“There are no more excuses,” the California governor said in pushing for municipalities to address one of the most visible byproducts of homelessness.
  • uuldika@lemmy.ml
    1·
    15 minutes ago

    my unpopular opinion: homeless encampments in the US are a result of housing becoming unaffordable.

    I’m not saying most people ended up in tent cities because they couldn’t afford rent. usually people will sleep in their cars, find a spot in a shelter if one’s available, crash with relatives etc. at least here (Seattle) most of those who live in big tent cities are homeless because of mental illness: drug addiction and/or psychosis.

    but serious addiction isn’t new. where did addicts live in the '80s? crack houses! before real estate turned into gold, there was plenty of mold-infested, aabestos-ridden, lead-painted substandard housing left abandoned or rented cheaply by slumlords. junkies could sleep there.

    now, most of those buildings have been torn down and luxury condos rebuilt in their place, at least in the big cities.

    I’m not pro-crack den. the old buildings were health hazards. but junkies can’t afford the upscale housing that replaced them. they can barely afford tents.

  • Marn@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    174·
    18 hours ago

    Title is a bit missleading. He’s also setting out $3billion for homeless facilities. Better than nothing, he’ll probably criminalize homelessness even more than it already is at the same time.

    I doubt the $3 billion will do much to reverse the damage California has done with their prison machine, cost of living crisis, and under funded public services. Unless they address the underlying issues the problems are not going to go away.

    • Tire@lemmy.ml
      4·
      43 minutes ago

      Funding is easy to lose down the road but laws against the homeless will sure be there for decades to come.

  • Ebby@lemmy.ssba.com
    67·
    1 day ago

    Ok sure.

    While you’re at it, allow cities to commandeer vacancies over 3 months to house the unhoused.

    Or is the point to put the squeeze on folks without options or resources to move up economically without providing any solution.

    • Lukas Murch@thelemmy.clubEnglish
      7·
      22 hours ago

      I came here to say this sounds like something Trump or DeSantis would do. Disappointing it is Newsome. We need leaders with solutions, not bigger prisons. (I’m not sure what I would do, but I’m also not the Gov of California hoping to be in the Dem shortlist in 2028).

      • SinningStromgald@lemmy.world
        6·
        22 hours ago

        I’m trying wrap my head around the possibility of voting for Newsome just to keep whoever the Nazis nominate is really painful.

      • pineapple_pizza@lemmy.dexlit.xyz
        110·
        20 hours ago

        I mean, they’ve been trying other solutions and they obviously haven’t been working. Citizens don’t like living near these and this issue is rallying people to the right. I get that banning and sweeping sucks and is just moving people around, but if that ends up moving people from a highly visible area to a less visible area then it can go a long way for local businesses and tourism.

    • pineapple_pizza@lemmy.dexlit.xyz
      3·
      20 hours ago

      I don’t think the first part is true but unfortunately I agree on the second part. The west Coast in general has been struggling with this for a while and the compassionate approach hasn’t shown the promised results. Maybe it technically is, but visible homelessness is what gets people elected.

      • MehBlah@lemmy.worldEnglish
        51·
        19 hours ago

        The solution is so simple. Its two pronged. Get them a place to live. Help them with their problems. Its what happened in this country until a republican took apart the system that was designed to do that. It had its problems but the solution shouldn’t have been the abandonment of the national mental health system. This homeless problem is 100 percent tied directly to the utter failure of all politicians who ever supported cuts to the mental health system.

        The reason they do it is also simple. They are terrified that everyone will know how bad they are on the inside. Not realizing that most of us already know.

        • pineapple_pizza@lemmy.dexlit.xyz
          24·
          17 hours ago

          Honestly you lost me at the first sentence. It’s very obviously a complex problem and to suggest it’s simple is just demoralizing to the dedicated civil servants that work so hard to fix it.

          And homelessness has always been a problem, I feel like generally people fall into this rosy recollection to a time where it was far harder to document it

          • MehBlah@lemmy.worldEnglish
            12·
            9 hours ago

            Honestly you lost me at the first sentence.

            You seem to think that matters. It isn’t complex. Its simple. The solutions are simple. By trying to over think the solution you lose sight of the goal. You are commenting without really knowing the history of this subject. Homelessness is a epidemic now due in full to the destruction of the public mental health system. I know this and nothing anyone says will change that. I watched for years as every time my states budget came up they cut the funding.

            I watched as those I worked with had to make do with less. I watched people who were getting help to keep them stable lose coverage. The people who would have been institutionalized before the 80’s were let loose onto the streets. Frankly the complete lack of understanding is the problem we have with the current sad state of events. Coupled with the outright fear many of the worst minds in our society have for mental health in general its lead us to this path and denying that just guarantees the problem will not be solved. Those minds gravitate toward power. They hone their masks to cover their true nature and get fools to vote for them. They cast blame and over complicate a rather simple matter as far as solutions are concerned. They fear exposure more than anything and think what they are doing is the best thing for them. Not for those fools who vote for them. Just for them.

            Don’t perpetuate the lie that the homeless situation is complex. Its simple. The people who are victims of it are complex but helping them isn’t.

            • pineapple_pizza@lemmy.dexlit.xyz
              1·
              41 minutes ago

              Yeah TBH I actually agree with a lot of your points but I still feel like you’re over simplifying this. The pre 1980s mental health institution had a whole other set of problems as well.

    • jam12705@lemmy.world
      3·
      19 hours ago

      Efficiency and progress is ours once more Now that we have the neutron bomb It’s nice and quick and clean and gets things done Away with excess enemy With no less value to property No sense in war but perfect sense at home…

  • skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de
    82·
    20 hours ago

    Crazy how California is speed-running a transition from liberal to left to Authoritarian almost as fast as the Federal government is transitioning from conservative to right to Fascism.

    • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
      4·
      15 hours ago

      Newsom was always a slimy neolib. He was just the lesser evil. The same story plays out constantly all over the US thanks to our broken two-right-wing-parties system, in which both parties are owned and operated by self-serving billionaires.

  • Nougat@fedia.io
    101·
    23 hours ago

    If you want to get rid of homeless encampments, how about making sure people have a safe place to stay at night?