This is very similar the stories one hears regarding NIMBYism in the Silicon Valley. Hard working, successful immigrants seem to subscribe the just world hypothesis, exactly as one might predict. Their tolerance for those who aren’t able to do the same is pretty low from what I’ve seen. If they can come here poor and in a generation become millionaires and buy a home in California of all places, then why can’t everyone else.
You can’t expect them to have the solutions for a societal problem. The fact that there isn’t affordable housing and job opportunities for these homeless is a failing of the US government, not Irving’s government, and definitely not of that local community.
However if all the homeless congregate in that area, it’s an unfair burden to that community from a problem caused by a failing of the government. They have the right to complain, and they don’t have the responsibility to accept that burden alone. They can certainly take action to remove the burden without being blamed because no other community will step up to the plate.
Surely city governments are responsible for acute mental health issues. Not all homeless have need for serious mental health care, but the number is high and those needs should be taken care of before (or at the latest, while) talking about jobs.
EDIT: At least, local governments should be educating the public about how much help they need from state and national government.
That would assume that the homeless were caused by / came from Irving. That’s unlikely, as there are no borders in the US and people are free to move about.
Problem is nobody wants them, yet no one will enact policies that will solve the problem. So if you sit back and accept the homeless while not really solving the issue, you’re just being a chump.
> That would assume that the homeless were caused by / came from Irving.
Something can be your responsibility even if it's not your fault. Particular people with particular problems is a local issue. Particular tent cities hurting particular parks or businesses is also a local issue. Go ask a local social worker or police officer. They know everyone on a first name basis. They just don't have anywhere to go with their information.
> Problem is nobody wants them, yet no one will enact policies that will solve the problem.
So instead of shifting responsibility in one way or another, local governments and communities need to organize more around these issues. It's true that it's a huge problem, arguably one that will never get solved completely, but the local governments need to start by getting the word out about the particular needs they have: studies, funding, legal frameworks, training, coordination systems, etc.
This is the kind of targeted Medicaid expansion that should be discussed, especially since mental health is in the news so much these days.
If Irving absorbs the cost of it, then other communities will simply keep sending their homeless. The problem will never be solved this way unless it's pushed back to its source.
> So instead of shifting responsibility in one way or another, local governments and communities need to organize more around these issues.
That's exactly what happened. Other communities shifted responsibility to Irving. By doing nothing, they are continuing to skirt responsibility. You're not going to get anywhere by forcing or shaming whatever current community is to shoulder the whole problem. For all you know, the encampments got there because of some initial sympathy and homeless-forward policies, and now you think it'd be fair to punish them for having shown some compassion?
I'm saying local governments are the best equipped to solve the problem and drive reform.
> The problem will never be solved this way unless it's pushed back to its source.
Well, the problem is that people have mental illness. That shouldn't be a federal issue, and tackling the problem state by state has the same "source of the problem" issue you're concerned about.
The sanest solution and the sanest reform starts local. The legal changes and funding models should probably be state or national. But we don't get there until we expect our local government to be responsible instead of plaintive.
Here's the part I don't buy. She says Irvine is made up of 45% Asians, but the protesters are mainly immigrants. Unless all 45% are first-generations, then what she said doesn't add up. She uses the word immigrant only twice in the article, near the top, with little proof backing her statement. Those that she interview have Asian names, but that doesn't mean they are immigrants.
By using the word immigrant, she made the article sensational. She tried to turn the protest into a topic of race, rather than simply stating Irvine residents don't want a homeless shelter in the neighborhood.
Are most immigrants intolerant of homeless in Irvine? That's rather absolute to be true. What about the other 40% whites? Do all of them approve of the homeless shelter? 40% vs 45% are about the same weight, but she chose to focus on only one side of the story. It would be more correct to state: Irvine, made up of 45% Asian ethnicity, fights back against homeless shelter.
She almost definitely categorized non-whites as “immigrants” based on assumption, simply based on the fact that I highly doubt she conducted a background survey of the protesters.
It's a trend in the media, that everything is framed as A vs. B. Whether that's immigrant status, race, color, religion, sex, it's all done to create a division, pander to one side or the other, and get viewers.
Another angle I've seen, in Austin, is that people who are close to falling off that cliff are among the least tolerant of those who have. Those who are scraping by with service jobs are often least tolerant of the mentally-ill homeless person who hassles them on the way to work, and quickest to call the police. If you are a first-generation immigrant, I think it often means you do not take it as a given that you cannot fall out of the successful class, even if you are doing well now. Someone born into the professional class may feel better about themselves for tolerating uncomfortable behavior from someone less fortunate, whereas someone who in the back of their mind is worried about "that could be me someday" is not feeling good about themselves for being tolerant.
Just my own anecdotal view, I have no data to back that up on a large scale.
No data but I have similar anecdotes, and also have to point out that in the past 50 years or so a lot of the strongest political opposition to increased social programs has come from the working class. Most of the wealthy I've spoken to are less opposed to social spending.
In addition to the reasons cited another factor might be diminishing marginal utility of money. A 1% tax hike on a millionaire will have zero tangible perceived effect on his or her lifestyle. A similar tax increase on a working class person could be devastating.
Certainly, but that was no doubt true before it became an immigrant community. First generation immigrants are more likely to have experienced a very different level of wealth earlier in their life, which makes one's attitude towards the possibility of losing it different than if you were born into that class and society and had always been there.
Edit: it looks like you've also been breaking the site guideline that asks people not to use HN primarily for political or ideological battle. Could you please fix this? That word 'primarily' is an important marker—being on the wrong side of it means being a negative contributor to HN regardless of which views you're arguing for. There's more explanation of this here:
