Nah even without that, it’s a massive improvement for people: it helps gets people off drugs & stops them ODing.
Yes we should do all of those things, but we have to stop pretending we need to boil the ocean in order to make progress.
- mental/physical healthcare
- affordable housing
- safe consumptiom sites
- stable careers
All independently have a huge impact and while they amplify eachother’s impact we shouldn’t wait on all 4 before making progress on each one individually.
Snidenote: YIMBYs (who ironically enough oppose building affordable housing) often use lack of safe consumption or jobs as an excuse to oppose affordable housing built near them.
ZERONOVABLOSSOM@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I live close to a few safe consumption sites so without seeing a study on this, this is just my observations.
There’s an increase of homeless people around (or perhaps they are more visible?) but since they have nowhere to go they get shifted around town by the police force every now and again. There seems to be a fair amount of violence amongst themselves as well, occasionally bleeding out into the general populace when we have big events nearby. I’ve also got friends from back in HS that went to these sites to “try” a variety of drugs they were curious about and now they’re full blown addicts that I don’t hear from anymore. Maybe they would have tried this stuff anyways but the whole draw for them was that it was “easy” and nobody would stop them.
Definitely aware of the YIMBY’s, I remember seeing their signs posted around before the sites went up, hence why the site got placed in my area despite not having the better infrastructure of the higher income neighbourhood nearby.
Not against safe consumption sites by any means it just feels like a bandaid on a festering wound situation. My neighbourhood safe consumption site hasn’t seemed to improve in the many years it’s been here- worsening conditions I’m chalking up to an increase in the general homeless population. The only time familiar faces seem to disappear is if they pass away.