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Yeah but what are the actual problems? It shouldn’t be a crime to not have a house. We should probably focus on actual problems like peeing or being intoxicated

Yeah but what are the actual problems? It shouldn’t be a crime to not have a house. We should probably focus on actual problems like peeing or being intoxicated on the bus which are the actual harms.

themafia 11mo ago
Falling asleep on a bus is a great way to get victimized. The homeless are most likely to be victimized by other homeless. It almost never gets reported to the police. It's not a shelter and it's not meant to be converted into one. To me it's an indication of an overworked and failing system that leaves people in bad situations because it has nowhere else for them to go. Sure, you could argue that because there's currently no obvious major problems, that you could just leave it as is and be entirely unconcerned with it, or even go so far as to suggest that anyone who does want to fix it is doing so in bad faith. I think that's cruel and lazy. The actual problem? These people need _real_ shelter.
trollbridge 11mo ago
Whilst it's not a crime not to have a house, providing housing via free buses is a very poor way to address people who don't have houses, and it has an unfortunate side effect of pushing people who would otherwise use public transportation away from using it.
- the_snooze 11mo ago
  You see this in public libraries in major cities. They're open to everyone, so they become shelters of last resort for homeless folks. The large presence of homeless people discourages the public at-large from using the library as a library. That in turn weakens the political will to continue funding libraries.
  - trollbridge 11mo ago
    I live in an area where the homeless by and large are well served (lots of halfway houses), so despite being a generally impoverished area in terms of bottom quintile of income or percent of population on food stamps and so forth, public facilities like buses and libraries get to be used for their intended purpose. A library levy recently passed despite being in a deep-red political jurisdiction. If families couldn’t use the library without contending with people using it as a residential facility, it wouldn’t have passed.

themafia 11mo ago

Falling asleep on a bus is a great way to get victimized. The homeless are most likely to be victimized by other homeless. It almost never gets reported to the police. It's not a shelter and it's not meant to be converted into one. To me it's an indication of an overworked and failing system that leaves people in bad situations because it has nowhere else for them to go. Sure, you could argue that because there's currently no obvious major problems, that you could just leave it as is and be entirely unconcerned with it, or even go so far as to suggest that anyone who does want to fix it is doing so in bad faith. I think that's cruel and lazy. The actual problem? These people need _real_ shelter.

trollbridge 11mo ago

Whilst it's not a crime not to have a house, providing housing via free buses is a very poor way to address people who don't have houses, and it has an unfortunate side effect of pushing people who would otherwise use public transportation away from using it.

the_snooze 11mo ago
You see this in public libraries in major cities. They're open to everyone, so they become shelters of last resort for homeless folks. The large presence of homeless people discourages the public at-large from using the library as a library. That in turn weakens the political will to continue funding libraries.
- trollbridge 11mo ago
  I live in an area where the homeless by and large are well served (lots of halfway houses), so despite being a generally impoverished area in terms of bottom quintile of income or percent of population on food stamps and so forth, public facilities like buses and libraries get to be used for their intended purpose. A library levy recently passed despite being in a deep-red political jurisdiction. If families couldn’t use the library without contending with people using it as a residential facility, it wouldn’t have passed.