The Off Topic Topic

[crazy canuck]

A government motivated by the public good in order to subsidize transit ridership will likely also have policies to address homelessness and drug use. For example, if Edmonton provided safe injection sites which are warm and dry, chances are people would not to be camping out all day using drugs while riding transit.

Yet it is not only right-wing jurisdictions that have problems with homeless populations.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/homelessness-deaths-bc-up-75-per-cent-2021-1.6614161

There's no panacea to homelessness, and different public policy choices have different outcomes, both good and bad.  Alberta does in fact have safe injection sites for example.  The model Edmonton has gone with is safe injection is done through medical facilities, and access to a wider range of health care facilities is also available.

When more wider-spread open-air safe injection sites were available they became associated with dramatically higher crime rates in the surrounding neighbourhoods.

You are a bit defensive this morning.  I did not claim homelessness is a problem only in right wing jurisdictions.  But right wing jurisdictions tend to do things like prevent, or shut down, things like safe injection sites.

If you were a drug user what would you choose - injecting at a place where you will have privacy and where there will be medical assistance or injecting on a bus?

[Barrister]

A government motivated by the public good in order to subsidize transit ridership will likely also have policies to address homelessness and drug use. For example, if Edmonton provided safe injection sites which are warm and dry, chances are people would not to be camping out all day using drugs while riding transit.

Yet it is not only right-wing jurisdictions that have problems with homeless populations.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/homelessness-deaths-bc-up-75-per-cent-2021-1.6614161

There's no panacea to homelessness, and different public policy choices have different outcomes, both good and bad.  Alberta does in fact have safe injection sites for example.  The model Edmonton has gone with is safe injection is done through medical facilities, and access to a wider range of health care facilities is also available.

When more wider-spread open-air safe injection sites were available they became associated with dramatically higher crime rates in the surrounding neighbourhoods.

You are a bit defensive this morning.  I did not claim homelessness is a problem only in right wing jurisdictions.  But right wing jurisdictions tend to do things like prevent, or shut down, things like safe injection sites.

If you were a drug user what would you choose - injecting at a place where you will have privacy and where there will be medical assistance or injecting on a bus?

Evidentially lots of people are choosing the bus.  It's more convenient plus they know the bus driver can call someone in an emergency.

[crazy canuck]

The fact that it is more convenient speaks to the restrictions local/provincial governments put on the save injection sites 

[Barrister]

The fact that it is more convenient speaks to the restrictions local/provincial governments put on the save injection sites 

Well sure.

But what's the alternative?  Have safe multiple open-air safe injection sites?  Safe injection sites do not supply the drugs themselves, so you have all the associated drug-dealing and crime in the area around the SIS.

Do you then provide the drugs themselves?  That then becomes very ethically dicey to hand out potentially deadly drugs to people.  And unless you force them to consume on-site you run the risk if actually increasing the drug supply on the streets.

Look, my work touches on issues of homelessness and drug addiction on a nearly daily basis, but I'm not a public policy expert.  I know enough to simply know there are no easy answers.

[Grey Fox]

Full decriminalisation of drugs, reallocation of the associated police resources to other social ventures? You capping.

[mongers]

Plenty still around in the UK.
I think there's a legal contract that has never been repealed because what if there's an emergency or something.
Increasingly in town centres you also see modern ones which are basically advertising boards with mics and speakers on the side from which you can make free calls.

Yeah lots have been re-purposed - some into the modern ones which are free Wifi hubs with charging points and ad boards.

Apparently there's 5,000 that can't be decommissioned by BT. The regulator's said they can't get rid of them if:

its location is not already covered by all four mobile networks; or
it is located at an accident or suicide hotspot; or
more than 52 calls have been made from it over the past 12 months; or
exceptional circumstances mean there is a need for a public call box (e.g. it's in a coastal location where mobile reception is less resilient or it's still being used for helpline calls).

Which sounds pretty sensible and a way of still meeting the universal service requirement. Apparently despite massive decline in use in 2021 they were still used for 150,000 999 calls, 25,000 Childline calls (and that strikes me as a real risk over who controls access to mobiles) and about 25,000 calls to the Samaritans.

Yep if it's working and at modest 'cost' then it doesn't need modernising/updating/replaced.

[Josquius]

Look, my work touches on issues of homelessness and drug addiction on a nearly daily basis, but I'm not a public policy expert.  I know enough to simply know there are no easy answers.

I know very little of the Canadian situation. But there are plenty of places in the world with decent, cheap transport that don't have a huge problem with homeless people camping out on it.

I have heard of this being a thing with London night busses.... But from all I've heard there it's largely decent homeless people just needing somewhere to sleep and not screaming arrest me now by shooting up on the bus.

If only I had said that, just one post before you 

Sorry. Seems you beat me by 10 mins. Might have been one where I loaded the page and then replied a bit after.

[Sheilbh]

I have heard of this being a thing with London night busses.... But from all I've heard there it's largely decent homeless people just needing somewhere to sleep and not screaming arrest me now by shooting up on the bus.

You definitely get beggars on the London Overground fairly regularly. Don't think I've seen it much on the buses.

But except for in Glasgow I don't think I've ever seen people shooting up on the streets or public transport in the UK. I've seen people getting their methadone in the morning and (literally in the block I live in) buying what they need.

[The Brain]

In Stockholm many... er... bohemians and similar don't pay when riding the subway, so making it free wouldn't make a big difference.

[Josquius]

On the transport topic...

A map of how much of the US is car parking.

http://kat.world/map.html

[DGuller]

On the transport topic...

A map of how much of the US is car parking.

http://kat.world/map.html

Not a lot?

[Josquius]

On the transport topic...

A map of how much of the US is car parking.

http://kat.world/map.html

Not a lot?

I took it as a shit tonne. Don't have to zoom far to see them take over.

[Admiral Yi]

Looks like we're short of parking.  Need to build more.

[Grey Fox]

How does it compare to how much of the US is warehousing?

[Barrister]

I have heard of this being a thing with London night busses.... But from all I've heard there it's largely decent homeless people just needing somewhere to sleep and not screaming arrest me now by shooting up on the bus.

You definitely get beggars on the London Overground fairly regularly. Don't think I've seen it much on the buses.

But except for in Glasgow I don't think I've ever seen people shooting up on the streets or public transport in the UK. I've seen people getting their methadone in the morning and (literally in the block I live in) buying what they need.

So it's fairly easy for communities to hide homelessness and drug use.  Police just harass/arrest homeless people, arrest anyone seen using drugs - basically send the message that you can't do such things where visible to the "normies".

I'm attuned to issues of homelessness and drug use because not only of the work that I do, but because my office is one block from one homeless shelter, and 3 blocks from another one.  And Edmonton Police are trying not to "criminalize" homelessness, so they don't get the "bum's rush" so often.