Yes but then we're punishing them and letting some corporation buy their labor(not from them, and not in such a way that covers the costs) and pay them in top ramen. Which is morally better, Jesus says so.
The answer to what question though? If it is what's presented here in the comic, I.e. "what to do instead of sleeping on the street", then that's a remarkably American answer, and requires significant stupidity and/or malice.
Wait y'all have cops that don't just start wailing on that guy for not moving? Cops in my city absolutely call backup and go squad deep when homeless people stand their ground.
Or when they dont. In my twenties I worked with unhoused populations, and someone who I was kind of point of contact for came inafter being missing for a couple weeks. She had really weird injuries. I recognized a few of them, not all, and I'm pretty familiar with broken bodies so that was surprising. Apparently she'd been kidnapped and tortured by cops for at least a week. I found out basically everyone has a few of those. The cops just do that. Theres no reason, There's no jusrification; they just take who they can.
And why should someone who's been thrown away like that give a shit about your comfort? I know when I was thrown away and ended up homeless, I lost a lot of respect for my environment and 'normal' people. I didn't get as bad as a lot of people.
Do you have a good reason for them to care? To care about something other than the next fix? Maybe a future, or a chat with a friend? No? Then maybe shut the hell up about how icky the actual living human beings you let get thrown away like trash make you feel when you have to walk through their fucking homes.
They want free prison labor instead of helping people. All programs that gave people shelter and UBI had high success rates of getting people off the streets. If you give people resources and real help. They can be housed, it isn't unsolvable at all.
They want free prison labor instead of helping people.
They don't even really want that, at this point. Prisoners are increasingly geriatric, malnourished, and prone to mental illness, making them unreliable employees at their best and completely unprofitable more often than not.
All programs that gave people shelter and UBI had high success rates of getting people off the streets.
Ah, but you're forgetting the mystery third option. Pack undesirable people into cages during a plague or a heat wave and kill them from behind bars. This is significantly less expensive than either enslaving them at a loss or funding housing/UBI.
You'll never get rid of the homeless by building shelters. Some of them don't want to go to one. They can't shoot up or drink in there, and there are other rules to follow too. There are also some other issues of living in a shelter.
If only Reagan didn't defund asylums in order to "prove" they didn't work so that they could move the homeless to jail or on the street where they can be a scary story to keep us wage slaves in line.
Like they aren't assured long term spots and can't bring their pets, often the pets who helped them survive, physically and emotionally. Maybe fuck off with your exterminationist bullshit?
Yeah, a shelter is not of much use to someone who has the shakes so bad that he would still feel better if he had his fix while on the street while its freezing.
Second of all those fat loser fucks would be beating the person in the second panel.
One popular move employed by city cops is to steal all a homeless person's belongings and trash them right before a big freeze or rainstorm or heat wave. This deprives the homeless population of protection from the elements and increases the rate of homeless death by exposure.
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.”
And then in a few years, after making no efforts to create a space where homeless people can live the way they want or a path for them to get a job and a home, the enforcement of these laws will loosen up and you'll be back to stepping over people on the sidewalk.
Around where I live, there's plenty of shelters, with plenty of open spots where the only requirement is that if you're on drugs you need to go to rehab.
Yes, that's part of the problem. Pay for rehab with what money? Homeless shelters also aren't a solution to homelessness, because shelters are not housing.
Yeah, the goal isn't to 'end' homelessness. There are always going to be dirtbags that think they are too good to get a job but stand on the same corner at the same time every day. They take advantage of the kindness of strangers and give nothing back to society. Worse they hinder the recovery of people who actually want to be a member of society.
But go on, pretend the violence and street shitting isn't a problem. I know you will defend the failed policies 100% no matter what the consequences. Because admitting they are bad policies would require introspection and rationality - both of which are clearly lacking.
I too would rather stand in the median of a busy highway interchange for 12 hours a day, in the rain or snow, with a bag of my stuff getting ruined, holding a sign and watching everyone turn their head away from me to not make eye contact, day in and day out, than get a job. I'm so glad you understand
Had coworkers who would insist the guys panhandling on the street were making more than we were. In fairness, we were being paid shit. But there were so many back-of-the-envelop assumptions and urban legends flying around - "Well, if he gets $1 on every light and there's 20 light changes every hour..." / "I hear they all drive nice cars and just pretend to be poor..." / "I heard on the AM Radio that there's a trick homeless people use to get rich quickly..." - that you couldn't have any kind of serious response to the right-wing rumor mill.
There are always going to be dirtbags that think they are too good to get a job but stand on the same corner at the same time every day.
There are always going to be far more dirtbags who let the rich convince them to betray their inherent solidarity with other struggling humans because of morality stories about who deserves empathy and who doesn’t that have ZERO percent to do with reality, actual effective policy or even common sense.
These dirtbags have used the incredible capacity of the human mind to mutilate their empathy and committed a colossal waste of time by using such a powerful organ of consciousness….. to rationalize not extending a basic mercy to those in need, which even children who know nothing of the world can easily identify as evil because ignorance is wiser than years of rotting the core of one’s soul out with hateful conservative rhetoric.
Housing First’s early goal was to create 2,500 new homes. It has created 3,500. Since its launch in 2008, the number of long-term homeless people in Finland has fallen by more than 35%. Rough sleeping has been all but eradicated in Helsinki, where only one 50-bed night shelter remains, and where winter temperatures can plunge to -20C.
But Housing First is not just about housing. “Services have been crucial,” says Helsinki’s mayor, Jan Vapaavuori, who was housing minister when the original scheme was launched. “Many long-term homeless people have addictions, mental health issues, medical conditions that need ongoing care. The support has to be there.”
“We had to get rid of the night shelters and short-term hostels we still had back then. They had a very long history in Finland, and everyone could see they were not getting people out of homelessness. We decided to reverse the assumptions.”
There are always going to be dirtbags that think they are too good to get a job but stand on the same corner at the same time every day.
You can't seriously believe this right? You're talking about fellow human beings who are down on their luck, not objects, could easily be you in a street corner some day.
I have sympathy for homeless people but I also realise they aren't all good, harmless innocents (just like those who are lucky enough to have a home aren't all good).
Some encampment activities were difficult to talk about — a disturbed camper throwing feces over the 97 Street bridge on unsuspecting passersby and cars.
Gangs are preying on vulnerable campers, setting up “taxation” tents like trolls under bridges, demanding payment for the use of safe consumption sites, or a chance to visit an agency to get free needles, or pick up a cheque
A 16-year-old girl was being sex-trafficked around the encampments. She was found in hospital with 75 per cent burns — under an alias.
They were sex trafficking a child, setting up wires to behead cyclists.. those aren't good people.
But yeah the solution isn't to shuffle them into prison. They need homes.
"It's worth every dollar. These are human lives. By making this new investment, we are going to put individuals on a new trajectory in life," he [the mayor] said, adding that city staff are hearing from other municipalities across Ontario and the rest of Canada, as many grapple with how to deal with homelessness.
There is a security hub, washrooms and showers separate from the units, and a service room. One of the 50 units has a toaster, toaster oven and microwave. Laundry is done off site. An indoor community space, which will include a kitchenette and laundry facilities, is not open yet.
Each unit, which costs $21,150 to build, comes with a bed, bedding, mini fridge, smoke alarm, personal heater, air conditioning unit, and storage space. The units are side by side, with a door at the front and a window at the back.