The Bell Riots start on Sunday. Stay safe out there!
<Anyone coming from /c/all please note this is a joke post for an in universe Star Trek event. Remain Calm.>
In reality, getting them to accept services and help is the #1 obstacle to getting them services and help.
Most homeless shelters in San Francisco dont allow people to take their belongings in with them.
Attitudes towards the homeless are highly backwards - demanding sobriety as a condition for aid, when in reality drugs are used as a way to escape the pain of trauma and homelessness. SF residents voted and passed Proposition F, cementing the idea that feeling smugness over the homeless is more important than actually trying to help them escape poverty.
Most shelters do in fact allow people to bring their belongings with them (within reason). Some even provide storage space, and the city provides a free self-storage facility.
Prop F addresses CAAP (cash welfare), not housing. You don’t have to be receiving CAAP to qualify for housing assistance, and you don’t have to be homeless to qualify for CAAP.
SF has been struggling with a chronic homelessness problem for decades. Offering voluntary services does not work. To put in in Trek terms, the problem isn’t the gimmes, it’s the ghosts and dims. Gimmes are easy to help because they can act on their own behalf and in their own best interests. They accept services and don’t end up being chronically homeless. The ghosts and the dims, on the other hand, are a different story.
Is sweeping their encampments an ideal solution? No, far from it. But what else is there for us to do? Let them languish on the streets? Honestly, what would you have us do?
Housing First is the correct way to reduce homelessness. The main cause of homelessness is being priced out of the housing market, because the vast majority of housing in America is entirely privatized. Plus most public housing in America is not done nor funded well, until our European counterparts.
Drug addiction is a symptom of late-stage homelessness, not a cause. The cause is almost always the private housing market pricing people out of affording even rent. In the US, housing is first and foremost an investment, not a necessity.
Numerous studies show that housing first participants experience higher levels of housing retention and use fewer emergency and criminal justice services, which produces cost savings in emergency department use, inpatient hospitalizations, and criminal justice system use.
https://www.pdx.edu/homelessness/housing-first
This has worked famously in Finland
And that is because a large amount of time, those services and help come with conditions they can’t accept.
Take shelters for example. If you’re a homeless woman, you could stay in a shelter (until they kicked you out) but you probably have a dog to protect you since you’re a woman on the streets. The shelter would make you abandon the dog.
I actually work in the SF housing industry, and worked at a housing site in SF that was converted to permanent supportive housing during COVID. In that case, barely 30% of the people even showed up to their intake appointments.
What were the conditions in order to get an appointment? Who was offered appointments? Who was informed about them?
