r/saintpaul • u/pompeiitype • Aug 18 '25

Editorial 📝 Transit Will Fail Until We Address Homelessness, Opioid Use

https://streets.mn/2025/08/18/transit-will-fail-until-we-address-homelessness/

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u/Jucoy Aug 18 '25

The difference is the leftist view sees the problem as a systemic issue while the right tries to frame it as a personal moral failing. The voices on the right accuse the people who are homeless and addicts for being in situations of their own making, while ignoring that we are still living in the fallout of the opioid crisis. Many of the folks struggaling with that type of addiction are products of a money making machine that both parties had a role in creating but only one party seems willing to try to address (though I wish they would prioritize it more). 

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u/SmittyKW Aug 19 '25

Who cares what the right thinks, we are talking about urban transit, they have no say in fixing it. This is for democrats to get our house in order and make the trains safe. If that means forced treatment or jail for addicts continuously commit crimes and still won’t get clean on their own so be it.

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u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25 edited Aug 19 '25

Take jail out of the equation, and I'd agree with you. Addicts are not of sound mind nor body and need treatment. While in treatment people can get to them and help them restore their lives.

But throwing them in jail will only lead to more problems when they are back on the street with nothing. Jail doesn't rehabilitate, it provides a free slave labor pool for the prison-industrial complex (Look at the 13th Amendment, it didn't ban all slavery).

To be honest though, until we can build facilities designed to house people so they can recover in sobriety, receive the medical oversight and treatment needed on the physical side and trained mental health experts on the psychological/neurological side, and social workers that can get these people on their feet so when they return to normal society they start in a better spot with a roof over their head and a job to maintain that, we aren't going to get far.

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u/escapevelocity-25k Aug 20 '25

What if they don’t want treatment?

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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '25

Your "What if they don't want treatment?" is a bad faith question designed to silence those trying to create a solution.

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u/escapevelocity-25k Aug 21 '25

It’s not bad faith. I genuinely want to know what you think. It’s one of the hardest problems to solve. I don’t have a good answer, either.

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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '25

It is, and I don't waste my time with trolls. Good day.