My Bike Path in the News

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018...biohazard.html

That is one of my commute routes, which is now a toxic waste dump. The ICE protesters and their homeless minions actually built a wall to keep me and the other cyclists out. Build that wall! I don't think they got the irony. https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/..._clearing.html

The curb cut to the trail is right through the blue tarp. https://media.koin.com/nxs-kointv-me...0_1280_720.jpg

During the early phases of the occupation, I was just blowing through it on my bike, exercising my First Amendment right to tell the dopes to get the f*** off the bike path. Then it turned into a scene from Night of the Living Dead, with zoned-out people sitting in the trail or staggering all over muttering, and I had to find alternative routes.

-- Jay Beattie.

On 2018-07-26 14:18, jbeattie wrote:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018...biohazard.html

That is one of my commute routes, which is now a toxic waste dump.
The ICE protesters and their homeless minions actually built a wall
to keep me and the other cyclists out. Build that wall! I don't
think they got the irony.
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/..._clearing.html

The curb cut to the trail is right through the blue tarp.
https://media.koin.com/nxs-kointv-me...0_1280_720.jpg


Disgusting. You may need more conservative city leader who don't let
things deteriorate that far.


During the early phases of the occupation, I was just blowing
through it on my bike, exercising my First Amendment right to tell
the dopes to get the f*** off the bike path. Then it turned into a
scene from Night of the Living Dead, with zoned-out people sitting in
the trail or staggering all over muttering, and I had to find
alternative routes.


During today's ride a woman was blocking my side of a bike path with her
overflowing shopping car. She was constantly screaming at herself. It's
sad, she was a beautiful younger woman but totally wasted. Probably
another OD case.

On a longhaul bike path something almost miraculous happened today. A
homelesss guy on a bike came from the other direction, big plastic bag
on top of his handlebar. On such lonely stretches of pavement I usually
greet other riders. Homeless hardly ever react but this guy
enthusiastically wished me a good day. Couldn't believe it. There is
hope for this guy.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On Thu, 26 Jul 2018 16:37:22 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

Disgusting. You may need more conservative city leader who don't let
things deteriorate that far.

Hmm. Lawn order is the solution?

During today's ride a woman was blocking my side of a bike path with
her overflowing shopping car. She was constantly screaming at herself.
It's sad, she was a beautiful younger woman but totally wasted.
Probably another OD case.

If she was an OD case she'd have been unconscious. More likely this
person has schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, a brain injury or
bipolar disorder. Us well-to-do folks tend to assume that "if you're
homeless" or "if you're poor," it's your own damn fault and you should
pull yourself up by your effin' bootstraps and stop bothering me. But
of the estimated 500,000 - 600,000 homeless people in the US, a bit
under half have a serious and persistent mental illness.

How'd that happen? A big contributor was the Reagan Administration
which pushed for closing mental health hospitals to sve money and loer
taxes. The theory was that there would be community menal heath centers
created to care for those folks, but those were basically not funded so
they don't exist to the degree necessary to address the problem. The
result was a gigantic influx of mentally ill people onto America's
street corners. Had the community end of the plan been effectively
organized, the problems would have still been bad but less bad.

Unless people can be adjudicated a danger to self or others by a judge
based on evidence, there is no way to force these folks to have
treatment to control their mental illness- any more than a cancer
patient can be forced to have chemotherapy and surgery. Individual
rights pertain to them as well as everyone else. Unfortunately their
mental illnesses result in poor insight, judgment, reasoning and
decision making.

On top of that, there are simply not enough mental health providers and
that is a situation that is worsening. Some 60% of psychiatrists are
pushing 65, there is already a significant shortage of them and we are
not training nearly enough new psychiatrists to replace them. My clinic
has five providers over 80 who are still working because they enjoy it
but also because they feel an ethical obligation to continue to help.
We have 20-some providers over 70 for the same reasons. More than half
of our providers are over 50. The situation is the same in mental
health clinics across the country.

From 1995-2014, the number of physicians in the US increased by 45%.
The number of psychiatrists increased by 12%. The population of the
country rose 35%. Considering the known prevalences of various mental
illness in the population, the number of people with those illness
increased greatly. A fair number of those people will be met by the
rest of us on street corners, acting odd and panhandling and makiung us
uncomfortable. Our typical reaction is, as noted in this thread,
disgust and resentment.

On a longhaul bike path something almost miraculous happened today. A
homelesss guy on a bike came from the other direction, big plastic bag
on top of his handlebar. On such lonely stretches of pavement I
usually greet other riders. Homeless hardly ever react but this guy
enthusiastically wished me a good day. Couldn't believe it. There is
hope for this guy.

So the key to success in life is "be nice to Joerg." Good to know.

On 7/29/2018 1:37 PM, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Thu, 26 Jul 2018 16:37:22 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

Disgusting. You may need more conservative city leader who don't let
things deteriorate that far.

Hmm. Lawn order is the solution?

During today's ride a woman was blocking my side of a bike path with
her overflowing shopping car. She was constantly screaming at herself.
It's sad, she was a beautiful younger woman but totally wasted.
Probably another OD case.

If she was an OD case she'd have been unconscious. More likely this
person has schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, a brain injury or
bipolar disorder. Us well-to-do folks tend to assume that "if you're
homeless" or "if you're poor," it's your own damn fault and you should
pull yourself up by your effin' bootstraps and stop bothering me. But
of the estimated 500,000 - 600,000 homeless people in the US, a bit
under half have a serious and persistent mental illness.

How'd that happen? A big contributor was the Reagan Administration
which pushed for closing mental health hospitals to sve money and loer
taxes.
-snip snip-

Because I knew people in the business at the time(aides,
orderlies, not shrinks) this was actually in the 1960s:

https://study.com/academy/lesson/dei...th-issues.html

You may dislike Mr. Reagan, and you're welcome to your
opinion, but facts are stubborn things.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On Sunday, July 29, 2018 at 1:50:27 PM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
On 7/29/2018 1:37 PM, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Thu, 26 Jul 2018 16:37:22 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

Disgusting. You may need more conservative city leader who don't let
things deteriorate that far.

Hmm. Lawn order is the solution?

During today's ride a woman was blocking my side of a bike path with
her overflowing shopping car. She was constantly screaming at herself.
It's sad, she was a beautiful younger woman but totally wasted.
Probably another OD case.

If she was an OD case she'd have been unconscious. More likely this
person has schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, a brain injury or
bipolar disorder. Us well-to-do folks tend to assume that "if you're
homeless" or "if you're poor," it's your own damn fault and you should
pull yourself up by your effin' bootstraps and stop bothering me. But
of the estimated 500,000 - 600,000 homeless people in the US, a bit
under half have a serious and persistent mental illness.

How'd that happen? A big contributor was the Reagan Administration
which pushed for closing mental health hospitals to sve money and loer
taxes.
-snip snip-

Because I knew people in the business at the time(aides,
orderlies, not shrinks) this was actually in the 1960s:

https://study.com/academy/lesson/dei...th-issues.html

You may dislike Mr. Reagan, and you're welcome to your
opinion, but facts are stubborn things.


Perhaps it applies to Governor Reagan, although the real explosion of crazies on the street of California was in the early to mid '70s during the first Brown administration. Closing down mental hospitals was promoted by liberals and conservatives, and the effects kept me plenty busy as an ambulance driver in SJ during the mid '70s.

I question whether policy choices made 40 years ago can explain the explosion of mentally ill homeless people in Portland in the last 15 years. Something else is going on.

-- Jay Beattie.

On 7/29/2018 5:31 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, July 29, 2018 at 1:50:27 PM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
On 7/29/2018 1:37 PM, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Thu, 26 Jul 2018 16:37:22 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

Disgusting. You may need more conservative city leader who don't let
things deteriorate that far.

Hmm. Lawn order is the solution?

During today's ride a woman was blocking my side of a bike path with
her overflowing shopping car. She was constantly screaming at herself.
It's sad, she was a beautiful younger woman but totally wasted.
Probably another OD case.

If she was an OD case she'd have been unconscious. More likely this
person has schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, a brain injury or
bipolar disorder. Us well-to-do folks tend to assume that "if you're
homeless" or "if you're poor," it's your own damn fault and you should
pull yourself up by your effin' bootstraps and stop bothering me. But
of the estimated 500,000 - 600,000 homeless people in the US, a bit
under half have a serious and persistent mental illness.

How'd that happen? A big contributor was the Reagan Administration
which pushed for closing mental health hospitals to sve money and loer
taxes.
-snip snip-

Because I knew people in the business at the time(aides,
orderlies, not shrinks) this was actually in the 1960s:

https://study.com/academy/lesson/dei...th-issues.html

You may dislike Mr. Reagan, and you're welcome to your
opinion, but facts are stubborn things.


Perhaps it applies to Governor Reagan, although the real explosion of crazies on the street of California was in the early to mid '70s during the first Brown administration. Closing down mental hospitals was promoted by liberals and conservatives, and the effects kept me plenty busy as an ambulance driver in SJ during the mid '70s.

I question whether policy choices made 40 years ago can explain the explosion of mentally ill homeless people in Portland in the last 15 years. Something else is going on.

I don't know but since that trope popped up in conversation
a lot recently I tried to find out. References at NPR,
Mother Jones and such specifically naming the Reagan
administration mostly center on Mr Carter's one-year
'Community Mental Health' initiative which Mr Reagan did
cancel. That's not 'locked wards', mind you.

Speaking of ancient history, the 1960s was an era in which
abuses at mental wards were popularized (from The Snake Pit
to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and beyond) and the
standard Soviet solution to difficult citizens (curmudgeons
and dissenters like me, actually) was mental wards. The
rediscovery of individual rights, even so far as 'Tune in,
turn on, drop out', also helped end involuntary commitment
for the bulk of lunatics.

I think most people can see both sides of these arguments
now. Looking back of course is not the same as being in the
moment.


--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On 2018-07-29 11:37, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Thu, 26 Jul 2018 16:37:22 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

Disgusting. You may need more conservative city leader who don't let
things deteriorate that far.

Hmm. Lawn order is the solution?


To a large extent, yes. Blocking a traffic pathway without a permit is
illegal and a bike path is a traffic pathway.

Many people who travel there have said that New York is now remarkably
clean in most parts because NYPD started to take a hard stance on this
issue. Needless to say there is a lot of caterwauling about that from
the usual suspects but it seems to work.

Sacramento is almost the opposite. They have a mayor who promises to
throw lots of money at homelessness, lots of free stuff and whatnot. A
short time later he was publicly "wondering" about the fast rise in
homeless population. Duh! As a cyclist I could have told him why but I
am rather sure he wouln't listen. The number of homeless in the
Placerville area east of Sacramento that we encounter on the El Dorado
Trail bike path has seriously dropped. Guess why ...

It's not just people with mental problems. In left-leaning states such
as California there is also the myriad rules and costs to developers of
housing. The result is that we now have many places where $1000/mo in
rent will not even get you a toilet with a bunk bed in there. Therefore,
a lot of people fall off the financial cliff. After some couch-surfing
they live in their car. Until they lose the car, then they are on the
street.


During today's ride a woman was blocking my side of a bike path with
her overflowing shopping car. She was constantly screaming at herself.
It's sad, she was a beautiful younger woman but totally wasted.
Probably another OD case.

If she was an OD case she'd have been unconscious. More likely this
person has schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, a brain injury or
bipolar disorder. Us well-to-do folks tend to assume that "if you're
homeless" or "if you're poor," it's your own damn fault and you should
pull yourself up by your effin' bootstraps and stop bothering me. But
of the estimated 500,000 - 600,000 homeless people in the US, a bit
under half have a serious and persistent mental illness.


Yes, that is also what a friend told me who is a seasoned former police
chief. The question is, how did they get to that point?


How'd that happen? A big contributor was the Reagan Administration
which pushed for closing mental health hospitals to sve money and loer
taxes. The theory was that there would be community menal heath centers
created to care for those folks, but those were basically not funded so
they don't exist to the degree necessary to address the problem. The
result was a gigantic influx of mentally ill people onto America's
street corners. Had the community end of the plan been effectively
organized, the problems would have still been bad but less bad.


If that were truly the case we'd have had these masses of homeless
people already since the Reagan days. However, we didn't. Even 10-20
years ago we didn't. You could walk along the American River Bike Path
and not see a single homeless camp. Now they are everywhere, to the
point where many cyclists and joggers consider part of that trail inside
Sacramento no longer safe to use and avoid it.


Unless people can be adjudicated a danger to self or others by a judge
based on evidence, there is no way to force these folks to have
treatment to control their mental illness- any more than a cancer
patient can be forced to have chemotherapy and surgery. Individual
rights pertain to them as well as everyone else. Unfortunately their
mental illnesses result in poor insight, judgment, reasoning and
decision making.


That's all ok, they have the same rights as we do. However, they also
have the same obligations as we do such as not trashing public space or
making it unusable.


On top of that, there are simply not enough mental health providers and
that is a situation that is worsening. Some 60% of psychiatrists are
pushing 65, there is already a significant shortage of them and we are
not training nearly enough new psychiatrists to replace them. My clinic
has five providers over 80 who are still working because they enjoy it
but also because they feel an ethical obligation to continue to help.
We have 20-some providers over 70 for the same reasons. More than half
of our providers are over 50. The situation is the same in mental
health clinics across the country.

From 1995-2014, the number of physicians in the US increased by 45%.
The number of psychiatrists increased by 12%. The population of the
country rose 35%. Considering the known prevalences of various mental
illness in the population, the number of people with those illness
increased greatly. A fair number of those people will be met by the
rest of us on street corners, acting odd and panhandling and makiung us
uncomfortable. Our typical reaction is, as noted in this thread,
disgust and resentment.


We need to look at the root cause and not at curing the effects and
symptoms later. I strongly believe the root cause in the US is the
haphazard way we look at drug use. Declaring marijuana legal as just
happened in California is _not_ the way to go about it because that
leads to stronger and stronger drugs. Until ultimately you see what I
saw many times on bike paths. Shopping carts full of stuff trashed onto
the pavement and when circling the bike around the trash heap you see
all sorts of bad stuff, including used syringes.


On a longhaul bike path something almost miraculous happened today. A
homelesss guy on a bike came from the other direction, big plastic bag
on top of his handlebar. On such lonely stretches of pavement I
usually greet other riders. Homeless hardly ever react but this guy
enthusiastically wished me a good day. Couldn't believe it. There is
hope for this guy.

So the key to success in life is "be nice to Joerg." Good to know.


No, all I am saying is that if a person has or retains the ability to be
nice to other people they have a good chance of turning their misery
around. Like this guy did who was on our local TV yesterday:

https://nypost.com/2018/07/28/homele...of-job-offers/

Decency goes a long ways and that applies to every person, including the
homeless.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On 30/07/2018 10:56 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-07-29 11:37, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Thu, 26 Jul 2018 16:37:22 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

Disgusting. You may need more conservative city leader who don't let
things deteriorate that far.

Hmm.Â* Lawn order is the solution?


To a large extent, yes. Blocking a traffic pathway without a permit is
illegal and a bike path is a traffic pathway.

Many people who travel there have said that New York is now remarkably
clean in most parts because NYPD started to take a hard stance on this
issue. Needless to say there is a lot of caterwauling about that from
the usual suspects but it seems to work.

Sacramento is almost the opposite. They have a mayor who promises to
throw lots of money at homelessness, lots of free stuff and whatnot. A
short time later he was publicly "wondering" about the fast rise in
homeless population. Duh! As a cyclist I could have told him why but I
am rather sure he wouln't listen. The number of homeless in the
Placerville area east of Sacramento that we encounter on the El Dorado
Trail bike path has seriously dropped. Guess why ...

It's not just people with mental problems. In left-leaning states such
as California there is also the myriad rules and costs to developers of
housing. The result is that we now have many places where $1000/mo in
rent will not even get you a toilet with a bunk bed in there. Therefore,
a lot of people fall off the financial cliff. After some couch-surfing
they live in their car. Until they lose the car, then they are on the
street.



Left leaning? Last time I was in New Orleans I was shocked by the
number of tent farms under the overpasses. Louisiana has been bible
thumping conservative since the Dixiecrats in the 70s.

On 2018-07-30 08:09, Duane wrote:
On 30/07/2018 10:56 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-07-29 11:37, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Thu, 26 Jul 2018 16:37:22 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

Disgusting. You may need more conservative city leader who don't let
things deteriorate that far.

Hmm. Lawn order is the solution?


To a large extent, yes. Blocking a traffic pathway without a permit is
illegal and a bike path is a traffic pathway.

Many people who travel there have said that New York is now remarkably
clean in most parts because NYPD started to take a hard stance on this
issue. Needless to say there is a lot of caterwauling about that from
the usual suspects but it seems to work.

Sacramento is almost the opposite. They have a mayor who promises to
throw lots of money at homelessness, lots of free stuff and whatnot. A
short time later he was publicly "wondering" about the fast rise in
homeless population. Duh! As a cyclist I could have told him why but I
am rather sure he wouln't listen. The number of homeless in the
Placerville area east of Sacramento that we encounter on the El Dorado
Trail bike path has seriously dropped. Guess why ...

It's not just people with mental problems. In left-leaning states such
as California there is also the myriad rules and costs to developers
of housing. The result is that we now have many places where $1000/mo
in rent will not even get you a toilet with a bunk bed in there.
Therefore, a lot of people fall off the financial cliff. After some
couch-surfing they live in their car. Until they lose the car, then
they are on the street.



Left leaning? Last time I was in New Orleans I was shocked by the
number of tent farms under the overpasses. Louisiana has been bible
thumping conservative since the Dixiecrats in the 70s.


Then why did they elect Billy Nungesser, a Democrat, as governor?

However, it often boils down to cities themselves and their local
leadership. This is almost blatantly obvious where I live. Sacramento
has a (predictably) huges homeless problem while it is less of a problem
in cities east of there, such as the ones in El Dorado County. Even
left-leaning guys start realizing that now.

https://www.investors.com/politics/e...finest-cities/

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On Monday, July 30, 2018 at 7:56:56 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:

snip

It's not just people with mental problems. In left-leaning states such
as California there is also the myriad rules and costs to developers of
housing. The result is that we now have many places where $1000/mo in
rent will not even get you a toilet with a bunk bed in there. Therefore,
a lot of people fall off the financial cliff. After some couch-surfing
they live in their car. Until they lose the car, then they are on the
street.

You need to learn some economics. Rents are driven by the market not development costs, particularly since much of the rental stock in most cities is old construction. Development costs will affect cap rates for new multi-family, but that just means that new construction has to be nice enough to justify the rent to generate a cap rate better than just buying a 10 year t-bill, although with the Trump tax boondoggle, you're better-off developing property than just buying t-bills. In any event, rents will be set at the level the market will bear -- unless you have communist rent controls.

If development costs were so high that you didn't get new multi-family, then you would have supply problems, but considering you're about to see an explosion of building in Folsom, I'm getting the sense that's not the case. You'e headed toward urban blight like the rest of the West.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/business...211168769.html Oh boy! The Donner Party meets Levittown.

The fact is, people want to live in the "left leaning states," and particularly in sunny California -- and even more so where the high-paying jobs are located in the Silicon Valley, and thus rents are through the roof. High rents drive development and most planning jurisdictions want to allow multi-family to meet population pressures. In-fill gets big, zoning changes from single family to single-family plus ADU and other permutations to allow increased density, etc., etc. The communists-in-charge generally demand some percentage of low-income housing or provide some incentive for low-income housing, which often gets gamed by either the renters or the developers, but hey, that's capitalism! Real estate 101. SMS can check my math on zoning trends. Rents have taken a small dip here in PDX because of the multi-family housing boom. Everyone jumped into the market, and the City -- with all of its left-leaning-ness -- jumped in with them.


-- Jay Beattie.