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Originally Posted by you&me
That doesn't really seem fair because I don't think there's any subjectivity to the effects of the SIS; the effect is objectively bad.
There may be varying degrees of negativity, but I think it would be pretty hard to argue the Beltline is better off overall with the SIS, rather than if it didn't exist at all.
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No, the effect is anywhere from irrelevant to bad, and a lot of the picture being painted is based on subjective anecdotes. As Table 5 said, how a young streetsmart male views an interaction with a homeless drug addict might vary wildly from how a retired old lady would view the exact same interaction.
The “varying degrees of negativity” is exactly what we’re talking about. They vary from “I’ve been stabbed with a needle” to “someone asked me for a smoke.” Nobody is going to put resources into protecting you from being asked for a smoke, which is why we can’t just make a decision on how to deal with the problem based on anecdotes and isolated data. For every negative worth doing something about, there’s multiple that are not worth even worrying about.
You can argue all you want that the SIS has had a negative effect on the Beltline, and there’s probably a lot to support that, but it’s not a relevant conclusion without measuring how negative that effect has been, and how it relates to the surrounding areas. Removing the SIS doesn’t just make homeless drug addicts vanish. At best, it spreads them out, at worst, it makes more dangerous situations in different areas.
In my experience, the changes that have happened are irrelevant. If the effects have been negative, they’ve been so minor I don’t even give them a second thought. Now, how many people want to take my experience as gospel and make decisions based off of it? Out of the people who have had their cars broken into or been hurt? Likely zero understandably. But do I want the city to make decisions based on the few absolutely terrible experiences people have had? No, I don’t. So that’s why they look at things from a broader perspective.
The SIS is just concentrating the effects of homeless drug addiction on one area. It didn’t create them.