OK sure.
$4,000,000,000 for one state. With the problem getting worse. You made a point about people (in general). But you swamped your own salami.
Seattle relatively spends even more. Problem is worse than ever.
Money is not fixing the problem!! It has created worse problems. Homeless industry. Moochers at all levels. Leeches sucking millions off at every level. Deep dependency.
Just STOP. People will starve, sure. Then we feed the starving. People will die, but we make sure the truly innocent don't die and let the moochers - able bodied men who chose drugs and loafing - go in the desert.
Remember: "there will always be poor people"
No I am NOT cold hearted. I am a realist and know people will never be motivated if everything is just given to them. Time to grow up. Will it be ugly? Face facts, grow up.
This resonates.
Locally, we have safe injection sites, multiple shelters, needle exchange programs, clean needle dispensaries, methadone clinics...etc. It's an industry, and a thriving one, as we continue to throw money this city doesn't have at a problem it can't solve.
"Back in the day" we operated a (large) facility adjacent to the hospital, which was a dedicated mental health facility. It treated everything, had considerable inpatient space, but had staff that could handle outpatient as well. When we built the new hospital, we shrunk, pruned and condensed that facility's role into a ward. No longer accessible as a standalone, no longer a considerable resource with its own staff. The bar is set very high to get admitted. Of course this was part of the Western push to get away from inpatient mental health treatment and download that onto families, parents and social workers as outpatient because it was "more humane"; more "progressive".
There's a dedicated mental health facility in Toronto called "CAMH" (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) that's a sprawling complex with considerable resources, like a jumbo version of the facility we had adjacent to our hospital, with separate buildings for different patient and treatment types. The facility is very successful with the work it does, because it is able to offer all levels of necessary care, including housing those who cannot properly function outside its walls.
I've been told our city can't afford to build or operate a facility like CAMH. But then I look at how much money we are pumping into this addiction and homelessness industry through all these private organizations that do nothing to solve the problem and I think, if all those functions were condensed into a single large treatment facility, that could also offer inpatient care and real treatment, I suspect that per client, it would be considerably cheaper. The problem is that with all these private parties hitched to the public trough, and with considerable political influence, getting something passed that would enable this; that would enable effective care, would be nary impossible.
