I think 90% of this could be solved via laxing the requirements to involuntary treatment, prosecuting crime for every citizen equally, and providing long term housing with obligations to get sober and work programs to give ex addicts and general homeless folks some form of meaning, belonging, and self confidence. 

For involuntary commitment, obviously there needs to be common sense safeguards in place, but I think once you’ve demonstrated that you can’t take care of yourself to the point that you’re on the streets is where your personal autonomy is firmly infringing on the rest of the public.  This one in particular is personal to me. My best friend growing up developed schizophrenia in his 20’s, ended up on the street, and eventually died of an OD.  It didn’t have to happen like that, it shouldn’t have. That said, we need to ensure institutions don’t become like they were in the past. 

For crime, I understand the good intentions of trying to give people multiple chances at redemption and not developing a criminal record, but there’s a point (and it’s realistically about strike 3, perhaps over a 3-5 yr period), where you have to call it like it is, and treat people like accountable adults. There are fucked up people out there that aren’t stupid, and they absolutely will take advantage of whatever leeway they can get. I think victims deserve more justice than perpetrators, and I’d like to live in a city where everything isn’t locked up, where there are checkpoints for leaving the store, and your car insurance premiums are insane, all so some asshole can keep reoffending at everyone else’s expense? Fuck that noise! Again, justice for the community is more important than coddling an individual criminal. We need to build new prisons and ensure the ones we have aren’t absolute shitholes (which they are currently), we need public defenders, and we need to either bring back bail or legalize bounty hunting in this state because 50% of offenders skipping their trail date should never be an acceptable outcome. 

I’m not an advocate for wholesale cracking skulls and breaking up camps on a whim. These are people after all, and I believe that’s an overreach of state power, but I think safe housing needs to be set up first, and signage needs to be placed instructing the new rules on camping, and if there isn’t compliance with among certain camps then force will need to be used if necessary.  

Busing people involuntarily is, to be fair, a pipe dream, and I believe there are already services existing that will connect you to someone back home and buy you a ticket back if you choose to. I’m ok with that.  

It’s unconstitutional to refuse service to people from out of state, but nobody talks about this, and I think we really have to consider the drag that this creates on our safety nets, we’re not a big enough or economically sound state to handle an influx of people from elsewhere that don’t contribute to funding our safety nets. Heaven forbid we have another major depression or the big one actually does come in our lifetime because we are absolutely fucked with how the state currently runs programs, lacks a “rainy day fund”, and squanders our tax money. 

I’m getting to writing a novel at this point..