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There's an inherent tension between protecting public spaces and protecting vulnerable but disruptive people. Your link refers to an article which is very Amer
by strken 5mo ago
There's an inherent tension between protecting public spaces and protecting vulnerable but disruptive people.
Your link refers to an article which is very American and very 2018. Lots of large font size headings about race and sexuality and gender. I don't think it's a productive take on how to manage the tension. Racially homogenous societies still need to decide how to handle people who try to sleep at train stations and yell at the commuters.
- wizzwizz4 5mo agoSleeping at train stations is fine (as is sleeping on trains), and yelling at commuters is disruptive / antisocial behaviour. (I don't like the word "antisocial" in laws, because it's too open to interpretation, and then you have a load of case law defining what precisely "antisocial" means, known only to legal experts, leaving everyone else ignorant of the law.) It seems to me that additional rules against loitering are not useful for the situation you described.
- strken 5mo agoWhy is sleeping at a train station fine? (Unless you're talking about infrequent long distance trains). Trains are transportation infrastructure. Drivers don't have to put up with people setting up a queen bed in the middle of their lane on the highway. If a country doesn't protect its public transport infrastructure, then the rich and the middle class stop taking the train, the poor have to put up with things, and the mentally ill get an overpriced and noisy mobile homeless shelter. One that costs more and helps less than crisis accommodation.
- Defletter 5mo agoSorry, different person here, why does "sleeping at a train station" imply "setting up a queen bed in the middle of their lane on the highway" or anything of the sort?
- strken 4mo agoPeople use a train station for travel. We don't allow people to sleep blocking a road, because that would obstruct travel, even though a road is a public space. Likewise, we shouldn't allow people to sleep in a train station where they'll obstruct travel, even though it's a public space. I agree that the two aren't exactly the same, but public transport users have a right to safe, comfortable, unobstructed travel. There's a difference between preventing a class of people from using public transport to travel, vs preventing everyone from using public transport to sleep. I also note that the case of long distance travel is an exception, because you might legitimately need to sleep at a station between legs. I'm talking about people who sleep in train stations with no intent of travelling anywhere.
- Defletter 4mo agoSorry, I'm still failing to see how someone rough-sleeping on a bench is in anyway comparable to blocking a road and obstructing travel. The actual equivalent would be laying across the track... which is not what's happening. I have seen disturbing images of places who so acutely fail to support their homeless populations that they have no other choice than to sleep in the roads, but even then they're up against the curb, not actually blocking the road. At this point, I'm beginning to think you consider the mere presence of a rough-sleeper at a train station to be blocking the use of that train station, regardless of what it is they're actually doing.