9 ms·

After learning about hep C (diarrheal, can survive in an infectious state for up to 6 months outdoors) the issue of sanitation became very 'real' to me. I had

After learning about hep C (diarrheal, can survive in an infectious state for up to 6 months outdoors) the issue of sanitation became very 'real' to me. I had the idea of starting a charity to rent port-o-potties for the homeless encampments near our office. For context, my company is filled with _completely_ woke people, super concerned about social justice and stuff like that... But when i pitched the idea everyone universally shot it down, in disgust and with a dismissive attitude like it wasn't even worthy of consideration. It messed with my head. It's a symptom of our fucked up country where "wokeness" is a separate idea from kindness, where disgust about the poor crosses all colors of skin, and it's worth keeping the poor in misery even when that decision threatens your own health.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
I was homeless for nearly six years. I did my level best to never use a port-a-potty. I think they are generally gross. I think the only exception was one set up permanently in a park as the only bathroom there. It was not as gross as the ones set up on city sidewalks, apparently usually for homeless individuals. I really dislike most solutions aimed at helping the homeless. They are often solutions no middle class person would accept. If you wouldn't want it for yourself, please think about why you think this is a good thing to do for the homeless population. It probably isn't. It's probably part of the pattern of societal behavior that helps keep this issue entrenched.
- cco 8y ago
  I use portapotties all the time, they're not unicorns and rainbows but assuming they haven't been defaced, i.e. poop or urine all over the inside and not in the receptacle, they're just fine. I don't see them as a dehumanizing thing. Shoot, nearly all construction workers use them as their office toilet, is that unacceptable?
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    When you are homeless, you tend to wear the same clothes for days or weeks at a time. You may be unable to shower for long stretches. Construction workers are going to go home, shower, change clothes, wash the clothes they wore all day and worked hard in. You seem to be taking it for granted that one can get cleaned up again after being exposed to a port-a-potty. This is not a given for homeless individuals. If you are in good health -- which many homeless people are not -- and have regular access to showers, laundry service, etc, using a port-a-potty may be no big deal. But this is generally not the case for people on the street.
    - username3 8y ago
      The solution is public showers for the homeless.
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        Yes, let's just leave them on the street and give them lousy port-a-potties and shower access. That's the humane approach. (Do I need a sarcasm tag here?) That still leaves them wearing the same filthy clothes. It doesn't remotely solve the problem. Furthermore, homeless showers tend to be as horrible as most homeless services. Either you have no privacy -- because why the hell should your dignity matter when you are homeless? -- or it has mold issues, etc. All services specifically designed to service the homeless population tend to be really, truly terrible in a "you would get sued if this were aimed at middle class people" kind of way. The general attitude is "beggars can't be choosers" and "don't be so uppity -- show a little gratitude for the shitty service you are getting for free, you ungrateful whiner." So, no, that's not the solution. Missing Middle Housing is The Solution here. Or one part of it. There is no single cause of homelessness. There is no single solution.
        lisper 8y ago
        > There is no single cause of homelessness. There is no single solution. This is really important to emphasize. I've never been homeless, but I did spend two years hanging out with homeless people while making a documentary film. The range of people on the street is almost as broad as the range of people off it. I met homeless people with Ph.D.'s. I met homeless people with florid schizophrenia. I met homeless people with substance abuse issues. I met homeless people who were perfectly ordinary but had some bad luck (ranging from losing their job to losing their entire family in a car crash). I even met homeless people who chose to live on the street (or in their car) because they wanted a nomadic lifestyle. But no matter how you slice it, the only real solution to homelessness is housing.
- czbond 8y ago
  With your experience, what solution would you offer knowing the situation better than many here?
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    We need to bring back housing that works for people without a car that doesn't cost too much. The best term for this type of housing seems to be Missing Middle Housing. http://missingmiddlehousing.com/ http://missingmiddlehousing.com/ Just as one data point, we have torn down more than a million SROs in recent decades while population has risen. SROs used to be a normal form of market rate housing that worked well for people just starting out who didn't have much money and didn't need much space because they were single and childless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy We also need to resolve the health care coverage issues in the US. Health insurance eats up a high percentage of the US GDP. Most homeless people have serious health issues, either physical health or mental health issues. This is a significant contributing factor to homelessness. There are studies that show that when people get affordable health coverage, it reduces the risk of eviction. https://www.benefitspro.com/2018/12/14/one-side-effect-of-the-aca-fewer-evictions/?slreturn=20190222111041 https://www.benefitspro.com/2018/12/14/one-side-effect-of-th... We don't need "homes for the homeless." We need homes for the people. We currently tend to build homes for rich people only and basically shrug and say "not my problem" when the rest of the US can't make their life work. Then we act like homeless individuals are simply defective individuals and weren't screwed over by a broken system. No, they just need to stop drinking/using drugs, obviously. "It's just a personal issue." Never mind that new housing has more than doubled in size since the 1950s and added substantial additional amenities at the same time that the average number of occupants has declined. These changes in housing pushing up housing costs couldn't possibly be related, no. Ask anyone with a good income and cushy life.
    - komali2 8y ago
      I think those are really good ideas and I think we should get to work on them ASAP. I'm curious if you have any short term solutions to give the people that keep pooping in front of my office at night a place to poop while we try to implement these solutions. I've suggested just handing out key fobs and the key for the first floor bathroom of our building but it was turned down by management. I'm not sure what we can do but I'm sad that the best option for a poo for whoever is doing this is our doorway.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
longhorn_alum 8y ago
> For context, my company is filled with _completely_ woke people, super concerned about social justice and stuff like that... In other words, a mob who doesn't think for themselves and who are easy to manipulate. Sounds like an intolerable and unprofessional work environment.
- cazum 8y ago
  What? How does "a group concerned with social issues" translate to "unruly, malleable, intolerable, unprofessional mob" ?
- nkozyra 8y ago
  Alternately, people who care about empathy, particularly for marginalized groups. Nobody is perfect, of course, but kneejerk lumping people who care about social justice this way is unhelpful.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    If a person distills his philosophy on social justice into one trendy word I think "kneejerk lumping" is appropriate.
    - nkozyra 8y ago
      Versus explicitly and verbosely enumerating every stance?
- komali2 8y ago
  Given that it appears you personally don't know the people op is talking about, what reasonable evidence are you basing this conclusion on? And given that it's generally an insulting thing to say about the op's workplace, what was your intention in saying it? How did you want the op to feel about your thoughts?
cazum 8y ago
Apparently they aren't that woke if they aren't aware of the systemic injustices that lead people to become homeless. But then again, most people aren't. Most people seem to dismiss homeless people as "lazy freeloaders who are just trying to get drugs" as if they're all addicted to drugs and that somehow addiction and poverty are moral failings worthy of scorn and contempt.
- czbond 8y ago
  I agree. I have many well paid friends in tech, who bristle when I blatantly say "Everyone is 3 steps from being homeless - the steps are just a little larger for some". They fail to see how .... a sickness, a lost job, etc can lead to that path.
Kalium 8y ago
> I had the idea of starting a charity to rent port-o-potties for the homeless encampments near our office. For context, my company is filled with _completely_ woke people, super concerned about social justice and stuff like that... You might find that this kind of disconnect is very common. In San Francisco, for example, there's broad and strong public support for providing housing and care to the homeless among us. Yet a great deal of this support vanishes once a particular site is proposed - the same people who like the idea of helping the homeless frequently don't like the idea of doing so right next to their homes. It can be difficult to blame them too much. Nobody likes dealing with the used needles, petty property crime, and fires that seem to go hand in hand with encampments here. Most everyone would much rather help those in such dire need at arms-length.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  NIMBY, not in my back yard.
  - Kalium 8y ago
    It's an understandable thing, at times. I know I became significantly less friendly towards encampments after one sparked a wildfire that posed a non-trivial chance of affecting the building I lived in. I first went through a phase of "but why can't we just get them into housing?". Eventually I realized that helping the current members of the encampment would address the issue for a few days or a week, but that a new set of vulnerable neighbors would occupy the same space in short order. This cycle would repeat until who knows when, which did not strike me as an attractive proposition. The other residents in my building followed the same thought process, and decided that the best thing for them was to advocate for the owner of the land to clear encampments. I kept my mouth shut. Nobody was going to thank me for telling them that the morally superior option was to risk having their homes burned down and their children burned alive.
  - siruncledrew 8y ago
    That's not NIMBY. It's more like saying vs. doing.
tsukurimashou 8y ago
Political correctness and being "open minded" only on the latest trends and hot topics is what means being "woke" these days They take a lot of shortcuts, they aim for equality of outcome and nitpick on useless details I'm really not surprised about the reaction you got from your coworkers / employees of your company
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
fzeroracer 8y ago
This ignores the very real problem that chronic homeless people tend to suffer from mental illness problems and you'd need to ensure they are clean 24/7. There would also be the issue of people using them for drugs and what not. This also ignores that the solution you propose has already been tried in other cities and hasn't worked out. Which could be part of the reason why you received such a harsh response. The solution wouldn't be portable toilets, it would be fully fledged bathroom units available to the homeless with options to shower, shave, fresh clothing etc. Of course a better and longer lasting solution would be actual housing for the homeless but that seems to be a harder sell for some people.
duxup 8y ago
I always thought of "woke" as more of a meme / ridicule kind of thing.
- stronglikedan 8y ago
  The irony is, it is. Unless you're "woke", in which case the ridicule is just something else to feign outrage over. And don't even get em started on the "social justice" bullshit!
  - duxup 8y ago
    I think we're too far down the double meaning rabbit hole for me to really know what that means ;)
Allower 8y ago
I'm not disgusted by the poor. Im disgusted by disgusting people. People who make little to no effort to improve their circumstances, people who trash their community, people who EXPECT a handout.
shams93 8y ago
The city of Santa Monica created a better solution - easy access to public toilets with an interior that is completely metal so its easy to hose down to keep them clean. For the most part they keep these very clean so while you see these outbreaks downtown you don't see them in Santa Monica because they do have public bathrooms. In downtown LA its impossible to find a public bathroom often the metro stations don't even have bathrooms. The assumption made is that bathrooms attract the homeless but in reality creates a situation where no one can wash their hands easily downtown.
on_and_off 8y ago
Is your country the USA ?

DoreenMichele 8y ago

I was homeless for nearly six years. I did my level best to never use a port-a-potty. I think they are generally gross. I think the only exception was one set up permanently in a park as the only bathroom there. It was not as gross as the ones set up on city sidewalks, apparently usually for homeless individuals. I really dislike most solutions aimed at helping the homeless. They are often solutions no middle class person would accept. If you wouldn't want it for yourself, please think about why you think this is a good thing to do for the homeless population. It probably isn't. It's probably part of the pattern of societal behavior that helps keep this issue entrenched.

cco 8y ago
I use portapotties all the time, they're not unicorns and rainbows but assuming they haven't been defaced, i.e. poop or urine all over the inside and not in the receptacle, they're just fine. I don't see them as a dehumanizing thing. Shoot, nearly all construction workers use them as their office toilet, is that unacceptable?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  When you are homeless, you tend to wear the same clothes for days or weeks at a time. You may be unable to shower for long stretches. Construction workers are going to go home, shower, change clothes, wash the clothes they wore all day and worked hard in. You seem to be taking it for granted that one can get cleaned up again after being exposed to a port-a-potty. This is not a given for homeless individuals. If you are in good health -- which many homeless people are not -- and have regular access to showers, laundry service, etc, using a port-a-potty may be no big deal. But this is generally not the case for people on the street.
  - username3 8y ago
    The solution is public showers for the homeless.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      Yes, let's just leave them on the street and give them lousy port-a-potties and shower access. That's the humane approach. (Do I need a sarcasm tag here?) That still leaves them wearing the same filthy clothes. It doesn't remotely solve the problem. Furthermore, homeless showers tend to be as horrible as most homeless services. Either you have no privacy -- because why the hell should your dignity matter when you are homeless? -- or it has mold issues, etc. All services specifically designed to service the homeless population tend to be really, truly terrible in a "you would get sued if this were aimed at middle class people" kind of way. The general attitude is "beggars can't be choosers" and "don't be so uppity -- show a little gratitude for the shitty service you are getting for free, you ungrateful whiner." So, no, that's not the solution. Missing Middle Housing is The Solution here. Or one part of it. There is no single cause of homelessness. There is no single solution.
      - lisper 8y ago
        > There is no single cause of homelessness. There is no single solution. This is really important to emphasize. I've never been homeless, but I did spend two years hanging out with homeless people while making a documentary film. The range of people on the street is almost as broad as the range of people off it. I met homeless people with Ph.D.'s. I met homeless people with florid schizophrenia. I met homeless people with substance abuse issues. I met homeless people who were perfectly ordinary but had some bad luck (ranging from losing their job to losing their entire family in a car crash). I even met homeless people who chose to live on the street (or in their car) because they wanted a nomadic lifestyle. But no matter how you slice it, the only real solution to homelessness is housing.
czbond 8y ago
With your experience, what solution would you offer knowing the situation better than many here?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  We need to bring back housing that works for people without a car that doesn't cost too much. The best term for this type of housing seems to be Missing Middle Housing. http://missingmiddlehousing.com/ http://missingmiddlehousing.com/ Just as one data point, we have torn down more than a million SROs in recent decades while population has risen. SROs used to be a normal form of market rate housing that worked well for people just starting out who didn't have much money and didn't need much space because they were single and childless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy We also need to resolve the health care coverage issues in the US. Health insurance eats up a high percentage of the US GDP. Most homeless people have serious health issues, either physical health or mental health issues. This is a significant contributing factor to homelessness. There are studies that show that when people get affordable health coverage, it reduces the risk of eviction. https://www.benefitspro.com/2018/12/14/one-side-effect-of-the-aca-fewer-evictions/?slreturn=20190222111041 https://www.benefitspro.com/2018/12/14/one-side-effect-of-th... We don't need "homes for the homeless." We need homes for the people. We currently tend to build homes for rich people only and basically shrug and say "not my problem" when the rest of the US can't make their life work. Then we act like homeless individuals are simply defective individuals and weren't screwed over by a broken system. No, they just need to stop drinking/using drugs, obviously. "It's just a personal issue." Never mind that new housing has more than doubled in size since the 1950s and added substantial additional amenities at the same time that the average number of occupants has declined. These changes in housing pushing up housing costs couldn't possibly be related, no. Ask anyone with a good income and cushy life.
  - komali2 8y ago
    I think those are really good ideas and I think we should get to work on them ASAP. I'm curious if you have any short term solutions to give the people that keep pooping in front of my office at night a place to poop while we try to implement these solutions. I've suggested just handing out key fobs and the key for the first floor bathroom of our building but it was turned down by management. I'm not sure what we can do but I'm sad that the best option for a poo for whoever is doing this is our doorway.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

longhorn_alum 8y ago

> For context, my company is filled with _completely_ woke people, super concerned about social justice and stuff like that... In other words, a mob who doesn't think for themselves and who are easy to manipulate. Sounds like an intolerable and unprofessional work environment.

cazum 8y ago
What? How does "a group concerned with social issues" translate to "unruly, malleable, intolerable, unprofessional mob" ?
nkozyra 8y ago
Alternately, people who care about empathy, particularly for marginalized groups. Nobody is perfect, of course, but kneejerk lumping people who care about social justice this way is unhelpful.
- ams6110 8y ago
  If a person distills his philosophy on social justice into one trendy word I think "kneejerk lumping" is appropriate.
  - nkozyra 8y ago
    Versus explicitly and verbosely enumerating every stance?
komali2 8y ago
Given that it appears you personally don't know the people op is talking about, what reasonable evidence are you basing this conclusion on? And given that it's generally an insulting thing to say about the op's workplace, what was your intention in saying it? How did you want the op to feel about your thoughts?

cazum 8y ago

Apparently they aren't that woke if they aren't aware of the systemic injustices that lead people to become homeless. But then again, most people aren't. Most people seem to dismiss homeless people as "lazy freeloaders who are just trying to get drugs" as if they're all addicted to drugs and that somehow addiction and poverty are moral failings worthy of scorn and contempt.

czbond 8y ago
I agree. I have many well paid friends in tech, who bristle when I blatantly say "Everyone is 3 steps from being homeless - the steps are just a little larger for some". They fail to see how .... a sickness, a lost job, etc can lead to that path.

Kalium 8y ago

> I had the idea of starting a charity to rent port-o-potties for the homeless encampments near our office. For context, my company is filled with _completely_ woke people, super concerned about social justice and stuff like that... You might find that this kind of disconnect is very common. In San Francisco, for example, there's broad and strong public support for providing housing and care to the homeless among us. Yet a great deal of this support vanishes once a particular site is proposed - the same people who like the idea of helping the homeless frequently don't like the idea of doing so right next to their homes. It can be difficult to blame them too much. Nobody likes dealing with the used needles, petty property crime, and fires that seem to go hand in hand with encampments here. Most everyone would much rather help those in such dire need at arms-length.

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
NIMBY, not in my back yard.
- Kalium 8y ago
  It's an understandable thing, at times. I know I became significantly less friendly towards encampments after one sparked a wildfire that posed a non-trivial chance of affecting the building I lived in. I first went through a phase of "but why can't we just get them into housing?". Eventually I realized that helping the current members of the encampment would address the issue for a few days or a week, but that a new set of vulnerable neighbors would occupy the same space in short order. This cycle would repeat until who knows when, which did not strike me as an attractive proposition. The other residents in my building followed the same thought process, and decided that the best thing for them was to advocate for the owner of the land to clear encampments. I kept my mouth shut. Nobody was going to thank me for telling them that the morally superior option was to risk having their homes burned down and their children burned alive.
- siruncledrew 8y ago
  That's not NIMBY. It's more like saying vs. doing.

tsukurimashou 8y ago

Political correctness and being "open minded" only on the latest trends and hot topics is what means being "woke" these days They take a lot of shortcuts, they aim for equality of outcome and nitpick on useless details I'm really not surprised about the reaction you got from your coworkers / employees of your company

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

fzeroracer 8y ago

This ignores the very real problem that chronic homeless people tend to suffer from mental illness problems and you'd need to ensure they are clean 24/7. There would also be the issue of people using them for drugs and what not. This also ignores that the solution you propose has already been tried in other cities and hasn't worked out. Which could be part of the reason why you received such a harsh response. The solution wouldn't be portable toilets, it would be fully fledged bathroom units available to the homeless with options to shower, shave, fresh clothing etc. Of course a better and longer lasting solution would be actual housing for the homeless but that seems to be a harder sell for some people.

duxup 8y ago

I always thought of "woke" as more of a meme / ridicule kind of thing.

stronglikedan 8y ago
The irony is, it is. Unless you're "woke", in which case the ridicule is just something else to feign outrage over. And don't even get em started on the "social justice" bullshit!
- duxup 8y ago
  I think we're too far down the double meaning rabbit hole for me to really know what that means ;)

Allower 8y ago

I'm not disgusted by the poor. Im disgusted by disgusting people. People who make little to no effort to improve their circumstances, people who trash their community, people who EXPECT a handout.

shams93 8y ago

The city of Santa Monica created a better solution - easy access to public toilets with an interior that is completely metal so its easy to hose down to keep them clean. For the most part they keep these very clean so while you see these outbreaks downtown you don't see them in Santa Monica because they do have public bathrooms. In downtown LA its impossible to find a public bathroom often the metro stations don't even have bathrooms. The assumption made is that bathrooms attract the homeless but in reality creates a situation where no one can wash their hands easily downtown.

on_and_off 8y ago

Is your country the USA ?