from Hacker News

<1% of homeless Portlanders found permanent housing in 10 months of city sweeps

by trynewideas on 2/18/23, 7:55 PM with 47 comments

• by flangola7 on 2/18/23, 11:03 PM

  "Sweeps" without the offer of reliable and private shelter are little more than pointless cruelty. "Out of sight, out of mind" is not a rational way to approach any kind of problem.

  Slight tangent story: While overall I think open carry laws are not the best idea, one positive use case I've seen manifest in Texas is mutual aid groups. Usually they run unofficial soup lines and things like that, but they also started lining up conspicuously armed with rifles and body armor around a homeless camp whenever police try to "sweep" the people living there. Not making threats or pointing their weapons - behaving perfectly legally per Texas legislation and case law - just being present and offering to happily leave if the city provides a written and signed one year apartment lease to everyone in the camp, or something in that vein.

  It's usually effective in at a minimum getting the police to buzz off, and sometimes at getting real help to these people since "casually bully and push them around" is taken away as an option.

• by throwayyy479087 on 2/18/23, 8:58 PM

  This is because Portland's homeless (like SF and Seattle), are not like Houston or NYCs homeless. They are much happier being homeless than housed, on meth instead of opiates (like the rest of the US), and generally reject the system and have no interest in being a part of it.

  Baltimore was just able to significantly reduce their homeless population by giving them housing. Portland needs the Portuguese "rehab or jail" mentality. What they're doing now is NOT working.

• by Tiktaalik on 2/19/23, 2:00 AM

  > Two-thirds of people swept from camps declined the offer of temporary shelter

  This is not terribly surprising. People are regularily preyed upon in shelters, suffering abuse and having their things stolen.

  A few years ago when many homeless were camping in Strathcona Park in Vancouver, I was speaking with a person there and they said that they were offered housing in an apartment owned by a slumlord and he stayed there one night and left to sleep in the park again, because the situation in the apartment was worse than staying in the park.

  I don't doubt his story but it is absolutely remarkable in that it speaks to the incredibly low quality of shelter and housing that is offered to people. I am not at all surprised that people would feel safer and healthier sleeping outside.

• by jschveibinz on 2/19/23, 12:00 AM

  It is my opinion that the word “homeless” is used to describe so many different kinds of people, with so many different lifestyles, situations, illnesses and/or contingencies, that I find it difficult to even comprehend what a “solution” could look like, and how housing might even fit into that solution. It is a failure on the part of society and our leadership to try to use one word to describe the whole problem.

• by more_corn on 2/18/23, 11:04 PM

  These numbers point towards a failing in the process not a failing in the people who are homeless. If you offer someone a place to live no strings attached they’re going to take it. Once housed it’s orders of magnitude easier to treat the causes of homelessness.

  Every time you complicate or add a restriction you lose people out of the system. Sounds like there are about twelve restrictions or hoops to jump through in the Portland system.

  Housing first programs in Salt Lake City showed phenomenal success. Get people houses and then take care of the other things like medical care, mental health care, addiction treatment.

  Know why the phenomenally successful program isn’t around anymore? Republicans pulled funding to it out of a weird and broken ideological belief. Not based on the facts of its effectiveness.

  At a certain point if your ideology doesn’t allow for the value of facts it’s just broken.

• by AtlasBarfed on 2/19/23, 3:30 AM

  "permanent housing"

  Ok, so what exactly is permanent housing in modern society? If you have housing, you have rent, taxes, utilities. If those aren't paid then that housing isn't so permanent. I'd hazard that the "permanent housing" has a lot of rules and requirements that homeless people may find challenging, and also therefore isn't so "permanent".

  Even if the housing is free, then it is sponsored, subject to the line item whims of local politics and funding. So is that "permanent"?

  If you're permanent, do you become subject to harassment by other neighbors and police?

  Is the "permanent" housing contingent on serpentine regulations, paperwork, applications, etc? Reviews, checkins, etc? Not so permanent then.

• by xyzelement on 2/19/23, 2:07 AM

  I don't know about Portland specifically but in most places there's a massive correlation between the homeless and hopeless drug addiction.

  Good hearted people think that if only the homeless had a chance at housing, they'd live a normal life but it's generally backwards - they are homeless because they are unfortunately really screwed up and just giving them a chance to live indoors isn't going to fix that.

• by olliej on 2/18/23, 11:34 PM

  Well yes, because “sweeps” are intended punish and criminalize being homeless, not actually doing anything to fix it.

  Step 1 is the seizure of property (which questionably constitutional)

  Step 2 is to not provide them anywhere to actually live

  Step 3 is to arrest them when they break the law now that they have no shelter at all, and so inevitably break some law.

  Then the private prison owners get money from the government, and in a bunch of states you get slaves. Win-win for everyone who apparently matters.

• by LatteLazy on 2/18/23, 10:11 PM

  Homelessness is a symptom. The actual diseases underlying it at mental illness and addiction (and under them are deep social disfunction). Sadly none of those core issues are really treatable.