this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
440 points (93.3% liked)
Asklemmy
43916 readers
1388 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
As far as I understand, the problem stems from the fact that places like skid row provide infrastructure to help homeless people, so more homeless move there to get at least basic healthcare, food etc.
If all larger cities did that instead of repressive measures, the problem should spread among them, making single places less problematic.
Well, that's always been the case with Skid Row, though it might be debatable which came first -- the homeless encampments or the aid agencies. And for that matter, there were Hoovervilles in the Great Depression. In any city in America, there are transients milling around the shelters, which is why there's so much NIMBYism over developing new shelters.
But what's going on in California probably has more to do with the fact that LA and San Francisco tend to be very tolerant of the homeless encampments and provide generous aid, thus inducing demand. The homeless population is soaring across America for various reasons, but California is a desirable place to be homeless: better aid, better climate, softer police, etc.
Maybe California's big cities really are more humane and generous, but at this point it's to the detriment of livability in those places.