Monday, September 11, 2017

It was only a matter of time.

After 15 die in hepatitis outbreak, San Diego begins sanitary street washing.

Homelessness is not a new thing. This new breed of homeless is. The hoarder homeless. I started yapping about this a few months ago when I went through a part of Oakland that always has had homeless. This time however I was completely stunned beyond words.  I thought it was completely insanity that governments were letting people live this way.

The absolute filthy unsanitary conditions were gobsmacking. And that's saying a lot since these people are by definition - homeless. The amount of trash they were accumulating was EPIC. The city honest to gawd had to bring out bulldozers to clean up. This new breed of homeless won't even make an effort to shit outside of their campsites. And now it's an honest to goodness health crisis in San Diego and I would not be surprised at all to see this spread to other cities. READ OAKLAND.

In Sacramento recently they tore down a homeless encampment that had buckets of rats and vomit and "whatever". I'm not exaggerating. These people are mentally ill, and I'm not even sure if they are capable of caring for themselves.

In San Jose a week doesn't go by that an encampment doesn't go up in flames. If you drive the 680 freeway in San Jose every few miles you can see where the homeless have set the trees on fire. And they won't even move to a new place. They are like - well, at least this place won't burn now. Then they set camp right back up in the burn site. It's all fun and games until they burn down an actual home. Until then people just turn a blind eye.

But now we are starting to see the cost of neglectful humanitarianism. 400 people have been affected by Hep A in San Diego. They say they were "mostly" homeless. Mostly.

I would be interested to know how much cities are spending on this problem now. When you have to power wash streets, and bring in bulldozers - that's a lot of resources. I believe the site in Sacramento cost a few million dollars to clean up.

I can't even believe that I would say such a thing, but maybe these people need to be warehoused for the good of themselves and others. And that's pretty effed up. I mostly believe if you aren't hurting anyone else you should be able to do what you want. But we have crossed that line now. They are hurting other people.

4 comments:

  1. It's really a shame that TPTB think they are doing the mentally ill a favor by leaving them to their own devices. Bring back the asylums!

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  2. I'm not sure I quite feel comfortable about locking them up either. "The System" is as dysfunctional as they are. I'm not sure that's helping them either. Or us as taxpayers. The thing is most of them are so antisocial you can't get them into a halfway house sort of thing. Sometimes "the system" creates more problems than it solves. Yet I don't know how we let this go on.

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  3. It'll sound weird at first, but here it is: zoning and building regulations prevent cities from creating dedicated and enforced areas for homeless camps.

    Tenements do not and should not have to deal with gold-plated zoning and building standards. However, since they're going to be eyesores and a drain on these cities, nothing says they need to be near these cities either.

    So why not solve two problems at once: stick the homeless camps next to charity-sponsored farms. Hell, solve three problems at once: sell the surplus produce the farms produce to virtue-seeking city liberals and use it to improve the camps!

    Otherwise, I believe you'll find that they were already harming people: they were grifting money out of people without giving them anything in return. Whether they were doing this with their hands out to individual people or to the government doesn't really matter.

    I don't see anything wrong with most of these people physically that they can't do honest-to-God farm work. They can be as anti-social as they'd like while picking carrots, shelling peas, and digging for potatoes.

    What's wrong with "the system" is that there are simply not enough incentives for these people to behave better.

    For what it's worth, yes, I do know about that old Texas prison that worked like this, where the prisoners had to raise their own food. It kept a lot of idle hands less idle and less busy with evil, and the deterrent wasn't something to laugh at.

    And some good came out of it:

    "As part of the program, prisoners grew vegetables which were sent to food banks throughout Texas."

    There's no reason California can't do this except that it offends certain easily offended people.

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  4. "What's wrong with "the system" is that there are simply not enough incentives for these people to behave better."

    See I've grown to believe that is not the case. There are some, that no amount of deterrent will make a difference. They have impulse control problems. But being in the "system" there is almost a certainty that they will not be able to get a job. The reason there are so many black kids in prison is because they get pinched for smoking pot or something small, and then they can't work. Then they are a permanent member of the "system". I think we need new ideas. I think to some degree that we should start turning these things into administrative issues. Maybe a huge fine and counseling. I'm really resistant to the current system that robs people of that ability within reason obviously. And yeah - it's their fault. But making them unemployable doesn't help us. I don't care about them as much. But we then pay for them for life. They will just be forever in the system. Maybe they could create a something where they could work off a conviction. Not just be locked up. Some people will be lazy and say no - but those who are willing to put in the extra effort can get points towards no longer being unemployable.

    I like a prison that teaches some kind of skill - like farming. Keeps them busy inside. Teaches them something. And I'm not a bleeding heart (anymore). I just think we want people to work.

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