Quote:
Originally Posted by powderjunkie
IMO there should be a 3rd 'problem' on that menu, which is Anti-Social Behaviour (or whatever you want to call it).
An individual with just one of homelessness/drugs/anti-social behaviour probably isn't the big societal problem we're talking about here, and are probably the lowest hanging fruit in terms of successful support. But once a second of those issues creeps in it seems like the trifecta is nearly inevitable.
Obviously the hope would be earlier intervention for individuals with relatively minor issues (group 1) to prevent them developing into major issues (group 2). A question I can only guess at is does the existence/prevalence of group 2 undermine/counter the efforts to help group 1?
ie. if group 2 is not an ongoing element in the community, would we be more successful with group 1? Could a 'banishment*' approach for group 2 recidivists coupled with more intensive supports for group 1 be most effective?
*still with supports/dignity/compassion as best as possible, though I'd argue none of those three are true in the status quo
I'm sure this could be articulated much more elegantly, but I guess I'm wondering if the first step isn't to admit that many people are effectively lost-causes and that pretending otherwise is a major obstacle to helping people who actually could be helped (eventually reducing/eliminating the lost-causes)?
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I think you have to approach it as though there is only one group (from a practical strand point because it would be even more difficult to try to identify which people are part of group 1 and which are group 2) and accept that there are going to be people who are left behind (basically, let people self identify as group 2 through their actions, but still make things available to them). Even in countries with really low homelessness, there is homelessness. It’s just nearly impossible to eliminate without some extreme, highly unethical or unpleasant measures.
I do think the current approach (and previous approach) is failing because it’s trying to do a little bit of everything to hit that homeless/addict/mental health trifecta, but it’s just doing nothing well. We have a housing shortage, healthcare shortage, and are unwilling to include mental healthcare as part of our socialized medicine plan. People who aren’t homeless/addicted/dealing with severe mental illness struggle to access these services and we’re somehow expecting the most desperate among us to do so? Impossible.
End of the day though, people complain about this issue but they don’t want to be taxed like the Scandinavian countries nor do they want to live under an authoritarian government. They want it fixed, but don’t want to go far enough in either direction to fix it, so it won’t get fixed.