> The downside though is that these places will invariably turn into social crack houses, rather than the sunny smilely communal life ideals they are sold as.

Ok, get rid of them, now the streets are social crack houses? What are we to do now? Perhaps the woodchipper?

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gryfft 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

You certainly don't want yucky undesirables to have shelter when homeless, to be fed when hungry, to be clothed when naked? Just because they happen to be the same species as you? Just because their blood is the same color as yours? Just because that's the moral teaching of every dominant religious system? No, some people should be homeless, and suffer, and be made to bear humiliation. It is self evident that the suffering of the marginalized is a social good which the people must not be deprived of.

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wat10000 3 days ago | parent [-]

You see, the only reason people are homless or otherwise down on their luck is because we make it so darned comfortable for them. If we can just make it sufficiently unpleasant, then they'll stop doing it.

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weakfish 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Is this sarcasm? This reads as incredibly malicious if not

	▲	wat10000 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		It is coming from me. It is a sentiment I see a lot of people sincerely espousing, unfortunately. (It's not stated quite so blatantly, but not far off.)

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xnx 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Some people are just too lazy to be born in the right circumstances (geography, economy, parentage, skin color, physical ability, etc.) /s

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ReptileMan 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Definitely true in the places with harsh winters.

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AlexandrB 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think everyone in this thread should read https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/you-call-that-compassio...

Addiction requires some level of coercive intervention to address. No one wants to admit this point so we keep arguing about whether we want to leave addicts to die in the street or in a crowded crack den. Neither really solves the problem.

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Workaccount2 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Or just binge watch soft white underbelly on youtube[1].

Mark followed a bunch of homeless people in Skid Row as well as providing assistance to them and documenting it all through interviews.

The problem is so much (soooo much) deeper and worse than the surface level virtuous hand waving of "Just give them food and shelter and the problem is fixed".

[1]https://www.youtube.com/@SoftWhiteUnderbelly

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prisenco 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is it bleeding hearts preventing this or the unwillingness to properly fund it?

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stackskipton 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Little of Column A and Little of Column B.

I have family member suffering from extreme mental illness. He is likely on the streets somewhere, we don't know where because we had no choice but to abandon him to save ourselves. United States makes it extremely difficult to force treatment for someone who can't be making these decisions on their own ever. He ended up in this cycle. Mental Health Episode, Drugs, Law Enforcement interactions trying to get drugs (Robbing people), some minor help, slightly better, stops medications because side effects, repeat.

Funding it is always crazy expensive and in United States with crappy social safety net, it's really hard to find funding and politically, people don't want to fund it because "I'm barely affording rent and you want to raise my taxes to pay for them? Hell no."

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AlexandrB 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm guessing both. I think a lot of people get the ick about forcibly incarcerating people who are addicts or suffering from severe mental health issues[1]. I know I did when I was younger. We've moved to a more voluntary model of "mental health outreach" and the like. But this requires folks with compromised thought processes to regularly make a rational decision to seek help.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation

	▲	zozbot234 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		There's a huge difference between "suffering from severe mental issues" (which is very hard to establish an objective standard for) and engaging in outright anti-social, criminal behavior. The latter can most certainly result in incarceration or court-ordered treatment, and no one sensible will "get the ick" about that.
	▲	ashtakeaway 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There is also deindividuation which occurs in homelessness. You are rarely referred to by your own name and ignored or practically invisible by everyone else except by those providing services. I was homeless for 6 years so this was apparent in a lot of that society. In red states there was a third cohort: those disowned by families for having a differing view than them so they got kicked out. It takes a minimum of one year to recover from the effects of homelessness, mentally. That process only begins after they are rehoused.

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2THFairy 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> No one wants to admit this point so we keep arguing about whether we want to leave addicts to die in the street or in a crowded crack den. Neither really solves the problem.

That is correct, yet at the same time: Society as a whole refuses to give these people even the kindness of a roof over their head.

They need better care, yes. But if people won't even agree that these people shouldn't freeze to death in winter (or overheat in summer), talk of funding better care is off the table.

Christ, Fox News had one of their guys outright suggest they be euthanized. The bar for discourse on homelessness is in hell right now.

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Workaccount2 3 days ago | parent [-]

Housing (or at least shelter) is infact widely available. The problem is that you can't do drugs or drink in these places.

	▲	TimorousBestie 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		https://endhomelessness.org/state-of-homelessness/ > The homelessness response system added 60,143 shelter beds in 2024, but with over 600,000 people entering homelessness for the first time each year, this is deeply inadequate. > In 61 percent of states and territories, growth in demand outpaced growth in available beds, meaning that they had less capacity to shelter people in 2024 than in 2023.

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zuminator 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well there's your answer right there. Communal living is discouraged because our capitalist society uses the fear of homelessness to force people onto the work treadmill. Either join the rat race or it's the streets for you. And now living rough is being made illegal as well, so it's labor camps.

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Workaccount2 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

There are many communes you can join, especially on the west coast, and it is usually free to join and free to live there. However you definitely need to work all day (doing mostly manual labor) at those too.

I am not aware of any viable life option that doesn't involve the need to work a lot. Besides being born into a trust fund or being content with homelessness.

	▲	mothballed 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		There are probably some benevolent communes, although I'd certainly be wary of investing much in building up "free" commune land knowing that you're basically acting on faith the owner doesn't simply declare everything you've built is "the peoples" and then use his position as glorious leader to lord it over you. Based on how much people pay for even absolute shithole desert wasteland where I live, I can tell you there'd be a huge demand for homesteading federal BLM or other land if they'd reopen it. It would definitely help people who can't afford to get land on their own.

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AlexandrB 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> capitalist society uses the fear of homelessness to force people onto the work treadmill

If we were living in pre-agrarian society you would either be on the "work treadmill" building/maintaining shelter and finding food or you would starve or freeze to death. Capitalism has nothing to do with it. Do you think animals spend most of their time looking for food because they're also operating under the capitalist system?

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gryfft 3 days ago | parent [-]

> If we were living in pre-agrarian society you would either be on the "work treadmill" building/maintaining shelter and finding food or you would starve or freeze to death.

It is my understanding that anthropology has shown that the people of prehistoric times cared for their sick, elderly, and infirm.

> "From the very earliest times, we can see evidence that people who were unable to function were helped, looked after and given what care was available."

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/17/8788963...

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AlexandrB 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

These were almost certainly family members, not strangers. Obviously you would care after your child/father/grandmother if they were infirm regardless of economic system. And even that is far from universal. Indigenous Amazon societies still practice infanticide[1] in times of scarcity or for infants that are infirm.

[1] https://www.scielo.br/j/csp/a/kPn9cHW4RWKz94CjxDBw3ds/?forma...

	▲	3 days ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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potato3732842 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>what care was available

This phrase is doing so much heavy lifting as to actively mislead people (i.e. lie with plausible deniability).

Take a subsistence farming community for example. If there aren't enough calories in the stockpile to feed everyone over the winter deficit they're gonna realize this in the fall and the less productive people will get their food rationed first and hardest and odds are some of the old (so like 50s) or otherwise infirm people who are in this huge calorie deficit are gonna keel over from a minor cold or something during the winter. The calorie math is what is and no amount of "well they cared for the elderly when times were good" misdirection is going to change the raw math of how frequently times were bad and the number of elderly, infirm, etc, that a society routinely subject to those sorts of "purge lite" events is going to be carrying at any one time.

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reactordev 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The Purge