The “Water Cooler” is a feature on Claycord.com where we ask you a question or provide a topic, and you talk about it.
The “Water Cooler” will be up Monday-Friday at noon.
Today’s question:
QUESTION: Based upon what you see in the streets when you’re out and about, do you think local cities are doing enough to take care of the homeless problem?
Talk about it.
I don’t know what other cities are doing, but here in Concord it’s apparent that what they are doing is not working. The homeless and the filth they leave behind is repugnant and disgusting. I have lots of ideas of how to get rid of them, but the bleeding hearts would find my ideas to be repugnant and digesting.
It’s not that I am unsympathetic, but I believe in tough love. To change a person’s undesirable behavior, they must face the consequences of their life’s choices and be dealt with harshly, or they will never change. The goal is to promote self-esteem, and teach them to respect society, and the law.
The problem is most of the people are completely broken beyond repair and will always fall back into the same patterns that result in homeless. Most come from broken families full of child abuse and serious trauma which is often coupled with severe mental illness. You can help ease the suffering and that’s about it. Cultural change and focusing on the next generation would yield the best results. I believe Mark Laita from Soft White Underbelly has the same opinion and he’s been working in skid row every day for like 10 years.
It is not popular to say, but there is a certain segment of folks who are hopeless. And these are the ones causing these problems and taking all the money. They will never be fixed. When an animal can never be fixed, they take care of it. Sometimes that would be a merciful thing.
So you propose killing them. I’m glad you are not in charge.
Then you pay for it all. Go ahead and throw your money down a hole because that is the same thing we are doing.
For what NOT TO DO, review efforts made in oakland and san francisco.
To say woke progressive democrats are both clueless and incompetent would be over generous.
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Prop 47 made drug possession for personal use a misdemeanor, preventing Judges ability to force a substance abuser to hit bottom and possibly get clean-n-sober.
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YOU can do a great deal to fix what democrats have done to California.
California Proposition 36, Drug and Theft Crime Penalties and
Treatment-Mandated Felonies Initiative
https://tinyurl.com/yyx8bb3c
I’m not convinced drug laws have done anything useful going back to the creation of the DEA in 1973. Prove me wrong. Drug addiction is a symptom of deeper underlying mental heath issues so simply arresting these people won’t do any good sincw it’s only a coping mechanism. Mental heath care in the United States is absolutely abysmal and this is the real reason for skyrocketing overdose rates. What we really need is an enormous amount of funding for mental health care. All drug laws really do is slap criminal records on people already struggling. It not only makes them feel even worse about themselves but also makes it harder to get a decent job. Drug addiction is a victimless crime – it’a a health issue, not a criminal one.
Victimless crime! Oh, boy. Not in the slightest!
It’s not a victimless crime when they steal from family, friends, and strangers to support their habit. Or the addict, who beats his girlfriend or wife, and fights with the police when they attempt to make an arrest. It’s not a victimless crime when their children go hungry because they are spending their money on drugs. It’s not a victimless crime when they lose their home and their whole family ends up in a homeless shelter or living on the streets. Then there are the addicts who will commit murder while robbing a liquor store, or a gas station.
Drug addiction, just like alcoholism, is not a mental health issue as the AMA would have us believe, it’s a weakness, plain and simple. The AMA was lying and spreading propaganda when they declared addiction as a disease. As long as the addict remains weak, they will remain an addict. It takes strength, courage, and will power to face their problems, and overcome their addiction. Then it will take even more strength to remain sober for the rest of their lives. There is help out there, organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous are only a phone call away, and most addicts are aware of this. Unfortunately, there are too many addicts and alcoholics who will never recover because they do not have the strength, they may attend a few meetings, but they do not have the strength and will power to commit to a life of sobriety and will die an addict.
No. The city should turn the old Kmart on Clayton road into a shelter.
PAUL,
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The City of Concord doesn’t own the property where Kmart was formerly located on Clayton Road to be able to turn it into a homeless shelter. Why would the owner of the property choose to rent the property to the City of Concord for a homeless shelter, which would then hurt his/her business and occupancy rate, as well as hurting all of the other businesses in the shopping center, and the neighboring residential properties? How about letting the City of Concord turn your home into a homeless shelter or the homes of your neighbors into homeless shelters?
Paul,
You should turn your house(apartment, tent, cave, park bench, car) into a homeless shelter.
While they are there, you could teach some self reliance, some respect for self, and pass on the moral value that one should not be a total burden on others.
So we can concentrate the crime and filth in one area? homeless shelters help no one and certainly not the problem.
Here’s how to address the homeless problem -Enforce the laws: Illegal camping, illegal dumping, creating environmental hazards, arson, drug use, theft, trespassing…… and more.
But, the democrats answer to the problem is to support and enable them, and make the problem worse.
Yes! Too much! … it’s all an expectation of hand outs with us taxpayers footing the bill and not having a say in it…. what’s that saying? Taxation without representation? Because my interests and voice definitely isn’t being represented.
We should give the “unhoused” $1000. a day. That should do it.
Doing ENOUGH???? The joke is they would have to start!!! In order to quantify effort into results!!!!! Every Town, City, County and State around are the definitive of FECKLESS!!!!! Bahahahhhahahahahahhh!!!! And the following with few exceptions!!! Wokeism, communism, leninism, marxism, socialism, fascism, racism, DEI to name just a few under the guise of the DNC (https://library.law.howard.edu/civilrightshistory/blackrights/jimcrow) these total failures are generated with intent particularly in the political machines of San Francisco, Chicago and New York these political machines feed, protect and push these ideals to line their own pockets without care to any betterment of society period. The snapshot of drug addled, mental health crisis, broken society and homelessness for all is their dream for us!! This future will be brought to you by every vote made for the presidential ticket of the Kackler and Timmy Tampon a true utopia not to mention WW3!!!
Mental health and addiction recovery are County Health Department responsibilities. These problems are responsible for more than 80% of the unsheltered homelessness we see.
The county has funding for mental health snd addiction, but it seems they are more than happy to let Concord and other cities pitch in and do their work for them.
Concord is doing more than its fair share. Good for us, but the County and neighboring higher income cities also need to step up.
With Oakland and San Francisco clearing out their encampments and giving homeless bus/bart tickets to leave town, Concord may see an influx.
NOPE!!!
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It’d be nice if the homes on either side of all Concord City Councilmembers homes were turned into halfway houses for the homeless. Until Concord’s City Councilmembers are forced to deal with the homeless in an up close and personal way on a daily basis, they won’t fully understand the homeless issues that Concord’s property owners and residents deal with each and every day.
No. It took months to get the homeless encampment outside Lazy Dog Restaurant in Concord cleaned up.
Now it’s just servers smoking pot on breaks out there and behind the building. Managers are blind and one joins in.
If they were doing enough we would not be overrun with all these feral people.
No! Yet, the mayor keeps “advertising” the bum count is down x%. I remeber not too long ago when the SIX drunkers of claycord would show up on this site. It is not hard to see that those numbers have increased exponentially.
They helped to create the problem with all the hand outs and programs. It brought in people from other areas to take advantage of the freebies.
As long as you allow the “elites” to promote “woke” solutions there will be failure. And the “elites” want it that way, everyone broke except for them. And they are planning for you to be broke too. Just give them a little more time.
Could it be woke progressive liberal politicians have created a
‘giant magnet’ that attracts homeless to this state ? ? ? ?
They’ve had their shot, time to vote them out of office.
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‘I get PAID to be homeless in San Francisco – it takes one phone call’:
‘Old-school junkie’ says he moved to woke city because he gets $620-a-month that pays for his Amazon Prime and Netflix and ‘cops are like neighbors’
https://tinyurl.com/2r9e7tey Take time to watch video.
The Daily Mail is not a reliable source of information.
DOH!
Where is your documentation to back up your claim?
DOH…. YOU are not a reliable source of information… just browse thru Claycord archives, it’s all there.
You’re always wrong and every link you’ve ever posted never works!
Daily Mail has won National Newspaper Of The Year 8 times.
To anyone thinking society just needs to tell mentally ill / drug addicted homeless people to “figure it out”, I encourage you to do some research into what’s currently available for people under Medi-Cal. You’ll find that the entire system is complete garbage.
I lost a family member to a drug overdose and I know exactly what their access to care was.
On the mental health side the initial appointment was about 3 months out and was only 30 min. Subsequent appointments were several weeks out and about 15-30 min. So someone struggling with mental issues just kind of has to wait. This is ridiculous – if someone needs mental health care they need to be able to get it immediately or within days. Not weeks or months. Not only that but the doctors are often noticibly rushed and there’s no way they can even accurately treat someone in such a short allotted time anyway. You need hours to really get to know someone and their medical record. As far as urgent care goes – 5150 holds for suicidal people are only 72 hours and they are released at the end of it every single time.
The drug treatment side is also awful. There are very few rehab centers in the Bay Area. They’re all full, have waiting periods usually 3-4 weeks out and it’s probably not even located in your city. If someone wants drug treatment then absolutely need it immediately. Lots can change in that 3-4 week waiting period.
We need more funding for mental health care and drug addiction treatment. Our current system is set up for failure. The mental health side in particular isn’t designed to really help people based on what I saw – it’s just kind of throws some pharmaceutical darts and that’s it. Treating drug side effects with more drugs, etc. Rinse and repeat.
We won’t get fentanyl overdoses under control until we get mental health and addiction under control.
Jim, you make a lot of valid points, but we also need to go back to enforcing laws against illegal drug sales and use. When Fentanyl can be purchased on the street for $1 a pill, of course we are going to have more addicts, regardless of the billions of dollars we now need to s-end on rehab, housing, etc.
The problem has ballooned too far out of reach for any city to handle it. Cities cannot keep up with “city” expenses, let alone State laws and State Mandates forced on them without direction, reasonable vision, or adequate funding to carry out Brown/Harris/Newsom follies. Cities were behind the eight ball before the the first tents hit the street.
The Cities should sue the State…. Bankrupt them for each unfunded Mandate. Shut down their nepotism, cronyism commissions and -gravy-train departments.
I’d pay extra to see that–and we’d all be better off when the dust finally settled.
Until every last one of them is rounded up and sent packing to some desolate planet the problem will never be taken care of.
Lets put out more birdseed to fight the Pigeon problem too.
I think the Cities and the State leaders actions have caused a rise in homelessness.
Newscum and his cronies handed out free money, free phones, free needles etc to the homeless. And well, other people heard about that and said, ‘that is cool’, so they came as well to collect.
Newscum and company then said we can’t kick them out, cuase they have no place to go. And well the other people heard about that and said,, ‘that is cool’, so they came as well to collect.
Newscum and his deviant followers then said that we need to provide them shelter inside a building with running water, etc. And well the other people heard that they could come to this state and have all their needs cared for without having to work, and they said ‘this is cool’. so they came to live rent free with all basic neccesites being met.
How bout our government doing less … no more free handouts of food, needles, drugs, etc ? How bout our government doing more … of enforcing our laws against stealing, loitering, camping on the street, etc?
How bout our government doing more … for our veterans and citizens, we can take the money away from the programs that help the illegals with their medical, shelter and food.
They have all definitely spent enough money and got little in return.
Maybe there should be an event like National Night Out only call it Tent City Night Out where Council members spent the night at various encampments to see/experience firsthand what is happening in their communities.
Re-open the mental hospitals and workhouses.
Round up the homeless and send them to the appropriate one depending on their mental or addiction state and willingness to be rehabilitated.
If they straighten themselves out, then they get to leave if they are willing to be productive members of society and have somewhere to stay ..
Will never happen though, certainly not in SF.