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I haven't encouraged locking anybody up, or fining anybody. They don't care. It doesn't work. I know. Please don't put words in my mouth. "They're just doing w
by RickS 10y ago
I haven't encouraged locking anybody up, or fining anybody. They don't care. It doesn't work. I know. Please don't put words in my mouth.
"They're just doing what they must to survive" doesn't justify the street behavior of san francisco vagrants any more than it justifies a hungry dog ripping the face off a kid.
Do you live in a neighborhood where you deal with the homeless and mentally ill on a daily basis and at all hours?
Do you step in shit? Are you spit on? Accosted? Have your roommates come home with phlegm and spit in their hair? Have you left your apartment to find a man's face pressed against the window, yelling "You look like you've been waiting to eat my ass your whole life"?
I'd need a yard to put the Y in NIMBY, but all I have is a feces-caked grate that I routinely kick people off of so I can open the door and get into a street that stinks of piss. Sorry if you're bummed that I'm interrupting their pill sales.
Live and let live doesn't cut it here, not for me. The idea that these people should be left alone regardless of the blight and destruction they cause to public spaces is short sighted and wreaks of "I don't actually experience this problem".
The homeless are struggling. They need help. But they're a scourge, too, and I'm sick and tired of people boo-hooing about how they're just trying to survive as the streets in this city rot from their presence, as though their being in pain makes it acceptable that they erode the quality of every public space in the city. It is not acceptable.
The solutions we have for homelessness and its associated ailments are weak, and need to be better. They need to be rooted in generosity and upward mobility. I completely agree. I'm all for huge city spending on building, and on every conceivable social program, especially for mental health.
What I am not for is turning a blind eye to the realities of homelessness' effects on the city in the mean time, and to distance the crimes and destruction from the individuals who commit them.
You do not get a free pass to fuck up the world because your life sucks.
- npizzolato 10y ago> I haven't encouraged locking anybody up, or fining anybody. Well, you encouraged "consequences," which usually means one of those two things. > But we encourage this behavior every time we allow it to happen with no consequences... There need to be consequences, but how do you discourage someone who has nothing? They're almost inherently unpunishable. So, there need to be consequences, but you don't agree with locking people up or fining them? What consequences were you referring to then?
- RickS 10y agoI have no idea, and that's what makes it difficult. It's the purpose of the sentence you quoted. Consequences are almost always about losing something, and you have to have something to lose it, so you can't punish those who have nothing. This creates a bizzaro nightmare scenario where the destitute can commit petty crimes with impunity. I won't pretend to have a solution to this. So far, I'm not sure anybody does. But that doesn't mean I can't be mad as hell about it. I'm sick of people saying that how people act in the streets here is somehow short of reprehensible.
- yazaddaruvala 10y agoOne potential solution I've been pondering: Send like 4000 homeless people to a small abandoned town (like old dead mining towns and such), with gear and supplies, such that they can help each other create themselves a society, simultaneously they might revive the abandoned town. If they then choose to leave, they leave. If they choose to stay they stay. Not everyone needs to be assimilated, and us building services to help them "be successful", is the literal meaning of assimilation. Kinda like a commune or an Amish village, potentially even burning man, allow them to build themselves the society such that they are successfully able to live in. P.S. I don't have particularly good ideas about how you keep them safe, or even if you should. It should be their society and maybe that means, allow them to make their own laws. P.P.S. I know I'm crazy.
- strait 10y agoNot impossible, but as a proposed government-sponsored program in this day and age, impossible.
- thisrod 10y agoYou should read The Fatal Shore.
- nradov 10y agoThere have been programs similar to that in the past. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multnomah_County_Poor_Farm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multnomah_County_Poor_Farm
- douche 10y agoIn NH, we have the right to shoot trespassers on sight, so long as they die on our property...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]