How Finland Slashed Homelessness by 40%

YellowSnow said:

SFGbob said:

Btw, has anyone been to LA lately and driven around town? Talk about a fucking bum explosion. I've not been to Seattle in years but LA is being over run.

I get a rat in my garage about 1 to 2 times a year. The old Victor traps work great. But I fear I am going to get typhus or plague once the LA rats make their way up to Seattle.

I fucking hate medieval diseases and measles too (hi @MikeDamone )

SFGbob said:

YellowSnow said:

creepycoug said:

SFGbob said:

Here's how you cut homelessness. Enforce vagrancy laws. Don't allow people to camp on the side walks and public parks. If you're mentally ill you should institutionalized. Enforce all laws prohibiting people for doing drugs in public. Get rid of all needle exchange programs. Get rid of all homeless feeding and give-away programs. Enforce all public urination and defecation prohibitions. Start arresting and prosecuting people again for property crimes.

Shit, we're going to at least semi-agree on this too.

As much as it pains me to say it though, Hondo may be partially right in that the places these people need to go - institutions and jail - require funding. Prisons fill up fast. I'm old enough to remember the Reagan/Bush war on drugs where we were putting dudes away for extended periods of time for selling pot to other stoners within some distance of a school, judicial sentencing discretion revoked for certain offenses, and we wound up having to let out pretty violent people early to make room for the drug guys doing mandatory long sentences.

But all that being as it may, making it comfortable and easy to be homeless isn't the answer. It seems to be the humane thing to do ... but in the final analysis it's not.

The other hurdle you have with institutions is the civil rights crowd and the issue of institutionalizing people against their will.

The cleanups are a waste of time. They had a big raid in Pioneer Square a month or so back, and a lot of the crazies aren't sleeping here anymore - although they come around because of the two Union Gospel Missions withing 5 blocks of one another - but all they did was relocate and make some other place in Seattle a shit hole.

There are about 100 tents along along I-5 between NE 45th and Northgate. They weren't there 12 months ago. I explain to my kids when they ask is that the reason they are there is because they do bad drugs and won't get jobs. You don't want to be like that when you grow up.

We've always had bums and we've always had junkies and drunks. What's changed that we now have so many of these people living on the streets?

MikeDamone said:

Why do you shit dicks not know we already have free and low cost housing for the poor.




Also, the major reason for homelessness isn’t low wages or the cost of housing. Fuck off.