> As another user mentioned: cash free bail, decriminalizing drugs, those things have little to do with homelessness but do wreck the safety of a city.
It's worth pointing out that even in Western cities plagued by homelessness that crime rates are still pretty low. The crime per capita in Seattle or Portland is still only half that of Nashville. So I don't necessarily see a strong link between being tough on drugs/crime and managing homelessness. I still feel pretty safe in Seattle, but that doesn't change the downtown sucks now.
There's clearly an intersection here between zoning policy, availability of services, and leniency towards crime.
I want to see a source. The 80th time you see drug addicts with their genitalia hanging out, do you call the cops or do you ignore it?
If you meant you'd call the cops because you were worried about them, not to punish them, that's a bit more reasonable. Then, it's just that it's unfortunate that the cops are the only service that you can feasibly call when you're worried about someone in that way considering how their response would often be inappropriate.
You ignore the no cash bail, drug decriminalization, and lax policing policies which don't just increase problems from the homeless, but others as well. Progressive policies incentivize criminal behavior, period.
Most homeless people have mental illness or drug problems. They don't need cheaper housing or to be ignored and stepped over, they need mental illness programs and rehab programs.
End no cash bail, end decriminalization (making it legal is fine), enforce public decency (no needles in the park, no shitting/pissing in the streets, no flashing people).
These things weren't problems in Nashville before progressive policies and relaxed enforcement.
Homelessness existed before then, it's not caused by homelessness, it's caused by leftists.
Be an adult and enforce the existing rules or we can't live in a society.
Yes I've heard the talk points that Joe Rogan has said. But where is the evidence that these policies have led to these issues? Places like Texas have a high homeless population too, and many southern states have huge drug problems.
It's a well known effect:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
Continue to vote for policies that make your city a hell hole.
I don't really care anymore, I don't live there.
> It has also been argued that rates of major crimes also dropped in many other US cities during the 1990s, both those that had adopted broken windows policing and those that had not.[41] In the winter 2006 edition of the University of Chicago Law Review, Bernard Harcourt and Jens Ludwig looked at the later Department of Housing and Urban Development program that rehoused inner-city project tenants in New York into more-orderly neighborhoods.[25] The broken windows theory would suggest that these tenants would commit less crime once moved because of the more stable conditions on the streets. However, Harcourt and Ludwig found that the tenants continued to commit crime at the same rate.
Still waiting on real evidence of causation.
As another user mentioned: cash free bail, decriminalizing drugs, those things have little to do with homelessness but do wreck the safety of a city.
Yes cities have homelessness, Nashville always had some, but it wasn't that bad, it's gotten much worse.
But from my perspective, the main problem is these people are now tweaked out in broad daylight, or shooting up, needles everywhere in the park.
These progressive policies incentivize people to act like this, which churns out more people on the street.
Focusing on jobs, mental illness, and rehab programs would be the best thing you could do for homelessness, not encouraging the behavior and building shanty towns.