I think this is the first article I've read to use the term "visible homelessness". For many people who live in Seattle, the world "homeless" really means visibly homeless, but for many political activists, the word includes people in shelters or living in the cars or otherwise keeping a low profile while not having a permanent address. I'm no expert but I strongly suspect that the best ways to help the visibly homeless and the not-visibly-homeless are pretty different. But activists are more than willing to conflate the two cases. This particularly arises in the case of affordable housing. Housing may indeed be the primary problem for the not-visibly-homeless. It seems pretty likely though (just based on observation) that the biggest problems for the visibly homeless are mental illness and substance abuse.<p>I think we'd be better served by not talking past each other and instead make it clear which kind of homeless problem we're talking about at any particular time.
Many years ago, while living in Fairfield, CA and trying to get education appropriate to becoming an urban planner, I had a class on <i>Homelessness and Public Policy</i> through SFSU. More recently, I spent several years homeless.<p>A very big issue in the US is housing policy which has steadily shrunk the availability of basic housing, such as SROs and Missing Middle housing.<p>While we need some emergency services for the homeless population, I'm really not for actively growing more homeless services as our primary approach to trying to resolve this. We need to fix what's wrong with society that's causing people to land in the street. Housing is a big part of that.<p>A few blog posts by me:<p>Why I'm not for "we need more homeless services!" as our primary approach:<p><a href="https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-shirky-principle-and-homelessness.html" rel="nofollow">https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-shirky-...</a><p>Housing cost and homelessness:<p><a href="https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-clear-connection-between-housing.html" rel="nofollow">https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-clear-c...</a><p>Missing Middle housing:<p><a href="https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-missing-middle.html" rel="nofollow">https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-missing...</a>
I live in Seattle but I'm currently in LA. Here in Santa Monica its out of control. I just went to Starbucks and a homeless person was harassing everyone in the line, very threatening -- and the security won't do anything about it. We can't do anything about it or we'd be the one cracked down on.<p>I was in another coffee shop and a homeless was behind my chair with a lighter trying to light my hair on fire. My wife was harassed in the same coffee shop two days later.<p>I can't see how this isn't impacting tourism. Even when I went to Hawaii, Waikiki was filled with homeless taking over all the public benches.
The criminal justice system should not handle these cases. I don't consider acts done by mentally ill people criminal. I have personal experience with this.<p>My sister is bipolar and schizophrenic. For 30 years she was a little quirky, but mostly normal. She worked at a private equity firm in New York, got married, had a great life. Something changed around age 30. She started acting strange. We initially thought it was just her normal quirkyness, but then things started to escalate. She wouldn't stop talking about Prince Harry. She said she wanted to marry him. We laughed it off.<p>Then she started talking about secret messages she was receiving from Prince Harry. She believed she had been chosen as the princess and that ISIS was trying to kill her to prevent Prince Harry from marrying her. She had all this proof (hidden messages in the news, Instagram posts of bananas, crazy stuff). She was convince that the government had put chips in our brains and were controlling us. We realized that she needed help, but she refused to believe she had a mental illness. There was absolutely nothing we could do BEFORE she committed a crime. We knew it would happen, we knew it was only a matter of time, but the criminal justice system would not do anything.<p>Finally, on Christmas day, she went on a rampage at my grandmas house and destroyed a bunch of property. (We found a journal entry later where she said she was sad because Santa Clause didn't come and pick her up and take her to the North Pole like he was supposed to so she lost it.) We got lucky that it was only property. She was put in jail for 24 hours and then let out on the street at midnight without us knowing. She assaulted a police officer the next day. She thought he was ISIS trying to kill her.<p>FINALLY, the criminal justice system did something. We had to hire lawyers to plead with the judge to force her on to medication. We had stacks of tweets, facebook messages, emails, etc that showed she was clearly delusional. They finally agreed.<p>She is on meds now and has regular checkins with her parole officer to ensure she stays on them. She is back to being a little quirky, but has no more delusions. She has a job again and is happy.<p>We are lucky. It could have ended up a lot worse. The current system for helping the mentally ill is totally broken.
Seattlites are desperate to conflate the housing "crisis" with homelessness, but I'm not convinced the person yelling at the sky and swinging a drain pipe at people in his alley narrowly missed his $5000 mortgage payment. It's unfortunate that people with less means have to live further outside the city and spend more of their commuting, but I don't it's unreasonable to assume that people will make decisions on their own behalf to stay housed rather than just live on the streets if rent is becoming too expensive.
This is a really simple problem that for some reason Americans just can't get their heads around.<p>We have eliminated virtually every government intervention besides police power. We have also seen our social institutions significantly divest their social contributions.<p>Therefore the criminal justice system has become the catch all. It is expected to handle the mentally ill, the homeless, the drug addicted, problematic families, neighborhood disputes and more.<p>Every now and then, we see the consequences of that divestiture and it shocks us. We see people who only really need mentorship, medical care or friendship being treated like hardened criminals and we see how that treatment corrupts these people with otherwise fairly socially benign failings.<p>So we pull back on the leash of the criminal justice system. These people begin to rejoin our society but with no assets, no standing, little to no mental healthcare. And unsurprisingly this influx of invested citizens gets people's attention. And regardless of whether crime genuinely increases these people are newly visible and easy to associate with any anecdote of crime and violence.<p>So people predictably turn against them and against the pull back. But to fix this problem you have to do two things Americans are loath to do. You must tax and spend money to build institutions that are not police. And you must give those institutions some power to intervene sometimes against the will of those they are intervening with. And I have no illusions. Involuntary commitment to mental health care and drug treatment and community involvement are often ugly but Americans make it clear over and over that even though vagrants and homeless are generally not a problem that much affects those other than the vagrants and homeless themselves we will never collectively tolerate their presence.<p>The options seem to be building institutions to specialize in the assistance and care of these people or continue to use one monolithic system and continue this cycle.
I work in downtown Seattle and the people I see affected by the aggressive homeless folks are those who don't know who they are- people visiting or new to downtown. I know which homeless folks are dangerous from experience and which ones are just panhandling. I've personally been spit at, spit on, attacked with a 2x2x18 piece of wood, and had a brick thrown at me (with surprising force), charged at, sexually assaulted (physically), the list goes on.<p>I've observed the end result of panhandling in various situations: there are the "my family needs help" folks who beg with kids in strollers and at the end of the day get back into their cars in the Target parking lot; there are the folks crying on the street begging for any money to get food, but don't want food directly even if you've already bought it for them with no strings attached; there are also the rare case of someone who was just mugged now trying to get on the bus.<p>The end result is any compassion I had has been slowly whittled away. Actively avoiding human shit or fresh vomit every morning on the sidewalks and keeping an eye out for needles everywhere (watch where you sit on the bus) really just leaves you tired and unsympathetic.<p>Pro Tips: avoid 3rd & Pine / Pike, avoid all of 2nd Ave. in general; avoid parks and downtown after dark; do not touch the needles unless you have to (bus seats); do not go into tall grassy or ground obscured areas as there may be needles; avoid the park beaches as they are toilets for the homeless early in the morning (4-6am).
Several of our offices are around the 3rd and Pike area downtown and it’s pretty common to overhear colleagues saying they feel unsafe walking on sideways around the office.<p>There is rampant and open usage of hard drugs, lots of people hawking used bus tickets or items stolen from Ross Dress for Less or Target, at least a couple instances a day of walkers being interrupted by visibly agitated homeless either shouting nonsense or aggressively begging.<p>Once a month or so there’s an arrest due to a stabbing or shooting within 1-2 blocks of this area.<p>Whatever they’re doing in policy terms at the moment isn’t working.
It's one thing to show compassion and not be overly punitive on those suffering from mental illness or addiction.<p>It's another thing to throw up your hands and let unstable people cause chaos in your streets. That's not good for them or you.
In an interview at the time, Holmes said, "What we're really talking about is to say, 'Just put 'em in jail. And at least that offender will be out of sight and out of mind for a defined period of time. Not receiving treatment, but at least out of the public view.'"
I'm not sure whether he's criticizing this thought or not, but if he IS, why? Having these people out of the public is obviously better than having them attempt to throw people off bridges or scream incoherent nonsense at random bystanders, regardless of whether they receive treatment.
I don't think the issue is so much that cities are too lenient on these people. It's more that the resources available to them are both inappropriate and inadequate.<p>My wife works at in-patient psych unit in my town.<p>Granted, we experience nothing near the scale of problems in cities like Seattle. But even here, our city can't cope with the sheer number of folks with these mental health / substance abuse problems.<p>Many of my wife's patients are dangerous to themselves or to other people. They can only stay on an in-patient unit for so long. After that, the stopwatch starts ticking. How long until the next violent offense?<p>If there were more institutions for these people, somewhere between Hospital and Jail, at least the stopwatch would STOP more often.
What the homeless activists don’t get is that 95% of most people who complain about “homeless” are talking about the visible homeless aka the crazy ones with mental/drug problems.<p>When these activists start shaming you about not caring about the “hidden homeless” it is actually turning more people to be even more apathetic.<p>My conspiracy theory is that the homeless activists secretly need (and promote!) the visible homeless in order to push their agenda for more housing for the “hidden homeless”. Since if the visible homeless are gone, then 95% of most people would be super apathetic to the “hidden homeless” cuz out of sight and out of mind.
The US used to have big mental hospitals for the mentally defective. Those were phased out in the Reagan era.[1][2] They didn't cure many people, but they fed and clothed them, and warehoused them out of sight, so everyone else could get on with life.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/11/30/567477160/how-the-loss-of-u-s-psychiatric-hospitals-led-to-a-mental-health-crisis" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2017/11/30/567477160/how-the-loss-of-u-s...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.thebalance.com/deinstitutionalization-3306067" rel="nofollow">https://www.thebalance.com/deinstitutionalization-3306067</a>
This is a question that will likely sound incredibly offensive, but only because I don’t know of a polite way to say it. But: What’s wrong with the mentally ill in America specifically?<p>It seems like you can’t walk down a single city block in the US without seeing someone screaming at something that’s not there, someone naked and wrapped in blankets, someone saying the earth is about to be destroyed by aliens/god/satan/whatever, someone screaming that they’re going to kill you (and looking quite serious about it), someone pissing on a wall without concern, etc.<p>I’ve seen this <i>nowhere else</i> in the world. I’ve seen homeless who are clearly mentally disturbed to some extent, but they’re usually silently searching for a meal or something without harassing or terrorizing anyone.<p>I know the go to excuse is mental health care in America sucks, but that can’t be the entirety of the problem. I’ve been to some incredibly poor places where basic health care isn’t even an option for most people, yet I still never worried about walking down city streets like I do in America.<p>What makes American cities so particularly bad and absolutely full of people who seem to be bad movie caricatures of mentally ill homeless people?<p>Edit: I am American and lived there most of my life, so it’s nothing to do with simply visiting a bad place. It’s something I saw everywhere
<i>Public frustration with the "visible homeless" found its voice in a recent hourlong special called "Seattle is Dying," by ABC affiliate KOMO-TV.</i><p>This fails to mention that KOMO is owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, which has been building a sort of 'Fox News of broadcast TV' across the United States. Here's one fun story about them from April 2018: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16734739" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16734739</a>
Because homelessness aggravates a controllable condition into an uncontrolled one. Treatment should be provided but it's not going to do much good if the patient is just going to live on the street.<p>You'll find the number of homeless with mental health problems corresponds with the total number of homeless which corresponds directly with housing prices. So until there is a major effort to drive those prices down, this problem will worsen, as it has for a generation now.<p>And of course Sinclair broadcasting is pushing to lock up the poor rather than do that.
Meanwhile, in my neighborhood in San Francisco, my neighbors are suing the city to prevent the construction of a homeless shelter.<p><a href="https://sf.curbed.com/2019/7/11/20689583/homeless-sf-suit-navigation-center-embarcadero-shelter-lawsuit" rel="nofollow">https://sf.curbed.com/2019/7/11/20689583/homeless-sf-suit-na...</a><p>The noise around this in HOA meetings, local body meetings, NextDoor etc has been incredible with anyone trying to propose that a homeless shelter might be a good option vociferously shouted down, accused of "not being a Bay Area native" and a "techie".<p>The only other cause that I've seen my neighbors so fiercely oppose is new housing construction.
I live in Seattle right across the street from a mental health institution. The folks that gather around it are really beyond their wits end.<p>While I think the idea that Seattle is dying is melodramatic bs, it is quite the nuisance to have these folks hanging around. Furthermore, the inadequate public sanitation in Capitol Hill compounds the problem into one of public health.<p>I think that the problem visible in the homeless population is the result of systematic marginalization. The USA has a real fuck-you attitude towards those who aren’t up-and-comers, so the down and out just get ground down further. It’s a tough problem to address, so do your part and try not to recoil in dehumanizing horror when you see these folks.
"Some accuse a reform-oriented local criminal justice system of becoming too tolerant."<p>As an American, I find our emphasis on inflicting maximum pain rather than reform very disturbing. Among "civilized" nations, our criminal justice system is one of the most unforgiving and inhumane.
I'm wondering if starting with better categorization of "homeless" would be important, I'm thinking of something like ETHOS (<a href="https://www.feantsa.org/download/en-16822651433655843804.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.feantsa.org/download/en-16822651433655843804.pdf</a>)<p>Ideally, you figure out how mental illness plays into the different categories, and you may be able to understand effective prevention.<p>My sense is that this goes beyond mere "we need some mental health facilities", because preventing someone in a less secure housing situation from becoming totally roofless may end up being significantly cheaper, i.e., not require specialist mental care and hospitalization, but just a subsidized housing and someone stopping by to make sure the person hasn't regressed.<p>Sadly, it appears nobody with real resources in the US wants to invest in understanding homelessness, so we just lump it all together and try to find ways to let the police deal with it.
This says a lot about a certain space within our current politics...<p><pre><code> Homelessness is a product of mental illness and shouldn't be criminalized... but let's not actually bother to treat these peoples' mental illness, either
</code></pre>
I don't know if this is just wishful thinking or a product of shortsightedness and unthinking hostility towards "criminalization" and all it entails, but yes, this is where we end up.<p>To be clear, mental illness <i>shouldn't</i> be criminalized, but a lot of these people need either intense, voluntary support or in some cases to just be committed for their own good and the safety of others, especially when their mental illness is making them violent.
Just want to say as a Seattlite that the city I experience is not a dangerous hell hole at all. I've lived in Capitol Hill for a decade. I've worked on the hill and in SODO. I regularly go to Pioneer Square, Rainier Valley, downtown, the ID, not to mention Ballard, Fremont, and so on. Homelessness is a serious problem in the city, and something I encounter every day, but I have never been attacked, threatened, etc. I'm sure it happens, but I think the narrative is getting unbalanced. I've stayed in Seattle for so long because it is truly an amazing place to live!<p>Setting all that aside, because the issue is so pressing and the risk at losing empathy so great I volunteer with a local homeless shelter. I encourage everyone who feels this issue is important to find some time to contribute to the solution. You can help make a difference, interact with homeless people as humans not "others", and regain a little agency in the world.
If people decide the homeless are likely to be dangerous their propensity to help them, via money or food or a place to stay or a ride somewhere will plummet to near-zero. Letting assault-prone people walk free because they're mentally ill is a threat to both the normal citizenry and the well-being of the homeless at large. Not to mention the fact that dangerous homeless are much more likely to injure or kill another homeless or otherwise-vulnerable person.
The amount of insane people on the streets is a big reason why I wouldn't want to move to the United States from Europe. I lived in America for 3 months and experienced more problems than in the 25 years before.<p>I truly don't get it why there's so many crazies in United States as opposed to pretty much any other country. Does anybody know? Seems like figuring out where does the discrepancy come from should be the first step before helping them.
One thing that really bothers me about America are the folks who are clearly suffering from severe mental health and substance abuse, yet are roaming the streets unable to take care of themselves. I can't recall another developed or even underdeveloped country (including where I grew up) on this being the norm. Is there research on why this is a uniquely American problem ? Is this due a stronger adherence towards civil liberties here ?
There are mentally ill in every country. Is it statistically higher in America? Is it a heritable condition or is it’s a brain chemical imbalance caused by environmental factors?<p>Surely, there are mentally ill people all over the world, but they don’t congregate in cities like this and roam around uncared for..not by family..not by society..not by anyone. The sheer numbers...It’s unfathomable.
My father is homeless. No matter how much money you throw at him, he will always be homeless. He's an incompetent 54 year old. He needs to be constantly monitored so he doesn't drink or do drugs.<p>The only real solution to this level of homelessness is you need to round them up and essentially put them all in a glorified daycare or rehabilitation centers. Kind of like a lesser prison.
I also live in Seattle. I have no idea how to solve the problem, but I definitely don't think letting dangerous people roam the streets, committing acts of violence without consequence, is the answer.<p>When you have a person that's consistently assaulting random people, that person needs to be forcibly removed from the environment as a matter of public good, regardless of the causal reason for their actions.<p>It's a real shame they were born with a bad brain that makes them incapable of not being a violent menace to society, and that no cost-effective and humane solutions seem to be on the table. But if I have to make a short-term decision on who's rights to sacrifice first: the ill violence committer or the innocent victim, I choose the former 10 times out of 10.
The law is blind. The more we bend this the more our society breaks. Especially in the eyes of our children.<p>Edit: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Justice" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Justice</a>