An unhoused 30-year-old Black man with schizophrenia named Jordan Neely was screaming erratically on a subway train and was put into a chokehold for 3 minutes by a 24-year-old white man named Daniel Penny. Neely died from being choked to death. I’m going to fast-forward through unimportant and/or obvious debates to get into the meat of the issue.
Excellent analysis. One more thing I would add is that lack of staffing on trains and in stations means that passengers themselves must respond to anti-social behavior. Bus drivers are trained and able to be the authority who is able to intervene when a passenger's behavior is inappropriate or out of control. Train passengers rarely have skills or know acceptable procedures for intervention, nor should they! Hiring staff for trains and stations would also create good public sector jobs for people who otherwise risk homelessness. It is not just unhoused people who behave badly on transit. I'm a 70 year old woman who uses LA Metro. I've never been offered a seat by a healthy young person, and I've experienced many inappropriate behaviors including loud boom boxes that should have been interrupted by a staff member. Staffing up our transit vehicles and stations would solve multiple policy issues, including lifting the new staff members out of poverty.
As a woman being harassed by drunk guys at transit stations a few times, it was much appreciated that some random guys intervened to get the guys to go away but sure would be nice to be able to someone professional to step in, deal appropriately with person and I don't want random men have to risk themselves in a confrontation - I suspect another difference between U.S. and other countries on this, is they have more functional and professional public safety/policing where people can get them to come quickly and deal with things wisely without escalating situation or killing person causing trouble.
Anyways - I guess my question on the proposed solutions is why can't blue cities and states do these things themselves? States like California and New York have enormous tax bases as you point out. And also very Blue governments. And both the wealth and blue votes are concentrated in the same places (the cities). If their desirability drives the homeless problem, through prices, if also offers the potential fiscal solution, through potential tax revenue.
"why can't blue cities and states do these things themselves?"
Well they can but because of federal taxes they won't meet the scale needed. If Congress is largely being funded by democratic areas, they can return those funds in the form of public investment.
It's a tricky topic but I don't think this adds up for me.
#1: I think this just adds up to the same thing. Returning the funds means redirecting them from other spending outlays, most of which can't be turned off or are unpopular to cut. Congress still needs to fund Social Security, for example. So where do the additional federal funds on a massive scale come from?...tax raises, whose burden will have to disproportionately fall on richer, bluer areas. So blue states might as well just raise them themselves.
#2: You got me curious about the actual numbers involved. The most recent year with per-capita numbers I could find was 2015. Federal tax revenue is clearly higher in blue states but it's a mixed bag. New Mexico is 3rd from bottom. Hawaii and Vermont are pretty near the bottom. At the end of the day it's more a city thing than a state thing. I'm sure within Texas, for example, more revenue comes from metro Dallas, Houston, SA and Austin than the rest of the state. In other words Blue cities are paying the taxes and they're also dealing with the homelessness. It's not Blue states in and of themselves.
#3: Morally this feels real similar to the bog-standard small c conservative arguments on taxes. Wealthy people pay most of the taxes so they should call the shots and if they want to cut welfare they should be able to. I don't see how you could get behind either one of these arguments without supporting the other.
"who had not committed any violence". Whoa... throwing garbage at people is definitely violence. It's assault, both legally and "common-sensically"
I probably wouldn't call it life-threatening, but it might be hard to know in the moment what exactly is being tossed at you. And just a short while back not wearing masks was interpreted as literally-life threatening, so I would think the potential germ risk should be given some respect.
Many "nice" things modern cities in other rich or middle income countries are resisted by well-off in U.S. cities because they are seen as attracting homeless, mentally ill, addicts - benches, bike paths, transit.
Basically, even if you don't care anything about homeless, by now, people must know, unless we do right thing and provide safe shelter for all people, through various options (secure temp shelter, cheap small but safe rooms with bathrooms, expanded drug treatment and mental health treatment/housing), we can't have nice things for anyone.
“those cities didn’t arrest their way to being largely unhoused and drug-free — they just have significantly less unsheltered homelessness”
Sure, but the high rates of involuntary institutionalization in, for example, many Nordic countries, belies the point. The difference between a police arrest that deprives a person of their liberty and involuntary institutionalization that deprived a person of their liberty is not insignificant, as the systems into which a person is thrown non-consensually are distinct, but neither is it enormous.
In fact, cities like Stockholm have higher rates of homelessness than many American cities. You’ve slightly covered your bases by referring solely to “unsheltered” homelessness, but I’m not convinced that involuntary institutionalization--where individuals are often referred to after arrest by the police--which is highly morally questionable, isn’t the price that countries pay for transit systems devoid of the unstable mentally ill.
Excellent analysis. One more thing I would add is that lack of staffing on trains and in stations means that passengers themselves must respond to anti-social behavior. Bus drivers are trained and able to be the authority who is able to intervene when a passenger's behavior is inappropriate or out of control. Train passengers rarely have skills or know acceptable procedures for intervention, nor should they! Hiring staff for trains and stations would also create good public sector jobs for people who otherwise risk homelessness. It is not just unhoused people who behave badly on transit. I'm a 70 year old woman who uses LA Metro. I've never been offered a seat by a healthy young person, and I've experienced many inappropriate behaviors including loud boom boxes that should have been interrupted by a staff member. Staffing up our transit vehicles and stations would solve multiple policy issues, including lifting the new staff members out of poverty.
Good points and i will address this is part 2 on bystanders.
As a woman being harassed by drunk guys at transit stations a few times, it was much appreciated that some random guys intervened to get the guys to go away but sure would be nice to be able to someone professional to step in, deal appropriately with person and I don't want random men have to risk themselves in a confrontation - I suspect another difference between U.S. and other countries on this, is they have more functional and professional public safety/policing where people can get them to come quickly and deal with things wisely without escalating situation or killing person causing trouble.
Average people are not fighters nor trained at intervention and they shouldn't be expected to. I'm discussing this more in a piece this week.
Anyways - I guess my question on the proposed solutions is why can't blue cities and states do these things themselves? States like California and New York have enormous tax bases as you point out. And also very Blue governments. And both the wealth and blue votes are concentrated in the same places (the cities). If their desirability drives the homeless problem, through prices, if also offers the potential fiscal solution, through potential tax revenue.
"why can't blue cities and states do these things themselves?"
Well they can but because of federal taxes they won't meet the scale needed. If Congress is largely being funded by democratic areas, they can return those funds in the form of public investment.
It's a tricky topic but I don't think this adds up for me.
#1: I think this just adds up to the same thing. Returning the funds means redirecting them from other spending outlays, most of which can't be turned off or are unpopular to cut. Congress still needs to fund Social Security, for example. So where do the additional federal funds on a massive scale come from?...tax raises, whose burden will have to disproportionately fall on richer, bluer areas. So blue states might as well just raise them themselves.
#2: You got me curious about the actual numbers involved. The most recent year with per-capita numbers I could find was 2015. Federal tax revenue is clearly higher in blue states but it's a mixed bag. New Mexico is 3rd from bottom. Hawaii and Vermont are pretty near the bottom. At the end of the day it's more a city thing than a state thing. I'm sure within Texas, for example, more revenue comes from metro Dallas, Houston, SA and Austin than the rest of the state. In other words Blue cities are paying the taxes and they're also dealing with the homelessness. It's not Blue states in and of themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tax_revenue_by_state#Fiscal_Year_2015
#3: Morally this feels real similar to the bog-standard small c conservative arguments on taxes. Wealthy people pay most of the taxes so they should call the shots and if they want to cut welfare they should be able to. I don't see how you could get behind either one of these arguments without supporting the other.
"who had not committed any violence". Whoa... throwing garbage at people is definitely violence. It's assault, both legally and "common-sensically"
I probably wouldn't call it life-threatening, but it might be hard to know in the moment what exactly is being tossed at you. And just a short while back not wearing masks was interpreted as literally-life threatening, so I would think the potential germ risk should be given some respect.
Until more evidence comes out though I'm not even sure the trash was thrown at anyone. Its from a police source and its a paraphrase.
Many "nice" things modern cities in other rich or middle income countries are resisted by well-off in U.S. cities because they are seen as attracting homeless, mentally ill, addicts - benches, bike paths, transit.
Basically, even if you don't care anything about homeless, by now, people must know, unless we do right thing and provide safe shelter for all people, through various options (secure temp shelter, cheap small but safe rooms with bathrooms, expanded drug treatment and mental health treatment/housing), we can't have nice things for anyone.
“those cities didn’t arrest their way to being largely unhoused and drug-free — they just have significantly less unsheltered homelessness”
Sure, but the high rates of involuntary institutionalization in, for example, many Nordic countries, belies the point. The difference between a police arrest that deprives a person of their liberty and involuntary institutionalization that deprived a person of their liberty is not insignificant, as the systems into which a person is thrown non-consensually are distinct, but neither is it enormous.
In fact, cities like Stockholm have higher rates of homelessness than many American cities. You’ve slightly covered your bases by referring solely to “unsheltered” homelessness, but I’m not convinced that involuntary institutionalization--where individuals are often referred to after arrest by the police--which is highly morally questionable, isn’t the price that countries pay for transit systems devoid of the unstable mentally ill.