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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]https://www.usich.gov/homelessness-statistics/dc/

DC's official homeless population isn't even 1% of the total population. With the amount of wealth and highly educated people, we have in this area, we could completely eradicate homelessness and also provide drug treatment , mental health services, and employment training  to those who need it. Also, while drug use rates in the US are comparable between Whites and Blacks, if you are a BIPOC person and caught doing drugs, you are 3X as likely to go to jail. Once you go to jail, your chance for employment and housing options narrow considerably. The path from jail spirals into drug use and living on the street sadly, all too often.
 
https://www.hamiltonproject.org/charts/rates_of_drug_use_and_sales_by_race_rates_of_drug_related_criminal_justice

Also, the DC's rapid rehousing program is a joke. It can take 5 years to get in, but you only have 12 months of subsidy. After that, you are on your own again. If you have mental health or substance abuse issues, a year is an unreasonably short amount of time to try to find employment or go into treatment especially when you have to navigate the byzantine DC bureaucracy to get those services. 
https://dhs.dc.gov/page/rapid-rehousing-individuals

Tents make homeless people more visible because they used to live under bridges or wooded areas. Their visibility makes some people annoyed that despite their own wealth, power and status having to see poor people as their neighbors does not work with their image of what a "nice neighborhood" should be.

It's more of a question of values: what kind of city do we want to be? One that ignores, despises and makes those who have fallen onto hard times navigate never ending hurdles to gain access to services/puts them on a one-way bus to somewhere else or a city that wants to truly care for all of its citizens in the ways that they need it and give readily access to services for them? [/quote]

The homeless living on DC's streets are living there because they chose to, not because DC does not have other options for them. We as a city or even a country do not want to believe this, but we have a HUGE mental health loophole that these people have fallen through. At the end of the day you cannot effectively treat people who do not volunteer for those services. If you don't want mental health treatment, you end up on the streets and the city does nothing about it.

So this less than 1% that someone was talking about earlier, it will always exist until we start involuntary treatment. Until then as a city we have decided to accept the issue.[/quote]

This. Our whole approach to mental health care fell apart in the 1980s when many mental hospitals were closed, driven by BOTH a desire to reduce costs AND calls for more "autonomy" for the mentally ill.  Camping in public space should not be an option and is not "compassionate".  Options for the unhoused should be (1) placement in a drug-free shelter; (2) detox; (3) mental hospital.  And yes, I realize that all of these options need to be available, which sometimes they are not now.  Also mentally ill/addicted should not be in the general population shelters.  [/quote]
The people preaching for more autonomy were actually the same ones motivated by reducing costs and cutting “socialized” health care. Literally the same people. It was an astroturf campaign to promote a right wing ideological agenda and it was very successful. [/quote]

No, the ACLU wasn't promoting a right wing ideological agenda.  And Reagan was looking to give block grants and push services back to state control.  But who cares now?

We've learned that community-based mental health care is a failure for serious diagnoses, and we need to swing the pendulum back to some involuntary treatment.  We know how to make it humane and give people as much freedom as possible while making them stay on meds and living in a clean, healthy shelter.[/quote]

You sound so utterly reasonable. [/quote]

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