>Yes, for most homeless the issue is housing affordability, but for the homeless that people complain about, the mentally ill and violent drug addicts, housing affordability is not the problem.
I don't know about you and can't speak for anyone else, but I complain the loudest about people who are homeless (especially families with young children) because of housing affordability.
Those with mental health and/or substance abuse issues are (at least in my mind) a separate issue -- one that is related to public health and not housing. And we fail those folks even worse than those who just can't afford housing.
>If the "annoying" homeless were all forcibly institutionalized no one would care about the "quite" homeless which is why discussion ignores them.
Are you really making that argument? If so, why stop with incarceration? We used to sterilize[0] those folks too. They're not really human anyway, since if they were, they wouldn't be homeless or mentally ill right? Because homelessness, addiction and mental illness are moral failings that only reflect on the individual and not on the society in which they live. In fact, why don't we just euthanize them. And why stop with the homeless? Those useless unemployed folks need to go too. And don't forget about the old and infirm. They don't add anything productive, so why should we suffer them to live at all?
Yes, I realize that you're not advocating for euthanizing Grandma, but what you are advocating isn't so far (as history has shown) from that. Or, as the old saw goes, "Don't wish for what you want. You might just get it."
You don't need to make the argument to me. I'm just pointing out why political discourse seems to ignore those "quiet" homeless as you have discovered. It's because there's minimal political will to help them.
Maybe I shouldn't have said nobody, but certainly the media and politicians wouldn't be talking about them.
>You don't need to make the argument to me. I'm just pointing out why political discourse seems to ignore those "quiet" homeless as you have discovered. It's because there's minimal political will to help them.
I don't know about you and can't speak for anyone else, but I complain the loudest about people who are homeless (especially families with young children) because of housing affordability.
Those with mental health and/or substance abuse issues are (at least in my mind) a separate issue -- one that is related to public health and not housing. And we fail those folks even worse than those who just can't afford housing.
>If the "annoying" homeless were all forcibly institutionalized no one would care about the "quite" homeless which is why discussion ignores them.
Are you really making that argument? If so, why stop with incarceration? We used to sterilize[0] those folks too. They're not really human anyway, since if they were, they wouldn't be homeless or mentally ill right? Because homelessness, addiction and mental illness are moral failings that only reflect on the individual and not on the society in which they live. In fact, why don't we just euthanize them. And why stop with the homeless? Those useless unemployed folks need to go too. And don't forget about the old and infirm. They don't add anything productive, so why should we suffer them to live at all?
Yes, I realize that you're not advocating for euthanizing Grandma, but what you are advocating isn't so far (as history has shown) from that. Or, as the old saw goes, "Don't wish for what you want. You might just get it."
[0] https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2020/11/04/americas-forgotten-histo...