7 ms·
I'm from Orlando, where the original hullabaloo over this sort of thing erupted a while back. Most of the time the people complaining about laws like these are
by pdeuchler 12y ago
I'm from Orlando, where the original hullabaloo over this sort of thing erupted a while back. Most of the time the people complaining about laws like these are (please forgive the stereotypes, but in my experience they've been accurate) white, upper class, white collar, with very little experience dealing with poverty or poverty related issues. They hear things that sound counter intuitive and the "white savior" complex goes into overdrive.
Since Orlando has weather (and an economy, look up 2008-present foreclosure rates in Central Florida for reference) that is very conducive to a large homeless population we have been dealing with the issue at a large scale for a long time, and a lot of caring, smart, experienced people all agree that there are very constructive ways of dealing with homelessness and very destructive ways of dealing with it. Time and time again, allowing the homeless to disperse geographically and survive in a "free for all" state creates enormous problems. You end up with exploitation, abuse, and harm to not only the homeless but those around them.
It's rare, but not unheard of, for stupid kids to give the homeless sandwiches laced with, say, exlax. It's rare, but not unheard of, for people to entice the homeless into essentially handyman jobs with the promise of a meal, or payment, only to "reconsider" at the last second once the job is done. It's rare, but not unheard of, for well meaning people to give out food that has gone bad, or can exacerbate terrible allergies or medical conditions.
Furthermore, encouraging the homeless to beg and subsist off of random passerby is an incredibly demeaning thing. It encourages the bad element of panhandling, begging, and lies to encourage donations. It creates an atmosphere where the most seriously poorly off end up being "out begged" by the devious looking to snag a quick meal, or beer money.
Last, but not least, it completely ruins standardized initiatives to solve the problem. The homeless are less likely to congregate in safe areas where organizations dedicated to help them are located. They're less likely to receive a steady, nutritious diet. They're less likely to be exposed to further job programs and mental health help. They're more likely to sleep in an alley somewhere instead of, at worst, gathering near a shelter, or at best, getting a bed in a shelter where they are safest and most secure. Keeping tabs on the homeless is one of the hardest things to do, but one of the most important. If you can't track progress on a community or individual scale you can't tell whether or not your efforts are working, and you can't develop the personal relationships and support groups that time and time again are proven to be, overwhelmingly, the most effective way to get people out of the vicious cycle.
It's hard to kind of shut off the automatic empathy that pops up, but you have to realize these are people just like you that ended up with a serious short stick in life. You need to treat them like that, instead of infantilizing them.
- pepitogr 12y ago"If you can't track progress on a community or individual scale you can't tell whether or not your efforts are working" Unfortunately, this is not a field for experimentation. People whose job is to take care of others can suggest this line of thinking, but to me, the problem is not to justify and pay those helping but to solve the underline problem. It is easy to say one thing and mean another. What are you fighting for? Your job, your career, your research, or do you really care <bold> beyong your own interest <bold> for the well being of all those people who are really suffering?
- shiftpgdn 12y agoThank you, I couldn't have said this better. I live in Houston near one of the areas where all of the church groups with the "white savior" complex would go and do mass feedings. This was in what was once a rough part of town and many of the homeless were killed/robbed/beaten/murdered.
- trhway 12y ago> Time and time again, allowing the homeless to disperse geographically and survive in a "free for all" state creates enormous problems. ... >The homeless are less likely to congregate in safe areas where organizations dedicated to help them are located. or in other words, it is harder to ghetto-ize the homeless, to take them off the sight of good citizens. A good citizen just need to know that somebody is taking care of these people, and so s/he don't need to think about that problem, better should forget about it and just mind his/her own business and pay taxes. To summarize your post as i see it - the homeless people make wrong choice between wonderful services available to them and all the horrors you described, and we need to apply force (i.e. law) to make them make the right choice and to fend off the "good-intentioned" enablers of the wrong choice. Somehow i don't think that homeless need even more force applied to them than they are already subjected too.
- pdeuchler 12y agoI really don't mean anything personal here, but this kind of comment illustrates exactly what I'm talking about. I highly recommend volunteering for a couple weekends with a local homeless initiative (not trying to get on my holier-than-thou horse here, I'm as big of a selfish jerk as the rest of us). And not to sound like a student who just came back from a 3rd world missions trip, but it will completely change your perspective on life. Believe me, I'm the last to give up my precious free time but it's almost fun, and incredibly educational. In practice it's extraordinarily hard to centralize the homeless. Like, proving P=NP hard. Consider the nature of the homeless, how they've been treated their whole lives, the way society talks and acts around them, etc. etc. They are not very willing to just hang around. To "ghetto-ize" the homeless would require mass sweeps by police to essentially arrest and forcibly move the homeless population. Yes, we always are in danger of marginalizing the people we're trying to help but that's going to be an easier job for a militarized government force, not a woefully underfunded and understaffed soup kitchen.