Yes. West Coast cities (San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Vancouver Canada) consistently get talked about with this even more disproportionately because the citizens there confuse crime with visible poverty.
People hear "Someone was randomly stabbed", then they go on the streets, see someone homeless and on opiates passed out in the street, or get screamed at by someone on meth, feel unsafe, and correlate the two. Then they look around at the state of certain parts of the cities and scream the city is dying, and demand superficial solutions like impeaching the DA, or cleaning up a homeless encampment.
But the cities don't have a crime problem (more than other cities in North America). They have a VISIBLE POVERTY problem. They have a houselessness problem. And they have a drug addiction problem (which almost certainly is an outcome of poverty and houselessness.
The root cause for these is complex, from wealth imbalance, to insufficient social services, but the reason why THOSE CITIES specifically have them is that the west coast provinces and states are 1/ Progressive, 2/ Mild-climated in the Winter.
There is no other province or state that is both consistently progressive (and as a result offers SOME social services for homeless, mentally ill, or drug addicted people) AND you can survive a winter in the street. The east coast has the former, but not the latter. The southwest has the latter but not the former.
The combination of the above creates the effect you see.
Some people claim social services for the homeless make it "too easy" to stay unhoused. Googling the problem seems to only result in punditry and rhetoric but not any kind of meaningful analysis as to whether a "tough love" approach has any advantage over a generous one.
Yes, there is a subjective philosophical question here for sure. Are humans inherently lazy and greedy or cooperative and selfless? The answer is "both". But since you can't tell who's who, and the greedy selfish have a vested interest in hiding it to get more, how do you decide?
I think you decide what is a bigger moral crime:
* To leave someone who needs help without it, even when you have funds to help them
* To fund someone who doesn't need help, and who will take advantage of it?
It's similar to strong-link/weak-link theories on societies.
Ultimately, the homelessness is not the root cause. The root cause is poverty, mental health, drug addiction, or all of the above. Those are the things that need to be addressed first.
* To make things worse in a reactionary panic when doing less would have been better.
> fund someone who doesn't need help, and who will take advantage of it
That's not actually my primary, or even top-20 concern. I only fear accidentally giving them things that ultimately hurt everyone.
Giving people clean drugs actually hooked more people and not arresting people for "victimless crimes" led to more "victimless" deaths.
> The root cause is poverty, mental health, drug addiction, or all of the above.
Okay, but how does taking people off the street hurt all or any of those goals?
I'm not saying junkies should be in maximum security but I think mandating that they go to rehab is better than giving them the choice to stay in the street.
> Giving people clean drugs actually hooked more people
[citation needed]
> and not arresting people for "victimless crimes" led to more "victimless" deaths.
But what is the proposal? Arresting people and incarcerating them for petty crimes? The US already has the most incarcerated population in the history of the world
> I think mandating that they go to rehab is better than giving them the choice to stay in the street.
Maybe. But if you don't address the reason why someone started doing drugs, when you get them off drugs, they still have all the incentives to start again (poverty, despair, etc)
I think for people with otherwise SOME social net, we do this. But you can't mandate a homeless person with mental health issue "go" to rehab, you can only lock them up. And in that environment, you need to be treating their mental health, after you treat their drug addiction.
This is what western european countries do. But they also address poverty.
> But what is the proposal? Arresting people and incarcerating them for petty crimes?
What's an honest counter-proposal? "Allowing" minor crimes, or requiring people to simply let thieves take some of their things?
So, of course, yes. Arrest people for any crime that hurts other people, because the other option is that those others suffer or they need to defend themselves. Both of which are unfair and unproductive.
> you can't mandate a homeless person with mental health issue "go" to rehab, you can only lock them up
We aren't talking homeless, they're already easily helped.
We're talking the incurably anti-social and dangerous. People who routinely hurt their neighbors or damage their spaces and things. And yeah, you totally can mandate rehab - you lock people up and require rehab to leave.
We already have to lock them up anyways so if they choose not to benefit from or are actually incapable of participating in rehab then yeah you just leave them perpetually locked up in the lightest containment possible. It's generally easier and better, for them and us, than some "free to die on the streets" nonsense anyways.
And rehab is only much of the issue - many people are simply "ill" and are never going to get fully well. They don't need punishment, and have no substances to kick, but they still need fair and firm containment.
Arresting people and incarcerating them for petty crimes?
The result of not arresting someone for breaking into a car is not someone getting their car broken into, but an entire population who believes they are not safe.
People hear "Someone was randomly stabbed", then they go on the streets, see someone homeless and on opiates passed out in the street, or get screamed at by someone on meth, feel unsafe, and correlate the two. Then they look around at the state of certain parts of the cities and scream the city is dying, and demand superficial solutions like impeaching the DA, or cleaning up a homeless encampment.
But the cities don't have a crime problem (more than other cities in North America). They have a VISIBLE POVERTY problem. They have a houselessness problem. And they have a drug addiction problem (which almost certainly is an outcome of poverty and houselessness.
The root cause for these is complex, from wealth imbalance, to insufficient social services, but the reason why THOSE CITIES specifically have them is that the west coast provinces and states are 1/ Progressive, 2/ Mild-climated in the Winter.
There is no other province or state that is both consistently progressive (and as a result offers SOME social services for homeless, mentally ill, or drug addicted people) AND you can survive a winter in the street. The east coast has the former, but not the latter. The southwest has the latter but not the former.
The combination of the above creates the effect you see.