5 ms·

It boggles my mind to see a comment like this, it is fundamentally based on the assumption that homeless people are subhuman and not deserving of amenities. Fur

It boggles my mind to see a comment like this, it is fundamentally based on the assumption that homeless people are subhuman and not deserving of amenities. Further it's looking at the purpose and situation in life as a qualification of usage. A homeless person walking into a library to use it, is now a library patron, would they still be excluded due to them being homeless? If I am upset one day and decide to take a long meaningless ride on a subway circuit, am I more or less allowed to do it compared to a homeless person? Of course these examples can be nitpicked and yet will miss the point. These simply become soundbites that justify cruelty.

scarmig 3y ago
Everyone should have access to public amenities. But a widespread homelessness problem ends up denying amenities to people who aren't homeless: when libraries regularly have people smoking meth or shooting up in the bathrooms, that makes it uncomfortable for most people to use. It's easy enough to say "they should just get over it, someone passed out on the bathroom floor is not really a threat to anyone," but that betrays a certain level of privilege that ignores the feelings of most people and the genuine lack of safety and cleanliness that homelessness introduces to those spaces. In your hypothetical example, if you were inebriated, aggressive, and unhygienic, I'd strongly support you being removed from the subway circuit, because you'd similarly be denying access to it to others.
- im3w1l 3y ago
  Being homeless isn't the same as making others uncomfortable. The correlation is high, yes, but it's important to distinguish nevertheless. Only by distinguishing can you incentivize good behavior.
  - scarmig 3y ago
    Although that is of course true, it's unclear how you translate that into policy. The ideal would be for the city to remove badly behaving people (regardless of homeless status) from public spaces and allow the well-behaved people to go and remain there. In practice, however, the city is unable to make that distinction, and a badly behaving person will, even if removed, return, resulting in the denial of access to the general public.
0xB31B1B 3y ago
Thats great, the library in question has to call the police multiple times per week for various issues caused by the meth addiction homeless who occupy it. It has completely ruined the concept of library for everyone who isn’t a drug user.

scarmig 3y ago

Everyone should have access to public amenities. But a widespread homelessness problem ends up denying amenities to people who aren't homeless: when libraries regularly have people smoking meth or shooting up in the bathrooms, that makes it uncomfortable for most people to use. It's easy enough to say "they should just get over it, someone passed out on the bathroom floor is not really a threat to anyone," but that betrays a certain level of privilege that ignores the feelings of most people and the genuine lack of safety and cleanliness that homelessness introduces to those spaces. In your hypothetical example, if you were inebriated, aggressive, and unhygienic, I'd strongly support you being removed from the subway circuit, because you'd similarly be denying access to it to others.

im3w1l 3y ago
Being homeless isn't the same as making others uncomfortable. The correlation is high, yes, but it's important to distinguish nevertheless. Only by distinguishing can you incentivize good behavior.
- scarmig 3y ago
  Although that is of course true, it's unclear how you translate that into policy. The ideal would be for the city to remove badly behaving people (regardless of homeless status) from public spaces and allow the well-behaved people to go and remain there. In practice, however, the city is unable to make that distinction, and a badly behaving person will, even if removed, return, resulting in the denial of access to the general public.

0xB31B1B 3y ago

Thats great, the library in question has to call the police multiple times per week for various issues caused by the meth addiction homeless who occupy it. It has completely ruined the concept of library for everyone who isn’t a drug user.