Washington State Ban on the Unhoused

https://lemmy.world/post/15197917

Washington State Ban on the Unhoused - Lemmy.World

Original Article [https://www.opb.org/article/2024/05/05/homeless-washington-scatter-cities-public-spaces-ban/]

Gonna risk going a bit against the grain here…

I have a lot of empathy for their situation.

I don’t know what the solution is but it isn’t the status quo. A lot of the west coast cities are having a disproportionate problem with homeless. It’s not clear if people are bussing their homeless or the housing prices or what.

The amount of trash generated by these homeless camps is nuts and ruins virtually every public space. In Portland, it is common to find hypodermic needles littered in the parks. You’ll walk past people on the sidewalk passed out with a needle in their arm or actively doing drugs. Human excrement on the sidewalk. I wish I had some solution but the current situation sucks for everyone.

Give them homes. That’s the solution. It’s actually that simple.

A studio apartment can be over $3,000 in the Bay Area. Meanwhile, there are like five homeless people on every block of the city I lived in with five-digit population. The city would need to find some way to seize land, without calling for a vote, in order to have enough housing for everyone since rent control has been voted against for over a decade.

The main issue is that people would vote to drive the homeless into the sea before they would vote to house them.

Cool. I know some land they can seize.

vanityfair.com/…/california-forever-billionaire-b…

That isn’t even in the same county I was in, let alone the same city.
All you said was the Bay Area.