This is closer to the truth than most are willing to admit. Places that solve this issue are those with strong social programs and drug rehabilitation. Some people definitely just fall in hard times and need the social programs unrelated to drug problems or mental disorders. A lot of homeless are those with untreated disorders and -- lacking real help -- are cast aside to fend for themselves. Handing them a house key doesn't actually solve that problem for many.

Right, hard working Americans and their children are now exposed to public defecation, open air drug use (not a big deal to me, except for the needles left behind), and antisocial behavior. We don't have an answer to that in this shithole country 😂😂

I don't have an answer. That's why I asked in my initial comment.

I want to be left alone too. But the homeless live where I live and I never get peace. You get to leave the homeless encampment and live in peace. I don't get peace in my neighborhood, so what's the answer to that?

I'm frequently in the Boston area nicknamed "methadone mile". And, as I said, very many of these people want to be left alone.

They don't want to be forced into treatment or into shelters.

I never said not to provide housing, etc.

I said that very many of these people want to be left alone. They don't want to be treated as a "patient", they don't want to be rounded up and put into shelters.

You cannot force these people to do what you want because you want them off the streets.

So what if all someone wants to do is not work and get high all day? That still doesn't mean they deserve to be homeless. They're human beings for fuck's sake!

The solution is simple: give them housing and ensure that all of their basic needs are met. I will never understand the mentality of wanting to deprive people of the essentials, just because they refuse to participate in society. Seriously, what the fuck!? Where's your empathy? Everyone deserves housing. Full stop.

These are drug addicts mostly (alcohol or worse), arresting them accomplishes nothing, buying them a new house accomplishes nothing, they will use until they die or quit, all on their own. Nobody can do it for them.

If you want less deaths, legalize. You can prevent a lot of overdoses and death, and use the profits for drug treatment and education. Everyone should have to look at this as a kid, this should be a fundamental part of school.

Well not my neighborhood, but in my broader municipal area, only about half the shelter/housing capacity is used. The number of empty but available free shelter capacity is close to the estimated number of people on the streets. They haven't figured out how to get them to prefer the shelters over street living.

Not to say there aren't problems but even when they make a pretty compelling effort, it's still not a slam dunk to get the unhoused into proper accommodations.

Prop 40 is currently on ballot in California!!!!

Treat it as a medical issue, have more than one methedone center per city. Government fund them. That distributes the problem rather than concentrating it.

Then you fund all sorts of homelessness and domestic abuse services so that a) kids can avoid following the paths of their families, b) spouses can get away from their partners when they need to.

See you treat a problem like this by sitting down and thinking about all the human choices that cause it, and interviewing as many people as possible about why they started and/or continue to use... And what would help them stop.

The point is, it's not a static problem happening out there - and it's not a problem happening to inanimate objects you can't just talk to people.

These aren't bridges or roads randomly collapsing. They're people, and they're in your town. You can absolutely use the hermeneutic, scientific, and socratic methods to find out about their pathology and put a bunch of options and off roads in for people to take. You won't solve the problem over night, but in a decades time you would absolutely reduce it.

People do drugs to escape poverty, stresses, and depression. A bad society that lacks accessible services and community are some causes. Fund people to have better lives, and a better society, and you can step in on problems like this.

It's not impossible for people to have less things they're escaping from alone. Right now the drugs provide more than society is.

Do you live in a neighborhood with a homeless crisis?

Ahh yes, the magical Trump voter. Always someone else’s fault.

They probably shit there because someone closed and locked the park bathroom.

It’s okay, I know you voted for Trump and I’m happy you’ll be losing your social security and Medicare. Hopefully that removes you as a problem from the world.

I wish you the worst. 🚫

Lmfao they could go kill themselves please? Why should children be terrorized by their drug use and filth? They have places to go. They can camp out in the woods. They choose to take over parks and kids are supposed to go where? THEY LITERALLY SHIT IN THE PARK LIKE ANIMALS AND DON'T PICK IT UP? IMAGINE IF A DOG OWNER DID THAT? YOU WOULD BE SHREEKING WITH ANGER 😂😂

There is no place for homeless and sober people to go.

Kill yourself please.

Oh that's right. The playground isn't for children it's for homeless crackheads.

If you ask them to leave, you’re a dumb fuck cunt who deserves what they give you.

Occupied by homeless. If you ask them to leave they will call you Racist 😂😂😂

Cold climates in the USA are all car-centric except the small downtown areas of the super major cities with a Metro (Philly, Boston, NYC, Chicago, etc). You’ll notice right away that Americans that choose to live outside of those metro bubbles are mostly extremely introverted, lack socialization, and want to be “left alone”. There are of course many people living to be near family that make it feel more varied than that super myopic view. Myself, I moved from a rural area to an urban environment as an adult; I can say that people who live out in these areas just don’t want to come together and make community.

If you look into the history of the USA, it was a bunch of religious fanatics that moved here centuries ago, who eventually spread out when they started disagreeing with the main religious leaders. Regular people didn’t generally move “out west” to build “better” community; they moved to get farther away from their neighbors, the law, elites, minorities, etc. A lot of the reason why you see these communities in the middle of the country is because hubs popped up around manufacturing/railroads/shipping ports. Many, many, of these communities are defunct and dying because the underlying reason for those communities to exist has vanished, sometimes generations ago in the past.

Political leaders in the USA are also simply anti-mass transit because the car lobiests incentivized politicians to be that way. If you complained to your political rep in middle-of-nowhere-town-inserted-here, they’d tell you to move to a place that already has transit.

Related to the above, American cities (read: not metroplexes) simply do not fund public works projects anymore. The funding isn’t there, nor the willpower. If you look at architecture around the USA you’ll find a lot of municipal buildings built to last out of marble/stone/brick popping up until the mid 20th century. I cannot recall a time that I saw better than cheap plywood structures going up anywhere near me. You simply do not see third spaces like parks/playgrounds being built and maintained either. The USA in its current form has essentially stopped growing, and is absolutely at an inflection point.

Tl;dr

Americans are anti-collectivist and do not want to live close to other people. The average American response to “let’s improve our city” is: “move away to [insert major city] that has what you want”.

Thanks for the breakdown! Took me a bit of sleuthing, but route 151 crossing route 12 is unambiguous: you live in Madison, WI, and the picture was likely taken around one of the Verona-something roads.

route the highways around the edge of the city, instead of punching right through its heart

Wait, is the latter something that is still done? As in, newly planned highway right through the city? Or no, you're talking about the 50s.

the city does have some genuinely nice spots

It's between two lakes, that can't be too bad. I also live in a village between two lakes - nothing all that exceptional in Southern Finland.

This is parking lot of a shopping plaza at the junction of US highways 12/18 and 151, and that structure is a highway overpass approach. Highway 12/18 was routed to a bypass, called the Beltline, and punched through the southern extent of the city in the 1950's. It cut a residential street in half at about this location. (The obscured building behind it is located on that street.) In the 2010's the state Department of Transportation grade-separated the junction, hence the sloped approach.

The contemporary ads from the '50s tried to make this place look modern and glamorous, and maybe it was. We used to love coming here as kids, because it hosted a Toys R Us store. Now, the big store is a Home Depot, and the place looks even more sad and run down.

Through the magic of induced demand, the highway expansion predictably led to worse traffic congestion. There's no room to expand it more, so WisDOT plans to destroy another strip mall across 151 (out of frame to the right, no great loss), and also half a dozen more small businesses, maybe 20-30 houses, and a city park to build a free-flowing interchange. What's left of the neighborhood will be next to a freeway sound barrier, instead of a quiet, tree-lined street. (A bit to the west, some friends of mine used to have a view of the sunset from their back yard; now they have a concrete wall.) The Wisconsin legislature outlawed using eminent domain to acquire land for bicycle and pedestrian facilities, but by god, we're still happy to throw people out of their homes for cars. Freedom!

In many respects, too, we're lucky. The planners had the foresight to route the highways around the edge of the city, instead of punching right through its heart, as they did in so many other cities. (They did seize and bulldoze the Italian/Black neighborhood by other means, so don't fret. Racism finds a way.) On the back side of this shopping plaza was an Illinois Central rail line that went right downtown. There was a proposal to replace it with another highway, to provide a high-speed connection into the heart of the city for drivers. It's now a fairly nice bike path, actually.

Further, the city does have some genuinely nice spots, mostly in the old, pre-auto core, around the university campus. Which is weird, because we have examples of what's beautiful (for the wealthy people who can afford to live there), and then choose to build this kind of dreck just about everywhere else.

Not OP but that brownish structure looks like a highway barrier/ramp. I can hear this picture, that's how common this type of parking lot is in US

Where is this taken? What's the weird low brownish structure in the bg?

Without having seen the extent of it for myself, I can only say that such places exist in all the countries I lived in.

So let's hope this comm will give me more material to form an opinion.

But I can say with confidence that carbrained infrastructure must be really really bad in the USA. A lack of sidewalks, bicycle paths, public transport...

And I've seen pics where overhead electricity was used in urban areas, which struck me as extremely outdated.