A San Francisco Library Is Turning Off Wi-Fi At Night To Keep People Without Hou...

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• And that giving people housing gets them off drugs.

  Funny. People here in San Diego refuse shelters that don't allow them to continue using drugs and alcohol.

  Also another fun fact, 40% of homeless in America have full time jobs.

  I guarantee you that 40% of the people sitting in camps on 5th Ave do not have full time jobs. You're committing a category error. Someone couch-surfing or crashing at a friend's place for a month is technically "homeless", but they are obviously not the people at issue here. Besides, the friend probably has wifi.

  • Re:

    Drugs and alcohol can be addictive.

  • With 40% working full time

    and everyone doing drug tests there's not that many of them. But also, multiple studies have shown that housing people with drug problems unconditionally is both more effective and more humane.
    
    But punching down is fun isn't it?
    
    I agree with you that 40% of people in camps on 5th ave don't have jobs. I'm assuming you mean New York, so it's probably closer to 80%. How do you think somebody can cook & clean for you in NY restaurants earning $15/hr when an apartment the size of a water closet costs $

    • Re:

      "humane"? Where do you think you are, socialist Europe?!
    • Housing first - taking in people without requiring drug treatment- does not work. In fact it has been a failure by a wide margin.
      https://ciceroinstitute.org/re... [ciceroinstitute.org]

      • • You responded to someone saying:

          > Housing first - taking in people without requiring drug treatment- does not work. In fact it has been a failure by a wide margin.

          By linking to a Guardian piece about Rukkila, where they say: "Rukkila does not allow drug or alcohol use; some other Housing First units do" without quantifying how much of each exist and a powerpoint slide that doesn't mention drugs at all, none of which seems to show that it's an idea of housing first wherein there is no drug treatment.

          None of this does anything to rebut the idea that drug treatment works far better than no drug treatment, which is the original claim that grandparent made.

        • Re:

          Maybe we can send the homeless to Finland, since it works so well there.

        • Re:

          Because Finland has invested very heavily in drug treatment and mental health facilities. We have not, not even in SF or Poirtland. And that's why those cities have such problems, especially Portland, which legalized all drugs.

      • Re:

        I read your link. My conclusion is the federal government screwed up by leaving it to the states. Only a tiny handful of states actually built any housing for the homeless, and there's no one more mobile than a homeless person. So they crossed the country and occupied the new housing just as soon as they heard about it, resulting in the 10:1 ratio cited of housed vs local homeless finally taken off the streets.

        The complaints about the wildly inflated per-unit cost of that housing are part and parcel of t

        • In Portland (don't know if this is a factor in SF), they legalized all drugs.

          So in Portland at least, housing had absolutely nothing to do with the homelessness problem. They came because they can do any drugs they want, all day long, and cops can't do anything about it. And they didn't massively expand drug treatment or mental health first, like they did in Finland.

          The resulting hellscape was entirely predictable, yet none of the idiots who voted for it are willing to undo it, because that would mean admitting their "compassion" is causing death and destruction. Just like the public housing / ghettos causes black crime to triple in the 70s and 80s: the left does not admit error.

      • Re:

        > Housing first - taking in people without requiring drug treatment- does not work. In fact it has been a failure by a wide margin. https://ciceroinstitute.org/re... [ciceroinstitute.org]

        "Adding one PSH bed reduces the homeless count by up to 0.10 people, and I can reject a reduction of more than 0.72 people at the 95% confidence level. Finally, I discuss several possible explanations for the relatively modest impact, including poor targeting, differential exit rates into private housing from PSH relative to homelessness, inc

      • You know we have Google right

        And I can Google the Cicero Institute. They're a right wing think tank. They did make sure that the first several hits on Google come from them and their buddies and claim that they're a "liberal conservative" political organization. Which is the most nonsensical thing I've read in years. The end of the day they're a right-wing think tank. It's not a surprise that they don't want to give homes to the homeless or that their research would show the giving homes to the homeless would be a bad thing. That's lik

    • Re:

      The homeless can be divided into categories. The latest boom over the last decade is not your stereotypical incoherent bum with a drug problem, many of these had normal lives until bills got out of hand: lost a job, got divorced, had medical bills. I would see ten years ago that there were lots of RVs, campers, and cars with sleeping bags parked around the block at work; some would move every day but be back in the evening, others would move once a week to avoid towing, but it was clear someone was living

      • What we have instead is a whole bunch of mentally ill people self-medicating and then a whole bunch of people forced into homelessness by circumstance also self-medicating. The vast majority of homeless people aren't drug users when they become homeless. Drug use is something they fall into to cope with the stress of homelessness.
        
        There's a large contingent of people who would like to keep the money that we would otherwise use to end homelessness for themselves. They would also like you to be in a constant state of fear of becoming homeless so that you'll take a lower salary from their businesses. They spend a lot of money putting the image of the lazy drunk bum into your mind. It's propaganda.

    • Re:

      Where do you house homeless drug bums that they won't just burn the place down? Meth fires are common.

    • Re: With 40% working full time

      They can move somewhere else, perhaps a place with more affordable water closet rentals...

      Some cities offer homeless residents bus tickets to other cities, maybe the homeless could go somewhere more affordable?

  • Funny, drugs are bad because they are addictive. So for some reason people that use drugs cannot simply decide to stop just because some hateful person says they cant get housing unless they quit cold turkey. But if you give them housing and let them continue to use drugs, then it becomes possible for them to quit.

    The people that ended the wifi the ones committing the category error. They assumed that moving the homeless by making their life harder solved the problem. NOPE. The problem was not homeless people near the library, but crime caused by homelessness. Very unlikely that turning off the wifi reduced total crimes. It is quite possible that it INCREASED crime, just in other areas where they drove the homeless too. Oh, crime went up, but not in my neighborhood, so I don't care, NIMBY fools.

    • Speaking of wrong timelines...

      They chose to get on them while they weren't yet addicted. This is a crappy situation, no doubt, but the problem is that there are safety issues for other people when among people who are having drug induced psychosis, among other things. Yet you're demanding that other people volunteer to take the short end of the stuck for a situation they did not create. SF does nothing but enable them to continue this self-destructive behavior.

      Feel free to put them up at your place instead of heroically volunteering

    • Re:

      "Some hateful person says they have to quit cold turkey" Okey dokey, enabler.

      Those "hateful" people know that you won't quit unless the pressure to do so reaches a point where you choose to get help, choose to stop.
      The pain has to be greater than the high, or you'll never hit bottom. There is no other way, unless we throw you in jail for a long time.

      The idiots in Portland legalized drugs because, in their infinite "non-hatefulness," they saw it as "wrong" that the prisons were "full of drug users

    • Re:

      You made the first stat up. Do you have any evidence to back it up?
      
      And yes, wanting to get rid of crime in your neighborhood is absolutely rational.

  • Re:

    So you're saying the shelters there contain only social workers and crickets?

  • The majority of homeless are inconspicous

    The majority of homeless are living out of their car or a shelter, or sleeping where they can, not on the street. You can ignore the problem and pretend that the homeless are filthy, drug-addicted, mentally-ill bums on the street and you could never be one of them, but that's just a lie you tell yourself to feel better at night.
    
    We have a shit safety net and terrible healthcare in the USA. A single moderate injury or lump found on your body could cost you a few years of income. Many of the homeless are

    • Re: The majority of homeless are inconspicous

      "Shitty safety net"? Please explain. As I understand it we offer homeless people housing, job training, food benefits, welfare payments, section 8 housing subsidies, etc. and if they are disabled, we offer them SS disability payments, and if they have dependent children they also can collect money to help care for them.

      "Terrible Healthcare"? Odd, it wasn't that long ago that Democrats "fixed" healthcare , making it affordable for those that are working and offering free healthcare to those that aren't worki

• Re:

  I’ve been devouring the unhoused for years and I’ll tell you the ones that are most visible and obvious have burned through friends and family, lost their cars, and foolishly congregate under bridges in pursuit of drugs. Blinded by the dangers of being consumed by trolls in pursuit of feeding their pathetic addictions.
  
  The depressing thing is that they’re but a fraction of the total homeless who are generally safely out of my reach.

  • • Re:

      Of course!
      When you’re a greater troll you must stay organized to avoid burnout! I do things other than eating people though. I also crush lesser trolls, terrorize villagers, and this upcoming Monday I have a Tai Chi class.
      Very good for posture and relaxation.

• studies show drug use doesn't cause homelessness, it follows homelessness. i.e. it's a coping mechanism from the incredible amounts of stress.

  I would be interested in seeing a citation to those studies.

• Jesus said lots of things but I'm pretty sure he didn't say you get to leave human shit and drug needles around the public library.

  • Re:

    Sure he did. It's from the Sermon on the Toilet.

    • Re: Fun fact

      Did he deliver that sermon at Dodgers Stadium the other week?

      • Re:

        You were there?

        • Re: Fun fact

          No, I was taking a shit.

  • Re:

    Check under 202 first, but you probably want 628 and 615 respectively.

• Re:

  You almost had me until I choked taking a sip of my drink while reading this, as I don't think that's the case. They're probably watching TikTok videos to get a laugh. If they were job hunting and doing homework, then that means they had their shit together and wouldn't be homeless and/or on drugs.
  
  As to your first paragraph, I don't doubt there are some studies showing a correlation between homelessness and falling into drugs, as I believe many of these people just fell upon hard times (major stuff, li

  • Re:

    If that's true, that they're watching TikTok instead of job hunting, then it would be a simple matter for the library to employ content filters to block entertainment sites and only allow job hunting sites.
    
    There! Technology solves the problem!

• Re:

  > I somehow doubt a lot of people are shooting up and then going on/. on their cell phones

  Then how do you explain rsilvergun's post history then?

  Checkmate

• Re:

  We just need more government funding for homeless services and then things will all get better, right?

• Re:

  >Also another fun fact, 40% of homeless in America have full time jobs

  Notice the disgusting shift to "unhoused" as if someone took their house.
  The issue is that some percent of the made up term "homeless" doesn't have a full time job. A hobo isn't even the main problem, to say nothing of someone who works a full time job and doesn't have a home (I'm not even aware of the proper term for such a person, though obviously our society has desperate need of one). The issue is bums and vagrants, who shit up t

  • Life is not fair

    I don't think it is a good idea to make the life more miserable, for the people already quite unlucky in life.

    I know, there might be some lazy & dumb among them. They have probably made some bad decisions in their life. I'm sure that most of them simply had bad luck.

    But I don't see the point of punishing them even more.

• • Re: Fun fact

    So are war and race-baiting. And neither of those are going away any time soon.

• Mod parent up.

  More of this please. Giving people a leg up is always better.
  
  One minor thing I'd change, I'd like to see us go all Nordic and just give people homes. As long as you give them some support while they need it the vast majority just become productive. Hell, at least 40% of them are already working full time jobs, and some studies show it as high as 70%. And in any case it's a lot cheaper to put people in apartments than jails.

• I recommend you go out and meet some addicts

  That should help you in your research project.

• Re:

  It looks like today is housing day on Slashdot. This sounds like a great idea. Let's do it in your back yard. Ooopsie!

  As I've said countless times before, affordable housing is a difficult problem because there are too many powerful interests who depend on expensive housing.

  That's why NIMBY is a thing.

• Re:

  Yes, those damn homeless need to be ordered about to do things we want them to.

  We know better.

  They don't need access to entertainment, emails and social media - despite the fact that emails and social media are the main ways to get jobs. And children are homeless so screw them over, make them miserable with no entertainment.

  When some shmuck thinks they know better and wants to tell others what they can do, the proper response is to make them live by the rules they want to enforce on others, with those ot

  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @07:34PM (#63603602)

    You noticed where I said "at night" -- right? So they'd be still able to access all those other things during the day. You should come down from your high-horse, the thin air seems to be affecting you. Also, *some* internet access a at night seems better than *no* internet access...

  • Re:

    Aren't those rules called laws?

    I'm not saying removing their wifi is right. I know very little about the situation of the homeless in SF, but saying society can't impose rules on others is also ridiculous.

    • Re:

      I'll also note that public services aren't free and I imagine homeless people aren't really contributing property/income taxes to support the library, the "free" wifi, and the police who may be dispatched to handle the noted neighborhood disturbances. Unless totally free and unfettered 24/7 WiFi is an "essential service" (Wait! It's not in the Constitution is it?) I don't see a problem with limiting the service if the people using is are causing problems. [Malory Archer: "This is why we can't have nice t

• Re:

  San Francisco also provides free wifi in other locations [sfgov.org], such as along Market Street (which is only a small block away from the Eureka Valley library) and in the larger city parks. Not every access point is actually reaches the Internet (they hand out a DHCP address but not much else), but there's enough of them that work.

• Re:

  Every hotel I've visited ih the past decade has a practically unguessable WiFi password unless you know someone's last name and the room they're in, or a similar password scheme you only get to know at hotel check-in.

  It's not at the WiFI level of security but it is a captive portal that won't let you browse the web if you don't know the password.

• Re:

  It can also be as simple as not being able to find a job that pays enough to make rent. I suppose you could make the argument that they should just enlist in the military at that point, but as you said - some people value their freedom, even if that means living on the streets.

• Re:

  So what you're saying is "You can't lock 'em up. They're all crazy or wanna be destitute anyway. So fuck 'em."

• Re:

  Your post explicitedly demonstrates you are the uncarring jerk.

  The idea that somehow, people (or some - implying many despite the real answer being FOR LESS THAN WE CURRENTLY SPEND on the homeless. The difference is we spend it on housing and utilities rather than cops, emergency room visits, jail and lawsuits. (Always makes me laugh when some shmuck is willing to arrest a homeless person putting them in four walls, bed, food, shower and guards, but won't give them a home without the guards)

  • Re:

    Cut off half the paragraph.
    Basically anyone that thinks more than 5% of the homeless deserve it (for any reason) is an uncaring jerk.
    Then the real answer is to give them free housing and base utilities, for less than we currently spend on them (tiny houses and studios condos not granite countertop homes).

    Also, those couch surfing people? They usually end up on the streets. It's hard to cobble together friends based housing for more than 6 months. Easy for the first couple of months, but eventually it ends.

    • Re:

      "All of society should be poorer and less free so that homeless leeches can shit up public spaces and make them unsafe for taxpaying citizens. We must tolerate this in the name of fairness, or equity, or progressivism, or some similar such bullshit".

  • Re:

    That "pie in the sky" idea never works..... Sure, it sounds good to just "spend money on giving them small homes and paying all their utilities" instead of cops, ER visits, jail, etc. Guess what though? When you give people things they didn't have to work for or earn in any way, shape or form, they tend not to appreciate or respect them. You'll just have people needing those same ER visits, calls to police about the problems they're causing, jail and lawsuits WHILE you're also paying out to house them in

• It doesn't sound like your daughter suffered

  Through homelessness. Unless you just kind of left her for a little while for the hell of it it sounds more like she suffered through an abusive relationship which admittedly is terrible and then waiting around to be picked up.
  
  I guess what I'm saying is is I don't think you actually learned empathy for homeless people from that experience.
  
  I've mentioned before at a minimum 40% of homeless people have full-time jobs. Many studies show it closer to 60 to 70%. These are actual studies conducted by univ

  • Re:

    You have no proof whatsoever that 70% of the drug bums shitting up public spaces have full-time jobs. We've already covered the difference between homeless people in general and long-term street-dwellers. The latter most definitely do not hold down jobs and almost always have no interest in doing so.

    Time to bring back the asylums.

• Re:

  That's more than fair, IMO. Not that long ago, high speed Internet wasn't even a thing, and people got by without it. They still can today.

  Nope. Try again.

  You can't apply for most entry level jobs without doing it online. All the sh*tty retail jobs are online application only. Heck, most other jobs also are online application only.

  Plus, plenty of things are online - if you need to check your bill to pay it, you have to do it online. Same with paying bills - most places won't take checks anymore and you pay

• Re:

  Lock them away so they don't interfere with your life in any way, because you are the better person, right?

  • Okay. So I get to shit on your front steps and strew sharp objects on your lawn because you don't have a right to expect me not to?

    Or is there one set of rules for normies and a whole other, looser, set of rules for crazies and adicts?

    • Re:

      People keep repeating this. It's just not that common. Even in San Francisco, despite this being a regular Faux News meme.

      • Re: Round them up and put them in a hole

        I don't know about San Francisco* but here in Boston, "Mass and Cass" is full of all kinds of wholesome entertainment, like the two hobos I saw fighting over the best stripe in the crosswalk as I was on my way back from Boston Medical Center one weekend about 8 years ago for some reason I don't remember at this point. And the complaints about needles and unsanitary conditions sneak their way into the pages of the Globe. No Herald subscription or Fox News required.

        • Re: Round them up and put them in a hole

          *I haven't been there since 2011. It was quite lovely at the time but people I know have had their stuff stolen out of their cars more recently than that.

      • Re:

        It is very common in San Francisco. Common as in I know several people that have suffered this first hand in the last year.
        
        Does it happen to everybody and every day? No, sure not. Neither does the common cold.

  • Re:

    Lock them up won't work. Kurt Russell will still escape the living h3ll/s

• Re:

  How about as an alternate to incarceration, we provide them with dormitory-style housing and employ them producing cheap consumer goods which we could then export to wealthier countries?

  Somehow, that just sounds more aligned with conservative principles than locking them up and making society foot the bill. Just don't look at which *ism did it first.

  • Re: Round them up and put them in a hole

    You know, there are institutions the world over that put people who can't otherwise take care of themselves to work doing completely to mildly useless things for reasons ranging from charity to just the compassionate goal of giving people some way to fill their time.

    No bad isms required.

• Re:

  Might I suggest feeding them to trolls? Long ago pathetic humans used to offer sacrifices so that we wouldn’t raze your fields and villages.

  So whatever happened to that deal?

• Re:

  Is there a housing shortage or not? Because if there is not, cool, I've heard SF has some nice things going and I'm game to move to the area. If there is, then all you're basically arguing that if someone loses an musical chairs, it's their fault for being bad at musical chairs, against people who's argument is "why the hell are we playing musical chairs?"

  • Re:

    A housing shortage infers that these people must live in SF. Is there some requirement for them to be in that city, regardless of whether they have access to housing? Or are you saying tha these people have chosen to live in a city where they have no access to housing, so it's ok for them to be unhoused?

  • Re:

    >"If there is, then all you're basically arguing that if someone loses an musical chairs, it's their fault for being bad at musical chairs"

    I am not saying that at all.

    Life is complicated. I am saying that not all of them are faultless. We are all full of faults. If one thinks they are all just victims of bad luck, then I am saying such a person is naive. There are consequences in life for making bad or poor choices, regardless of what is thrown at you. A good choice is to be kind to others, help oth

• Re:

  The amount of crime, the amount of homelessness, the amount of open drug use, the percentage of kids dropping out of school... these are things that vary from place to place.

  Human beings don't vary THAT much, so you'd expect once you have a large enough population that the rates would be pretty much statistically identical. They're not, so if you're intellectually honest you start looking for what's different about the places.

  Culture, laws, differences in opportunity... these are the things that start gen

  • Re:

    I don't disagree with anything you wrote.

    I would argue that the main problem is poor government policy that has, over time, created bad culture and parenting. And there is some really bad culture all over the place, but it gets especially explosive when it meets with even more bad government policy. And SF has some really, really bad policy.

    Any solution that doesn't ALSO include accountability to those being helped is doomed to fail. Accountability is what creates responsibility and that is what creates

• Re:

  And that is why the US is in decline. There is no sane reason for life in the west to be _this_ hard with current industrial productivity levels. It is due to unfettered greed by a few.

  • Re:

    >"And that is why the US is in decline. There is no sane reason for life in the west to be _this_ hard with current industrial productivity levels. It is due to unfettered greed by a few."

    To me that sounds like something written by someone driven by envy. A collectivist/socialist mantra.

    The downfall has much less to do with greed than other factors. Even the poorest have it better here/now than anyone could even imagine a few hundred years ago. At least when it comes to food, shelter, goods, medicine,

• Story can't even come up with a good counter

  The problem is that (recently) the after-hours crowds brings with it open drug use and loud altercations thereby making going out at night unsafe.

  Meanwhile, the summary offers this counterpoint for why it should come back, a friend who needs to use it:

  the requester said their friend had trouble communicating with the staff and has a hard time being around people who used drugs, among other issues. Because this friend has no regular cell service, "free wifi is his only lifeline to me

  If the friend has a hard

• Re:

  Do you have young kids? How would you feel if a child started crying because they saw a guy walking around with a drawn knife and muttering to himself? Do you think children should be seeing public urination, defecation and drug use on the street? With all the drug use and desperation going on, is it safe for a child or a vulnerable adult to walk outside at night? That's how some of us experience your favorite city.

  As for help, sure, but first there is little I can do personally that would make a durable di

  • Re:

    1) Don't be an irresponsible parent taking kids down dangerous streets filled with the people who society can't be bothered to care about.
    2) If your kid sees a homeless person and is understandably upset at seeing what happens when the world writes off human life as unsalvagable junk, consider it a teachable moment. Your kid could come away from the experience with compassion and a broader perspective.
    3) If YOU have young kids and they see this, I'm afraid it just means a new generation just learnt how to i

    • Re:

      If your kid sees a homeless person and is understandably upset at seeing what happens when the world writes off human life as unsalvagable junk, consider it a teachable moment.

      Again, if you had kids, you would know age and circumstances for teachable moments. You do not comfort a two your old with a CRT lecture and you do not ignore the practical danger of a deranged man with a knife for the sake of their future enlightenment. What you do is resolve to not take your family to such a hellhole again and vote

  • Re:

    I also doubt you've given $100 to the homeless, cumulatively, over your entire life.

    The "they will just waste it!" os the absolute easiest (and laziest) excuse not to give $5 to someone in a more desperate circumstance than you, isn't it? But I'm sure you've got more rationalizations coming to excuse your empathy vacuum.

    • Re:

      Since you are making random and false assumptions about me without knowing anything about my life, I don't see why I should pay attention to anything you say. Also I don't see what is your moral authority to lecture people who assume that all homeless are just bums who want to keep using drugs while being unwilling to do any work? You are making up things about strangers just as they do.

      • Re:

        What part was false about you?

        The problem is you think homeless people should act like fully functioning adults without recognizing them as (long or short term) incapable of caring for themselves. They aren't going to just go away. There will always be new homeless people. It's society's job to care for people who are incapable of caring for themselves. If you can't see that then you are more broken than they are.

        Moral "authority"? I'm just pointing out stuff that's obviously immoral. That doesn't take auth

        • Re:

          You made a specific claim that I have not given $100 to homeless over my entire life. Since it is false and you pulled it out of your behind in the first place, you have no business criticizing people who assume that $5 they give to someone who claims to be a homeless army vet will just be spent on crack. Also, it's clearly useless to debate more nuanced and abstract concepts with you while you are busy stereotyping people based on a few paragraphs they wrote on a social media site. If you are interested in

• Re:

  Indeed. A society where compassion is dead does not have a future. And, of course, blaming the homeless for their own fate is both very convenient and makes the problem worse. The insane thing about it all is that at current productivity levels, there is zero need for this at all. The problem is the increasing uneven distribution of wealth. Of course those that blame the homeless for their fate cannot admit that, because then they may have to do something. Far easier to make it "those people of low quality

• Re: Using WiFi

  If they were motherfuckers, wouldn't they be less likely to be homeless?