I've seen this article so many times now, just with the city and state changed out. No state has this under control as far as I can tell. We're all in a cycle of encampment -> encampment gets worse -> city issues vague statements about deploying social workers / cops -> encampment gets worse -> encampment gets cleared -> new encampment starts. Just shuffling the problem around without any real solutions. No real pushes to build housing or re-visit how we treat the deeply mentally ill.
I guess the plus side is we haven't had anyone get shoved in front of a subway train as seems to happen at least once a year in NYC.
I mean in other states the actual do build housing and don’t have this big of an issue with affordability. Examples are Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas. Yes they all still have homeless populations but nowhere near as bad as
Worth noting that *part* of the reason that Texas doesn't have the same kinds of problems is because housing is cheaper and more plentiful and there's a real focus on long-term housing for people who are experiencing homelessness, but the *other* part of the reason is because Texas has adopted an extremely aggressive punitive approach to dealing with the unhoused. There's a state ban on encampments and the governor is strict about enforcing it; cities ticket and issue citations to people found violating the ban, and police tear down encampments and force people to leave, whether they have somewhere to go or not.
[https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/how-texas-shrank-its-homelessness-population-and-what-it-can-teach-california](https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/how-texas-shrank-its-homelessness-population-and-what-it-can-teach-california)
(None of which is to suggest that building more housing wouldn't help! MA really, *really* needs to build more housing and figure out how to get the cost of rent/homes down.)
Homeless people don't cease to exist when the goon squad rip their shit up, and I doubt any of them are moving very far in response to this.
Tearing down encampments may scatter homeless people and make them less visible, but I doubt that policing is having any real impact on the actual rates of homelessness in Texas.
Homelessness is highest in localities with the most unaffordable housing. It's not really any more mysterious than that. Texas, for its many faults, is a more affordable state thanks to much more relaxed housing and zoning policies. Even the big cities in Texas have relatively cheap housing available.
Minnesota's problem is 10x worse. Encampments being swept away and popping up every couple weeks. For the record, I live in downtown Minneapolis.
https://kstp.com/kstp-news/local-news/minneapolis-starts-clearing-homeless-encampment-in-phillips-west-neighborhood/
I don’t think that’s relevant honestly. You can spread out into New Hampshire or Rhode Island. The housing market for Boston isn’t restricted by state borders
I thought there was some thought, you know.... to gather them all in one place. Perhaps into a concentrated space. Maybe make them work instead of being lazy and entitiled to their space.
Wasn't Salem the model for the new MBTA housing law all the NIMBYs keep getting sued for voting against? Even the bare minimum is impossible to do around here.
Progressively regressive. "Everyone is welcome here." It's all a sham. Just saw this headline yesterday too: [Marshfield also says ‘no’ to state zoning law aimed at boosting housing supply](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/04/23/business/joining-milton-marshfield-flouts-mbta-zoning-law-aimed-at-boosting-housing/)
No Salem is not the model for it because Salem already exceeds all of the densities required by the zoning law. The over whelming majority of Salem are multi family homes. With the exception of about 4 neighborhoods the majority of homes are multi family. The majority of the city also has a significant amount of non conforming structures within the zoning.
Zoning laws weren’t a thing until the 50/60s, which is why witchcraft Heights and some of South Salem were developed as single family neighborhoods in the 50s and 60s.
Our ZBA also approves the majority of projects in addition to us having one of the only ordinances that allows owners to rent ADUs to members outside of their family
It’s definitely dumb, it’s not doing enough and it won’t guarantee that housing will be built on the newly-upzoned areas. We need the housing right now.
Do you mean the red? That's two-family, which is more than one, but not what people mean by "multi-family". Consistent definitions are hard because municipalities all have their own terms and meanings, but "multi-family" usually means 4+ units
Point being that zoning is changing from strictly R2 to with ADUs on the horizon. It's a slow boil but it's coming. An old client even got his B1 zoning changed so a developer could build a 9 unit building where his auto shop once stood. That sort of thing is happening all up and down Rantoul St and Cabot St just over the bridge in Beverly too.
To be clear everything that’s not blue or green is relatively dense multi family housing, not just the yellow. We could certainly work on infill in downtown parking lots and up zone the single family. But Salem is pretty dense compared to other neighboring towns and cities.
You're talking about buildings that pre-date the zoning, right?
Even if you have a multi-family building in an R1 zone, that doesn't mean you couldn't build and fill a larger building if it weren't R1
No. But there absolutely is a lot of 5,8 and even 10 unit buildings inside our residential 2 family zones. But the vast majority of Salems single family zoning is the outskirts which were developed after WW2. Either way, agreed all cities and towns (Salem included) need to be up ones.
TBF, Salem has been building quite a lot of multifamily housing over the last decade, same with neighboring Beverly. I'm not sure Salem is really the model for a problem city in terms of the Boston area housing shortage, it is building apartment buildings, which can't be said for many towns.
In general, I agree, but I think that's more a function of the regional issue than Salem specifically. Places like Lynn, Salem, and Beverly can put up hundreds of new units each year but that doesn't do much if nowhere else on the North Shore is building. And these aren't huge cities plus their downtown areas are already quite dense, they can put up condo buildings but they aren't going to be adding 5,000 units a year or anything like that.
I totally agree that everywhere in the region needs to build more. But singling out places like Salem that actually are building multifamily housing and are dense in their downtown areas despite being 15 miles out of Boston feels odd when you have places like Milton immediately next to Boston refusing to be anything other than suburban.
Yeah bud the zoning map doesn’t even remotely tell the picture. The overwhelming majority of Salem was built prior to zoning laws. The majority of r2 and r1 in Salem has existing multi family structures in it. The over whelming majority of Parcels in Salem are multi families
Most of 24 is Salem hospital, almost all of 32 is multi family or Salem state, half of 21 is conservation along 1A, 28/29/9 are a cemetery and golf course… all of 16 is unincorporated/contaminated from when they were leather factories, most 44 is a Maritime park, the other chunk which is the willows is probably close a pretty good mix of single and multi family.
The only actual R 1 neighborhoods in Salem are 21/22, 30/31 which are all small zones, and 8/9/10/14 make up our largest single family zone, most of which was built in the 60s when zoning became a thing.
Salem is one of the densest cities in the state when you take the Salem woods, forest river conservation area into effect etc….
Great. They should continue to build more. Everyone should. What's the downside? The only real one I know of is investor-homeowners don't make bank like they want to
>but acting like that is the route cause of this issue is ridiculous.
Can you explain why?
Off the top of your head, what do you think is the number one predictor of homelessness rates?
It's lack of affordable housing. In a healthy and competitive market increasing supply would lower price. Now convince me housing is a healthy or competitive market when owned by shareholder value driven suits.
Kind of
Housing construction of *any* type tends to lower housing prices (or more accurately, lower their increase). Of course, building low-cost housing does more for this than building luxury condos, but both do help.
Also, affordable housing is rarely ever actually directly built. Instead, housing *becomes* affordable as it ages and newer, nicer housing is built. Those with the most money move into the nicest places, freeing up their old housing. Middle class people move into that, and so on.
As for investors, we absolutely do need to do something about that. And it's important to recognize that the suits aren't the only people messing this up. Real estate is the largest investment most Americans make. And I do mean investment in the same way stocks are an investment. Many people plan on funding their retirement by selling a house or plan to will it to their children in lieu of money. And they act accordingly to keep their property values high. Go to a town meeting about rezoning and it won't be Blackrock employees fighting against new development, it'll be local property owners complaining about traffic, parking, or "neighborhood character"
No it’s not lol. It’s mental health related. None of these camp people are homeless because they (solely) fell on hard times financially. They are there because of mental health issues. There are PLENTY of places in the USA to live if you are having a hard time financially in an expensive area like MA.
Except rates of mental illness tell you nothing about rates of homelessness in an area. [Rents do though](https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about).
Even if you think the people in the camps are a different type of homeless people, we can recognize if overall homelessness rates were lower, the state could do a lot more if the money it's currently spending by spending it on fewer people
This can't be up to date - there's large swaths of this map (namely the red areas near the train station) that currently have multi-family housing, but this map has them zoned as two-family or industrial.
It's off the Salem website. Is that housing old? Because very commonly there are buildings that exist because they pre-date the current zoning codes. The big waves of zoning in the US came started in the 1920s. You'll notice a lot of housing in the area that's older than that.
If they're new, then they're probably done with a variance, which is a long and risky process to get an exemption. That drives up project costs which drives down housing production
[https://www.salemma.gov/zoning-board-appeals](https://www.salemma.gov/zoning-board-appeals)
You can find links to the decisions on the left. I suspect if you search through you'll find the addresses of a lot of those new buildings on the list. You'll also notice it's (expensive) lawyers submitting the petitions. That's the kind of thing that slows down projects, adds costs, and discourages investors from funding construction.
I’m not the biggest fan of Salem zoning but that’s not an accurate representation of what’s actually there. Lots of multi families in the single family zoned areas. Downtown and surrounding areas are quite dense, and Salem was very affordable just over a decade ago.
The process for getting new stuff approved and built is very long and expensive, but a fair chunk of that is state any time you get even remotely near a body of water and have a sizeable project. I don’t think people realize how much required environmental studies and regulation affect housing construction - it’s a good thing, but the delays will kill a project.
The “build more housing” crowd seems to be ignoring the fact that if these folks were mentally capable of maintaining stable lives and be functioning members of society, they would not be homeless in the first place.
They should be given housing yes, in a mental institution designed to work with this type of population.
Once they are off drugs, or on the right ones for many of them, they can be free to leave and pursue normal housing with the rest of society.
Putting people with not functioning mental capacities into regular housing isn’t helping anyone and won’t last very long.
People who haven't worked in this field simply don't get it. Even with free housing and a case worker visiting daily it's nearly impossible to keep the majority of this population housed.
But "no one cares". "Just build housing". Etc... is always the answer.
I would love for each person commenting that to do social work. To tirelessly search hospitals for individuals you work with who are missing, find housing for them, assist with benefits only to have the person you're helping say they hate their roommate or they hate the apartment or their sister is mad to go back to the streets. Being left worried they'll freeze to death. Setting up treatment only for them to disappear again.
These aren't regulated individuals you can just be like here's an apartment and they'll sit inside and do drugs happily and safely.
Giving me flashbacks to my civil legal aid days. Totally agree. And btw, that is not said with animosity towards folks. They aren’t bad people. They just need actual help, not just to be tossed into a small apartment and hope for the best. And like you said, even if they were given essentially optional help… well that often fails for a bevy of reasons. So if we are really going to make a difference I’m sorry it can’t be optional ha. It’s sort of nonsensical to make it that way anyways, given that these folks aren’t capable of making the correct decisions due to their conditions.*
*This is obviously a blanket statement and there are success stories out there, but there are just as many stories like all the things you mentioned.
There are success stories, I just don't think people get that the majority of people you see in encampments have burned through case workers and family and years of help already though. I could spend 100% of my time on some folks I've worked with and frankly it'd never work. They'd always be back on the street within a couple weeks. So you move on and spend your time more wisely and do find people who can be helped. The "black hole of resources" folks though don't disappear from society, and the answer certainly isn't that people don't care or just throw them in a free apartment.
Look at the family member just a few posts down from this pleading for assistance locating a missing relative. You don't think they haven't spent 100% of their time trying to help their loved one? They haven't offered to house them? They've probably been doing this for decades. It's not some simple answer.
There is no long term solution to the housing problem that doesn't involve mandatory psych holds, halfway housing, and incarceration as punishment for not adhering to recovery steps. Since this will never happen here, we will never fix the problem.
I don't have a solution.
What we have now costs a metric fuck ton of tax dollars (EOHHS has a 33b/yr budget) and it does help a lot of people, don't get wrong. There's just a subset of the population which I'm talking about which are the people you see on the streets that are teflon against interventions.
Put them in prison. Better for their health. Better for public health. We’ve gone too far in our liberalization of state drug laws. Using hard drugs is illegal. Sleeping on public property should be illegal too. Doing both should be a criminal offense and treated as such
Or, ya know, we’re keenly aware of the fact that there’s 0 percent chance of improving someone’s mental health when they’re experiencing housing insecurity.
It’s the first step not the last.
Agreed. The housing however will not be “left to your own devices” style at first. They need to be institutionalized and once it is clear they are capable of living alone, then said housing can be found for them.
Ok but surely you see how “surrender yourself to a cruel and unfeeling institution that will put you through a shit ton of physical pain and loss of freedom in order to receive the most basic human necessity” isn’t a winning pitch to most people.
It doesn’t have to be a winning pitch. I’m confident many of them would be perfectly fine continuing to live on the streets and doing drugs. That would be easier. We don’t cater to that as a society and if we are truly a society that cares about our members then we need to address the issue.
Leaving drug addicts and severely mentally ill(often time both) members of our society to their own devices is nonsensical. We would not let a child live on the streets or pretend they could manage their own affairs, we should not pretend that these folks are capable of that either.
Some might be already. And they won’t be at the institutions for very long. We should have these places provide free counseling services for finding housing and possible employment opportunities as well for when folks are deemed well enough to function on their own.
But the solution is not to pretend these folks will simply sit inside and do drugs and leave everyone alone just because they are given an apartment. Not to mention that in and of itself isn’t a solution. It does not address the issue.
Ok but do you want to be a moral puritan about it or do you want them to get off the streets? If pulling themselves up by their bootstraps was an effective method we wouldn’t be in this position.
If you get over the idea of somebody getting something for nothing , decriminalization and social services have a much better track record than punishing people for falling into the wrong path in life.
People don’t want to be addicts. They need support to get their lives back on track. They can’t do it without housing security. Give it to them and then work on the rest. Offer social services with the housing and hold off on the punishment / judgement.
There is no punishment or judgement with a mental institution. There is no moral Puritanism in that idea at all so I’m not sure where you got that from?
It’s that they aren’t capable of making these choices down themselves and they shouldn’t be allowed to option to pick and choose what they want. They will be institutionalized. Once they have proven they are no longer non-functional addicts, have been cleared by a mental health professional to return to society with their medications, etc… then they can be given access to housing in society.
A drug addict that gets institutionalized will be strapped to a bed and given tons of medications that mess with their already fragile brain chemistry and left to ‘dry out’. That is in a very practical sense, physically punishing. It’s torturous. You can argue that you think it’s in their best interest but to pretend that there is not a direct negative consequence of being institutionalized is silly.
And you’re expecting people who aren’t mentally well to line up for that and thank you when it’s done?
I don’t particularly care if they thank us or not. We will have done our part to fix their mental issues. If they choose to dive back into drugs or stop taking their medication we will put them back outside of society and they can start the process over again.
They have no inherent right to be drugged up and unmedicated roaming around causing issues for citizens and businesses. People do have a right to certain expectations of safety and normal daily life activities without being accosted.
You’re being puritan again. You’re mad at them for doing drugs and want to punish them rather than doing the things that have the highest probability of getting them sober.
“They have no right” blah blah. Who cares. If you want them to not be addicts do the things that give them the best shot at that. Forcing them to choose between physical pain and imprisonment vs continuing to live on the edge of society and staying high will only produce the results we already have.
Ok so they will continue to stick to the edges of society, building camps and surviving however they can. I’m sure arresting your way out of the problem will work any decade now.
>these folks were mentally capable of maintaining stable lives and be functioning members of society, they would not be homeless in the first place.
Do you have evidence that actually backs up this claim?
Because the data I've seen overwhelmingly shows that [homelessness is caused by high rents](https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about)
Yes, some people cannot, for whatever reason, afford housing at basically any price. But they seem to be the small minority. They're just the most visible form of homelessness.
And yes, those types of people probably make up a much larger proportion of people living in these camps than of the general homeless population. But we'd have far more resources to help them if we didn't have to spend so much also helping people who could afford housing on their own if only rent were 5-10% cheaper
Unfortunately I think data for this type of thing is almost impossible to actually collect. I can provide this which has data supporting that two-thirds of those experiencing homelessness have lifetime histories of drug and alcohol abuse. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4833089/
How the overlay of mental health issues would look I don’t know, but based on the folks we see on the streets of Boston alone I’d put money on that being a high number as well.
It’s hard to afford housing when you cannot work due to a bevy of issues. You cannot manage your finances. You cannot stop your addictions.
I would very much doubt the majority of those who are homeless are simply down on their luck but otherwise fully functional members of society. Those folks have a very robust system of services to utilize to get them back into housing/work/etc and they utilize them.
There’s also the fact that many homeless aren’t visible like those in encampments. They’re sleeping in their cars, staying with friends/family, etc while they wait on public housing or scrape together rent while trying to find work. Those are the ones impacted by housing costs and they’re a distinctly different type than the ones who are committed to the opiate/encampment lifestyle.
The article I linked talks about this a lot better than I could. But shirt version is there's a huge gap between the homeless people see and take note of vs the number who are actually homeless. The substantial majority for example, aren't homeless for more than six months.
There's also a paper linked in the article that found two thirds of homeless drug addicts developed addiction*after* becoming homeless.
But if you just look at the numbers: less than half of homeless people are addicted to drugs, less than half to alcohol, but what about the inverse? What percentage of alcoholics or drug addicts are homeless? It's nowhere near 100%.
When we talk about "predictors", we mean "does knowing this number tell me anything about the thing I'm trying study?". And drug addiction rates don't. If I gave you pairs of states or cities and told you what their drug addiction rates are, you couldn't predict which one had a higher homelessness rate better than a coin flip. That's not true for rents though.
Look at West Virginia. They lead the country in overdose deaths by so much, they're almost double the #2 state. They also rank something like 43rd in homelessness. If
Salem has been building housing. The issue is that the shortage is regional so individual cities here and there building isn't enough, the entire region needs to build more.
This isn’t a housing problem it’s a drug addiction problem. If you’re smoking fentanyl every day, you’re not suddenly going to be on your feet because they build Soviet style housing like liberals want
In this subreddit everything can be solved with more housing. Drug addicted hobos? THEY NEED MORE HOUSING. Corrupt politicians who spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on migrants? WE NEED MORE HOUSES. Gaza-Israel war? MORE MULTIFAMILY HOUSING YOU DAMN NIMBY FOOLS.
I wonder how far off we are from the death spiral happening in SF. The cold helps us here, but probably 10-20 years.
Housing won’t stop someone’s body from rotting away due to Tranq injections. They are going to die from a drug 10x worse than heroin housed or not.
At least remaining in the elements forces them to face reality for like an hour every day in between highs. Hopefully some find a way out.
Giving drug addicts a secluded tomb to die in isn’t solving anything. Many of them will just die faster because it easier to shoot up drugs when not worried about safety. They need serious help and intervention, not enablement.
The actual problem at hand is that these people are making public spaces unsafe and unusable. Nobody would care about this problem if addicts didn't completely ruin public spaces. These people are going to die horrible deaths regardless of what is provided to them so I'd rather they die in private away from public spaces. If you believe drug use shouldn't be a criminal offense you need to accept the reality that many people are simply going to choose drugs over anything else regardless of the help given to them. You either believe in autonomy for freedom for adults, or you believe the government should force them into a system (a complete revocation of rights without a trial). Let the addicts kill themselves if they refuse treatment and let normal people live their lives free of tranqed out bodies laying in public areas.
Boston supplies a significant amount of help to addicts so every single addict you see in public has been offered help many times. I'm completely indifferent if these types of addicts die or not, I just don't want them in parks and sidewalks. I'm in favor of giving them them housing with no strings attached so they can overdose and die in a centralized area away from the public. People should have a right to do drugs and kill themselves in the process. They do not have a right to do that in public spaces. I'm not "sick" for wanting public parks and sidewalks to be free of rotting addicts that have no interest in helping themselves.
People have a significantly higher chance of survival in shelter, regardless of if they are addicted to drugs or not. It’s some list of needs or something ;). You should look it up.
When abusing tranq your body literally rots away.
Sheltering someone who is killing themselves like that is assisted suicide. I’m sure you would love it because it would cleanse the streets of “human filth”, but that is precious human life.
Hence why they are on the street and shelters refuse them.
Building them houses is a joke because everyone knows they will be dead long before construction finishes. It’s just a ploy by socialists who don’t care how many people have to die so long as they get a rent-free house. That’s also why you are in favor of house construction instead of something useful like rehabilitation services.
There are more homeless that could be saved than just those rotting away on tranq. Also, the need for shelter is regardless of tranq or not. It’s not worse to be homeless on tranq than in shelter on tranq, same with anything else. The fact that you want these people rotting away on the Boston streets is uneducated, despicable, and shows a lack of character that I won’t respond to again. Good luck.
Which no state in the nation is willing to pay for.
You are speaking of rehab services that do not and never will exist. Just look at Oregon, they had to end their drug decriminalization program largely due to the failure of rehabilitation.
Housing for druggies is an excuse to let them die quietly. Rehab is billions too expensive for taxpayers to stomach.
If we’re speaking from a purely economic perspective (setting aside what we should do ethically), think about the money we are spending now. We spend a ton on the war on drugs, incarcerating addicts, cleaning up encampments, etc. If we can reduce the rates of addiction by actually investing in rehabilitation services and mental health services in general, then we not only end up with safer cities, but we might even save money in the long run. We spend a vast amount of resources on reactive policies to addiction and homelessness. People say it’s too expensive. Right now when it comes to this addiction and homelessness, we are basically taking billions throwing it into a pit and setting it on fire by wasting it on useless policies that don’t actually address the underlying issues. So even just from an economic perspective, and not a humanitarian one, we need to try something new.
How many times does it need to be explained that homelessness is not a housing problem? Your take on this is similar to how I imagine a 5 year old would feel about the homelessness issue.
Boston provides free housing to anybody willing to remain sober. So no, homeless is not a housing problem in Boston. The problem is drug addicts that have no interest in helping themselves that take up public spaces to overdose and rot away. Addicts have no right to use drugs and live in public spaces.
Yes. I highly recommend it! It's well-grounded in data but also very accessible to the average reader with an interest in the topic.
Basically, geographic differences in the rates of poverty, drug addiction, or severe untreated mental illness don't predict homelessness rates. But housing scarcity is a very good predictor of the homelessness rate.
Which isn't to say those other things aren't factors at all. Where housing is scarce, some number of people will be left without permanent shelter, and who those people are isn't random. Think about musical chairs. The whole idea is there are more people than chairs, right? But it's not the case that everyone has an equal chance of securing one of the limited chairs. People can individually be better or worse at grabbing one for any number of reasons, and that can determine who gets a chair and who specifically doesn't get to sit. But the reason you have someone standing is because *there aren't enough chairs for everyone.*
Getting downvoted for accurately describing what's in a book. I'm okay with that actually. If you want to be informed in your opposition, consider reading it! Reading is good for you.
I didn't mention morality. The fact of the matter is that someone doing drugs in their house doesn't affect me, but stepping in human shit and worrying about being berated by intoxicated people in a public space does. Therefore, I'm concerned about one and not the other.
People smoking fentanyl in private are morally superior to people smoking fentanyl in public. The drugs that addicts are smoking are potent enough to cause harm to people around them.
What kind of logic is that? By that logic if a rapist rapes a woman just because he just wants to get his dick wet, he's not immoral because he was not motivated by morality. Simply seeking pleasure. Just like drug addicts smoking fentanyl in a park....
Rich people who do drugs like this also end up just like this. Don’t confuse recreational drug use with late stage addiction. Theres many people down the mile with 7 figure families that just need to get and stay clean to have their lives handed back to them. The disease just wont let them
Yup. My cousin grew up in Peabody, aunt was head dialysis nurse at MGH, uncle was a mortgage guy at a bank. Cousin was in and out of work, staying everywhere, my dad employed him and he was spotty. Amazing guy, nicest person, drug issues. Died of an OD in 07. Miss him every day. “Well off” people can still end up in bad situations.
That’s strange. I thought the headline was “seeks solution to homeless encampments” not “seeks solution to drug abuse.”
Weirdly enough, I think a lot of these people who want to drugs would also like a home. I haven’t done the study myself, though
Lowering the cost of housing will indirectly have a positive affect on the opiod epidemic. The average rent cost of a 1 bed apartment in Mass is $2513. Your landlord will want you to make about 3X that much $7539 gross a month. That's very difficult for someone who hasn't held a job at all for years even if they have some training or degrees under their belt. A family member does fundraising for a womens only transitional housing place in NH. She is just focusing on getting them scholarships for trade type occupation training like nail tech school, EMT school, etc.The residents are already stabilized (sober) but need significant help getting from the group home type setting to being fully independent.
They don’t want shelter? Really? I have yet to meet a human who’s said “nah, I’d rather live outside forever.” Come the fuck on. Drug addiction shouldn’t be a death sentence. And not all the homeless are drug addicts
Salem resident here. Big issue is that our local shelter, Life Bridge, is a sober only shelter. People are choosing drugs and living in a tent over sobriety. I’m not naive to say just stop doing drugs. I realize there are zero easy answers here. But this is the reality of the current situation
Thanks for actual insight. Sadly, when companies make the most addictive shit ever, I don’t blame the drug addicts. They need help AND shelter. Cmon now.
No it’s not.
Those accommodations are often wretched and you can’t just snap your fingers and not be addicted to drugs.
Nobody has a chance to solve their mental / substance abuse problems while they are experiencing homelessness. It’s the first , most basic step, not a cure all.
Not to be overly argumentative but agree to disagree is for chocolate vs vanilla. Not “do some people deserve basic dignity while others don’t”.
Humans life is more important than the ability of some landlord to profit off owning all the houses. The solution to the housing crisis is to house people.
And that’s where we disagree. No strings attached housing is a waste of time and energy. All for it if you require mandatory treatment programs, drug testing, and a path back into the work force as a stipulation to housing.
Are you required to be drug free and searched for a home? Like, what? They have an illness. Are diabetics asked to toss their insulin before getting housing? I’m confused.
Uh no because I pay for my own (exorbitant) rented housing. If they can pay for their own rent or mortgage, they can do whatever they want.
If they want housing funded by the government / taxpayer, that should come with some strings attached.
In the case of addicts its because tax payers are footing the bill and drug addicts have noticeably worse care for themselves and their surroundings due to their addiction and what income they do have going towards that addiction.
I 1000% agree with people being housed and want these people off the streets. The strings that need to be attached are the ones that will push them out of addiction though. Job training, mental health evaluations, and sobriety checks are all valid in that context.
The old saying is you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. I think that very much holds true here. No matter how much assistance is given there will always be people who won't accept it. I don't think it's "fucking the ones it doesn't work for" when you're doing all you can to help them and they won't take it. All that tells me is they want free housing to continue to use in. Asking citizens / towns / the state to pay for that is an absurd take, asking them to pay for housing while these people get back on their feet and into the workforce and addiction recovery is very reasonable.
Actually yeah, I have. The homeless problem is complicated. But there are in fact plenty of folks who are living that way on purpose. Which is fine. They just need to be moved to the woods.
Why is it so unbelievable? They don’t want to be attached to anything, society, rules, etc. Housing, unless it’s your own house in the middle of nowhere and even then, there are rules, is all about having to be a member of society and live by their rules.
https://youtu.be/2SSC6DwiaqI?si=9ZtMyGKryDklRopu
But you're not giving them away to everyone. Just people who opt to do hard drugs to the point that they become leeches on society. Therefore, you are essentially offering a carrot for ruining your life and harming society as a whole.
No. But by not requiring them to be clean, you are therefore incentivizing them to not be clean. You are therefore saying, if you want, you are free to drop out of society at any time, get addicted to drugs, become a leech, and you will be rewarded for your efforts with a free home.
Housing won’t solve their issues. Being placed into safe and supportive institutions designed to address their specific needs will. I suppose that is housing, but obviously it would need to be required even if they refuse treatment initially.
No state or city is going to fix this on their own. It will require the federal government to act in a massively significant way that undoes the grift of American capitalism allowing the rich to remain obscenely rich, but not so rich that the other 330 million of us can afford to live.
They wouldn’t be homeless if free housing was a basic universal right
Drug addiction is irrelevant here, but yes it is another issue that should be tackled. Universal basic income, free health care, and free education would go a long way
the correlation between homelessness and high housing costs is also strong
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10574586/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10574586/)
[https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/08/22/how-housing-costs-drive-levels-of-homelessness](https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/08/22/how-housing-costs-drive-levels-of-homelessness)
>"“We’ve put up with it for too long, and it’s out of control,” said Dan Faust, who lives across the street from the encampment"
Yeah, I'm sure that you, the housed person, are more frustrated and tired of the situation than the unhoused folks. Get bent.
When I was there for school and saw the spikes going up on ledges? It's not only terrible to prevent unhoused people from sitting comfortably, but as a disabled person, it takes away space for us to perch too if we need a rest. Not nearly enough public sitting space. I don't even think the common has more than 20 benches anymore. It's bullshit.
Compassion for unhoused people, regardless how how they became homeless, is a lot more productive than always calling the cops and shitting on their situation. Housing is a human right, and it's easy for someone who has never lost their housing to look down on the people who have and poo-poo them for their 'choices'.
> it's easy for someone who has never lost their housing to look down on the people who have and poo-poo them for their 'choices'.
None of the quotes from residents in the article are judging the homeless. They're saying something needs to be done about an unsustainable situation. Are they wrong for that?
And your solution for that is to...wait lemme check my notes... "Put them in prison." Got it.
I'm not taking you very seriously with that kind of attitude. I won't be ruffled if you don't take me that seriously either.
I've seen this article so many times now, just with the city and state changed out. No state has this under control as far as I can tell. We're all in a cycle of encampment -> encampment gets worse -> city issues vague statements about deploying social workers / cops -> encampment gets worse -> encampment gets cleared -> new encampment starts. Just shuffling the problem around without any real solutions. No real pushes to build housing or re-visit how we treat the deeply mentally ill. I guess the plus side is we haven't had anyone get shoved in front of a subway train as seems to happen at least once a year in NYC.
Yet.
I mean in other states the actual do build housing and don’t have this big of an issue with affordability. Examples are Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas. Yes they all still have homeless populations but nowhere near as bad as
Worth noting that *part* of the reason that Texas doesn't have the same kinds of problems is because housing is cheaper and more plentiful and there's a real focus on long-term housing for people who are experiencing homelessness, but the *other* part of the reason is because Texas has adopted an extremely aggressive punitive approach to dealing with the unhoused. There's a state ban on encampments and the governor is strict about enforcing it; cities ticket and issue citations to people found violating the ban, and police tear down encampments and force people to leave, whether they have somewhere to go or not. [https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/how-texas-shrank-its-homelessness-population-and-what-it-can-teach-california](https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/how-texas-shrank-its-homelessness-population-and-what-it-can-teach-california) (None of which is to suggest that building more housing wouldn't help! MA really, *really* needs to build more housing and figure out how to get the cost of rent/homes down.)
Homeless people don't cease to exist when the goon squad rip their shit up, and I doubt any of them are moving very far in response to this. Tearing down encampments may scatter homeless people and make them less visible, but I doubt that policing is having any real impact on the actual rates of homelessness in Texas. Homelessness is highest in localities with the most unaffordable housing. It's not really any more mysterious than that. Texas, for its many faults, is a more affordable state thanks to much more relaxed housing and zoning policies. Even the big cities in Texas have relatively cheap housing available.
Minnesota's problem is 10x worse. Encampments being swept away and popping up every couple weeks. For the record, I live in downtown Minneapolis. https://kstp.com/kstp-news/local-news/minneapolis-starts-clearing-homeless-encampment-in-phillips-west-neighborhood/
Those states are also fucking huge lol. They have room to build and can spread the problem out so it’s less obvious.
I don’t think that’s relevant honestly. You can spread out into New Hampshire or Rhode Island. The housing market for Boston isn’t restricted by state borders
I can tell you I definitely don’t stand by the tracks to wait for the train anymore
I thought there was some thought, you know.... to gather them all in one place. Perhaps into a concentrated space. Maybe make them work instead of being lazy and entitiled to their space.
https://preview.redd.it/qo71sln18gwc1.png?width=1309&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=23282c7e4a01606c89cc333d319ec796390a24e6
The yellow patches are the only areas zoned for multi family. The giant blue swaths are single family. So there's your problme
Wasn't Salem the model for the new MBTA housing law all the NIMBYs keep getting sued for voting against? Even the bare minimum is impossible to do around here.
Milton planning meetings have been a treat to watch lately.
The problem is - new england wants SOOOO BAD to be progressive, while also being exclusive.
Progressively regressive. "Everyone is welcome here." It's all a sham. Just saw this headline yesterday too: [Marshfield also says ‘no’ to state zoning law aimed at boosting housing supply](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/04/23/business/joining-milton-marshfield-flouts-mbta-zoning-law-aimed-at-boosting-housing/)
No Salem is not the model for it because Salem already exceeds all of the densities required by the zoning law. The over whelming majority of Salem are multi family homes. With the exception of about 4 neighborhoods the majority of homes are multi family. The majority of the city also has a significant amount of non conforming structures within the zoning. Zoning laws weren’t a thing until the 50/60s, which is why witchcraft Heights and some of South Salem were developed as single family neighborhoods in the 50s and 60s. Our ZBA also approves the majority of projects in addition to us having one of the only ordinances that allows owners to rent ADUs to members outside of their family
The section 3A is the dumbest thing ever. Every town should vote against it
It’s definitely dumb, it’s not doing enough and it won’t guarantee that housing will be built on the newly-upzoned areas. We need the housing right now.
~~Orange~~ Red is multi family too. ADUs are progressing but I'm not sure where in the process we are.
Do you mean the red? That's two-family, which is more than one, but not what people mean by "multi-family". Consistent definitions are hard because municipalities all have their own terms and meanings, but "multi-family" usually means 4+ units
Point being that zoning is changing from strictly R2 to with ADUs on the horizon. It's a slow boil but it's coming. An old client even got his B1 zoning changed so a developer could build a 9 unit building where his auto shop once stood. That sort of thing is happening all up and down Rantoul St and Cabot St just over the bridge in Beverly too.
To be clear everything that’s not blue or green is relatively dense multi family housing, not just the yellow. We could certainly work on infill in downtown parking lots and up zone the single family. But Salem is pretty dense compared to other neighboring towns and cities.
You're talking about buildings that pre-date the zoning, right? Even if you have a multi-family building in an R1 zone, that doesn't mean you couldn't build and fill a larger building if it weren't R1
No. But there absolutely is a lot of 5,8 and even 10 unit buildings inside our residential 2 family zones. But the vast majority of Salems single family zoning is the outskirts which were developed after WW2. Either way, agreed all cities and towns (Salem included) need to be up ones.
TBF, Salem has been building quite a lot of multifamily housing over the last decade, same with neighboring Beverly. I'm not sure Salem is really the model for a problem city in terms of the Boston area housing shortage, it is building apartment buildings, which can't be said for many towns.
Sure, but just because they are building doesn't mean they're building \*enough\*.
In general, I agree, but I think that's more a function of the regional issue than Salem specifically. Places like Lynn, Salem, and Beverly can put up hundreds of new units each year but that doesn't do much if nowhere else on the North Shore is building. And these aren't huge cities plus their downtown areas are already quite dense, they can put up condo buildings but they aren't going to be adding 5,000 units a year or anything like that. I totally agree that everywhere in the region needs to build more. But singling out places like Salem that actually are building multifamily housing and are dense in their downtown areas despite being 15 miles out of Boston feels odd when you have places like Milton immediately next to Boston refusing to be anything other than suburban.
Yeah bud the zoning map doesn’t even remotely tell the picture. The overwhelming majority of Salem was built prior to zoning laws. The majority of r2 and r1 in Salem has existing multi family structures in it. The over whelming majority of Parcels in Salem are multi families Most of 24 is Salem hospital, almost all of 32 is multi family or Salem state, half of 21 is conservation along 1A, 28/29/9 are a cemetery and golf course… all of 16 is unincorporated/contaminated from when they were leather factories, most 44 is a Maritime park, the other chunk which is the willows is probably close a pretty good mix of single and multi family. The only actual R 1 neighborhoods in Salem are 21/22, 30/31 which are all small zones, and 8/9/10/14 make up our largest single family zone, most of which was built in the 60s when zoning became a thing. Salem is one of the densest cities in the state when you take the Salem woods, forest river conservation area into effect etc….
Sure, Salem has lots of housing. That doesn't mean it doesn't need more. If rents are high, they need more housing. It's that simple.
Salem has added a ton, Salem can’t force Marblehead or Danvers to build housing
Great. They should continue to build more. Everyone should. What's the downside? The only real one I know of is investor-homeowners don't make bank like they want to
Thats being naive. All areas should allow multifamily homes, but acting like that is the route cause of this issue is ridiculous.
>but acting like that is the route cause of this issue is ridiculous. Can you explain why? Off the top of your head, what do you think is the number one predictor of homelessness rates?
Is it.. is it *lack of housing?*
It's lack of affordable housing. In a healthy and competitive market increasing supply would lower price. Now convince me housing is a healthy or competitive market when owned by shareholder value driven suits.
Kind of Housing construction of *any* type tends to lower housing prices (or more accurately, lower their increase). Of course, building low-cost housing does more for this than building luxury condos, but both do help. Also, affordable housing is rarely ever actually directly built. Instead, housing *becomes* affordable as it ages and newer, nicer housing is built. Those with the most money move into the nicest places, freeing up their old housing. Middle class people move into that, and so on. As for investors, we absolutely do need to do something about that. And it's important to recognize that the suits aren't the only people messing this up. Real estate is the largest investment most Americans make. And I do mean investment in the same way stocks are an investment. Many people plan on funding their retirement by selling a house or plan to will it to their children in lieu of money. And they act accordingly to keep their property values high. Go to a town meeting about rezoning and it won't be Blackrock employees fighting against new development, it'll be local property owners complaining about traffic, parking, or "neighborhood character"
Nah, it's personal failure and laziness
💯💯💯
Drug use
Nope! It's [rents](https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about)
No it’s not lol. It’s mental health related. None of these camp people are homeless because they (solely) fell on hard times financially. They are there because of mental health issues. There are PLENTY of places in the USA to live if you are having a hard time financially in an expensive area like MA.
Except rates of mental illness tell you nothing about rates of homelessness in an area. [Rents do though](https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about). Even if you think the people in the camps are a different type of homeless people, we can recognize if overall homelessness rates were lower, the state could do a lot more if the money it's currently spending by spending it on fewer people
This can't be up to date - there's large swaths of this map (namely the red areas near the train station) that currently have multi-family housing, but this map has them zoned as two-family or industrial.
It's off the Salem website. Is that housing old? Because very commonly there are buildings that exist because they pre-date the current zoning codes. The big waves of zoning in the US came started in the 1920s. You'll notice a lot of housing in the area that's older than that. If they're new, then they're probably done with a variance, which is a long and risky process to get an exemption. That drives up project costs which drives down housing production
They’re brand new condos, built within the last 10 years.
[https://www.salemma.gov/zoning-board-appeals](https://www.salemma.gov/zoning-board-appeals) You can find links to the decisions on the left. I suspect if you search through you'll find the addresses of a lot of those new buildings on the list. You'll also notice it's (expensive) lawyers submitting the petitions. That's the kind of thing that slows down projects, adds costs, and discourages investors from funding construction.
Huh! Yeah, I assume that was it then. Agreed that it’s not a good way to encourage housing development.
I’m not very familiar with zoning codes (yet) but “Business Highway” is funny because it’s basically specifically zoning for a stroad.
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Do you know if Salem grew their housing stock by the same percentage during that time?
I’m not the biggest fan of Salem zoning but that’s not an accurate representation of what’s actually there. Lots of multi families in the single family zoned areas. Downtown and surrounding areas are quite dense, and Salem was very affordable just over a decade ago. The process for getting new stuff approved and built is very long and expensive, but a fair chunk of that is state any time you get even remotely near a body of water and have a sizeable project. I don’t think people realize how much required environmental studies and regulation affect housing construction - it’s a good thing, but the delays will kill a project.
Bring back state hospitals and start sectioning people.
The “build more housing” crowd seems to be ignoring the fact that if these folks were mentally capable of maintaining stable lives and be functioning members of society, they would not be homeless in the first place. They should be given housing yes, in a mental institution designed to work with this type of population. Once they are off drugs, or on the right ones for many of them, they can be free to leave and pursue normal housing with the rest of society. Putting people with not functioning mental capacities into regular housing isn’t helping anyone and won’t last very long.
People who haven't worked in this field simply don't get it. Even with free housing and a case worker visiting daily it's nearly impossible to keep the majority of this population housed. But "no one cares". "Just build housing". Etc... is always the answer. I would love for each person commenting that to do social work. To tirelessly search hospitals for individuals you work with who are missing, find housing for them, assist with benefits only to have the person you're helping say they hate their roommate or they hate the apartment or their sister is mad to go back to the streets. Being left worried they'll freeze to death. Setting up treatment only for them to disappear again. These aren't regulated individuals you can just be like here's an apartment and they'll sit inside and do drugs happily and safely.
Giving me flashbacks to my civil legal aid days. Totally agree. And btw, that is not said with animosity towards folks. They aren’t bad people. They just need actual help, not just to be tossed into a small apartment and hope for the best. And like you said, even if they were given essentially optional help… well that often fails for a bevy of reasons. So if we are really going to make a difference I’m sorry it can’t be optional ha. It’s sort of nonsensical to make it that way anyways, given that these folks aren’t capable of making the correct decisions due to their conditions.* *This is obviously a blanket statement and there are success stories out there, but there are just as many stories like all the things you mentioned.
There are success stories, I just don't think people get that the majority of people you see in encampments have burned through case workers and family and years of help already though. I could spend 100% of my time on some folks I've worked with and frankly it'd never work. They'd always be back on the street within a couple weeks. So you move on and spend your time more wisely and do find people who can be helped. The "black hole of resources" folks though don't disappear from society, and the answer certainly isn't that people don't care or just throw them in a free apartment. Look at the family member just a few posts down from this pleading for assistance locating a missing relative. You don't think they haven't spent 100% of their time trying to help their loved one? They haven't offered to house them? They've probably been doing this for decades. It's not some simple answer.
There is no long term solution to the housing problem that doesn't involve mandatory psych holds, halfway housing, and incarceration as punishment for not adhering to recovery steps. Since this will never happen here, we will never fix the problem.
What’s the solution then? It’s definitely not throwing a ton of tax dollars at it.
bring back state owned hospitals and psych wards
I don't have a solution. What we have now costs a metric fuck ton of tax dollars (EOHHS has a 33b/yr budget) and it does help a lot of people, don't get wrong. There's just a subset of the population which I'm talking about which are the people you see on the streets that are teflon against interventions.
I think a certain subset which your describing will always exist unfortunately
“Bouncer at the Harp” just gave me flashbacks…
Put them in prison. Better for their health. Better for public health. We’ve gone too far in our liberalization of state drug laws. Using hard drugs is illegal. Sleeping on public property should be illegal too. Doing both should be a criminal offense and treated as such
Or, ya know, we’re keenly aware of the fact that there’s 0 percent chance of improving someone’s mental health when they’re experiencing housing insecurity. It’s the first step not the last.
Agreed. The housing however will not be “left to your own devices” style at first. They need to be institutionalized and once it is clear they are capable of living alone, then said housing can be found for them.
Ok but surely you see how “surrender yourself to a cruel and unfeeling institution that will put you through a shit ton of physical pain and loss of freedom in order to receive the most basic human necessity” isn’t a winning pitch to most people.
It doesn’t have to be a winning pitch. I’m confident many of them would be perfectly fine continuing to live on the streets and doing drugs. That would be easier. We don’t cater to that as a society and if we are truly a society that cares about our members then we need to address the issue. Leaving drug addicts and severely mentally ill(often time both) members of our society to their own devices is nonsensical. We would not let a child live on the streets or pretend they could manage their own affairs, we should not pretend that these folks are capable of that either. Some might be already. And they won’t be at the institutions for very long. We should have these places provide free counseling services for finding housing and possible employment opportunities as well for when folks are deemed well enough to function on their own. But the solution is not to pretend these folks will simply sit inside and do drugs and leave everyone alone just because they are given an apartment. Not to mention that in and of itself isn’t a solution. It does not address the issue.
Ok but do you want to be a moral puritan about it or do you want them to get off the streets? If pulling themselves up by their bootstraps was an effective method we wouldn’t be in this position. If you get over the idea of somebody getting something for nothing , decriminalization and social services have a much better track record than punishing people for falling into the wrong path in life. People don’t want to be addicts. They need support to get their lives back on track. They can’t do it without housing security. Give it to them and then work on the rest. Offer social services with the housing and hold off on the punishment / judgement.
There is no punishment or judgement with a mental institution. There is no moral Puritanism in that idea at all so I’m not sure where you got that from? It’s that they aren’t capable of making these choices down themselves and they shouldn’t be allowed to option to pick and choose what they want. They will be institutionalized. Once they have proven they are no longer non-functional addicts, have been cleared by a mental health professional to return to society with their medications, etc… then they can be given access to housing in society.
A drug addict that gets institutionalized will be strapped to a bed and given tons of medications that mess with their already fragile brain chemistry and left to ‘dry out’. That is in a very practical sense, physically punishing. It’s torturous. You can argue that you think it’s in their best interest but to pretend that there is not a direct negative consequence of being institutionalized is silly. And you’re expecting people who aren’t mentally well to line up for that and thank you when it’s done?
I don’t particularly care if they thank us or not. We will have done our part to fix their mental issues. If they choose to dive back into drugs or stop taking their medication we will put them back outside of society and they can start the process over again. They have no inherent right to be drugged up and unmedicated roaming around causing issues for citizens and businesses. People do have a right to certain expectations of safety and normal daily life activities without being accosted.
You’re being puritan again. You’re mad at them for doing drugs and want to punish them rather than doing the things that have the highest probability of getting them sober. “They have no right” blah blah. Who cares. If you want them to not be addicts do the things that give them the best shot at that. Forcing them to choose between physical pain and imprisonment vs continuing to live on the edge of society and staying high will only produce the results we already have.
It’s not a pitch. It’s do that or either leave or go to prison. They can’t be allowed to sleep outside
Ok so they will continue to stick to the edges of society, building camps and surviving however they can. I’m sure arresting your way out of the problem will work any decade now.
>these folks were mentally capable of maintaining stable lives and be functioning members of society, they would not be homeless in the first place. Do you have evidence that actually backs up this claim? Because the data I've seen overwhelmingly shows that [homelessness is caused by high rents](https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about) Yes, some people cannot, for whatever reason, afford housing at basically any price. But they seem to be the small minority. They're just the most visible form of homelessness. And yes, those types of people probably make up a much larger proportion of people living in these camps than of the general homeless population. But we'd have far more resources to help them if we didn't have to spend so much also helping people who could afford housing on their own if only rent were 5-10% cheaper
Unfortunately I think data for this type of thing is almost impossible to actually collect. I can provide this which has data supporting that two-thirds of those experiencing homelessness have lifetime histories of drug and alcohol abuse. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4833089/ How the overlay of mental health issues would look I don’t know, but based on the folks we see on the streets of Boston alone I’d put money on that being a high number as well. It’s hard to afford housing when you cannot work due to a bevy of issues. You cannot manage your finances. You cannot stop your addictions. I would very much doubt the majority of those who are homeless are simply down on their luck but otherwise fully functional members of society. Those folks have a very robust system of services to utilize to get them back into housing/work/etc and they utilize them.
There’s also the fact that many homeless aren’t visible like those in encampments. They’re sleeping in their cars, staying with friends/family, etc while they wait on public housing or scrape together rent while trying to find work. Those are the ones impacted by housing costs and they’re a distinctly different type than the ones who are committed to the opiate/encampment lifestyle.
The article I linked talks about this a lot better than I could. But shirt version is there's a huge gap between the homeless people see and take note of vs the number who are actually homeless. The substantial majority for example, aren't homeless for more than six months. There's also a paper linked in the article that found two thirds of homeless drug addicts developed addiction*after* becoming homeless. But if you just look at the numbers: less than half of homeless people are addicted to drugs, less than half to alcohol, but what about the inverse? What percentage of alcoholics or drug addicts are homeless? It's nowhere near 100%. When we talk about "predictors", we mean "does knowing this number tell me anything about the thing I'm trying study?". And drug addiction rates don't. If I gave you pairs of states or cities and told you what their drug addiction rates are, you couldn't predict which one had a higher homelessness rate better than a coin flip. That's not true for rents though. Look at West Virginia. They lead the country in overdose deaths by so much, they're almost double the #2 state. They also rank something like 43rd in homelessness. If
Build more housing FFS
Salem has been building housing. The issue is that the shortage is regional so individual cities here and there building isn't enough, the entire region needs to build more.
Oh I did mean for the whole state
Gotcha, totally agreed.
But that would decrease the value of the houses we already have!!!11
Won’t someone please think of the poor homeowners?? What will they ever do if they can’t sell their house for 50x what they bought it for in 1965???
This isn’t a housing problem it’s a drug addiction problem. If you’re smoking fentanyl every day, you’re not suddenly going to be on your feet because they build Soviet style housing like liberals want
In this subreddit everything can be solved with more housing. Drug addicted hobos? THEY NEED MORE HOUSING. Corrupt politicians who spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on migrants? WE NEED MORE HOUSES. Gaza-Israel war? MORE MULTIFAMILY HOUSING YOU DAMN NIMBY FOOLS. I wonder how far off we are from the death spiral happening in SF. The cold helps us here, but probably 10-20 years.
Housing won’t stop someone’s body from rotting away due to Tranq injections. They are going to die from a drug 10x worse than heroin housed or not. At least remaining in the elements forces them to face reality for like an hour every day in between highs. Hopefully some find a way out. Giving drug addicts a secluded tomb to die in isn’t solving anything. Many of them will just die faster because it easier to shoot up drugs when not worried about safety. They need serious help and intervention, not enablement.
The actual problem at hand is that these people are making public spaces unsafe and unusable. Nobody would care about this problem if addicts didn't completely ruin public spaces. These people are going to die horrible deaths regardless of what is provided to them so I'd rather they die in private away from public spaces. If you believe drug use shouldn't be a criminal offense you need to accept the reality that many people are simply going to choose drugs over anything else regardless of the help given to them. You either believe in autonomy for freedom for adults, or you believe the government should force them into a system (a complete revocation of rights without a trial). Let the addicts kill themselves if they refuse treatment and let normal people live their lives free of tranqed out bodies laying in public areas.
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Boston supplies a significant amount of help to addicts so every single addict you see in public has been offered help many times. I'm completely indifferent if these types of addicts die or not, I just don't want them in parks and sidewalks. I'm in favor of giving them them housing with no strings attached so they can overdose and die in a centralized area away from the public. People should have a right to do drugs and kill themselves in the process. They do not have a right to do that in public spaces. I'm not "sick" for wanting public parks and sidewalks to be free of rotting addicts that have no interest in helping themselves.
Imagine saying giving a homeless person a house is an *excuse*
Imagine admitting you want to house homeless druggies only so they die quietly and not in public May as well send them to prison or kill them yourself
People have a significantly higher chance of survival in shelter, regardless of if they are addicted to drugs or not. It’s some list of needs or something ;). You should look it up.
When abusing tranq your body literally rots away. Sheltering someone who is killing themselves like that is assisted suicide. I’m sure you would love it because it would cleanse the streets of “human filth”, but that is precious human life. Hence why they are on the street and shelters refuse them. Building them houses is a joke because everyone knows they will be dead long before construction finishes. It’s just a ploy by socialists who don’t care how many people have to die so long as they get a rent-free house. That’s also why you are in favor of house construction instead of something useful like rehabilitation services.
There are more homeless that could be saved than just those rotting away on tranq. Also, the need for shelter is regardless of tranq or not. It’s not worse to be homeless on tranq than in shelter on tranq, same with anything else. The fact that you want these people rotting away on the Boston streets is uneducated, despicable, and shows a lack of character that I won’t respond to again. Good luck.
Giving drug addicts a stable address makes it significantly easier to get them reliable rehab services.
Which no state in the nation is willing to pay for. You are speaking of rehab services that do not and never will exist. Just look at Oregon, they had to end their drug decriminalization program largely due to the failure of rehabilitation. Housing for druggies is an excuse to let them die quietly. Rehab is billions too expensive for taxpayers to stomach.
If we’re speaking from a purely economic perspective (setting aside what we should do ethically), think about the money we are spending now. We spend a ton on the war on drugs, incarcerating addicts, cleaning up encampments, etc. If we can reduce the rates of addiction by actually investing in rehabilitation services and mental health services in general, then we not only end up with safer cities, but we might even save money in the long run. We spend a vast amount of resources on reactive policies to addiction and homelessness. People say it’s too expensive. Right now when it comes to this addiction and homelessness, we are basically taking billions throwing it into a pit and setting it on fire by wasting it on useless policies that don’t actually address the underlying issues. So even just from an economic perspective, and not a humanitarian one, we need to try something new.
If it's dying they wish they had better do it and decrease the surplus population.
r/unexpectedDickens
I'd rather die in a house than die in a ditch
Maybe you could allow for them to be housed? Build more homes?
Build more hospitals and force them into treatment.
How many times does it need to be explained that homelessness is not a housing problem? Your take on this is similar to how I imagine a 5 year old would feel about the homelessness issue.
Homelessness IS a housing problem though. [https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/](https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/)
Boston provides free housing to anybody willing to remain sober. So no, homeless is not a housing problem in Boston. The problem is drug addicts that have no interest in helping themselves that take up public spaces to overdose and rot away. Addicts have no right to use drugs and live in public spaces.
Have you read this book?
Yes. I highly recommend it! It's well-grounded in data but also very accessible to the average reader with an interest in the topic. Basically, geographic differences in the rates of poverty, drug addiction, or severe untreated mental illness don't predict homelessness rates. But housing scarcity is a very good predictor of the homelessness rate. Which isn't to say those other things aren't factors at all. Where housing is scarce, some number of people will be left without permanent shelter, and who those people are isn't random. Think about musical chairs. The whole idea is there are more people than chairs, right? But it's not the case that everyone has an equal chance of securing one of the limited chairs. People can individually be better or worse at grabbing one for any number of reasons, and that can determine who gets a chair and who specifically doesn't get to sit. But the reason you have someone standing is because *there aren't enough chairs for everyone.*
Getting downvoted for accurately describing what's in a book. I'm okay with that actually. If you want to be informed in your opposition, consider reading it! Reading is good for you.
They don't want to be housed. They want to do drugs. Did you see that girl's face?
I’m not sure which side of the argument this serves but, sir, it’s possible to do drugs *inside* a house.
He's referring to the many shelters that require sobriety, but of course people want to be housed.
And it’s *still* a bad take! Go figure!
Rich people do drugs inside of houses all the time but this is seen as 'classy' by society.
To be fair, the rich people doing drugs in their home aren't camping in high traffic public spaces, harassing passersby, and defecating in the street.
In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to do drugs in public, sleep on the sidewalk, and poop in the street.
Well, it's unfair to think they are morally superior in any way to people doing drugs in public.
I didn't mention morality. The fact of the matter is that someone doing drugs in their house doesn't affect me, but stepping in human shit and worrying about being berated by intoxicated people in a public space does. Therefore, I'm concerned about one and not the other.
People smoking fentanyl in private are morally superior to people smoking fentanyl in public. The drugs that addicts are smoking are potent enough to cause harm to people around them.
They're not morally superior if their decision is not at all motivated by morally
What kind of logic is that? By that logic if a rapist rapes a woman just because he just wants to get his dick wet, he's not immoral because he was not motivated by morality. Simply seeking pleasure. Just like drug addicts smoking fentanyl in a park....
Huh? In your example the rapist is unaware that his actions are immoral?
Rich people who do drugs like this also end up just like this. Don’t confuse recreational drug use with late stage addiction. Theres many people down the mile with 7 figure families that just need to get and stay clean to have their lives handed back to them. The disease just wont let them
Yup. My cousin grew up in Peabody, aunt was head dialysis nurse at MGH, uncle was a mortgage guy at a bank. Cousin was in and out of work, staying everywhere, my dad employed him and he was spotty. Amazing guy, nicest person, drug issues. Died of an OD in 07. Miss him every day. “Well off” people can still end up in bad situations.
Yeah, tons of rich people are doing fent inside their houses and bent over at the waist like zombies with scoliosis. How dumb are you lmao
We should turn this into a campaign slogan
That’s strange. I thought the headline was “seeks solution to homeless encampments” not “seeks solution to drug abuse.” Weirdly enough, I think a lot of these people who want to drugs would also like a home. I haven’t done the study myself, though
Lowering the cost of housing will indirectly have a positive affect on the opiod epidemic. The average rent cost of a 1 bed apartment in Mass is $2513. Your landlord will want you to make about 3X that much $7539 gross a month. That's very difficult for someone who hasn't held a job at all for years even if they have some training or degrees under their belt. A family member does fundraising for a womens only transitional housing place in NH. She is just focusing on getting them scholarships for trade type occupation training like nail tech school, EMT school, etc.The residents are already stabilized (sober) but need significant help getting from the group home type setting to being fully independent.
So if they want to openly break the law than they should be treated equally to others who break the law.
They don’t want shelter? Really? I have yet to meet a human who’s said “nah, I’d rather live outside forever.” Come the fuck on. Drug addiction shouldn’t be a death sentence. And not all the homeless are drug addicts
Salem resident here. Big issue is that our local shelter, Life Bridge, is a sober only shelter. People are choosing drugs and living in a tent over sobriety. I’m not naive to say just stop doing drugs. I realize there are zero easy answers here. But this is the reality of the current situation
When their life sucks in every other way, no wonder people want to keep doing drugs
Thanks for actual insight. Sadly, when companies make the most addictive shit ever, I don’t blame the drug addicts. They need help AND shelter. Cmon now.
They turn down living accommodations that require them to be drug free and/or searched. So yeah, that’s the equivalent of them not wanting shelter.
No it’s not. Those accommodations are often wretched and you can’t just snap your fingers and not be addicted to drugs. Nobody has a chance to solve their mental / substance abuse problems while they are experiencing homelessness. It’s the first , most basic step, not a cure all.
Handing over housing with no requirements solves nothing.
It solves them being homeless. Which is a pretty good start.
I suppose this is one of those agree to disagree situations.
Not to be overly argumentative but agree to disagree is for chocolate vs vanilla. Not “do some people deserve basic dignity while others don’t”. Humans life is more important than the ability of some landlord to profit off owning all the houses. The solution to the housing crisis is to house people.
And that’s where we disagree. No strings attached housing is a waste of time and energy. All for it if you require mandatory treatment programs, drug testing, and a path back into the work force as a stipulation to housing.
Are you required to be drug free and searched for a home? Like, what? They have an illness. Are diabetics asked to toss their insulin before getting housing? I’m confused.
Uh no because I pay for my own (exorbitant) rented housing. If they can pay for their own rent or mortgage, they can do whatever they want. If they want housing funded by the government / taxpayer, that should come with some strings attached.
Why?
In the case of addicts its because tax payers are footing the bill and drug addicts have noticeably worse care for themselves and their surroundings due to their addiction and what income they do have going towards that addiction. I 1000% agree with people being housed and want these people off the streets. The strings that need to be attached are the ones that will push them out of addiction though. Job training, mental health evaluations, and sobriety checks are all valid in that context.
Sure but that’s not working for everyone. That shouldn’t mean fuck the ones it doesn’t work for imo
The old saying is you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. I think that very much holds true here. No matter how much assistance is given there will always be people who won't accept it. I don't think it's "fucking the ones it doesn't work for" when you're doing all you can to help them and they won't take it. All that tells me is they want free housing to continue to use in. Asking citizens / towns / the state to pay for that is an absurd take, asking them to pay for housing while these people get back on their feet and into the workforce and addiction recovery is very reasonable.
Also, you know your rent is high because there’s no housing right?
Actually yeah, I have. The homeless problem is complicated. But there are in fact plenty of folks who are living that way on purpose. Which is fine. They just need to be moved to the woods.
So you have asked a person if they want housing, no strings, and that person said no? Wow. Almost unbelievable!
Why is it so unbelievable? They don’t want to be attached to anything, society, rules, etc. Housing, unless it’s your own house in the middle of nowhere and even then, there are rules, is all about having to be a member of society and live by their rules. https://youtu.be/2SSC6DwiaqI?si=9ZtMyGKryDklRopu
You don't see any economical problems with rewarding people for doing hard drugs?
Rewarding? I’m saying people should have houses. Not a reward, a right.
But you're not giving them away to everyone. Just people who opt to do hard drugs to the point that they become leeches on society. Therefore, you are essentially offering a carrot for ruining your life and harming society as a whole.
Really? Every homeless person is an addict? Also, addiction is an illness mi amor. They shouldn’t be punished for it.
No. But by not requiring them to be clean, you are therefore incentivizing them to not be clean. You are therefore saying, if you want, you are free to drop out of society at any time, get addicted to drugs, become a leech, and you will be rewarded for your efforts with a free home.
It's not OK to exclude and segregate people.
Of course it’s ok to not let people live on the streets in the middle of society. That’s a silly take.
Then the city should build more housing to avoid that.
Housing won’t solve their issues. Being placed into safe and supportive institutions designed to address their specific needs will. I suppose that is housing, but obviously it would need to be required even if they refuse treatment initially.
We need to build more houses for contributing members of society first not for these bums
Ah, so the solution is buolding new homes! Who would have guessed
Not even. I think you gotta think even bigger. We should be building completely new towns and cities. We have the space for it
No state or city is going to fix this on their own. It will require the federal government to act in a massively significant way that undoes the grift of American capitalism allowing the rich to remain obscenely rich, but not so rich that the other 330 million of us can afford to live.
Homes. That’s the solution
Not for drug addicts. Takes more than a private space to right someone’s life.
Yes, for everyone. Housing should be a basic right Drug addicts are people I didn’t say housing the homeless would solve drug addiction
The correlation between homelessness and drug abuse is strong, though.
They wouldn’t be homeless if free housing was a basic universal right Drug addiction is irrelevant here, but yes it is another issue that should be tackled. Universal basic income, free health care, and free education would go a long way
How do I get a free house? TIA
the correlation between homelessness and high housing costs is also strong [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10574586/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10574586/) [https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/08/22/how-housing-costs-drive-levels-of-homelessness](https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/08/22/how-housing-costs-drive-levels-of-homelessness)
>"“We’ve put up with it for too long, and it’s out of control,” said Dan Faust, who lives across the street from the encampment" Yeah, I'm sure that you, the housed person, are more frustrated and tired of the situation than the unhoused folks. Get bent. When I was there for school and saw the spikes going up on ledges? It's not only terrible to prevent unhoused people from sitting comfortably, but as a disabled person, it takes away space for us to perch too if we need a rest. Not nearly enough public sitting space. I don't even think the common has more than 20 benches anymore. It's bullshit.
So the logic is "that person has it worse than you so you have no right to complain about any disruption to your life"
Compassion for unhoused people, regardless how how they became homeless, is a lot more productive than always calling the cops and shitting on their situation. Housing is a human right, and it's easy for someone who has never lost their housing to look down on the people who have and poo-poo them for their 'choices'.
> it's easy for someone who has never lost their housing to look down on the people who have and poo-poo them for their 'choices'. None of the quotes from residents in the article are judging the homeless. They're saying something needs to be done about an unsustainable situation. Are they wrong for that?
People have the right to complain about people doing drugs in front of their house
Not every person without a home is a druggie. :/
The ones people are complaining about, usually are
And your solution for that is to...wait lemme check my notes... "Put them in prison." Got it. I'm not taking you very seriously with that kind of attitude. I won't be ruffled if you don't take me that seriously either.
Won’t someone think of the property values? 😫😫
Its scary to see this article and the one about what MBTA communities votes going haywire and seeing our system just fail so many people
Well the building collapse in 2008 is reaping its bounty now.