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> 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_

by 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.
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    That’s EXACTLY what NIMBY is. Everyone talks a big game until it hits close to home. There is an effort going on called YIMBY as obviously an opposite that is trying to get people on board with housing developments in these areas we’re talking about. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/YIMBY https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/YIMBY

by Kalium 8y ago

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.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  That’s EXACTLY what NIMBY is. Everyone talks a big game until it hits close to home. There is an effort going on called YIMBY as obviously an opposite that is trying to get people on board with housing developments in these areas we’re talking about. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/YIMBY https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/YIMBY