Edit
I kinda made this post out of spite for the fact the most previous post in this community, whose title I quoted/copied, was getting so many downvotes… At the time I posted this, the previous post had about a 30% downvote rate, and it really, really made me mad.
I am relieved tho to see people in the comments here who have real, actual empathy for their fellow humans. Thank you for contributing here.
It blows my mind how normalized it is to hate on those who are struggling. Especially in 20fucking23 when so many of us now are on the verge of it ourselves. Let’s be better, everyone - to everyone. I beg you.
i dont mind letting people use public areas as a place to stay for the night. but its not just a place to stay for them. its a place to do drugs, shit and piss all over the place, steal from and harrass and assault everyone around them, and let their trash pile up and attract pests. its a huge problem where i am and these people are fucking terrifying to be around. like, i dont want to be inhumane to anyone but where do we draw the line?
There does seem to be way fewer public toilets around these days. We closed them (or at least lock them overnight) because people were doing drugs and having sex in them.
So now they do those things outside, and I have to piss in the bushes when I’m out for a walk.
The trouble with the homeless is that they need to be around the normal people in order to survive and get money for food and drugs, but the normal people want them as far away as possible.
If we were rational about this, we’d set up communes where people would be fed, housed and clothed for free, given all the drugs they want, and help if they want to stop living like that. It would be way cheaper for society to deal with all in one place like that, drugs aren’t really expensive to make, and the rest of us can go to their town centre without a psychotic toothless crackhead screaming at them for money. But we’re not rational, and likely never will be. This isn’t Star Trek, and the idea of somebody else getting something for nothing seems to fill about half the population with a frothing rage.
, i dont want to be inhumane to anyone but where do we draw the line?
Imo we draw the line when someone who wants to be housed is threatened with being houseless and provide them with housing. Providing housing first is also the best way to deal with all the issues connected to being houseless like drug use, trauma from violence, mental health issues, etc
Imo the line has been crossed long ago and gets crossed every day and its important to keep in mind when trying to find solutions that are more like band aids on a broken system.
yeah im not advocating to kill them all or arrest them all or anything. i dont have the answers. but its pretty much weekly that someone at my job is assaulted or cars are broken into daily or a kid finds a dirty needle or so on. and most of these people seem like they dont want help. they really do revel in being awful it seems. they steal and harrass us gleefully without a look of remorse in their eyes so idk.
It’s always interesting to me how no one ever complains or overgeneralizes about people who are criminals, drug addicts, and/or severely mentally ill who live in houses. There are news stories daily about people losing their shit on airplanes. Every retail store and restaurant I’ve ever worked in had some kind of ongoing bathroom and/or dressing room issues where people can’t be bothered to utilize toilets or put their menstrual products or kids’ diapers in garbage cans. I’ve dated several people who were physically abusive to me and the people they dated before and after me. Yet, they are now parents with careers and, you guessed it, a mortgage or rent bill. I’ve also been around plenty of people who are either “functionally” mentally ill, meaning they are raging narcissists who don’t hesitate to harm others in any way possible as long as they get what they want, or who are just raging fucking assholes, like the twenty something year old girls at my college who are so invested in being at the top of their class and kissing the professors asses that they put effort into sabotaging other students and talking shit about everyone around them.
Bit I don’t hear anyone generalizing every single college student as being a self-obsessed sociopath just because there’s a subset of them that are bitches. I don’t hear anyone overgeneralizing every blue collar worker as being immature woman beaters with anger issues just because there’s a subset of them who are like that. And you get my point.
In addition, I think dealing with the presence of unhoused people and their camps is far less impactful for me at least. Ok, so downtown is dirty and dangerous. Wtf else is new? My college campus has had a problem recently with fake uber drivers picking up female students and assaulting them. Somehow, I don’t think any of the drivers were homeless. But I guess we should all stereotype uber drivers now as violent perverts, and outlaw all rideshare companies from the area. So it doesn’t really matter whether you’re downtown or near some camp or what have you. Crime is everywhere, and unhoused people are no different than the average population.
And what about car camping? I never hear anyone complaining about people who live in their cars being violent or dirty or crazy? If all unhoused people were all of those things, shouldn’t car campers be a huge problem? Especially when they’re not limited to doing all their crime in urban areas and can drive to wherever they want?
ive worked in retail for 10 years. this job is the first job ive had where there are drug addicted homeless people camped all around it. its different then your average karen or douchebag kyle. and yes ik that bathrooms are perpetually disgusting. but this is not like that. its a special kind of fucked up idk.
they are alive, so they need to shit and piss. they consume things, so they will create trash. if they are addicted to drugs, they need a place to do them. if we don’t provide for people public restrooms, public trash receptacles, and places to do drugs safely, they will do them in public where you can see them. nothing about any of these behaviors are unique to unhoused people, you just don’t see housed folks getting high and shitting in the street because they because have a far more comfortable, safe place to do their private business. you don’t see housed people’s trash because they have a bin to put it in that takes all the trash to the dump. how are they supposed to do anything different when they have nowhere else to go?
this whole antipathy towards people on the street makes me so fucking angry. they can’t go anywhere else. they have to keep all of their belongings out on the sidewalk, they have to shit on the fucking street, they have no other options but to live every moment of their lives in a public place, and we pass judgement on them when it doesn’t look pretty. these are human beings you’re talking about, not pests, not monsters, they’re people that you’re watching live in abject poverty, and all you can muster up is fear and disgust. its disgraceful.
im not sure youre catching on to the nuance of what im saying here. i am not unaware that i am one or two missed paychecks from being in the same position financially as them. im not saying their subhuman because of their hardships. but the reality of their addiction is that they care only about getting their next fix. to the point they will rob and assault any one they need to to get it. there is a certain point where my concern for mine and my family and my friends and my coworkers well being outweighs the pity i feel for these people. again im not advocating for killing or arresting them or anything inhumane like that, but something has to be done about it. no one whos lived around these camps for any amount of time thinks differently than i do about it.
the idea that unhoused people are usually addicted to drugs is a falsehood. the idea that these people are dangerous to the public as a self-evident fact is a falsehood. i do live around many camps. i walk by homeless encampments every single day. i don’t agree with you, and your biases are not some logical result of your proximity to them. i don’t think you can characterize unhoused people as dangerous or irrational categorically, i don’t think you can make assumptions about them being on drugs, and i don’t think that addicts are dangerous by virtue of their addiction. i don’t think the perception you have of these people in need is in any way a rational appraisal of them, and it plays into long held prejudices about impoverished people that cast them as less than rational, incapable of making good decisions, and addled by drug abuse, rather than what they are, people who have fallen into desperate circumstances and need help. attitudes like yours, that see them as threats to your community, rather than community members themselves, make it easier for systems of governance to further deprive them of resources. forcing them into camps, police raids that ruin their tents and dump the few belongings they have into landfills, building hostile architecture that makes the only places they can live unlivable, making laws that criminalize the only way they can survive. pitting your concern for your people against your “pity” for your unhoused neighbors is a false dichotomy.
You don’t want to be inhumane… but everything you just described previous to that is basically dehumanizing an entire segment of population…
