zlacker

>>NaOH+(OP)
Quoting a reddit comment:

> Wow, this is almost a parody. An able-bodied meth addict and convicted felon was illegally living in a public park for 20 years, littering the land around him and forcing rangers to spend countless time and resources cleaning up the mess he left behind, making regular emergency room visits due to his unhealthy lifestyle costing the city hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, constantly doing illegal drugs while not holding down a job and suspiciously acquiring new supplies for his encampment after every sweep (how much do you want to be he engages in illegal activity), and giving an extremely hard time to caseworkers and HHS staff who already have a busy workload (including leaving/getting kicked out of housing multiple times). That one Golden Gate Park Dweller has probably cost the city millions of dollars over the last few years while consuming valuable time from caseworkers and park rangers who could be helping someone else (they're already overloaded). Not to mention the potential damage to the park's environment caused by his littering. What this guy needs is outpatient mental health treatment, and it's honestly criminal that our country has basically no resources for people with mental illness and shoves them into jail or shelters without treating their underlying problems.

>>searea+G7
This is true, I've heard the SF DA and police departments say so as well. They no longer prosecute or convict people of things here also, because there is no purpose, no where for them to be sent for rehabilitation. As a result we have created an open air mental institution combined with an open air drug market. It's getting pretty wild to live here.

>>iancmc+m8
It's absolutely nuts to me that the government finds ways to spend money on literally anything but providing shelter, clothing, food, and support to people. UBI would be cheaper and far more humane than practically any policy--or lack thereof--they can think of.

>>titzer+69
This is an article about a man who was given all those things, repeatedly, and went back to sleeping rough in the park. How would giving him money make any difference?

>>idlewo+Ua
The hope is that UBI would prevent him and people like him from falling into homelessness in the first place.

>>Bryant+Jc
The whole UBI thing has always seemed absurdly naive. What do you think a junky is going to do with that money? That's a rhetorical question. I really seriously doubt having a few extra dollars in the first place is going to either slow mental illness or people picking up drugs, and frankly having a bunch of people out of work with money, for the vast majority of people in my experience, only leads to them picking up bad things like drugs in the first place. One of the most myopic views I read on sites like this, that are obviously heavily biased in their readership, is that if we give people some amount of money for nothing, they'll magically pick up art and entrepreneurship and other productive outlets spontaneously.

What's going to happen, if we're foolish enough to try UBI, is we're going to bleed a bunch more money that immediately gets vaporized (or at least put in the pockets of pushers and alcohol distributors), and then we still will have the same problems for at least 50% of the people that needed the focused benefits like SNAP or Medicaid anyways. We'd be much better served getting very medieval on anyone and everyone selling drugs, and then going from there.