4 ms·
I love seeing this creativity, but I hate the system that causes people to have to live this way. I was homeless off and on for years, blending in. Crashing in
by lrvick 3y ago
I love seeing this creativity, but I hate the system that causes people to have to live this way.
I was homeless off and on for years, blending in. Crashing in college campus common areas, or living in my car. Bumming showers from friends once in a while or paper towel baths in gas station bathrooms. Would sometimes sleep in the trunk when it got cold enough. I was normally employed, had friends, and most knew nothing of my living situation. I knew how to hide. Part of that invisible homeless population. Thankfully I had my youth, my health, and the will to find many types of work, save, find my way out. Most are not so lucky.
Later, on my feet, I would often try to help visible homeless I had developed some empathy for. One day handing out 50 sandwiches at Lake Eola Park in Orlando, like I did every month, I was given a warning by a police officer to stop. I tore it up in front of him and dared him to arrest me. I was already out of food for the day so he walked away. Dozens of others who doing a larger scale regular feedings with Food Not Bombs were actually arrested over a few months.
Feeding 25 people was the limit, and cops went in undercover plain clothes to catch who would commit the crime of feeding the 26th hungry person at Lake Eola park.
They would often arrest the homeless too, for loitering and other such nonsense. Friend of mine had been arrested for this, and then repeatedly arrested over a dozen times for failing to pay the fines, jail costs, and court costs related to the previous arrests and so on burning endless taxpayer time and money. At least he got a hot meal and a bed in jail some nights.
Once in a local court myself for a traffic citation, I saw a man in front of me issued a $200 fine by a judge for holding up a sign asking for money in a public place.
The homeless are not helped in most of America. They are not seen as human, but as vermin to be removed, along with anyone that gives them too much unsanctioned help.
You can hardly blame them for breaking a few laws to survive, when it is against the law for them to even exist.
- phero_cnstrcts 3y agoBut sending billions of dollars to fund wars overseas is done because it’s humanitarian and the “right thing to do”. How the homeless are treated tells me all I need to know about the people in power.
- shreyshnaccount 3y agoAid sent abroad isn't humanitarian, it's to buy political and strategic favours from autocrats.
- malux85 3y agoThe reason is not “humanitarian and the right thing to do” it’s to send tax payer dollars to the enormous war companies in the US. There’s even leaked voice memos of these CEOs assuring investors “there is still plenty of instability” to prop up profits. It’s a disgrace.
- worldcoup 3y ago[dead]
- bratwurst3000 3y agoI don’t think words can state how angry this makes me. Wtf is wrong with those police and judge. How can this be socially acceptable? Those people should be behind bars for cruelty against humanity. Couldn’t imagine something like this in Europe. Certainly we have our systematic problems towards homelessness but what’s going on in the states is intensionaly beating down.
- pxmpxm 3y agoMaybe instead of going full-feels, you should pause and contemplate why those sorts of regulations and laws exist. I would imagine it relates to the premise that public spaces are supposed to be a benefit to all, which doesn't happen if they mostly serve as an encampment for a minority of a population. Well-intentioned actions like the ones in the parent post can actually come with negative externalities that entirely outweigh them; places like San Francisco are learning that particular lesson as we speak.
- nativeit 3y agoOK, I contemplated it. They’re band-aids, tools of oppression, and the worst possible response to “the problems” they profess to address. We can fix poverty and homelessness as a society. We choose not to do so. That’s a shitty excuse for criminalizing a person’s right to exist and survive.
- jiminymcmoogley 3y agoI see a lot of San Franciscans online complain about homeless people leaving their feces and used needles in the streets and harassing people going about their lives, I don't see so many complaints about them eating food. Surely an approach that maximises the freedom for all would be one that criminalizes the actually harmful behaviour, rather than going after the segment of society whose existence correlates strongly with that behaviour. It just seems like going after Tony Soprano by putting italians into internment camps, rather than devoting police activity to capturing mafia criminals
- soco 3y agoThe society is (arguably?) working for the benefit of all its citizens. So no user of a public space should be prioritized over another. If the homeless takes a dump in the park it's because he doesn't have a better place to do it, so dear society please go fix that. PS: leftists are often called "snowflakes" but I see the others whining waaaay more.
- black_13 3y ago[dead]