I don't need to define "homeless" so you comment guys can show how pure you are.

12 guys in a park are not "the homeless". We don't need to solve vagrancy before we kick them out of McPherson square.

I don't, and neither does the other person, because you're communicating like shit and immediately contradicting yourself, which has confused multiple people.

Correct. If they leave this park, they go to a different place in the city. Very good. Your insistence that this park be clean for you does not resolve it.

Going from “slamming heroin” every day to sober overnight has numerous studies to back up that that’s not a way to be sober sustainably long term. The most long term sustainable sober option is medication assisted treatment, that people still clutch their pearls about.

Like if any of you who are hardcore against drugs and would do any amount of research to see why harm reduction is the model that helps more people get sober and healthy with the assistance of MAT and able to get into housing and jobs long term like many of you claim to want them to get into, perhaps the policy failures that keep plaguing DC would get somewhere.

Nope that's just word games. You know exactly what I meant.

No.

This is not "ignoring the problem" or fixing homeless. They are a dozen vagrants removed from a central park.

We have neither added to or subtracted from the homeless population. They are where they would have been anyway, today.

You realize those people were living in other parks that they got kicked out of previously, these people just go wherever they can they’re not doing this shit for fun

He wants you to decide if they aren't the homeless or if they are.

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It's not virtue signaling to try to understand your clear fuckup in your incredibly low level logic

You... said they weren't homeless. Now you are saying they are. Do you understand why they asked how you would classify them?

The homeless are "the homeless", they are not represented by a dozen yucksters that took over a central park for way to many weeks.

If I drove a truck over to McPherson SQ and started building a cabin there I would have been kicked out the same day. This isn't the issue of "the homeless" this is the obvious conclusion to a nothing story about some guys that decided no one else was going to be able to use the park.

You know what actually helps prevent drug deaths and exposure to needles?

Safe use facilities, which cities like DC refuse to legalize.

I am fairly sure the vast majority of people under 40 that have lived next door to me while living in DC were drug users, and the people they had over were as well.

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I know because I have smoked or drank with them.

Probably coming from Hagerstown or something.

>If it’s not so easy for them to post up somewhere else, they will be more likely to accept help.

Is there any evidence of this approach actually working anywhere? I've seen it suggested a lot--just make being homeless even more awful then no one will choose to do it--but I have yet to see any study show that it's an effective approach.

The homeless are fucking everywhere in this city. They're there because it's where people who may give them money and food are and they had yet to be pushed out of somewhere else that will be closed for months to train them to be elsewhere. We are pushing a problem on top of, not under, a different rug, deciding to clean that run, and pushing it to another.

I took the linked and other comments as implying that housing was the better first step than rehab https://reddit.com/r/washingtondc/comments/118eh0l/_/j9gtr25/?context=1

I’m just looking for sources on the claims people make because this is a highly complicated issue. Any data or studies on it is interesting and people throwing out random facts in these threads should be able to back it up like op does.

Moving the goal posts again? They chose that park to be closer to those things. We still can't let them live there in a shanty town. Even a progressive warrior should understand that.

I would confidently suggest that there is similar or higher percentages of drug use by those working on the hill and K St as those living in tents.

A lower percentage of homeless have drug or alcohol issues than the percentage who have used this program.

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https://americanaddictioncenters.org/rehab-guide/homeless

That is not the Pentagon. If you are near the Pentagon though there is a Panda Express in the mall at Pentagon city.

Did he state that?

"I don't have solutions but the problem can't be solved and I don't want my money-"

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It's not your money.

Don’t get all 2015 anti-sjw on me, I’m saying if those people aren’t “the homeless” then who exactly qualifies as “the homeless”?

It's right fucking there. I'm not going to repeat it because you're not gonna answer it.

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No, those tents don't have electric and running water.

Agree, but park clearing must continue to be done, vigorously and relentlessly. If it’s not so easy for them to post up somewhere else, they will be more likely to accept help. I’m encouraged to hear that 33% of those at McPherson did accept, and hope the other 2/3 come around to not living on the streets of DC.