I don't care anymore. Bus them out to the desert. Set up camp there. Provide food and busses into town for those with interviews and jobs. I really don't care, just get them out of the damn cities. I've seen too many people shit in the bushes or just peeing up against a building. Building tent cities on the beach and enjoyable areas, etc. I. Don't. Care. Get rid of them. I left California for this reason and housing costs.
This. I have small children, and all the local parks are completely unsafe and unusable because of the homeless population.
The parks should belong to families/the broader public, instead they’re dumping grounds for violent drug abusers and the mentally unwell.
I despise paying taxes to the corrupt government that allows this. I hate that so many people are seemingly just “oh well, what can we do?” About all this. There is a LOT we can do, we don’t have to live this way. We don’t have to put up with any of this.
There is a pretty big range of solutions between shanty towns and concentration camps in the desert. When you become homeless you are effectively excluded from polite society and it is pretty hard to climb out of. You have states and municipalities trying to tinker at the edges but as many other people have pointed out, with freedom of movement the localities that are completely disinterested at solving the any of the causes will just move their problems onto those that do. How would you like it if you were forcibly bussed out into a desert concentration camp, away from your support networks and people you know? How much would you care about polite society if you fell into the hole and now everyone just comes and spits on your face like this a little more each day?
Am I a part of the society you are talking about? Or are only homeless people a part of it? I and hundreds of thousands of other residents of my city want to live in a clean and safe city. Is that completely irrelevant?
Where did I say anything like that? In any case, if you're shipping these homeless people out somewhere else, aren't you just making this someone else's problem but at least you don't have to look at it anymore?
I am not advocating for shipping anyone off to anywhere (it wouldn't be effective). However, the prevalent opinion that we just need to throw more money on this problem, or just silently suffer in the name of compassion is/will make things worse.
> The parks should belong to families/the broader public, instead they’re dumping grounds for violent drug abusers and the mentally unwell.
It turns out that when you construct a society in which a "cost of living" is a normal concept, people without money are largely excluded from said society. You've excluded them from malls, shopping centers, museums, restaurants, streets, government buildings, and anywhere else you can. They can't get educated, they can't train themselves, they can't get access to healthcare, because we've all decided that those services are only available to those with money. Now they find themselves in the parks, because it's the only place they're allowed to legally exist. But I guess that's not enough, because you and the parent poster would prefer to "concentrate" them in desert "camps" as your "final solution" to homelessness. Really amazing to see the masks off here.
I'm there too. I'm blown away by all the "housing first" advocates here, as though that hasn't been the message for the last fifteen years and many, many billions of dollars. IT. DOESN'T. WORK. Yes, if in a magical land you held the number of homeless steady and efficiently built housing, you could solve homelessness. But that's not what happens. Not only are the government institutions in charge of building that housing hopelessly corrupt, but the more you build, the more you recruit.
We offer many, many hands to those who are down on their luck and need help. I personally donate to several every year. For those willing, there's a publicly-funded escalator to a better life. But the ones who used to shit on my sidewalk, throw beer cans in my flower beds, and graffiti everything in site (I've since moved out of the city) aren't interested in taking the escalator. They don't care about anyone. They only care about their next fix. They need to be involuntarily incarcerated. If they won't participate in the usual programs, then ship them to the desert. I just don't care anymore.
Not him, but it would likely be my own fault and weakness if I end up like that and people have every right to ridicule me for acting ridiculous. That is, pooping on the streets and leaving needles everywhere.
People turn to pooping on the streets and shooting up in the middle of the street because they have nowhere else to go. Getting hoisted out of rock-bottom is extremely difficult, and the longer you slip through the cracks of any kind of support the more cemented you get there. If society is kicking the ladder out from under you like this then respectability is the last thing on your mind. Being shipped off to a desert concentration camp is really the icing on the cake here.
The ("progressive") opinion that you express is ultimately de-humanizing. You take away all agency from people and treat them as mindless victims.
It's all the society's fault, awlays someone else do blame. People who poop on the street can't find any other place (perhaps, a bush?), people who throw needles on the street have no other place to take drugs (perhaps, the supervised drug injection site where they get the drugs?).
Empathy must come with responsibility and not with a patronizing de-humanizing pseudo-compassion. Which is, of course, just enablement under a different name.
This talk about not pooping on the street and not shooting up in the street is not really solving the material issues of homeless people. How does pooping in a bush or going to a supervised drug injection site get you out of abject poverty?
How is it not a structural problem when homelessness is a growing epidemic? Do you think that if every homeless person took a little more personal responsibility this issue would be fixed already?
> Do you think that if every homeless person took a little more personal responsibility this issue would be fixed already?
Yes. A little more personal responsibility leads to taking more and more personal responsibility. I dislike talking about homeless people as a homogenous group, but the visibly/street homeless need to take more responsibility for their life in order to improve it. There are many resources available that can make their journey out of homelessness faster.
Important to remember that every one of us are just a few accidents away from being ejected from society too. I try to catch myself when I'm looking down my nose at the bum who make a mess of my recycling because there is another richer person looking down their nose at me!
I don’t think I’m a few accidents away from what I see people doing every morning in the east village. I’ve been in four should-have-died accidents, when are you expecting me to abandon society? It’s a silly fantasy to pretend the average white collar is a few bad missteps away from the chronic detachment you see from these folks. We must live in very different worlds, my friend.
I really hope you never have to experience it, because it is a very nasty rug pull. No, it's not a silly fantasy, it's a deadly reality. As long as you produce value, you can enjoy momentary security. But take away anyone piece of your capacity to produce money: maybe your hands to type, or your brain to think- and all that security rapidly comes undone. Maybe you're lucky enough to have a rich family to fall back on or you live in a country with a generous welfare. But barring that, you absolutely will find yourself out on the street given the right circumstances.
Well, it is normal to have such feelings when people are harassed by those people. Yesterday, in Texas while I was harassed by kids. They used all the slurs and it was so bizarre to me. In California, I can't imagine the situation.
It only takes few people to ruin experience for all people.
I hope you never end up in a situation where people decide not only to leave you in pool of your own urine on the sidewalk, but to feel righteous about their activism to make sure you're left there.
Agreed, get them out of functional society. I’m sick of the Quaker quasi religious Progressives who think they can cure everything. It’s like dude, these are broken fucked up people. Get them out of society and try and rehab whatever ones still have something left. Just get them out.
We used to have asylums. Maybe it’s time to bring these back and house these people in them with whatever medication can sedate them. Not saying bring back the lobotomy but maybe we institutionalize people that are obviously crazy?!
