Peterkin

How about logical and moral factors? I was 12 and didn't care a jot about science when I read that bit in the NT where Jesus ends a bunch of demons into an innocent herd of pigs, which stampede over a cliff as a result. As a moral child, brought up in the christian tradition, I considered that action profoundly wrong. I don't think I was the only one put off by christians contradicting themselves and breaking their own rules, or disbelieving in a perfect being who contradicts himself and breaks his own rules. The religious narrative needs a much stricter editor!

Okay, I concede that. One charitable option has been put forward. Others, including religious ones, are already operating emergency and temporary shelters. Perhaps you can recommend a comprehensive plan to co-ordinate the efforts of all these agencies, public and private, for a permanent solution.

Probably won't. Information is hard to sort out. There are plenty of arrests on drug charges, vagrancy, trespassing; lots of stats on alcohol-related violence, but it's hard to find any linking violent crime to homelessness and/or addiction. There is a record in Portland, London and Vancouver of increased crime in areas where homeless people camp, but it's unclear whether the homeless are the perpetrators, or the rising crime is concentrated in the same neighbourhoods where homeless people are able to camp. There is evidence that they're more often victims. There ought to be an exhaustive study somewhere, but i haven't found it. Even if Habitat for Humanity did consist of you and me, I don't think they have the capability to house Portland's, or Toronto's, or Manchester's homeless population. They may be able to help with a scheme that was worked out with the community in which they operate.

What? I was neither cherry-picking nor contradicting; I was responding. This isn't a brand new argument: we've all heard before all the reasons homeless people, poor people, people with all kinds of chronic societal problems, have nobody to blame but themselves. No; I have no personal interest in the UK. I picked out some articles about various cities in different places were trying to do about a problem that appears to be world-wide, and that I don't see how can possibly be independent of the increasing concentration of wealth and escalating cost of living - particularly of housing, since the surge in international real estate speculation that started in the 1990's. I have never in way said you or anyone else said anything of the kind. I've just been tossing out random information that seems to be relevant to the topic - none of it aimed at you.

I've mentioned a few familiar ones. Finland's mentioned, too. Here are some more: https://caufsociety.com/cities-solving-homelessness/

Yes, that's a phenomenon - not the biggest problem, but one that's easy to cite by people who want to prove it's 'their choice; their fault'. Here's an article on the subject: This is mainly about emergency shelters, not long-term housing solutions. The long-terms ones obviously need to have a number of different options for different needs. I should think one of the most urgent - families or single parents with children - would also be the easiest. Mental health issues are more complicated.

I guess, but I'm willing to hope a kinder, if less articulate police officer in my neighbourhood.

Nothing. One incident in which each character, speech, act and circumstance might be judged on insufficient evidence, and I won't judge them, because they shed no light whatever on all the other incidents taking place in all the places with all the other participants.

Not exactly. You don't build them; I don't build them; we don't build them - either a developer or a city government does. Either choice has its problems. The developer prefers to put up low-density luxury housing for maximum profit. Where will he do it? On expensive downtown real estate he has to buy from another profit-seeker, or on the greenbelt that had hitherto served all the citizens? Well, he can't do the latter without the collusion of some level of government. Will/has it cost him substantial campaign contributions? that will be added to the price of the homes. Very likely, no vagrants allowed in there. If the city does it, it has to build on lands already owned by the city and designated for some other purpose, or else buy land at market value. It has to plan high-density, low cost housing and contract out the actual construction, using public funds, and make plans, and if necessary pass bylaws, to keep down the cost of owning or renting those units. City councils are not all just sitting on their night-sticks, ignoring the problem of homelessness; they're trying to solve it, in various ways, according to their budgets, their political clout, their level of corruption and the extent of their constituents' concern. https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/community-partners/affordable-housing-partners/housingto-2020-2030-action-plan/ https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2013/nov/26/london-council-house-sale-southwark-colley https://www.citybureau.org/newswire/2023/2/3/how-chicagos-2023-mayoral-candidates-plan-to-address-the-affordable-housing-crisis No, it was seriously misrepresented in the OP, and several people have made attempts to clarify the issues of homelessness and substance dependency and crime - which do not necessarily come as a nasty, disposable package. A great variety of people are involved - real, live, human citizens - for a great variety of reasons. There cannot and should not be a single, simple, final solution. Governments and voters have to acknowledge, identify and address the causes of this problem before they can begin to solve any part of it.

And the few people who have a lot more work no hours at all, just own the housing other people can't afford. Oh, yes, here I agree. And so should letting people off paying their share be treated seriously. It's very expensive and complicated to do properly and fairly; much cheaper and easier to do it brutally and unjustly. Whom would you put in charge? I think so, too. But then, of course, if working people can't afford the next rent hike and become homeless, it's harder and harder to keep their job, and having been arrested for vagrancy and held in custody, they lose the job, run out of money, have no transportation to get to their hearing on time, get re-arrested on outstanding warrants and lose in a police sweep even the little property they were able to rescue from the eviction, so now they haven't got a change of clothes to go to a job interview, or anyplace to shower and shave. He's easy prey for the dealer who hands out free samples of oblivion or relief, gets addicted, and now last month's working person is a menace to society, worth no tax dollars to save, but lots and lots of tax dollars to punish. FTR I didn't say anything about Nazis. There are many concentration camps under various government regimes. However, I don't see voluntary enrollment in the OP proposal to which I responded. Which was this: Not unlike operations on strikers, political dissidents, protesting natives, university students and Japanese-American communities by previous US administrations. Not a nazi in sight - just police boots and guns!

it's unfortunate that the more palatable alternatives pretty much require that money be collected from those who have possession of it. People do not like to relinquish possession of money.

re's also this, for background: https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/homeless/new-study-housing-market-root-cause-homelessness/283-819457a7-9606-42c6-9cb3-62bd25661d2b https://bc.ctvnews.ca/vancouver-beach-becomes-makeshift-campground-amid-affordability-and-housing-crisis-1.6097983 https://wacities.org/data-resources/state-of-the-cities/affordable-housing-homelessness IOW - people can't afford to live in houses.

Portland seems to be another city in contradiction. It seems from this article that the homeless are more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of violence. There is also this self-fulfilling aspect. If you criminalize what people are, or have done, they become criminals, and thus targets for police to "sweep" - basically, terrorize, simply for being in somebody's way - the encampments or arrest, more or less at random So, yes, the editorial comments are exaggerated; the causes and consequences are difficult to disentangle, and there is at least one other side to every scare story.

I don't. But that was the proposal in the OP. Which part of those cost analyses is incorrect, and what particulars? Alex_Krycek was not talking about one extra prisoner in the existing prison system; he was talking about incarcerating all the thousands of homeless drug addicts in specially constructed concentration camps.

It's a lot more expensive to criminalize people than to help them. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/economics_of_incarceration/

It is a problem, though. Mostly of sanitation, but also of law-enforcement, property value, aesthetics, health and safety concerns. Also, homeless people freeze to death at a higher rate than the general population. Even in sunny California, it's a problem. A big one. Even more so, during a pandemic. And of course, there is a perception problem, as the prosperous citizens become increasingly antsy about all the crime they anticipate from homeless people. https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness/ And it's a growing problem, as housing grows ever less affordable.

Which ones are at half capacity? And how can the homeless of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal get to them?

Which ones? I know, I know, they've made bad choices....

If enough safe shelters exist, people will take advantage of those shelters. Just build those, make help available in physical and mental health, rehabilitation, education and employment. Save a ton of money on police overtime, court costs and barbed wire.

And you have found the public funds to hold individual trials for the newly-instituted crime of addiction? What's the wait-time for a court appearance? Have you lined up the advocates for both prosecution and defence?

Evidently, a less dystopian one than yours.

So... the solution to homeless drug addiction is concentration camps. Buildings, furnishings, water, sewer and power would have to be laid on. Food supplied. Staff hired.* Security measures built in: barbed wire, alarms, guards, tracking dogs - or maybe the inmates could be microchipped, right after the delousing. Obviously, after the entire law-enforcement budget has been used up to acquire the land and build the facilities, there wouldn't be any resources for individual or even mass trials. A classification of citizens would be criminalized without distinctions or hearings. And then rounded up. Only, of course, the police who did the rounding up would have to tell which of the homeless people are drug addicts and which are just unsteady on their feet from hunger, and decide whether the heroin, meth and crack addicts belong in the same camp with the winos. If a few sociology students who were just distributing blankets happen to be caught up in a raid, oh well, they probably had a joint or two in their pockets. Of course, all the alcoholics, coke users, opioid addicts and ritalin abusers who are currently housed would be immune from incarceration by the signal virtue of not yet being destitute, and could continue to support the legal and marginally respectable drug industries. But, of course, the illicit drug manufacturing, importing and distribution sector would be very hard hit financially, and forced to turn to other kinds of crime. And all the people who are homeless for reasons other than addiction would still be on the street, assuming the police could tell them apart from the addicts. * Or, we could just provide the housing, without the maximum security. Long as we're in the country, how about a few plots of land to grow vegetables? And a daycare center for the children? Or, we could just treat people better in the first place, so they don't turn to drugs for escape.

I didn't know that. Most people just do business where they live and earn - even if they're buying from companies that have their headquarters in another country, these companies are usually international, with financial interest in both the one where the buyer lives and the one where the buyer gets paid. Money is cosmopolitan. Considerable - even decisive - sums can be transferred from one nation to another. Also business operations, employment, investment, development, tax-exemption, licensing, waste removal and land-ceding can make a large impact. If an airline or manufacturer moved from one country to another, that might matter to both countries. It would take an awful lot of individuals' well-informed and directed cross-border shopping to counteract that effect. But that's not what I was referring to. I took this: to mean emigration, rather than overseas banking or habitual border-crossing.

For sure! It takes lots of little actions to balance a big one. But we who are capable of only small actions and cause only small consequences, need not waste energy blaming ourselves for major ones going wrong; it's more useful to pick up whatever pieces you can carry and keep truckin'.

Yes, it's as much significance as you can have without committing major acts of sedition or heroism. But it only works once. After you've become part of a new community or nation, you are expected to contribute to its welfare, help shape its future. You no longer matter to the old one, but you still can matter.