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Comment by labrador | Hacker News Reader

I don't know where you're from but it wasn't just Governors Brown and Reagan who created the problem, it was the Psychiatric survivors movement which was against forced treatment and forced medication.

I voluntarily take my medication and look upon those poor schizophrenics on the street screaming at birds with pity and sadness because well meaning do gooders don't believe they should be forced to take meds or accept treatment of any kind (because freedom) so they are left to suffer like wounded animals on the street.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatric_survivors_movement

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Homelessness isnt a side effect of a mental illness epidemic. Mental illness is a side effect of a homelessness epidemic.

The reason for the focus on mental illness as a cause is that it stops people from drawing a direct line between a cult of landlord greed and drug addicts defecating outside of your local drugstore.

The non-mentally ill homeless aren't shitting on the sidewalk requiring 1.7 million dollar toilets. You should give functional homeless, which I've been, more credit than that.

They tend to be the ones who have been homeless the longest. Homeless -> drugs -> crippling mental illness -> shitting on the street. It can take years.

It's not coincidence that there are armies of them where the rents are highest. We're told is is though.

> It's not coincidence that there are armies of them where the rents are highest.

I believe you are neither wrong nor right. I lived adjacent to a massive homeless community, in a (then) low-cost rural county.

It's been there for decades. It's still there but is larger since housing costs are >2x what they were in 2020.

What level of "greedy landlord" do you, personally, have to experience, to cause you to push an elderly Asian in front of a subway?

never knew clinically significant mental illness was directly related to the "cult of landlord greed" - where do I learn more about this?

People who cant pay rent end up on the street. They take drugs to salve the pain of being on the street. How would you expect that to end?

Are you asking about the connection between rents, regulatory capture and greed? High rents and being on the streets? Or living on the streets being a bit of a cause of mental issues?

A good summary. I would add, mental health illnesses tend to present themselves in high stress situations. So while not the cause of the illness, being unable to afford reasonable housing while also being unable to find work with reasonable wages can cause illness to present.

"a bit of a cause of mental issues" there we go

It's kinda both. In NZ in the 90s, residential care for people with severe mental illness was replaced with "community care" where all those patients be helped to go flatting the community, and have their condition treated so well that there was no need for residential care facilities.

It's far better! It's more respectful! It's also incidentally going to let us trim millions from the Health budget so we can pay for the tax cuts for high earners!

The care provided in the community was wisely delegated to the Almighty Invisible Hand of the Free Market, so a bunch of fly-by-night sub-par contractors sprung up to get the government cash and then provide very little care at all, and so large numbers of former patients ended up homeless due to their poorly controlled illness, and well gosh, hard to care for them in the community when you don't know where they live right?

It's an absolute debacle, and a great demonstration that neoliberalism is nothing more a belief set for business people who don't like paying tax.

But I fully agree that homelessness is a great medium for developing mental illness and drug dependencies.

> residential care was replaced with "community care" where all those patients be helped to go flatting the community, and have their condition treated so well that there was no need for residential care facilities.

I think you posted this in good faith but reads like a fairy tale. By definition, folks who need long-term inpatient care aren't going to be sufficiently treated by outpatient programs.

My spouse needs long-term, inpatient care. Not permanent care but the adjustments she needs aren't going to take place over 72 hours or 7 days. They're going to take months.

She didn't get the needed months of treatment. She got decades of the fairy tale. She's homeless now and likely will be until it kills her.

> I think you posted this in good faith but reads like a fairy tale

I read GP's post as sarcastic, I think you both agree. Thank you for the explanation on why it isn't great though.

I wish it was make believe. It's what happened in NZ in the 90s.

It wasn't just mental illness patients affected, it was also those with significant intellectual disabilities. At least there's an NGO sector that could develop the ability to provide housing and care for them.

For an anecdote.

Deinstitutionalization was supposed to be coupled with community mental health centers, which would have been places for these people to go when they fell through the cracks to get help without being segregated from society. The problem is that deinstitutionalization happened. Federal funding was removed from institutions but then never materialized for CMHCs.

These would have been places with maybe a psychiatrist and some therapists and social workers on staff who would work with the chronically mentally ill to help them navigate society so they didn't fall through the cracks. It was the same idea behind the "Least Restrictive Environment" requirement for No Child Left Behind--people who have problems in society should still be allowed to navigate society with support.

> it wasn't just Brown & Reagan, it was the Psychiatric survivors movement which was against forced treatment and meds.

There are options to hellholes that aren't abandonment. But they have to compete with fat justice system budgets.

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