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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]i'm hearing a lot of voices on social media that don't seem to understand that these people ARE offered shelter and/or housing and solutions but they reject them in favor of not living under restrictions. In particular, the people who were living on 17th St in Dupont were active drug users who were not ready to get clean. I don't know what kind of treatment options DC has to offer, but EVERYONE was trying to get them housed and they preferred setting up their camp and getting vemo'ed money from passersby and crapping in the alley by the elementary school. People in DC DO NOT have to be on the streets and everyone is acting like these are healthy people who couldn't make rent and now they are destroying their tents. That is not the correct narrative. The tents I've witnessed are a public health threat.[/quote]

Sounds like you’re not cut out for [b]true city living[/b], then. Still plenty of clean and tidy Mayberrys out there to choose from.[/quote]

NP here. Actually, it sounds like your idea of "true city living" is stuck in the 1950-1995 period of decline and disinvestment that we have been working to recover from for the last quarter century. Cities are meant to be glorious. They don't have to suck and they don't suck by definition, only by default when dysfunction drives people who have options away. Why on earth do you support this return to the bad old days? [/quote]

Read your history. Cities have always been dirty and overcrowded.[/quote]

Crowded, yes. That's only a problem when services are inadequate and people are allowed to be selfish.They're only dirty when civil society breaks down and the populace tolerates people who create filth and an ineffective system for removing filth.

The problem here is not that there are a lot of people, but that DC tolerates (sometimes celebrates) antisocial behavior and is insufficiently prepared to keep things clean. It doesn't have to be that way. Cities can also be palaces of culture and education with grand architecture and vibrant businesses. [/quote]
I am trying to think of an example of a city that fits your utopian ideal and am really having a hard time thinking of one. [/quote]

+1 -- That's because this "utopian ideal" only exists within the confines of the PP's mind. He/she/they are clueless.[/quote]

Nobody is asking for utopia, and you are setting up a straw man. All people want is the DC of 10 years ago, when homicides were less than half, car thefts were low, you could walk around "hip" areas without worrying about violent crime or being mugged. That's not utopia, it's just a decent city that is arresting bad people and maintaining police presence where needed, and, oh yeah, PROSECUTING and following through on arrests. I guess a lot of city dwellers want to watch their city burn. I don't care I live in McLean but have fun with all that![/quote]
It’s an incredible turnaround. PP describes a utopian model of a city and then turns around and accuses the people remarking upon that as “setting up a straw man”. [/quote]

Different PPs. But I agree that some European and Asian cities do generally better. I don't have personal experience of Asian cities, but Singapore is famously no-nonsense about quality of life infractions. I have lived in Central London, though, where the air is dirty but the pavement is relatively clean, trash doesn't blow through the streets or clog the gutters, and in wealthy areas, the windows and front steps get washed regularly. At least during my residence from 2000 to 2006, there were a lot of "rough sleepers" in commercial districts, but they didn't pitch tents and spread their garbage around with impunity. They certainly weren't allowed to take over public spaces in prosperous communities like DC has permitted here.

London also has something DC never really achieved even in the best of times: a thousand varied cultural happenings every day throughout the city. Obviously DC is much smaller, but recently there's also this enthusiastic rejection from our politicians of anything that threatens to get too nice. We can't have nice things here.

I traveled widely in Europe while I lived in London and saw a range of cleanliness/homelessness/crime/cultural life scenarios. But yes, in general there is a higher premium placed on quality of life, architecture, and culture in most European cities, which have not been abandoned by people who have choices the way DC was in the 2nd half of the 20th century and, I worry, will be again as DC embraces its worst-behaving inhabitants at the expense of its productive citizens.

This isn't an argument against compassion or care, but allowing mentally ill drug users to make public places unusable is not actual compassion or care. It's entirely ineffective virtue signaling.[/quote]

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