The other day at the transit station there was a man sitting on a bench with a shopping cart of his stuff, having a loud argument with nobody in particular. Lik

The other day at the transit station there was a man sitting on a bench with a shopping cart of his stuff, having a loud argument with nobody in particular. Like shouting at the top of his lungs, for at least a half hour. A couple of weeks ago I had to avoid an altercation with a woman who talking to herself on the subway, she didn't like the way I "looked" at her as I was doing my best to mind my own business. She starts mad-dogging me and then darts off the train. Every so often a transient blocks the stoplight at a large, 6-lane intersection near my house, because he decided to ignore the crossing signal, and sometimes even the crosswalks. My young sister doesn't feel safe walking home on certain routes as there are groups of disheveled men hanging out doing nothing in particular. I've counted over a dozen of them, blocking the sidewalk and sometimes a lane or two on the street. The strip mall near my house has had to fence off certain areas open spaces because they had a habit of hosting impromptu bike chop shops. A woman who owns a local tasting room at said strip-mall has told me multiple stories of shenanigans with the local transients, as they like to get into trouble in their outdoor bathrooms, and her business has the closest key. Last week a man was sucker-punched because he asked a transient, who was sleeping in his car, to leave. (The man who got punched needed to drive to work.) Last year a woman was stabbed with a needle by a transient while waiting in line at a drive-thru. My city's local subreddits are rife with complaints and specific altercations. Most city parks are or have homeless encampments, and you can find them pretty much anywhere that there is unattended open space. My city even opened a safe zone for unhoused to camp, with police supervision and outreach resources available, and had to shut it down due to lack of use. City police generally do nothing; they are underfunded, understaffed, and still butthurt from the BLM protests and imposed COVID policies. Some of the videos that have been posted online have been downright childish. I know that not everybody is the same, and there are a handful of locals that I see repeatedly and know to be decent folk, but it is extremely difficult to be charitable with a narrative like this. And I am aware of other cities around here that have it much worse. There are areas of town that I used to enjoy walking through, but now they smell of a shit and piss. People are not quite as destitute as some of the South American cities I've walked around, but it feels like we are getting closer to that. If the homeless, as a group, would control/behave themselves people might have a different attitude. But they don't, and it takes a long time to recognize whether a specific individual is worth helping or not.