Denver started not enforcing their camping ban law, and it turns out that doesn't help much either, it just made things worse by allowing long running shanty towns to embed themselves in the city and its close suburbs. Say what you will about most homeless people, but populations of this size end up with significant numbers of people who steal, harrass, and terrorize, not to mention the biohazard from the shit and trash. So a city has a vested interest in keeping large groups from forming.
The homeless problem can't be fixed by just treating the visible symptoms. It requires affordable housing, affordable healthcare, and a mental health system that can handle involuntarily confining and rehabiliting people who are too far gone from the years of neglect to the other parts of the system without abusing them and making things worse. Otherwise we're stuck with this, and I'm pretty sure America just plain can't solve those 3 things, we just can't make ourselves do it.
landsharkfin on June 30th, 2021 at 22:42 UTC »
Since I got out of the military I have been trying to figure out what freedom means for this reason.
Brisan7 on June 30th, 2021 at 23:50 UTC »
It's amazing how quickly you can go from having a decent paying job to homelessness because of how expensive this country makes it to be poor.
taco_powered_robot on July 1st, 2021 at 00:05 UTC »
Denver started not enforcing their camping ban law, and it turns out that doesn't help much either, it just made things worse by allowing long running shanty towns to embed themselves in the city and its close suburbs. Say what you will about most homeless people, but populations of this size end up with significant numbers of people who steal, harrass, and terrorize, not to mention the biohazard from the shit and trash. So a city has a vested interest in keeping large groups from forming.
The homeless problem can't be fixed by just treating the visible symptoms. It requires affordable housing, affordable healthcare, and a mental health system that can handle involuntarily confining and rehabiliting people who are too far gone from the years of neglect to the other parts of the system without abusing them and making things worse. Otherwise we're stuck with this, and I'm pretty sure America just plain can't solve those 3 things, we just can't make ourselves do it.