I'm glad for you and your brother. There are a lot of people who don't want help and won't take housing, or other assistance, if it's contingent on getting clean.

Because i know how addicts think, i know that will never work. I used to get all ragey about the way they think and they constantly trying to get stuff through social tricks from whoever is around (usually are very bad at it), but i've gotten over it. The contingency is not a good plan. They crave what they want and it is the most important thing in the world, it gets like hardwired into the brain, but they are still people and they can still get over it or get somewhat normal. Cages don't help the psyche. Street doesn't help the psyche. It's like punishment and the negative reinforcement is not helpful. Housing gives a base and yes, there is gonna be plenty of abuse of the system by them. They will continue to try to get drugs and do them, etc. I am imagining there's tons of corruption and wasted money that goes on in the organizations that handle things right now, and that needs to be handled. But the bills being proposed by the Republicans in the state governments across the country have teeth on them that go too far, because it's all really centered around using policing and punishment to enforce something that can be helped with assistance.

The 'left' solution is gonna continue to annoy republicans, who don't want their country to be seen as having a huge poverty problem next to China who is researching it and actively alleviating it. But their fixes are gonna cause a lot of human suffering that is out of sight, out of mind. When Joe Biden was talking about the border patrol's mistreatment of Haitians, everything he said was really just about perception. He wants the effect of the enforcement, he just doesn't want it to be seen in the light of what it truly is. The homeless thing and the release of this propaganda book we are discussing is a coordinated effort to "solve" the problem. The people passing these bills don't research poverty and they don't have a real plan besides violence.

In China, they actively discourage (to put it mildly) drug abuse. They may be housing the addicted but they are certainly not permitting them to remain addicts. On the other hand, there is no agreement in US society that we should stop addicts from getting their fix -- if anything, the current progressive regime believes in housing addicts and facilitating continued access to drugs.