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> Maybe instead of spending huge amounts of taxpayer funds treating the symptom, San Francisco should ask itself why local businesses find it impossible to keep
by koolba 3y ago
> Maybe instead of spending huge amounts of taxpayer funds treating the symptom, San Francisco should ask itself why local businesses find it impossible to keep their restrooms open?
SF businesses already have to deal with a near daily hosing down of human feces from the street in front of their stores. If they opened up their bathrooms to vagrants it would just double the number of places they’re literally cleaning shit up.
- lolinder 3y agoThat's exactly my point: that is not a problem in most other cities. Which is why other cities can have the bathrooms open. For San Francisco to spend money on truly public bathrooms is putting lipstick on a pig.
- ethanbond 3y agoEh, New York City would absolutely benefit from more public restrooms (paid or not). Central Park is a prime example.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> that is not a problem in most other cities The well-meant and originally-necessary drive to end criminalising poverty overcorrected into absurdity by equating poverty with mental illness, and compassion for the mentally ill with not arresting people who smear feces over restroom walls. This fallacy, which dovetailed with anti-police sentiments, is most pronounced in San Francisco. But it’s also present in other American cities.
- yazzku 3y agoSan Francisco has the problem of inequality and an incompetent management, backed by people who wish the "homeless problem" just magically disappeared overnight. The toilets and piles of human defecation rolling down the hill are a consequence of the above, and unsolvable until the above is addressed first. You can't borrow ideas from other cities around the world because those don't have rampant inequality.
- pirate787 3y agoThe obsession with "Inequality" is misplaced envy. The issue is government policies that enable and support lawbreaking.
- amanaplanacanal 3y agoWhen some people can afford a place to live and others can’t, I’d say that inequality is a problem. Calling it envy doesn’t address that at all.
- xg15 3y agoSo arrest all the homeless then?
- pb7 3y agoIf they break the law then yeah, why not? They’re not above the law.
- Gibbon1 3y agoGeneral principal among civilized peoples is you can't punish people for breaking laws they they are unable to follow through no fault of their own.
- lolinder 3y ago"Through no fault of their own" is the point of contention with this topic. One side believes the homeless are mostly victims of circumstance, the other that they're mostly victims of their own poor choices and addictions.
- alistairSH 3y agoThere are no free public toilets. So the homeless shit in the street. Arresting them for that fixes nothing. Except maybe buys you a day or two without shit, until another homeless person settles in.
- manicennui 3y agoOther large cities in the US have exactly the same problem.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bsder 3y ago> That's exactly my point: that is not a problem in most other cities. Except it is a similar problem in most cities? The only exceptions are cities with nasty weather which basically "solves" the homeless problem every winter or cities which basically shuffle the homeless into jail. I haven't really seen any big city (even in Europe) "solve" their homeless problem any other way.