling:
[https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2018/09/04/1...](https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2018/09/04/15-35845.pdf)

------
kauffj
[http://archive.is/gNmAt](http://archive.is/gNmAt)

(Archive link for those who prefer non-broken web experiences or want to avoid
supporting publishers that actively want to break the web.)

------
munherty
How about finding ways to rehab these people instead of finding creatively
hide them away at the fringes of cities and towns.

~~~
alexbanks
If you don't want to be rehabilitated, you will not be rehabilitated.

~~~
freehunter
You have to at least _try_ before coming to that conclusion.

~~~
alexbanks
Definitely. I'm by no means saying "Do nothing, let them die." But I'm also
saying "We have to rehabilitate them" is not a good enough idea either - you
can't make people want help.

~~~
wahern
> you can't make people want help.

You can make people _receive_ help. We just don't do that anymore because
we've adopted a principle of radical autonomy, which apparently includes the
"freedom" for the mentally ill and addicted to literally rot on the streets.

Many homeless advocates seem to have similar fears as gun rights advocate.
Whereas some people vociferously oppose gun restrictions because of an
irrational fear of helplessness in the face of crime if they couldn't carry a
gun anywhere and everywhere, some homeless advocates vociferously oppose
forced psychiatric and drug abuse treatment because of an irrational fear--
obscured by a simplistic, self-serving sense of empathy--that _they 'll_
somehow be forced into such treatment or otherwise lose their own autonomy.

The boogey man of big government out to get you isn't just a motivating fear
of the right, it's also a motivating fear of the left.

------
neonate
[https://web.archive.org/web/20191015123642/https://www.latim...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191015123642/https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-15/homeless-
boise-martin-supreme-court)

------
jMyles
One thing that I have never understood about this discussion is why it always
seems to avoid the following question:

What about people who _want_ to be homeless?

Why have we built a society in which anybody who doesn't accept the lifestyle
of sleeping in a static, hardened structure, and working to pay rent or a
mortgage so as to have the right to do so, is diagnosed with some kind of
illness?

Isn't it quite clear that there are some humans that simply aren't built to
live with this strange definition of normalcy?

I have lived on a school bus for the past five years (if you are curious about
this aspect, I gave a talk at PyCon last year that might interest you[0]) and
I have met literally thousands of people like those I'm describing. I'm
convinced that there are hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions - in the
USA.

Of people that I have met who live on streets, in forests, in mobile vehicles
like me, and in all sorts of other configurations that are not "homes" as we
typically understand that word, I think that something like 1% are a nuisance
to the extent that some kind of intervention is warranted for the public good.
And, for what it's worth, that's probably true of about 1% of people who
aren't homeless as well.

Now, in the age of smartphones, small-scale solar charging, and remote work,
it's easier than ever to be happily homeless.

Let's stop acting like it's such a problem.

Help the people who are homeless and want to stop being homeless. Don't judge
the people who are homeless and loving life.

0:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRp84BlFF94](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRp84BlFF94)

~~~
sweeneyrod
Because people like you are incredibly uncommon. I do not believe at all that
there are millions of people like that in the US.

~~~
tistrue999
I don't know about millions, but I have firsthand experience and no one would
know just by meeting someone like this that they had no fixed place of
residence.

------
shadowgovt
L.A. is a place that respects the value of a creative solution.

If one cannot force the homeless to leave, how does one positively incentivize
people to stop living in the street?

~~~
crooked-v
'Just give them housing' seems to work pretty well.
[https://nationswell.com/one-state-track-become-first-end-
hom...](https://nationswell.com/one-state-track-become-first-end-
homelessness-2015/)

~~~
DuskStar
IIRC that actually hasn't worked too well for Utah in recent years.

~~~
crooked-v
Tragedy of the commons is a major factor here. Any city that looks 'homeless
friendly' will get people shipped to it from other cities, sometimes as part
of explicit 'bus ticket' programs.

Really solving this will take work at the national level. There's more than
enough wealth around to fund it, given how much goes into the pockets of
opioid manufacturers alone.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Homeless people are also fairly mobile, it doesn’t take that much to come up
with a $50 bus ticket even if they don’t bother hopping freight cars anymore.
Hell, many can even scrounge up enough for one way tickets to Hawaii (...and
Hawaii will often take care of the ticket back).

------
CodeSheikh
Build them tents on all of these golf courses. We have plenty of those in this
country.

------
ridewinter
No one discussing UBI as a nation-wide comprehensive solution here?

------
fred_is_fred
To save you a click, the "City in Idaho", which is clearly written to make it
sound like a village of like 10 people in the middle of nowhere, is Boise.

~~~
CodeWriter23
Don’t feel so bad, the article is also sounds like it was written by someone
who has never been to LA. Skid Row overflowed into Little Tokyo several years
ago, creating a new ad hoc neighborhood name “Skid Rokyo”.

Oh and the there’s the giant homeless encampments every 1-3 miles as you drive
around LA.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Japan has homeless encampments also...I saw a nice tidy one in an Osaka park,
and also around Uueno in Tokyo. They are fairly clean about it, however.

~~~
livueta
Yeah, go for a walk down the Arakawa or Sumida embankments (not right now, I
guess, given that was all recently underwater) and you'll find some semi-
permanent camps in a good state of repair. Talked to some of the guys by one
and apparently they've got a pretty strong culture of self-enforcing
cleanliness and not messing with the civilians, since they'll get cleared out
if the cops get legitimate complaints from people in the area

------
generalpass
The broader issue is why a federal court is interfering with municipal
policies.

~~~
jlmorton
Because in a constitutional form of government there are lots of things that
cities are not allowed to do, and judicial relief from those unconstitutional,
or otherwise illegal actions is expected and by design.

