I think the U.S. overall has low single digits. And even those exist in an extremely dubious legal space, requiring the cops to turn a blind eye to their existence.
Unfortunately I don't know the exact specifics of the situation there as I don't live in the US. I know there's a large homeless problem but not the details. Maybe the policies I mentioned also need other policies to balance them out, policies like you're not allowed to camp on the street and you're not allowed to steal, at all.
Maybe don't allow people to drive under the influence of any drug that's not a stimulant, or improve tests that measure the dose a person is on so we know if they're on normal dose adderal or high on huge doses of meth.
I know law isn't easy to test and iterate but we need something like that in order to improve things, maybe invent temporary laws, specific to certain test cities, which require direct voting to enforce, have a maximum test period and require another vote to lengthen.
Yeah, everything you laid out is perfectly logical and what they should be doing, but unfortunately, progressive politics in the US philosophically opposed to enforcing camping and theft laws. E.g., in San Francisco, it’s legal to steal under $900.
So if I don’t have the money to pay rent, what should I do?
Should I commit suicide?
And the extremely high rents means in the US you don’t even need to be jobless to not be able to afford rent. The lowest 10-20% of paying jobs may not pay enough money for a person to live in the area the job exists.
Homelessness in the US is a massive problem. But the homeless are not the cause of homelessness. They’re the victims. The U.S. has multiple failed policies which allows homelessness to exist in the richest country in the world.
And there are solutions across the ideological spectrum. You can go left and have the government give them housing. This is cheap (way cheaper than shelters) and extremely effective. On the extreme right you can stop NIMBYs from allowing housing to be built, which will in itself drop costs and rent.
The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. But the US has chosen to simply ignore the solutions altogether.
When the U.S. does pick a solution, it chooses to incarcerate them. Which is the worst possible solution because now you’ve led them to joining a gang and predictably becoming real criminals themselves who now learn know how to rob and steal and commit violence to satisfy their need for money.
And it’s also ridiculously more expensive than all the other solutions above.
Not everyone needs to concentrate in a couple big cities. You can't afford to rent in the city go somewhere else that's cheaper. There is an abundance of land in the US not being utilized.
Why must people be subjected to witnessing others misery and self-destruction? If you care so little about their public camping would you also let someone camp in your yard?
You seem to have no sympathy for shop owners that get robbed constantly, if someone robbed you on your way to the car from the grocery store would you also be ok with it?
Even if rent is arguably cheaper outside of the big cities, the costs of living for the poor are more expensive as transportation costs increase, and economic opportunity plunges.
Of course it makes sense for economically precarious people to move to the city. We should expect and applaud them for making this decision. It’s where all the jobs are.
No it's not, stop spreading misinformation. It's illegal as it always has been, and stop listening to police about why they do what they do. They are not honest about it and their incentives and motives are easy to decipher once you choose to.
Homeless people aren't camping! That's where they live. If you want to make homelessness a crime you could prosecute landlords who evict people with nowhere to go. Why isn't that the crime?
Just think for a minute please about the propaganda you've internalized and are now spreading with these positions. These are complex issues and the view of the police, and police-based solutions, are not the only or best approaches.
Half-assed solutions lead to half-assed results. Decriminalization sounds nice to liberals, but when you continue to criminalize the production and sale of drugs you still get almost all of the same problems you had before decriminalization.
