Re: Trump's latest lunacy

On 26/03/2025 4:20 am, Don Y wrote:

On 3/25/2025 9:12 AM, bitrex wrote:

On 3/25/2025 11:24 AM, Don Y wrote:

On 3/25/2025 7:48 AM, bitrex wrote:

So just build houses for the homeless and then they won't be homeless anymore,

>
No.  There will *still* be homeless people, regardless of the level of
support that you provide.

>
Sure, there are no perfect solutions. So what.

 *Expecting* it to be solvable by "mere handwaving" is naive.
Like the example I gave of the organization, here, that hands
*checks* to homeless youth.

Except that they probably didn't do only that. You saw that as the only thing that they did, and that put you off looking harder.

All THAT does is enable them to engage in the same behaviors
that have kept them from "settling down" and overcoming their
current issues.

If that was all they did.

E.g., allowing them to claim the need for "emergency relief"
(a special "exception" that is put in place to handle those
"emergency situations") to buy food -- when they have spent
their regular stipend check on something *frivolous* doesn't
teach them to avoid the wasteful spending; you've bailed them
out, again!

Few aid agencies are that naive. You want an excuse not to give them money, so you ignore a few crucila details.

Unless you resort to "institutionalizing" people "for their own good".

>
Many of he homeless we're discussing are drug-addicted, and lots of Americans seem to want that for the seriously drug addicted. They seem to believe that drug addicts who aren't "trying to get better" need to be forced to.

 Many also suffer from mental illnesses.  Neither "problem" has quick,
easy cures.  Throwing staff and money at it isn't likely going to
achieve any positive results -- except for the exceptional cases
that manage to pull their shit together AND leave the lifestyle
that had *put* them in that situation.

Throwing staff an money at it probably will produce some positive results - more of them than not doing anything.

Going back to "the same old crowd" (of friends) is likely going to put
them back where they started (on their failed trajectory).

Everybody knows that, but trying to isolate people from their acquaintances does generate a lot of resistance. Humans are social animals, and weaning people away from their regular acquaintances is painful. I've moved between countries several times during my life - Australia to the UK to the Netherlands and back to Australia - and it isn't easy.

They seem to be under the misapprehension that recovery from serious drug addiction is a matter of like, finding the right therapist vs. fighting one of the most complex and poorly understood conditions in modern medicine, with relapse rates worse than the worst cancers even with the best care money can buy.

 No, but folks who don't *commit* to recovery sure as shit aren't going
to STUMBLE into sobriety!

There are degrees of commitment, and the kind of mentors who want fanatical commitment to their ideology are best avoided.

Give every "drunk" Antabuse and you can eliminate alcoholism, right?

They've got to keep on taking it.

(I.e., if the "drunk" isn't committed to getting sober, Antabuse
is just going to piss him off).

There are lots of additional ways it can piss them off. It doesn't seem to be all that helpful in practice.

Unfortunately the outcome of many severe disease processes without reliable cures is death. But the ones who are destined to recover have a better shot at it with stable housing.

 Healthy foods, access to good medical care, good support/social networks,
etc.
 Housing, by itself, doesn't do much.

But it tends to be a necessary condition for all the other support.

But yes, institutionalization and forced treatment with non-evidence based medicine is doomed to fail and the amount of money that can be wasted there for little result (and taxpayer outrage at it) far exceeds the little result that could be obtained by cheaper means.

 Problems only get solved when you are *committed* to solving them.

But there are degrees of commitment, and too much commitment can be unhelpful - more so if some authority figure is insisting on it.

If (like the homeless youth issue, above) all you are doing is
paying lip service to the problem, you are effectively just
rationalizing the NEED for your paycheck.

That's your perception of what was going on, which gave you a great excuse for not giving them money.

I give my time to organizations that, I see, produce results.  As
*I* am involved, I can bear witness to those results -- instead of
being duped/misled by glossy annual reports.

But you aren't all that skilled in assessing the results.

[This subject -- charities -- often comes up at dinner parties;
friends/friends-of-friends wondering where to put their donations.
The first thing I tell them is to volunteer *at* the organization
so they can *see* how their monies will be spent.  "Gee, they just
bought another building!  How many buildings does it take to
HAND OUT STIPEND CHECKS???"]

One dinner party I attended as graduate student had a rather conservative graduate student sounding off like that. My female companion - who is now a professor of sociology - had been stuck with doing preliminary interviews for the Melbourne Poverty Survey - and she briefly pointed that he had got a lot of his facts wrong. He looked like an idiot, but it didn't change his beliefs.

Housing needs to be *affordable* and sited in locations that folks
will be comfortable living (and MAKING a living).  No one wants to
"invest" in places where the only folks who will want to habitate
can't afford to provide sufficient profit for the investor -- esp
if there are other places where they can make a bigger, quicker buck!

>
There's a trickle-down theory of housing that if you just build new market-rate the prices on older stock will come down, there's a certain logic to it but proponents sometimes use Tokyo Japan as an example of a city that did it "right."

 Prices only come down when there is a "surplus" (for some definition of
"surplus") of units.  We have seen a significant up-tick in home prices
as the influx of Californians (who are used to paying ridiculously
high prices for tiny plots of land) puts a bias in what buyers are
willing to pay for a given property.
 [A friend put $200K into a small home he purchased for $500K.  And,
thought nothing of it!  Really?  What was "missing" that needed a
$200K upgrade?  You've gained no extra floor space.  You have the
same types of appliances (if you consider them part of the property).
The yard is the same.  So...?]

And you will probably never find out. My wife and I spent money on all three of the houses we bought as we moved from Brighton UK to Cambridge UK to Nijmegen in the Netherlands. We had different needs from the people who have previously owned the houses, and enough money to reorganise the houses in ways that suited us.

 

Japan is a terrible example of doing something "right" they had the better part of two decades of economic stagnation and a whole lost generation to help keep their housing costs low, it wasn't just urban policy.

 Japanese homes (according to a neighbor who lived there for many
years and married a Japanese woman) are considerably different
from US homes.

Mostly, they are lot smaller.
<snip>
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney