A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco
Same exact thing is happening in Seattle as we speak. They are buying hotels and converting them to permanent housing and, get this, do not require that you don&#x27;t take drugs or look for a job if you live there. How the fuck are people supposed to &quot;exit homelessness&quot; if they&#x27;re addicted and jobless? The answer is, they don&#x27;t expect them to _ever_ exit it. I went to a city council meeting and asked actually. They did not have an answer. Moreover, their projection is that the already _insane_ number of homeless people will triple in Seattle area over the next 10 years. That&#x27;s the _official_, rose colored glasses projection, so it&#x27;ll probably be even worse than that. It&#x27;s a billion dollar industry in WA now, and as such it has become self sustaining and grew feedback loops which exacerbate the problems. Nobody is interested in actually solving the problems - for all the beneficiaries if it were, say, a 4 billion dollar industry, it&#x27;d only be better. So the cancer will metastasize until things reach SF levels of insanity, and maybe even beyond that. Activists speaking in favor of this stuff in public hearings are all on the take: &quot;executive directors&quot; of something or other. And then within 10 years people will wonder why we have shit on the sidewalks and people shooting heroin in plain view of the public.<p>Worst part is, like in NY and SF they are often putting these permanent housing units a block or two away from schools, and allow drug addicts, sex offenders, and violent criminals to live there. It&#x27;s only a matter of time before they commit crimes. Meth makes it difficult not to - gotta have that next hit. Why do this? Fuck me if I know. You can see the problems this will inevitably cause from a mile away.<p>And don&#x27;t get me wrong, I&#x27;m not against sheltering the homeless and such, _as long as_ you actually make not being homeless the lowest energy state, and take care of their underlying issues. Housing them permanently without that is a recipe for disaster.