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Houston seems to be quite successful with the housing first policy indeed, although providing housing for homeless people isn't quite the same as deregulating housing. Deregulating housing probably does make it cheaper to provide housing for homeless people, so fair enough. Houston isn't the only place with liberal gun laws, so I'm not convinced gun laws have anything to do with it though.
I tried looking up some statistics for a bit to check my intuitions in homelessness overall, but the statistics seem to be not very straightforward. For instance, the list on wikipedia for countries by rate of homelessness has the USA at 19.5 per 10.000 people and France at 48.7, however the table also a column called 'unsheltered per 10.000' and there USA scores 12, whereas France scores 4.5. So I have no clue whether France or the USA has more people living on the street now based on these statistics. I've never been in the USA personally, but I have been to lots of places in Europe, including non-touristy bits and not so nice parts of various towns and I've never seen a fent zombie or anything like that and I've never been harassed by a homeless person beyond obnoxious begging and I do know various Europeans who were shocked at the amount of (visible) homelessness when traveling to the USA. Whether there are more or less of them I do not know, but homeless people anecdotally sure seem to cause more problems and be more visible in the USA, despite the USA's liberal gun laws. I don't know that much about housing regulation in the USA, but I certainly would not describe housing in my own country of the Netherlands as deregulated.
It depends. Generally in cities in blue states residential construction is illegal and only happens by special exemption.
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The places in the US with high rates of homelessness (e.g. San Francisco) are places with restrictive gun laws and restrictive housing and building regulations. The places with liberal gun laws and liberal housing regulations have low rates of homelessness. It's very consistent.
Houston's housing first policies are good, but they only work because the baseline rate of homelessness is already extremely low. This is mostly due to cheap housing. When the lowest tiers of housing are so affordable that someone with drug and mental health problems can afford to live there, you end up with far fewer homeless people. You also avoid negative feedback loops where, once someone becomes homeless, their lives tend to spiral and their issues get worse. When housing is attainable for even the lowest income people, it provides a sort of "ladder" people can climb to get their lives in order.
Also, just to clarify, I am not arguing that liberal gun laws reduce homelessness. I'm arguing they make homeless people far less likely to hassle or assault people because you never know who's packing heat. For example, you will see some homeless people on public transit in Houston, but I have literally never seen one approach other riders to ask for money, make a bunch of noise, or threaten anyone, all of which are common behaviors in other cities.
You never answered my question about what specifically liberal gun laws are doing to facilitate this state of affairs. Is there even a single recorded case of a transit rider firing a gun at a homeless person in Houston? If there is, do you believe that this would be the correct course of action for a gun-carrying rider on a bus? (Homeless guy asks me for money, I quick-draw my gun and start blasting, and hope none of the bullets hit anybody else on the bus?) I’m as anti-homeless as anybody on this website — I’ve argued that they’re an inherently parasitic class with essentially zero legal rights, and that an appropriate course of action might be to round them all up into something like concentration camps — but this strikes even me as a dangerous and wildly irresponsible overreaction.
I maintain that you continue to posit causal relationships between different things which are, in reality, only correlated.
It should not be legal to shoot someone on the subway except to defend against deadly force. But the deterrent effect of guns extends beyond these situations. People have broad incentives to respect others' boundaries when it's unclear who has a gun and under what circumstances they might be willing to use it. I never carry a gun, but I look like I could be carrying one, and that by itself changes the way people treat me and others in public.
I can't conclusively prove causation, but the observable correlations are so strong it should at least give you pause to consider they might be causal.
If everyone is aware that firing a gun on the subway is illegal and will result in serious prison time, and therefore anyone carrying a gun is extremely unlikely to use it in that circumstance, then I’m not sure what would actually be causing the deterrent effect. Leave aside that the average bum is not even in a clear enough state of mind to seriously consider who might have a gun; even if the bum is thinking in that way, I would assume he’d also recognize the likelihood of an otherwise-law-abiding citizen would fire his gun on the subway as very low, and therefore not weight it significantly in any cost-benefit consideration.
The correlations you’re observing are simply an artifact both things being true under Republican government. As @hydroacetylene notes, Republican-run areas tend to give their police and prosecutors far greater leeway to punish vagrancy, and these areas also independently tend to support expansive gun rights. The former policy has a lot to do with curbing the behavior of bums, whereas I believe that the latter policy has very little effect.
A jury decides self-defense cases. If you can convince even one person out of eight that you credibly feared for your life or the life of another, you are not guilty.
Even a very addled person can understand "Lots of people around here have guns and there's no way to tell who. I had better not cause trouble (like swinging a makeshift halberd at people) or I might get shot."
Observably, this is what we see. The homeless objectively behave differently in places with guns versus places without.
Houston's government is entirely run by Democrats and vagrancy is not punished. The police force is smaller and less active than most comparable cities. Houston's police force is 5,300 (pop. 2.3 million) versus 11,000 in Chicago (pop. 2.6 million).
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I think you're vastly overestimating the consideration the average aggressor gives to the "but they will go to prison if they attack me" thing.
Being intimidating works because most people will not cold-bloodedly evaluate the costs and benefits of you actually using your offensive capability.
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It is probably true that legal concealed carry does little to curb the behavior of psychotic homeless(although it probably does do a little). What it probably does have a major effect on is mugging- muggings are a far smaller percentage of total crime in high crime red areas. These criminals are rational, but dumb.
Oh certainly, I’m not denying that. The key difference being that both police and the judicial system, at least in a Republican jurisdiction, are very likely to have your back if you shoot a mugger in self-defense. They will not have your back if you open fire in a crowded area because a bum made a creepy noise, or asked you for money, or even if he made a vague verbal threat to you.
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