Starbucks to close stores for employee safety. Let’s discuss.

[ktgrok]

I do get that nothing is 100 percent effective, obviously, but housing first really does have a ton of evidence behind it. There are various types - sometimes all a person or family needs is a rent subsidy.

But there are also "Permanent Supportive Housing" programs that work with higher need, more difficult cases, offering yes, housing, but also OPTIONAL mental health care, addiction treatment, job training, etc. The key thing is they are optional - when you have so little control over your life, being told what you have to do can create a knee jerk opposition. 

These programs can be ridiculously successful. More so than anything else, AND cost less than other options. 

"

The target population for this intervention was people with extremely high needs; as the researchers noted in their writeup of the study for Health Services Review, “Participants averaged five hospitalizations, 20 visits to the emergency department, five to psychiatric emergency services, and three to jail in the two years prior to being enrolled.”

In other words, this Housing First-aligned treatment was specifically for the hardest-to-treat members of Santa Clara’s unhoused community. The results of the intervention were extraordinary: 86% of those who received the treatment were successfully housed and remained housed for the vast majority of the follow-up period (which averaged around three years). Similarly, there was a sharp drop in utilization of emergency psychiatric services among the treatment group, corresponding to a rise in scheduled mental health visits.

Not only does Housing First work, but the evidence shows that it can work for even the highest need population of people experiencing homelessness. The 86% success rate cited in the Health Services Review article, while impressive, actually understates the intervention’s effectiveness. When BHHI researchers revisited Santa Clara for additional data, they found that more than 90% of participants had been housed and remained housed over the long term.

https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/blog/housing-first-not-housing-only

[Tanaqui]

Quote

Unfortunately, many of our homeless population is due to mental illness and personal choice.  Not that they choose homelessness, just poor choices like addiction that can result in homelessness.

Did you intend to suggest that addiction is a personal choice?

MENTAL ILLNESS, INCLUDING ADDICTION, IS NOT A PERSONAL CHOICE. Nobody chooses to have an addiction.

[Excelsior! Academy]

46 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

Did you intend to suggest that addiction is a personal choice?

MENTAL ILLNESS, INCLUDING ADDICTION, IS NOT A PERSONAL CHOICE. Nobody chooses to have an addiction.

Of course not. Nor did I mean it that way. No reason to shout. I have close family members with mental illness and others with substance abuse issues.  While addiction may not be a choice, first trying a substance often is. It’s hard to get addicted if you never try a substance. Do I believe that some addictions happen without choice? Yes, I do.  After a serious injury, for example, one often is prescribed a strong pain medication with addictive properties.  Another example would be chronic illness. Do I believe some homelessness and addiction is caused by choices one has made? Yes, I do.  Not all and maybe not even the majority, but some certainly is.

[Rosie_0801]

1 hour ago, Tanaqui said:

Did you intend to suggest that addiction is a personal choice?

MENTAL ILLNESS, INCLUDING ADDICTION, IS NOT A PERSONAL CHOICE. Nobody chooses to have an addiction.

I think it would be more correct to say nobody chooses to *need* one, because I certainly know people who have chosen to have addictions.

[Shoeless]

N.M. tmi

Edited July 23, 2022 by MissLemon

[gstharr]

On 7/21/2022 at 6:24 AM, Soror said:

I'd like to hear more info because from what I'd read these are also stores that were unionizing. Maybe I didn't get the full picture or that isn't accurate but it gave me pause in accepting their story that this is all about safety.

I question too whether safety is the real reason for the closures.  In the past year, three Starbucks near me have closed.  One was in an super upper zip code, and another in a less upper zip code.  The third one--closed less than a month ago-- was a less than a quarter mile from a police station and  the cops regularly met  there. .    

[Tanaqui]

Clearly I very much did need to shout, because in response, people said the same thing.

Addiction is not something people choose. Literally nobody. Even if they say they did - listen, people say things all the time for all sorts of reasons besides "This is the literal truth".

As for "They could have just chosen not to take that drug in the first place", again, see what I said above about self-medicating. Sure, they could just have never taken that first drink in some alternate universe, but they'd still have all the same problems that over in THIS reality caused them to drink in the first place and then led to addiction.

Addiction is not a choice, and this whole obsessive moralizing, backwards attitude is what makes it so hard to help people in the US.

[TechWife]

On 7/21/2022 at 9:24 AM, Soror said:

I'd like to hear more info because from what I'd read these are also stores that were unionizing. Maybe I didn't get the full picture or that isn't accurate but it gave me pause in accepting their story that this is all about safety.

ITA with programs that help the homeless. We can't just make laws against their existence and expect them to go away. Do we just want to throw them all in jail?

That is my understanding about the stores they are closing as well - that  they are reacting to the union organizing.

 

 

[ktgrok]

4 hours ago, Tanaqui said:

Clearly I very much did need to shout, because in response, people said the same thing.

Addiction is not something people choose. Literally nobody. Even if they say they did - listen, people say things all the time for all sorts of reasons besides "This is the literal truth".

 

This. 

I know with obesity plenty of very morbidly obese people will say they like being heavy, don't feel a need to lose weight, etc. That doesn't make it true. What they usually mean is they can't find a way to lose weight without extreme mental or physical pain and stress. More than that, they can't handle trying and failing again - their psyche and mental health cannot take another round of proving to themselves what a failure they are, or how "weak" they are. Better to say they dont' care, and stay sane. 

[Tanaqui]

49 minutes ago, ktgrok said:

This. 

I know with obesity plenty of very morbidly obese people will say they like being heavy, don't feel a need to lose weight, etc. That doesn't make it true. What they usually mean is they can't find a way to lose weight without extreme mental or physical pain and stress. More than that, they can't handle trying and failing again - their psyche and mental health cannot take another round of proving to themselves what a failure they are, or how "weak" they are. Better to say they dont' care, and stay sane. 

It's the same with students sometimes - it's a lot easier to say that the class is stupid and boring and they'd rather play video games or go out partying than to try as hard as you can and still fail. At least if you fail a test because you're soooooooo hungover, nobody can claim it's because you're actually stupid.

[Harriet Vane]

7 hours ago, Tanaqui said:

Clearly I very much did need to shout, because in response, people said the same thing.

Addiction is not something people choose. Literally nobody. Even if they say they did - listen, people say things all the time for all sorts of reasons besides "This is the literal truth".

As for "They could have just chosen not to take that drug in the first place", again, see what I said above about self-medicating. Sure, they could just have never taken that first drink in some alternate universe, but they'd still have all the same problems that over in THIS reality caused them to drink in the first place and then led to addiction.

Addiction is not a choice, and this whole obsessive moralizing, backwards attitude is what makes it so hard to help people in the US.

Whether with the first drink or one of many, many more down the road, often it comes down to: I'm in pain and I need to feel better.

That is how it happened for the addicts in my life.

 

That said, I'm not sure what to do with people who simply party a ton because partying is fun and what the group is doing. Soooo many I saw like this in college especially. I also think it's possible some fall into addiction through purely social mechanisms. They simply think they will not be addicted.

[Rosie_0801]

10 hours ago, Tanaqui said:

Clearly I very much did need to shout, because in response, people said the same thing.

Addiction is not something people choose. Literally nobody. Even if they say they did - listen, people say things all the time for all sorts of reasons besides "This is the literal truth".

As for "They could have just chosen not to take that drug in the first place", again, see what I said above about self-medicating. Sure, they could just have never taken that first drink in some alternate universe, but they'd still have all the same problems that over in THIS reality caused them to drink in the first place and then led to addiction.

Addiction is not a choice, and this whole obsessive moralizing, backwards attitude is what makes it so hard to help people in the US.

I have had someone literally tell me (more than once) that they chose their addiction because they wanted a way to kill themselves slowly.

He didn't choose the reasons for wanting to do that, but he did choose the addiction.

So, either "literally nobody" except for this guy, or I'm lying about these exchanges, or he was lying when he told me that, despite my never seeing evidence to the contrary in the four years I've known him and his family, and seeing plenty that confirms it.

I am not claiming him to be "the rule" to anything. I'm quite willing to believe he's in a category of his own and that you previously haven't heard of anyone with his special levels of specialness. But shouting won't convince me that a mate of mine doesn't exist when he does. What stops him getting help is he doesn't want it. He literally believes that being human is morally wrong and is living accordingly because what he considers appropriate conditions for suicide haven't happened yet. 

[Melissa Louise]

Nobody chooses to be in a head space where killing yourself slowly with a substance seems like a sane and desirable choice.

 

 

[Melissa Louise]

My ex btw is killing himself with drink, quite openly, and has been for decades.

I do not think at any stage he had a real choice about having the kind of brain, genetics or developmental background that set him on this path. It's a compulsive 'choice'. 

I was a risky drinker as a young person. I had the type of brain, genetics etc that allowed me to say 'hey, this is risky, I'm stopping' and then stopping. That isn't a tribute to my great choices or wonderful will. I was just luckier. 

Go back to each addict as a child and you'll never find a person who wants their future life to be objectively shit and harmful and full of addiction to costly and difficult substances.