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I found this article on the Free Press. Well written, thank you. I'd just add Shellenberger's point that "homeless" is really a euphemism for "drug addict" (co-morbid with mental health issues). Again and again in the media I see the lie that the "homeless" increase is solely due to a housing crunch. This is absurd. I don't know any normal adult that would say, "Well, since my rent went up 8% I decided I'll start doing drug cocktails of unknown origin that make me completely lose my mind, become a hoarder of garbage which I'll pile up on public sidewalks, rob my neighbors, start stabbing and shooting people, light stuff on fire, and actively avoid my own family members and the plethora of city services available to help me". I honestly don't believe that more housing is the primary tool here. In SF it's normal for 5 grown adults to all be renting rooms in one apartment. It's not great, SF's housing policies are garbage, but normal people adapt to higher prices/demand by getting less for their money, or moving to locales that cost less, or temporarily moving in with family members, or in the worst case going to shelter because they aren't doing drugs and will be admitted. In the most affluent society in human history, people still have options and people adapt even in the midst of price increases. The idea that moral depravity on the streets is the next step from a rent increase is patently absurd. On the other hand, addicts move across the country to expensive but lawless cities to do drugs, especially when they decriminalize them, again as Shellenberger has shown. One need only take a walk and talk to ACTUAL "homeless" people in any west coast city to prove this very quickly. Advocating for "the homeless" is linguistic jui-jitsu that is really about defending the same woke ideology that is appearing everywhere, and at base seems to be about nihilism itself, a glee in the destruction of the West generally including all merit, property ownership, and "privilege" of any kind. I'm a psychotherapist. To the extent these individuals are indeed "victims" of early life trauma which led to addiction, the absolute last way I'd "treat" these individuals is by letting them rot in the streets, as hundreds of thousands of people slowly kill themselves. It would be insane to write up such a treatment plan for the struggling clients I love and yet this is standard public policy across the United States.

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You should learn more about this topic before you post. Well it is true that most homeless people have substance abuse problems, most of them develop them when they are homeless. Not before. This simple fact which is readily available, makes the entire rest of your argument moot

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Feel free to look at Shellenberger’s exhaustive research, or just join the field of mental health with me and see for yourself. If you want to challenge my claims, feel free to cite evidence, documentaries, personal experience, or anything else that would persuade someone of your position, like I’ve tried to do.

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A good, annotated place to start is here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://homelesslaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Homeless_Stats_Fact_Sheet.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjP6YvEw5CHAxWGHDQIHcaLDKwQFnoECBkQBg&usg=AOvVaw03n-78M27BWJMKqI-Jy6SA

(That'll take you to a downloadable PDF or some similar) if you dislike the source of the document itself, please note all of the footnotes and external sources. If you would like me to track down URLs for those sources, please let me know.

You'll see that substance abuse is low on the list of proximate causes for homelessness.

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Michael shellenberger has no relevant experience, and no peer-reviewed research whatsoever on this topic. A good discussion of his... Knowledge of the topic can be found here, making points similar to what I've made here, but unlike shellenberger, based on actual research done by relevant professionals in the field. A simple Google search for get you to that research. But if you need me to do that ground work for you, I'd be happy to do so.

https://prospect.org/culture/books/homelessness-meets-cluelessness-shellenberger-review/

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“Shellenberger refuses to admit that mental illness is often caused by homelessness”, the article says.. You and this author clearly don’t work in mental health, understand the nature of the psyche, or know real people that suffer from substance use issues. I can only encourage you to go out on the street and talk to real people here in Portland where I live or in SF, for example. Your luxury beliefs won’t last long.

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I actually work with homeless people in portland. What he says about that is actually true. Do you have some expertise in mental health that we don't know about? I haven't been to school for it, but when they trained me to work with the homeless in portland, they taught me the signs and taught me the pathologies.

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I don't mean to do this interaction to "win" but instead to ask you and anybody was reading along, to stop a little bit back from your visceral reactions to homelessness in your community. The sanitation, the trepidation into the parks that make you feel uncomfortable. All of that. And put aside your need to blame these people, to at least acknowledge that the causes of these things are what they are. And the solutions need to acknowledge what the real causes are. Not that you like so many people in Portland feel it's hopeless and it's better to get them out of the way and blame them then to actually address what's going on.

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And for what it's worth I think what he's talking about there for mental illness is the onset of emotional problems and that segment of mental illness. Typically the more major mental illnesses like schizophrenia and so on are only exacerbated by homelessness.

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Let me know if you can't get the homeless law link to work and I'll figure out some other way to get it to you.

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