In cities across the US — in fact across the world, but particularly in the US — homelessness is a growing problem. In fact, there has been a growing bleeding heart argument that we should just let people camp and defecate on the street, or it’s “cruel and unusual punishment.”
The cities are dealing with this the way they deal with this, and the do gooders ditto. The way the cities deal with it, is by building at great cost, houses to put these people into. The do-gooders collect money, build shelters, and generally try to make it easier on people who are in these circumstances, in the hopes they’ll pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
They seem to think the people camping on the streets, randomly attacking passerbyes, defecating and masturbating in public are doing this because housing is too expensive. Or that there isn’t enough housing. The latest renaming of “homeless” to unhoused puts the emphasis on that, making it sound like these people are really, really, really just on the streets because mysteriously there aren’t enough houses to go around.
Now, I’m not going to argue with any of you that housing and rent isn’t to expensive. That has way too many reasons, among them the stupid covidiocy and the fact landlords have to recover all the money they lost during the “no one needs to pay their rent” so they can do repairs and such, you know? But also well, the open borders bringing illegals in and then having the government house them at the People’s expense and top dollar, and foreign investors buying American real estate under the illusion it’s a safe investment. Honestly, to list all the reasons houses are too expensive and people– particularly young people –are having serious issues paying for housing I’d need a bigger blog. However, I’ll note in passing we could get rid of the shortage and have a glut if we got rid of all the wanker regulations on what houses have to have and do to allow people to live in them. No, I don’t mean “must have a roof” and “must be minimally functional.” I mean stuff like “The pipe used must be blah blah” and such. If you just make it easier to retrofit commercial real estate into living space you get rid of the office space glut and you create enough housing to make the housing market more rational.
But here’s the thing: the people who can’t afford houses or even apartments aren’t the people who are “homeless” or “unhoused” in the sense of camping on city streets and making a public health hazard out of themselves, while making it impossible for people to live normal lives around there. No, the people who can’t afford houses or even apartments, a number that’s growing as inflation makes it hard to afford that and food, both, are either getting another couple of roommates — it’s not unusual for married couples in their twenties to share with other married couples, or three or four single people — or living “van life” or couch surfing with friends till the crunch passes, or move back in with mom and dad, or, oh, a million other arrangements that still count as “homeless” because they aren’t renting or buying a house. Those people might not or might be helped with some money, but honestly? Most of them you couldn’t get them to take it. Like all Americans they’re not poor, they’re temporarily embarrassed millionaires. The best help you can give them is cut through the forest regulations and government money making housing stupidly unaffordable.
The “Homeless” making our big cities unlivable and growing in numbers are a different breed, and throwing money at it isn’t going to solve anything. In fact it’s going to make everything worse.
Look, even I didn’t fully realize this. Except, you know, I lived in a downtown area for most of my married life. To be exact in downtown Colorado Springs. And we routinely walked downtown (all of us) mostly because parking was really impossible. It took less time to walk the mile and a half downtown than to drive and then try to park. And we often walked through or around Acacia Park which at the time was full of homeless people.
It was impossible to do that and not listen in on their conversations — look, I’m a writer. I listen to conversations. That’s what I do. — and to start getting a feeling for why these people were there.
Sure, most of them were addicted to something. Sure. Whatever. A surprising number sounded functional enough. However…
They talked — particularly the young ones — about leaving home because of “all the rules”. And they made fun of the rest of the population, those who worked for a living. They talked of places to eat for free, places to sleep for free and “with no judgement”, places where they could get medical care and dental care. (Outside emergency room where they get medical care for free anyway.) All of this — absolutely all of this — for free and not demanding anything of them.
They thought we, the rest of us who work for a living and try to save for retirement and all that, were stupid.
And you know, if you don’t mind living in a tent, etc. they aren’t even wrong.
Yes, there’s genuine untreated mental health. There’s genuine untreated addiction.
But through it all? There are people who are homeless, or at least start out that way — I think the drugs and mental health kind of come with the territory after a while, because man was made to strive, not to an endless, purposeless summer vacation — because it’s easy. Because there re no rules to follow. They don’t have to do anything. Everything gets given to them. This while life for the productive, between unemployment, inflation, and increasing regulations is getting harder and harder every year.
Listen here, perhaps we get more and more homeless every year because we throw money at it. You get more of what you pay for. It’s basic economics. Everything else is a cope session to claim economics is wrong in this case.
We sneer and point fingers at the Victorians because they put the poor and homeless in work houses. But you know, from where I stand, I don’t see where “hand them everything with no judgement and don’t demand anything of them” is better. Do you? At least they — failing and with massive recidivism — tried to encourage bourgeois virtues, not spit on them.
Perhaps we should stop treating those who fall by the way side as impaired, incapable and victims, and stop throwing money and care at them with no conditions.
If you ask me, encouraging them towards normalcy and a productive life would be better for everyone. Including themselves.
*Because these are my two weeks of fundraising, I’m obligated to add the following:
This blog is reader funded. I don’t have a grant or a patron. You’re my patrons and only you can compensate for the toil of keeping the blog going day after day, year after year. For the full explanation of why a funding drive, and what I intend to use it for, if you’re interested, go here.
There are several ways of supporting me.
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I know times are tough — for all of us — and I don’t hold it against anyone who can’t contribute. But all contributions are greatly appreciated. – SAH*
According To Hoyt 
Well said and about the right length for a blog post. It didn’t become a short story.
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The Joe Pesci movie comes to mind. When called “homeless” by a stuffed shirt Professor, he replied “No, I’m just a bum.” because he quit life and was fine with not having a home. He was also shirking responsibilities too (left a wife and kid, now had a grandkid etc) they ‘excused’ because he had mesothelioma or some such.
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Congratulations. You have used the word that defines the problem, thus facilitating a resolution.
“Bum”
Idle. Layabout. Mooch. freeloader.
Bum.
There are plenty of folks who prefer the wanderer life, “minimal employment”, and work their way through it. Sure they accept freebies. But they will work as needed to finance their wandering. They can be Hobos or van-life sorts, day laborers , etc. Note that the plethora of freebies will often seduce the wandering work-willing into the bum lifestyle.
The Left isn’t curing Bumming. They are encouraging it, growing it like their favorite crop. It is dehumanizing, destructive, and dependent-creating. Thus, of course, the Left want lots more of it. Bums are a weapon to wreck -you-, your earnings, your wealth, and your self-respect as the Left taxes you to feed the mooching Bum, demands you accommodate their nuisance behaviors, and shames you as evil for not gladly supporting the freeloading Bum.
No. And it is high time we revert to using proper term for the willing parasite. Bum.
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The left needs lazy, ignorant, and evil to survive. That is their base.
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Before the move, I volunteered with a homeless shelter. They had a summer program where you could stay for ~3 months, extendable, if you would meet with a counselor every week and plan to improve something: get job, get training, join AA, get a bank account, there where all kinds of things that would qualify.
That program had fairly high turnover – guys would join, start fixing stuff, get on with their life. Get 3 of them together, and they would rent an apartment, move out, come back and volunteer with the next batch.
There was also a winter shelter Nov-March, which was no questions asked, you can lay down someplace warm for the night. Probably saved lives from the cold. But a different clientele, one with a lot of alumni year after year who you rarely saw in the summer program.
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Thus we wind up with more and more parasites leeching off a shrinking number of the productive class.
And the Democrats don’t see any problem with the situation.
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Of course they don’t; it’s a guaranteed source of votes. The fact that it’s non-sustainable long-term is irrelevant (or possibly invisible) to them; they don’t “do” long-term.
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They’re like 17th century Spanish aristocracy. Everybody got rich off the gold from South America so they all stopped working. Before long, there was nothing to buy with all that gold. Their fancy palaces were all falling apart from lack of maintenance.
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It happens to almost every system that rewards anything other than productive and competent effort and penalizes the opposite. It even happened to the Mongols after they finished conquering and got lazy! Humans seem to be programmed to want to be productive, but also to take it easy when the occasion permits. Sort of like eating everything in sight when food is plentiful, a way to prepare for the bad times. And when either becomes a permanent feature of the environment it becomes a habit. A bad habit. 😒
Just my 20 mills, but that’s how it looks to me.
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I use vagrants, and hobos. And I have started calling the cops on panhandlers starting to crawl out of the woods here in Post Falls.
“I will buy you a tank of gas and fill your frig, and then if I see you again on this corner I will call the police.”
I haven’t had to call the cops yet. I won’t let this area become Seatle, that I had to flee from.
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On some days I can really sympathize though. Just spent a sleepless night, feel like throwing up from anxiety, struggling with intrusive suicidal thoughts. I can understand the appeal of just taking something to numb yourself and dropping out of society.
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You have a support system for that, right? Pro help? Under no circumstances is that a “go it alone” thing.
And you aint alone.
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Thanks.
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See if you can find a decent nurse practitioner or something– there are some mild anxiety meds and after I had like two weeks of sleeping regularly, I was way less nervous.
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I shit you not I was in the middle of trying to get ahold of professional help for my depression and anxiety and get back on my meds when my phone inexplicably cut me off mid-conversation, after a lot of frustrated calls to customer support (the only thing I could call) and some Internet help centers I learned it was because my new number and phone had been approved. Well needless to say I’ve never applied for a new number OR gotten a new phone. I went to my dad’s house to borrow his phone to call all the near useless numbers I was given to try and sort this crap out, but then his phone started fucking up for literally no reason. I managed to get some fraud reports filed. I can still text, but that’s pretty much it. What a long hard shit hole of a day.
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:is saying a lot of very bad words:
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Not even going to get into how the true economic homeless who get NO benefits feel about all the resources lavished on parasites and improperly handled mentally ill folks.
Not. Even. Gonna.
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I know. I have had friends who were homeless of that kind. And some who would be if family weren’t lending help.
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Nod, there were several times that I’d have been “labeled homeless” by the idiot Feds.
IE There were times when I was “between jobs” and had to move in with my parents.
Oh, by the way, there was a “Made For TV Movie” back when Lefties were making “Homelessness” an issue.
A guy lost his Job and his home BUT refused help from a relative (IIRC his brother).
And his idiot wife and their children apparently refuse help from that relative.
The idiot movie makers really sent the wrong message.
IE We were to “feel sorry for that man & his family” but instead intelligent people would have thought “what an idiot” (and thought the same thing about the wife).
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Michael Flynn would poke fun at how he was homeless as a child, and didn’t even notice! He just thought they lived at his grandmother’s.
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🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
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At one of our previous residences, the local school district let that slip. The sob story about HOMELESS CHILDREN (meant to invoke the image of little kids sleeping under a bridge) mentioned that “living with relatives” was included in the statistics.
Sorry, those kids HAVE a home. It may not be ideal, but it IS a home. Lying liars who lie….*grumble*
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Gee. I wonder how all the elderly inlaws/grandparents are counted living in very popular “inlaw suites”? Or areas where multi generational is a life style? (Which apparently areas of Hawaii are known for? per Renovation Hawaii, HGTV.)
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we lived with my grandparents till I was six, because my parents were saving for a house. it was a very happy situation for me, as a little kid, if I guess frustrating for parents.
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I live with my wife and daughter… at my mother-in-law’s house. My wife and I have great credit, and terrible income.
I could go into all the reasons that our income is pathetic, but I’d rather not list them now. It is sufficient to say that I have had wretched (but improving) mental health and she has abysmal (and deteriorating) physical health.
Without faith in God, and specific faith that He has a plan for my family, things would be much worse than they are.
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Not uncommon.
Son has one friend who, with his wife, and two children, live with his parents. They can’t qualify for a loan for a house. Their income isn’t large enough to overcome the percentage needed for a rental. Neither parents can qualify for co-signing for either (his parents own their home, because mom inherited it).
Another of son’s friends is in an apartment only because of his wife’s subsidy (diabetic caused blindness), and parental help.
Our son has been watching to buy a house. He can’t get into an apartment (without our co-signature) because of income to rent percentage ratio. But can afford a house, at reasonable prices, because he’s been saving (we don’t charge rent*) since he graduated with his degree.
(* Why? He is an only child. He gets everything eventually.)
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Technically, I was NEVER “homeless.”
Let the “do-gooders” whin(g)ing about false homelessness get by in a (ANY) labyrinth. Oh, and since they are anti-weapon, no labrys or axe for them!
Now, those doing their damnedest to escape the spiderweb/quicksand of “welfare” “help”… they ought to be lent a a hand/hoof/talon/tentacle/whatever… The folks genuinely TRYING don’t CARE about the appendage, as long it’s not more damned crab bucketing and ensure-work for useless bureauCRAPS.
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You know, there’s a song about that: Rich Men North of Richmond.
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PUTUS Trump uses that song at his rallies now, and everyone sings along. Pretty neat.
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“PUTUS” ?
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We could go on for days and days, couldn’t we?
My brothers wanted me on the streets, and my sister and BiL rescued me. So, yeah, I have opinions.
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You should hear what the Hispanic citizens here in the Phoenix area, many of whose families have lived here for generations, have to say about the illegals flooding across the border; it ain’t pretty or PC. And they’ve felt that way since before Obama (maybe way before, but I just moved here in ’07).
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Just to be clear, that’s Hispanic US citizens.
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I was living in CA in the 90’s. Even then the Hispanic community was furious over the immigration problem.
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The question is, is this time around when the US Hispanic community will start voting based on the illegal immigration issue?
There are some indications just such a shift is starting to overcome Dem machine politics in border areas like Texas. If it also does so in the places those buses drove to, say, in New Yawk City, then that bus strategy will be proven to be frelling brilliant indeed.
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Abbott and DeSantis should have sent all those buses to D.C. Specifically, to the neighborhoods where all the elitist left-wing politicians and bureaucrats live like royalty. Let them deal with 15 million illegal aliens, right in their front yards.
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I have a friend who needed help–she wasn’t homeless, but very easily could have been, and being in a wheelchair with disabilities that amounted to a need for being institutionalized that could have been catastrophic. I watched her struggle with trying to fill out the forms and paperwork to get SSI, get housing assistance, etc., and if she hadn’t had friends willing to do the bulk of the legwork it wouldn’t have happened.
There are people out there who should have assistance and can’t, because they can’t physically or emotionally fill all the requirements of the bureaucracy, while others who are perfectly functional sail through. In my opinion, after watching her deal with this, if someone finds it easy to get through the maze they should almost universally be denied.
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Definitely. I know son’s friend the reason they have an apartment better than what they can afford on his salary for them and their two girls, is because of his mother, made sure the wife got her SSI and housing allowance.
Dad’s SSI disability was 100% because a HS classmate who had been working at SS admin for 25+ years by then had all the correct forms filled out for mom. All mom had to do was go get the appropriate signatures. Apparently SSI rarely goes through the first application. Dad’s did. The HS classmate was not dad’s caseworker. Still had to use dad’s work insurance, until mom found work (she’d never worked beyond Christmas retail or part time fill in where grandma worked) that had insurance and got past the precursor requirement. (What is sad is the classmate just lost her battle with cancer at age 90.)
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If you just make it easier to retrofit commercial real estate into living space you get rid of the office space glut and you create enough housing to make the housing market more rational.
Alas. This is not as simple as you make it out to be. It’s difficult and expensive to retrofit office space into residential housing, and not because of material specs or onerous licensing/permitting schemes. The buildings just aren’t designed for that. I’ve seen “loft” apartments retrofitted into old Chicago warehouses. Mostly they suck, but boy are they expensive (and yeah, part of that is, see comment about onerous licensing/permitting schemes — and of course it is graft-ridden Chicago). Ex-gf’s boy had one of those up on West Grand Ave. We visited once. He had to get a special permit from the management for us to park on the street, because his 1BR/1BA loft came with exactly one parking space and his car was already using it. And IMHO the place was poorly laid out and shoddily built. It didn’t even have an outside-venting exhaust fan in the bathroom. And this was supposed to be a luxury loft apartment…
Modern office buildings are even harder to retrofit than that old warehouse was. With concrete floors, you have to core drill every hole where you need to run a drain. Core drilling is expensive and time-consuming and can’t be done by random plumbers — you need a pro to do that. Air conditioning is a problem because the floors aren’t usually designed to be split up into rooms with walls. I could go on and on but I won’t. It would be easier (and probably in the long run, cheaper) to drop those buildings and build high-rise apartments or condos. IMHO.
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With concrete floors, you have to core drill every hole where you need to run a drain.
I’m thinking the less expensive way to do that would be to build a plenum on the floor, run all the plumbing under that, and just have them go down in one or two locations. That might require big pipes for the central stack, though.
Would it still be less expensive than dropping the building and starting anew?
Well, that depends on whether its cheaper and easier to get the building re-zoned and get remodeling permits than it is to get a demolition permit and a new-construction building permit…
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Apartments are more challenging than dormitories. If the plumbing and fixtures and appliances are shared, easier to convert the “commercial” setups.
A raised floor allows all sorts of utility runs without expensive concrete drilling.
You do not need high/vaulted ceilings for living space.
Wall lockers handle storage of clothing etc.
Fold-away bunks, or couch-to-bed convertibles, provide day/night utility. But a rolled up sleeping mat, and a folding chair and folding table/desk also work.
Spartan but functional shelter. Works just ducky as long as there is some culture and/or authority to enforce the norms and customs (consequences!), and the willingness to do so.
I have known college folks to rent an 6’x6′ walk-in closet. Roll-up sleeping mat and bag. Hanging storage. Folding chair and table. Hang some lights. Power from the overhead light socket with add in sockets/extender. Small fan. Bathroom and kitchen privileges in the house. Net cost was $75 a month, versus $400-500+ for small apartment. “Illegal” but CMFM rules. Homeowner often traded work for rent. (paint, shovel, mow, etc)
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And if anyone thinks $75 was way overpriced, that was in a really nice house a block from campus in a nice neighborhood.
Versus a shitty neighborhood beyond walking distance for the “legal” rentals.
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You’re assuming offices high rises, I think? Outside those there are a ton that look like suburban apartment complexes. Like where Dan worked in the springs. I suspect they’re easier. I could be totally at sea. I still think cheaper to retrofit. And even the towers, no matter how kludgy, are probably doable absent regulation. Heck, our Victorian didn’t have outside venting fans….
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Everything is way easier when the government doesn’t regulate it to death.
But they can’t help themselves. Everything they see, they want to control, until they wind up strangling it.
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Do you want to know what happens to a 3″ core drill(not to mention the driller) when said bit hits a piece of 3/4″ rebar?
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RE: hitting rebar when core drilling. There’s actually more to it than that. Some buildings are built with post-tensioned concrete floors; steel cables are laid in the forms, concrete is poured and allowed to set. The cables are then tightened to a specified tension. Post-tensioning allows *slightly* thinner floors but the cables are <i>the</i> important component. When drilling a post-tensioned floor the concrete floor must be X-rayed * to see where the cables are because cutting them very significantly weakens the floor. Cutting one, you could probably get away with it, depending on where in the stress loading plan that cable is. Cut a couple and you’ll lose the floor, not today, not tomorrow, but give it a little while, and running pipes, drains, vents, ducts, and electric will require a <i>lot</i> of drilling. Commercial spaces are built to support a higher floor loading (weight in pounds) than residental construction; going from 100-120 lbs/sq ft to 40 <i>might</i> dodge the bullet, but some people have large – and full – bookcases, fireproof file cabinets, gun safes, etc. and just about everywhere in a “commercial converted to residential” will be out in the middle of the floor, away from the perimeter or vertical core support.
Point is, converting commercial to residential ain’t quite the slick and easy thing some think it is.
*X-raying means emptying that part of the building because the energy required poses a substantial health hazard on the floor being X-rayed, the space below and above it. Ultrasonic can take the place of X-raying in some cases.
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I re not any type of building architectural engineer, but it seems like as long as the floor planes can take the weight, it would be smarter to gut and build up a false floor for utilities and rats across the entire building floor, since the common drop-ceiling overhead can accommodate without loss of headroom. Stairwells and elevators would be a thing to address, maybe ramps down to where they let out or something, but conceptually I’d rather deal with that than cutting into structural floors.
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Cicero is right that if you have to drill you must know exactly what’s in your way where you are drilling.
And if the original plumbing – chases or penetrations – don’t have enough capacity to accommodate the increase in occupancy, you will have to drill somewhere.
As always with architecture, the question is never “Can it be done?”
The question is always “Can it be done for a price anyone involved is willing and able to pay?”
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“Same thing that happens to everything else.” – Ororo “Storm” Munroe.
I know that’s not how you meant it, but I just couldn’t leave that setup hanging.
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I have not heard such conversations, but I find them all too believable. If you make something cost less people will consume more of it. In fact I recall that as a finding about what happened to coal consumption as steam engines became more efficient.
Bernard Shaw has a passage about this in Pygmalion:
DOOLITTLE: I’m one of the undeserving poor: that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up agen middle class morality all the time. If there’s anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it’s always the same story: “You’re undeserving; so you can’t have it.” But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow’s that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don’t need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don’t eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement, cause I’m a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything. Therefore, I ask you, as two gentlemen, not to play that game on me. I’m playing straight with you. I ain’t pretending to be deserving. I’m undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like it; and that’s the truth.
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That sounds just like a scene in ‘My Fair Lady’. :-D
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Don’t know if you were joking, but…there’s a reason for that :p
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I share Sara’s uncertainty, but just in case, that’s because My Fair Lady is an adaptation of Pygmalion as a musical comedy. I quoted the source, both because Shaw’s wording can be expected to be more incisive than an adaptation, and because I can access Pygmalion via Project Gutenberg and get it word for word. Though the song “With a Little Bit of Luck” does capture some of the spirit of the thing.
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Ah yes, GBS is definitely the source for many insightful statements and phrases, but I doubt he gets taught anymore. Racist and sexist and all that.
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He wasn’t being taught when I was in college back in the 1960s, either, but I read him on my own, having seen him mentioned by Robert Heinlein (in “Let There Be Light,” if I recall correctly). I disagree strongly with his advocacy of socialism (he was one of the founders of the Fabian Society), but I find some of his sayings useful: above all “You had better take care to get what you like or you shall have to like what you get.”
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I agree his politics were abysmal, but he had a great way with words and twisting things including your mind about when least expected. I guess that is what qualified him politically, sadly.
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>If you make something cost less people will consume more of it
Jevons Paradox
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Yes, exactly. I first learned of it from a discussion of changing illumination levels, from the candle to the incandescent bulb to the LED . . .
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Notes overly bright lights in shop’s workroom, and the need to turn off half the lights when I need to use the computer… The dangers of affordable LED shop lights. :)
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>If you make something cost less people will consume more of it
Demand is often elastic.
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c4c
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Zoning. Particularly of the “open land preservation” kind.
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A few days ago, the Supreme Court said that did say that cities could ban “camping on public lands”.
At least one city was already planning to do so.
But of course, I’m sure that plenty of Leftish cities won’t do that.
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So the ‘homeless’ booted out of more rational cities will flock to them. Like ‘sanctuary cities’ they will sink into a swamp of their own making.
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100%.
Popcorn worthy here in Eugene. It was okay to clear them out for the Olympic Track Trials, and prior other big events that brought national and international attentions. Be interesting if TPTB keep it up in light of the decision.
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Oh, they have–on areas of the city that their “elites” don’t want them to have. I forget where–Austin, maybe?–they suddenly decided that homeless could camp anywhere BUT right in front of the state capitol. That was just a bit too much for the lefties who worked there.
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I wonder it it was more of the State legislature is not in tune with the Stay Weird Austin rulers, and the Austin council didn’t want the visuals of their constituency being dealt with by Texas DPS and Rangers? Making a stark contrast of how they have hamstrung the Austin PD?
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Could be–I don’t quite recall, as it was a few years ago now (and I do not live in Texas) :D
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San Jose, CA, as lefty signaling as you’ll see in northern CA outside of the City and County of San Francisco, jumped all over the camping ban ruling. They were already enforcing one within x distance of any of the new micro-home shelter locations, and the mayor said they’d be using this new authority to ban all camping along the local mostly-seasonal waterways and freeways. It’s always a panic annually when rainy season returns to try and clear the encampments from between the flood levees, because apparently “think of it as evolution in action” is mean or something.
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I used to work at a then-HP site at the NE-ish corner of US-101 and the Guadalupe river. Summertime, there was quite an encampment along the banks under the bridge. Come fall, it got interesting, and by the rainy season, it was quite troll-free.
BIL passed away two years ago (cough-Vaxx-cough) and $SPOUSE’s kid sister volunteered(yikes!) to do the estate gubbage. She had more trips along Lawrence Expressway than she wanted, and told us it was quite spooky, having to dodge drugged-out zombies wandering onto the roadway.
I haven’t been in Silly Valley since 2003, now have zero need, and less desire to go there.
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Grants Pass (*Oregon?) was the city who took it to SCOTUS.
https://www.vox.com/homelessness/357861/homelessness-encampment-grants-pass-supreme-court-housing
(* Decision doesn’t state which state city is in. But nothing comes up except Grants Pass Oregon, so … Also wouldn’t surprise me.)
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Yep. As memory serves, they did an ordinance, one of Kate’s judges stopped it, then it went to the federal court system. Electoral maps show a patch of conservativism in SW Oregon, and GPass is in it.
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Thought so. Never lived there. But had an uncle build a lot of subdivisions in Grants Pass. Middle daughter still lives there, as do another uncle (also building trade). Aunt lives in Applegate Valley between Grants Pass and Medford.
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Grew up in the Applegate valley back in the hills. There were BIG problems last year with bums and Boatnik. Parents still live there – I was gonna take my eldest kids down for a visit this weekend, but the heat is murder on mum and da, and there was a tweaker arrested attempting arson behind their place.
Minus spots centred around Medford, most of S.OR is rather conservative, from the border to almost Eugene (and I wouldn’t be surprised if the surrounds are a lot more con than the city. It was like that when I went to school outside of Salem. Minus Salem (and the school) it was pretty conservative all around.
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“Applegate Valley”
Aunt & uncle are relatively “new” to the area, even having been there now for 20-ish years. Retired there after wandering the west working for the railroad (ended in Sacramento) because aunt had family in Grants Pass. “New” because this is the Applegate side of the family, she was raised in Drain/Yoncolla.
The possibility of wildfires is something I know about. They had problems originally getting homeowner fire insurance because they’d had a wildfire trespass onto their property outside of Sacramento, never mind it was Uncle’s wildfire suppression setup that prevented the fire from spreading onto their property, and beyond. The odds of their Applegate property not having heavy duty protection is zip to none, and, at their age and health, automatic. They also fought successfully the more recent state extreme wildfire risk designation which would have priced homeowners out of home insurance coverage. Aunt usually keeps mom up on gossip on what is going on, but mom didn’t pass on anything about an arrested arsonist.
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Our house/property insurance went up 72%* last year over 2022, after being fairly steady for years. We got officially annexed into the fire district that had been unofficially covering us for 15 years, and despite the vast improvement in that FD (I was involved in some of that mess. If I still drank, it would be a full evening at the pub to tell that tale.), apparently “rural fire departments are not sufficiently good to keep rates low”.
I know a person who got burned out in another district. That’s one of the really good rural FDs, but the last I heard, she could not get any fire insurance.
I looked up the OR wildfire risk map. Apparently the latest draft is due out mid-month, and I suspect backlash might possibly trigger the Cascadia earthquakes. I love the statement that the new map “will not be used by insurers to raise rates”. Pull the other one, it has bells on.
((*)) We tried other companies through our agent. Crickets. This after we got rid of the wraparound(!) cedar(!) deck and replaced it with gravel. We’re supposedly in the “not so bad” area by previous statements; defensible space, proximity to a river, and a reasonably well-maintained grove of pines. (Room for improvement there, but the arthroscopic knee fix is next week. If it’s healed as fast as the optimists say, I could start in a month. Waggles hand. Praying they have it right.)
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Hmmmm. I think I heard that from Uncle J. Only he wasn’t that polite 😂
My mom is “stuck” with State Farm. Not because of rural fire danger, but because she is grandfathered into her policy because of her woodstove (actually ours*), a Fisher insert. Truth be told it is probably safer, and burns cleaner, than any of the newer reburn certified by OSAH ones.
Our old Santa Clara rural volunteer fire department (rated better than Eugene) got incorporated into the Eugene/SpringField/Santa Clara fire department, a few years ago. Our home insurance has gone up too, but not 72%.
(* Brought it down from Longview, from our house, in ’85 to use in our rental, but it wouldn’t fit. So mom & dad installed it, with county permit, in family home. Also wouldn’t fit in our home we bought in ’88. When the house sells it’ll have to be pulled. I’m thinking of making an outdoor fire pit with it. We have the door screen, put a fire screen over the stove pipe. Why not?)
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Re: Why not?
If TPTB are aware of it, I’m sure they could come up with myriad responses, maybe even a regulation. Validity/semblance to reality optional.
The then 2 year old barn/shop came with a many-years old Lopi that put out a boatload of heat, but the air control was such that burns went from medium high to OMG. In 2014 I got a Heatilator to replace it (unfortunately with half the max BTU, so winter projects start with lots-o-layers).
Taking the Lopi to the dump meant that it had to be rendered completely (regulation), so I took a cutting torch and added a few large holes. My understanding is that if an old (non-compliant) stove/insert is officially swapped for a new one, destruction of the old one is mandatory. For unofficial swaps… Know of one, and the old stove went to an area that made ours look like New York.
Can’t speak about fire pits. ODF covers for USFS locally, and they take a twitchy view of any outdoor smoke report in fire season. Pits get sold in Flyover Falls, but most likely for use in the city/suburbs.
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Well, it was on the access Road our property borders on the up hill /East side. Plus there were fireworks three houses down. 🤦
Dad was telling me a few days ago that ODF had a meeting trying to talk about stuff for fire prevention, etc, but the crowd that gathered was extremely hostile so they (ODF) just walked out and gave up.
Weird things.
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I know aunt & uncle’s house is slightly uphill off the road, but couldn’t tell you which side of the valley. (Been by, once, about 5 years ago.) Supposedly no development was to be allowed above their property. Don’t know the set aside reason but uncle wasn’t particularly happy about it because it negated some of his options for wildfire safety (couldn’t clear brush on the other side of the property). Gossip (through mom from them) had some public input on a planned development. Good/Bad news. Might give options for better wildfire prevention. OTOH might get less continuous new neighbors too.
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Well, the Applegate is also relatively long, from the border (the reservoir) to Wilderville south of GP. I find it easy to say they ain’t neighbours.
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Well if they know them as the couple that came from California (via Arizona), they aren’t transplanted to Oregon. More like temporarily displaced wandering Oregonians.
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I’m rather amused over that, because the plaintiff, Grant’s Pass, OR is west of the Cascades, and the casual observer might confuse it with the Salem/Portland axis of Woke. Er, no. (The Greater Idaho people seem to have some fans over there, too.)
Our local city (east of the mountains) never was that friendly to homeless encampments, and broke up a few a couple-three miles south of downtown. Haven’t figured out where the current crop are staying, and I’m seeing more solos than groups, unlike last summer.
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Bad Case imo.
They fought it on the 8th amendment. Except Grants pass only fines, no jail time. and that does not count in terms of the 8th.
No mention of what eventually happens if the fines keep on accruing.
I agree about the additional costs from regulations, my brother in law is a builder in nz, and they will have to put a $1000 door on a 3 foot space, rated for fire, earthquake etc.
In Australia where pretty much any house in a big city is going to sell for a million, builders are going under frequently because of rising costs.
The joke around home is that the homeless will often have expensive skate/surf boards, they are just camping for summer because they can/ There is one old guy who I admit I have not seen in the last year. His head is not right but he owns a multi-million apartment building, he panhandles, sleeps rough, etc but there is no real reason for it.
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Our neighborhood had a problem with a homeless encampment – on private land, fortunately. The homeless camping on that patch had made the place noisome and dangerous, and crowned it all by setting a fire which burned a fence and came close to some houses. Yes, the affected neighbors and those a little farther away were outraged. We don’t pay taxes and maintain our little patches of suburban paradise to live in dumps, or have our families regularly menaced by the deranged.
So – community meetings, and the encampment was cleared. San Antonio is pretty proactive with the local homeless, so the city hasn’t become an end-to-end dump like Austin. What you tolerate and enable, you will get more of. And where communities, towns and cities take a firm stand … miraculously, you get less of it.
Funny how that works out.
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We used to live on the route between the jail, the Savation Army and a homeless encampment. Throw in a couple of rundown houses and a meth dealer.
It’s about as fun as it sounds. Everything had to be locked up and nailed down. Drug trash in the yards. A/C compressors drained of Freon. (They liked to huff it as way to get high, also spray paint.) Random spastic people walking in the middle of the road.
We fought back. Coerced the police to do their jobs. Worked with the city to go after land owners, etc…
Over time it got better. The drug dealer caught his house on fire cooking meth. The owner of the trap houses lost in court, so they got bought by responsible owners. Property developers cleared the land with homeless encampment. The Salavation Army was forced to move.
Mass homelessness is a scrouge. Tough love is the answer, not money.
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Sigh. At one time, the Salvation Army setup in San Jose,CA seemed to have a good residential program. OTOH, I haven’t seen it since 2003. SA had a thrift store in Flyover Falls, had to move from downtown, with the succeeding locations burglary magnets. Now it’s a tiny office doing once-per-week something.
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Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action, ten thousand times is policy.
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The push to allow squatters to camp wherever they like, whether in parks, out in streets, or someone else’s home, is part and parcel of the left’s push to eliminate private property all-together. They believe all property is communal (except their own of course) and that people are entitled to take whatever they want, because it is their “communal” right. This is why the push to allow squatters is going hand in hand with the allowance of large-scale shoplifting. It all is based on the same premise, that stealing stuff from others is permissible and to be encouraged because private property should not exist and thus is to be ignored.
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As a librarian, I have also overheard, (and been part of), the conversations betwixt the homeless.
There are many reasons to be homeless, and I think I’ve seen all of them by now. I feel sympathy for those with real psychological problems, or developmental issues. Those who’s parents, who watched over them, have passed. Now they have no one to fill out the government paperwork for them, and wind up on the street.
But that is not the majority of the homeless that I have dealt with. It’s not even a sizeable chunk. They are a minority of the homeless; like the working homeless who have to live in their vehicle because housing prices are insane. (Considering how many there are of them in California, that’s a staggering claim.)
No, the rest are exactly as our Beautiful yet Evil Space Princess has surmised. They want free stuff with no responsibilities.
I’ve heard the teens lament that rules were too restrictive, so they moved to the street. Or the couples who rotated through the churches in town, looking for any and all handouts they could find.
For those of us who have been homeless, (couch surfing for a few years), we know how hard it can be. But these people aren’t even trying, and that’s disgusting to me.
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A friend of ours used to work in the downtown branch of the San Diego city library. She told us of expensive art books having to be discarded after homeless people urinated on them. And of librarians being asked to go around and pick up discarded syringes in the rest rooms . . .
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On another note, there’s some interesting news out of Georgia. The State Election Board has announced that voting locations must hand count the number of ballots submitted at the end of each day. And the number counted must match the number of electronic votes.
mind you, I’m confident that a lefty judge will shortly find an absurd reason to declare it unconstitutional. But it’s a move in the right direction.
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Interesting. Arizona here. We hand count all ballots at the end of the vote, but to be clear that’s not the same as tabulating the voting results. Our big issue is purging the voting registration roles. We do require ID and proof of citizenship for state and local voting, but due to lack of a Federal law, folks can show up and vote Federal only without proof of citizenship. Might explain the Federal results in last 20 years or so.
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The homeless camps I’ve seen reminded me of nothing so much as the reconstructed “shebangs” at the Andersonville prison camp monument. A lot of these clowns would LOVE Andersonville—nothing to do, food coming in, no rules, no nothing.
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(1) Let the States fund Slacker Communes with free room, board, medical, and recreational drugs–up to and including fentanyl–for anyone who volunteers to stay there. Walk away, and you get zero benefits.
(2) Stop ALL handouts to everyone in the Free Sh*t Army. No workee, no eatee.
(3) Allow municipalities to hire day laborers for cash payment, all that’s required is a valid SSAN. Hey, if I can hire a guy in the Home Depot parking lot, why can’t my city?
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Allow municipalities to hire day laborers for cash payment, all that’s required is a valid SSAN.
But… but.. but… YOU’RE TAKING JOBS AWAY FROM UNION WORKERS!!!111!!
Who are apparently the only workers you aren’t allowed to replace with someone cheaper or foreign…
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That said, it would be an easy way to clean up an area.
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Fuck union guys. Give those of us who actually work for our livin’ a bad name.
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Back during Reagan’s second term, someone in his cabinet made the remark that “we need to acknowledge that there are more than just the haves and have-nots; there are also the want-nots — people who don’t want the house, the yard, the car, the 2.3 kids, the cat, etc.
We have no obligation to support the want-nots in their chosen lifestyle.
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One local city here in Silicon Valley uses their “unhoused” budget to buy bus tickets for the homeless to destination-not-this-city.
Apparently the growing “unhoused” problem on the Hawaiian islands is caused in large measure by other, larger municipalities using their “unhoused” budgets to buy plane tickets for them to destination-not-this-city of the unhoused’s choice, and amazingly many pick Hawaii.
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I was in NYC today. Lots of milling about, way more than even a couple of weeks ago. Haven’t seen so much milling about since I stopped going to the third world.
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I stopped giving to panhandlers when I went skiing one weekend in Breckenridge (circa 1997). I stayed with a friend who grew up there. She brought me to a party with her friends. A few of them were talking about their adventures going to Denver to panhandle for lift-ticket money. That was the end of that.
I also stopped carrying cash so I could honestly say “I don’t carry cash, these days.” Now that I live somewhere sane, I’m trying to get back into the cash habit. The more of us who use it, the harder it will be to ban it (not that I’m too worried; politicians need to be bribed, so there will always be cash).
There is no easy or right answer (or the problem would have been solved by now). What is clear is that the current approach does not work. More of the same will not help.
My biggest peeve: Why do they put all the homeless assistance stuff in the middle of downtowns? The people who work there can drive wherever. The homeless will congregate wherever that stuff is. Move it out into the middle of nowhere!
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A few years back, there was a mini-documentary that somebody did about the homeless problem on the banks of a local river. (The Army Corps of Engineers hate these people, because the first thing they do is steal the tarps they put down over any riverside project, including necessary levee repair.)
The phrase one guy used was, “I don’t want to say it’s a drug problem. It’s a meth problem.” It may start out with the “no rules” idea, but it almost always devolves into a drug issue, because the “rule” that they don’t want to follow is “stay clean.”
Mind you, there are a lot of people who are homeless who are not those folk. But they’re less visible because they care enough to not be visible, to be seeking out the services they need, or at the very least, keeping out of the way and camping clean. They’re not the ones blocking the sidewalks, living in a self-made trash dump, or whatever.
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Quoting part of your comment, crediting as B. Durbin. (Locked to friendsonly.)
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Theodore Dalrymple noted that the drug-addicts in prison had generally done drugs for the first time after they had first served a sentence in prison — and it takes being a confirmed criminal to get a prison sentence.
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Funny I was just reading/watching about Slab City, which a squatters camp on a abandoned Marine Corp. Base in the middle of the Sonoran desert. If you want to help vagrants do it in some nowhere place away from the rest of us. Also I’m very aware of the history of abuse and violation of human rights of those of mental illness (and people others claimed were mentally ill) but I’ve also been institutionalized for depression twice and bringing back insane asylums is a lot less cruel than the alternatives.
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That last paragraph. Yes. De-institutionalization amounted to throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
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Perfect phrase to describe it. 👍 Make mental institutions great again. Even if you’re just “wharehousing the mentally ill” it’s still better then sleeping under a bridge.
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One of my neighbors is a leader in a group seeking to recall several of our City councillors; the issue is ‘homeless’ and how they should be treated.
Being Oregon, the default is give them stuff.
I’m against the recall, not only because I remember Schwarzenegger who was elected after the recall of Gray Davis – and how well that worked out – but because there’s no chance replacement counselors would have any answers for the ‘want nots’ and the ‘want free stuff with no responsibilities’ folks, nor can we expect the councillors to impose required treatment/acceptance of housing-with-rules, etc.
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We had mixed success with recalls in Flyover County in S. Central Oregon. We had three really bad county commissioners (three on the board), and one was persuaded to leave, with a recall kicking at least one out.
Round two had the conservative replacements with targets on their back. One guy was unknown for politics (I knew him slightly in a business context) who turned out to be great. OTOH, when the RINOs won out, the target went on his back, both from commissioners and the bureaucracy, and he left.
We’re in round 3. One liberal RINO got reelected outright (the urban voters do count, alas :) ), but the conservative stands a chance in the runoff. The one not up for election is tolerable, if not my preference.
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Consider how many closed military bases there are in this country. Open selected ones, gather up those who can’t take care of themselves, (druggies go to a different location with former DI’s handling their problems). Those who just want the “free” life who can take care of themselves become caretakers as needed or they starve.
I know, I know, never going to happen – until it’s too late, and then the freeloaders will really be unhappy as they’re being loaded on the boxcars…
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Freeloaders won’t be loaded onto boxcars, because they will always have one thing of value to trade: votes.
Why do you think voter registration goes with welfare registration?
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Mail-in voting solves that. Just don’t report the deaths.
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Well, there has been a mass shooting in Britain.
With a crossbow. No mention of whether it was an ‘assault crossbow’.
How long until they ban crossbows? Hell, ban all bows, just to be ‘safe’. :-(
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They already put warnings on Thomas the Tank engine fork and knife sets, WHAT MORE CAN THEY DO?
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In an early J. D Robb’s Eve Dallas novel, Eve Dallas is on the scene of another murder and is thinking we banned guns to prevent gun deaths but humans still find a way to murder people.
In this book, the man was killed by a portable electric drill. 🤣
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Ah, but was it an ‘assault drill’? :-o
Anything can be a murder weapon. Our caveman ancestors killed each other with sticks, rocks and bones. Shoelaces have been used as garrotes. They can’t ban everything.
I once read a story about a murder on a beach. The victim was strangled with a leather thong, but there were no other footprints near the body. Turned out the murder weapon was a bolo made by freezing a chunk of ice onto each end of the thong.
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Mythbusters proved that an ice bullet would just turn into a puff of steam by the time it left the barrel from the heat of the gunpowder being fired, but what if you used air as a propellant for an ice bullet? 🧐
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How about a bullet made of Pykrete? Water mixed with sawdust and then frozen makes much stronger and more durable ice. Or just use an icicle as a spear.
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Or that Roald Dahl short story about the housewife who murders unfaithful hubby with a frozen leg of lamb, pops her murder weapon into the oven to cook, steps out for a bit, then pretends to come home to find her husband dead and phones the police. Said police ponder what could possibly be the murder weapon as she’s politely serving it to them and trying not to giggle.
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“Lamb to the Slaughter”
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Off topic, but there’s an article called China the Helpless Giant up on zerohedge that I recommend anyone interested in the topic should read. Superb.
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Went to zerohedge, but couldn’t find the article.
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Go to DuckDuckGo, put China the Helpless Giant zerohedge in search box. Or go to Zerohedge, channels, geopolitical. This morning it was on the second page. Now I went 8 deep on the main page and it is gone.
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In 25+ years of dispatching I can only think of two people we’ve dealt with that were homeless and weren’t addicted to either illegal drugs or alcoholics. One was a guy traveling around on a bicycle, loaded down with his belongings, that had his dog with him. The other was holding a 3.8 GPA in college, but was a little off in the head, to the point he thought living under the bridge was just fine and dandy, even in winter.
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