Seattle is dying

[RootSkier]

If there still existed hospitable unsettled land this problem ceases to exist.

[PNWbrit]

Looking at a map of the Seattle area, could the homeless problem just be solved by moving the homeless to one of the Orca Islands?

The Seattle is Dying piece suggested sending them to McNeil Island

[GoldMember]

I'm confused... are you suggesting that other funding sources, like federal programs and nonprofits are covering the over 80k differences in the numbers you are quoting or perhaps you think Seattle spends way more on the homeless than San Francisco?

In the article you linked, non-profits in Seattle spent $746M in addition to the $200M Mofro put up. It's all contained in that article. The $1.06B total economic impact includes health care, emergency services, and other associated costs in addition to the costs of trying to house these folks. Not all that money goes directly to the affected but it all accounts for cost to the community related to homelessness. There has to be more effective ways to get arms around the problem and reduce that expense while providing better care for this group. Throwing more and more money at it isn't showing a great deal of positive impact.

[PNWbrit]

1937 Seattle Hooverville.



Population of USA was 129 million in 1937.

Still sticking with Malthus IAS?

Over all of the other factors I mentioned?

Heroin addict sitting on sidewalk by Pike Place I just talked to said he isn't interested in your wagon train theory.

[Timberridge]

The Seattle is Dying piece suggested sending them to McNeil Island

Looking at the Google satellite map, there looks to be fresh water and plenty of open spaces for camping.

[mtngirl79]

In the article you linked, non-profits in Seattle spent $746M in addition to the $200M Mofro put up. It's all contained in that article. The $1.06B total economic impact includes health care, emergency services, and other associated costs in addition to the costs of trying to house these folks. Not all that money goes directly to the affected but it all accounts for cost to the community related to homelessness. There has to be more effective ways to get arms around the problem and reduce that expense while providing better care for this group. Throwing more and more money at it isn't showing a great deal of positive impact.

You didnt answer my question.

Is it really that hard to admit that you are wrong?

[GoldMember]

About what? The one night census count of homeless in Seattle was 11,634. The amount spent on homelessness in Seattle was $1.06B. Do the math. The economic impact of the homeless on a per capita basis is $91k. For $91k per person, more effective methods of dealing with the issue should be sought, not the least of which is doing a better job of coordinating services between all those providing aid in order to provide services more expeditiously and cost effectively.

[ill-advised strategy]

So we've gone from boot strapping would work to full on homesteading?

Yeah, that's kind of the traditional approach to handling not being able to make it where you are....move on to a place more hospitable. All of the most temperate hospitable locations on earth have been built-out, filled with human development, and polluted. What's been left for the last few hundred years are places fundamentally difficult to settle....arid plains, super cold places, super hot places, swamps and jungles with a lot of poisonous or hostile elements, steep mountains...etc.

The fertile temperate areas with good fisheries and abundant edible flora have been gone for hundreds of years. So here we are: in order to exist people have to participate in civilization, and the construct of this capitalist civilization is that food, clothing, shelter, and medicine are commodities bought and sold for profit. You have to produce profit to trade for things you need to live. Because there are too many human beings for each one of us to just occupy a piece of suitable land fit for sustaining that life.

The people causing all this difficulty in Seattle have nowhere hospitable to go, can't make their own profit, and aren't profitable to anyone else. There's no upside, economic or otherwise, to interacting with those people, and there's a lot of downside risk; so we avoid them as a means of avoiding the variety of risks of interacting with them, and they slowly die.

It's overpopulation, it's capitalism, it's industrialization, it's the breakdown of family and church structures, it's moral bankruptcy. It's all of those things and more.

[Buster Highmen]

We used to live up against the Cascade foothills, the end of the public roads East of the Snoqualmie Valley.

East of there were either timber company holdings or National Forest lands accessed by logging roads. It is well known that there are enclaves of people living up there, some Vietnam vets, some Desert Storm vets, among others. We would see them walking up or down the road, typically with army backpacks and fatigues en route to or from the local grocery store in Carnation.

So there are people out there living like that, likely poaching deer and subsistence living on occasional store supplies in tarp towns or shitshacks cobbled together from commercial leftovers.

Some people just don't fit into the boxes allotted by America moderne and the current financial gradient, as it continues to steepen, allows for fewer and fewer of them to find a respectable place in the city.

Of the hipsters and freaks I knew back in the 70s and 80s around Seattle, many have relocated to places like Republic or Tonasket, scratching out some life there growing weed or making salsa. But those were the ones that had it together at least a little and survived the smack fashions of the 80s.

We lived in shared housing in many of the cheesy, leaking bungalows in the U-District, Wallingford or Fremont when rent was $60/month/room and pizza slices still sold for $2 each.

All that is gone.

The ones that could bootstrap or leave did. Those that couldn't leave went to sleeping rough, many of them emotionally or mentally unstable, many addicted to drugs or alcohol.

So again, that's the point: it's a mental or emotional illness that lies at the root, homelessness is a misnomer.

My brother was one, although saved from being homeless by the graces of my dad, but emotionally castaway, drifting from one boozy bender to the next. And lonely, really, really lonely. And manipulative. I could never break through, my parents agonized about it endlessly oscillating between rage and depression, but also never broke through. But the issue was mental illness in a cold society where it's always someone else's fault, where some ridiculous myth of the self made man is the standard bearer and all the punitive wrath of the Reformationists rains down on those who can't quite pull it together.

Who knows if there is a fix, if there could have been something to help my brother or those like him. I hope that compassion is a good place to start for each of you and that maybe reaching out just to extend some abundance or good will to someone else is in your ability.

[ill-advised strategy]

Population of USA was 129 million in 1937.

Yeah, the kinds of places most supportive of indigent human life were already pretty much built out at that point.

[Buster Highmen]

I just finished an interesting book, :"In Our Mad and Furious City" about contemporary London racial and cultural friction, written largely in street slang. It kind of applies.

[Ted Striker]

Looking at the Google satellite map, there looks to be fresh water and plenty of open spaces for camping.

Two gated communities featuring landscaped grounds, full restaurant, gym, on-site laundry, and community playing fields. Behold the spectacular ocean views from many of the units at the Anderson Pond location, or enjoy the natural seclusion of our Butterworth Reservoir property, where you can take nature walks along the perimeter of the grounds in complete safety due to our wildlife-proof fencing.

Notable former guests include Charles Manson, Mickey Cohen, Robert "Birdman of Alcatraz" Stroud, and former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard Samuel Bowers.

[PNWbrit]

The people causing all this difficulty in Seattle have nowhere hospitable to go.

Yeah I saw that... Society Shuns Sackler Family; Blames Purdue Pharma for Opioid Crisis

breakdown of church structures

You can't have it both ways pilgrim.

Wasn't a breakdown of church structures a big driver of migration to the new world? And led to all that hewing a fabulous living from the virgin prairie that would be just the right tonic for the face tattooed addict shouting at a bus stop sign in downtown Seattle right now.

[Ted Striker]

The ones that could bootstrap or leave did. Those that couldn't leave went to sleeping rough, many of them emotionally or mentally unstable, many addicted to drugs or alcohol.

So again, that's the point: it's a mental or emotional illness that lies at the root, homelessness is a misnomer.

...and trauma (which you alluded to above).

The guy who runs our shelter here in B'ham said something along the lines of they didn’t become homeless from running out of money, they became homeless from running out of relationships.

Even though homelessness is a misnomer, I don't think it's necessarily a bad one. Another local guy who runs HomesNow! says that getting people into a stable environment is the first step toward mental/emotional stability.

It's tough to have dignity when the rest of society views you as subhuman.

[The AD]

Yeah, that's kind of the traditional approach to handling not being able to make it where you are....move on to a place more hospitable.

I'd say the reason homeless people congregate in big cities is that these are the most hospitable places for them.

[Ted Striker]

Resources. The city is so rich that its cast-offs are still valuable. Perfectly edible food is discarded for its unattractiveness.

[PNWbrit]

I'd say the reason homeless people congregate in big cities is that these are the most hospitable places for them.

We need some educational videos for these homeless folks...



Part one "Charles Ingalls never needed Oxycontin for his aching back"

[ill-advised strategy]

Yeah I saw that... Society Shuns Sackler Family; Blames Purdue Pharma for Opioid Crisis



You can't have it both ways pilgrim.

Wasn't a breakdown of church structures a big driver of migration to the new world? And led to all that hewing a fabulous living from the virgin prairie that would be just the right tonic for the face tattooed addict shouting at a bus stop sign in downtown Seattle right now.

The most supportive parts of North America were full of people well before Euros ever arrived.

God damn man, wtf is so challenging to your schema about reckoning with overpopulation?

[ill-advised strategy]

Yeah, actually trying to scrabble out a living on the arid plains because nice coastal rivermouths were all built-out cities is a rather prime example of what I’m saying about how long it’s been since the really prime human habitat has been overpopulated.

Btw...what’s your interaction with homeless people anyway? I spend time with them 6 days a week. How about you?

[PNWbrit]

The most supportive parts of North America were full of people well before Euros ever arrived.

Full?!

So that's the solution? Pre Columbus native American population density levels? Somewhere between 2 to 18 million is figure I've seen for North America.

wtf is so challenging

That's not challenging, it's just ridiculous.

[ill-advised strategy]

I'd say the reason homeless people congregate in big cities is that these are the most hospitable places for them.

Yes. No shit.

I think the phrase I used earlier was “least inhospitable”

[ill-advised strategy]

Full?!

So that's the solution? Pre Columbus century native American population density levels? Somewhere between 2 to 18 million is figure I've seen for North America.



That's not challenging, it's just ridiculous.

Fuck you.

[muted]

That's the proper response to PNWbrit, he's not worth your time.

[ill-advised strategy]

Full?!

So that's the solution? .

Ya. Full.

Where did I say I was solving anything? If anything I’m saying this complex of problems and a few others are virtually unsolvable. I’m characterizing them as outgrowths of a much larger and significantly more intractable problem.

[glademaster]

That's the proper response to PNWbrit, he's not worth your time.

That's a call to arms for the PNW circle jerk crew.