We’reTexas

Look up the proposed state of Jefferson. That area of the country is...something. I was driving through Klamath and saw a Trump 2024 sign...in October. I couldn’t decide if he was really optimistic or pessimistic.

I don’t know why I’m bothering, but: pretrial detention can result in job loss, child custody loss, eviction, excess leverage for plea bargaining, etc - not to mention that the detained are not necessarily guilty. Cash bail is a poverty penalty and disproportionately affects minorities. It affects poor white people too, and that is a concern, but it is the unintentional construct that has a disparate and perpetuating impact on minorities that we refer to as systemic racism.

Let’s not even get into releasing mugshot photos.

Cash bail jesus is DT Texags now?

So is not letting black people vote

What if I were to tell you that providing homeless people with high quality, unconditional shelter actually makes them amenable to seeking treatment, all the while decreasing a city’s cost per homeless (especially chronic homeless) and with the vast majority moving through the system paying for their own housing to some extent? Because that’s exactly what Houston did, decreasing unsheltered homelessness by over 50% and chronic homelessness by over 70% since 2011. Housing First and similar initiatives, the current favored school of thought for attacking homelessness, do not provide a universal solution. It has not proved to be in feasible in California. Maybe it would not be in Austin. But at the very least, an evidence-based approach to reducing homelessness is what we should aspire to. “Homelessness should be hard” or “Why bother helping those who don’t want help” are useless statements from a policy standpoint and frankly belie an understanding of the basics of homelessness: the vast majority (75-85%) get out within a year, because being homeless is awful. The rest, chronic homeless, are generally beset with mental illness or addiction. And homelessness is caused by housing prices. That small group is our focus. If the tent camps get them out of sight and out of mind while costing the city less money in the long run, why do you care? The issue, of course, is whether the plan will work - that’s the conversation. I don’t know. I think it’s a national issue. But the moralism is largely pointless and muddies this debate.

It (“it” being a fully-committed Housing First initiative) worked in Houston. It worked in Utah as well, until they stopped funding it. But that’s just for homelessness, and as BC notes the housing crisis hits the whole spectrum of housing. Most cities are unable to viably address housing on their own, and there is rarely any regional or state cooperation.

Definitely. It’s been a troll word for at least twenty years (remember the RNC’s “RATs” ad?).

He constantly cites his childhood growing up seeing his parents in prison as his inspiration for a career addressing the disparate impact of the justice system on minorities. This is fine, except, as you’re probably aware, that his parents were involved in the murders of three security guards and police officers during the Brinks robbery and he had the privilege of having a stable childhood and an elite education. He has never been able to comprehend the magnitude of his parents’ involvement in those murders and seems to believe they were almost innocent bystanders (that piece was the harshest I’ve ever seen him be on them). He seems unaware the story he sells elicits no sympathy and actively hurts his image, but self-awareness is not the strong suit for a guy who worked for Hugo Chavez’s government and wrote a cringe-inducing book romanticizing it. More to the point, San Francisco is not really a city in drastic need of progressive criminal justice reform. I support many policies and ideas that are considered to fall within that sphere, but I think cities like New Orleans and Baltimore, with significant drug violence and histories of police corruption, are places that need serious institutional restructuring. San Franciscans don’t really care about white collar crime and police brutality because these aren’t problems. Car break-ins, petty theft and violence among the homeless are huge problems, but as you note, these aren’t of much interest to Chesa. It’s important to note that he came to office in a low-turnout special election, so he doesn’t have much of an electoral mandate.

I’d say it’s very high and reached a fever pitch after the hit and runs, which triggered the recall petitions. It’s not necessary his policy stances, it’s just that he’s a very poor vessel for his message and folks really would appreciate a focus on QOL crimes.

Hit up Gris Gris recently - was great. Should definitely fit Brigsten’s in (or Gabriel).

25% of Austin’s homeless are chronic, meaning they’ve been homeless for over a year (which is much higher than the national average of 15%). So the vast majority get out within a year, using shelters less than six months. The chronic are of course the most visible, but I don’t really know what “choice” means. Homeless will decline services at points in time for a variety of reasons. But in the Housing First initiatives that have had successful federal/state collaboration (Utah, Houston, the national VA program) chronic homelessness has almost been eliminated. So yeah, there’s definitely evidence that chronic homelessness is not intractable, but I don’t know if Austin has shown so far it has the initiative Houston did.

I have actually tried to keep up with it over the last two years, but I don’t live in Austin anymore and I certainly could be off course. But I’ve told him I agree with everything I’ve read him post, except for a specific characterization of homeless demographics. And I suspect I would strongly agree with you as well, because barb aside Austin is certainly perpetuating the disastrous policies of California.

You, and many others on this thread, need to read about homelessness. Like, from square one. You are arguing about conceptions of homelessness without trying to understand it as a policy issue. A very comprehensive yet digestible source for this is the San Francisco Chronicle’s SF Homeless Project. To wit, someone posted the below today on Nextdoor, in a very nice neighborhood: I can’t stand that this is allowed to happen in this city. This guy is, in all likelihood, a pretty shitty person. But I don’t really care, because I’m more concerned about how to stop this. Simply writing this off as some bum who needs to lift himself up by his own bootstraps does not help that discussion.

No. This is not accurate. Categorization of the homeless experience is complex, but this is a simplistic view with a moralistic bent that is largely irrelevant to the problem. I strongly agree with you’ve expressed in this thread, but viewing homelessness like this precludes any sophisticated policy discussion.

Yeah idk what that guy is talking about. Bay Area burbs and Oakland/Berkeley have been on fire during COVID. SF actually has come down a bit in some aspects.

Because you didn’t read my post. They are outliers and if you focus on them you are missing the forest for the trees. Nonetheless, as I alluded I support measures like camping bans and even quality of life prosecutions to disincentive to antisocial behavior and deter opportunistic drug users, train jumpers and drifters like those Missouri women. But they are what - maybe 10-30% of a homeless population in any locale? That’s certainly something to reduce. Every homelessness feature in the San Francisco Chronicle has a moment where the reporter asks some guy why he isn’t shooting up on a sidewalk in Oakland or San Jose, and the guy just laughs and says because he’d be locked up for doing this shit anywhere else. I don’t think those people deserve my tax dollars either and I want them kicked back to Ohio or New Mexico or wherever. But you are giving them a disproportionate amount of weight in the context of homelessness.

I don’t think you understood my point. If I lived in Austin, I would have voted for Prop B. But I live in San Francisco, and trust me, I am familiar with the research over homelessness. Affordable housing s the problem. I meant that the current municipal approach is a waste of money because it does nothing to address the underlying causes of homelessness. In 2018, SF approved a tax on gross receipts to bring in another $300 million per year for homeless services. I opposed it. The root cause of homelessness is that, as another poster noted, the median house price in SF is $1.5 million. It costs $700k to build a new unit. Median price for the nine Bay Area counties is around $800-900k. And yet, by my count, the confederacy of dunces that is the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has built less than 1,000 affordable housing units in the past twenty years. Housing needs to be affordable to address homelessness. Homeless are of course attracted to cities because cities offer the services they need, which is precisely my point - cities like SF and Austin are futilely trying to provide what California, Texas and the federal government should be providing. The bulk of homeless in a given city are from that region - it’s inaccurate to think of them all as grifters from Missouri. Nationally, about 80% of homeless in a city had a residence there prior to being homeless. But there needs to be regional collaboration on housing. It makes no sense to build housing in SF when it’s much cheaper in Sacramento, or in Austin when it’s cheaper in La Grange. This is a very complex issue. I am disgusted as anyone when I wake up to someone smoking meth on my doorstep or see some guy scream and upend a family’s table outside at a Michelin star restaurant (all within the past month), but I try to think about to address this dispassionately.

What you are describing is, basically, the Tenderloin in San Francisco. The city oscillated between compassion and toughness for decades before Gavin Newsom (then mayor) announced an ambitious plan very similar to yours (and Adler’s - to provide 3,000 housing units in 5 years). And it worked. Some 12,000 people had moved from the streets into supportive housing by the end of his administration. Yet the number of unsheltered homeless never wavered, and is likely higher than ever today. In other words, there is a larger systemic issue causing homeless that can’t be patched up by social services at a municipal level. The primary cause of homelessness is the lack of affordable housing. There is a strong correlation between the increase of housing prices and homelessness. Mental health services (or lack thereof) are of course a huge issue too. There will be no effective long-term solution until there is state and federal involvement.

TBF, “woketopian” is my new favorite lib-owning buzzword of the week.

Some of my favorite fried chicken in town. I’m so happy this Treme institution reopened (but don’t let appearances fool you - there’s the former head chef of Upperline in the kitchen).

San Francisco’s problem is that it is a municipality taking on a regional - even national - problem. Certainly, San Franciscans deal with homelessness, but in general the city is taking in homeless from other parts of the state and country. Many trace this back to California’s significant mental health budget cuts in the 80’s. Likewise, I imagine the majority of homeless in Austin are simply there because they were drawn to an easy place to be homeless. It has never made sense to me why homeless drawn to SF or Austin need to be provided housing in SF or Austin. These are extraordinarily expensive cities where even high-income households struggle to afford housing. We need to reframe homelessness as a state and federal issue as well, and not solely a city one.

Confirmed. The budget option is to shoot a chicken with an AK-47.

The vaccine rollout here was a total disaster, though we have made huge strides since then. Note that the winter surge was in Southern California. In Northern California (ie, the Bay Area), rates have always been among the lowest in the nation, and I think it’s fair to attribute that to strict masking/social distancing protocols and universal compliance.