cops and business owners in this situation actually seem to have behaved in a very humane and decent way
Well it’s nice that they didn’t beat her to death. But they still kicked her out and didn’t actually provide any more help. “Services in the area” probably will be less adequate than what she’d had before they booted her.
I don’t expect them to actually take care of her, but they don’t get a gold star for declining to bludgeon, strangle, or imprison her. She’s on her own.
I think it’s sad af, if she was a bird or raccoon they’d let her stay. We give people less dignity than a bird.
Would you like the officer to take a second mortgage out on his home and build her a room on his house? The system is broken, the cop did his best to not make it worse.
You know back during the Great Depression, we used to let widows buy their homes for pennies rather than let them be homeless. It’s sad that these days, our sense of community is so fucked that people would pick profit over making sure everyone in their community has a house.
I’m not blaming the cop. But I’m also not praising him. Nobody here helped the woman. Let’s just lament her homelessness without weirdly congratulating the people who kicked her out.
Cop shoulda pulled one of these
They behaved kindly because they were in the wrong - it’s almost certain that if they’d used force and she’d resisted that it’d end up in front of a judge and she would be able to claim the area as a residence.
There are laws about squatters rights in the US and they likely qualified under them.
I agree it sucks, but they can’t reasonably let her continue living there after they found out. There’s so many legal and ethical issues with that. They are not qualified to provide housing. We need to provide better alternatives.
Legal problems? Yes. Ethical problems? Fuck no.
She was living rent free pulling resources from a company that likely fights against social programs for homelessness. That, to me, 1000% ethical.
It would only be unethical if the US has an adequate social safety net.
The ethical problems are that it’s not designed to be lived in, so it’s probably not safe. It’s also an ethical problem to kick her out without a safety net, but there’s plenty of reasons why I could think of that would make it not OK for her to be there.
I mean, I would add on not sticking her with a criminal charge as an important thing they didn’t do here, because the whole story of “oh you missed a court date because we sent the notice to an address you haven’t lived at in years, so now we’re fining you on top of the original criminal charge that brought you in here, [soon] wow, you’ve got a lot of missed court dates and unpaid fines, you look like a career criminal who needs the book thrown at them” happens a lot,
And there’s a very real chance that the contractors looked the other way and then this woman’s residence got discovered they could have lost their licenses or otherwise gotten in trouble
Like, I think what you’re pointing out is a really important perspective and we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that a woman with a home was made homeless here, but I think a lot of relatively powerless people here tried to be as humane as an inhumane system would let them be, and I think that’s important too. I think the way this world gets less shitty is when more people start making these little steps towards revolutionary kindness and then those little steps start getting bigger and bigger.
Again, it’s not praiseworthy that they merely declined to abuse her. I’m not scorning them, but they get zero credit for declining to abuse her (beyond the abuse of kicking her out with no help).
there’s a very real chance that the contractors looked the other way
Without evidence, there’s no point in this speculation unless you’re hired by their PR to praise them (which seems unlikely).
the way this world gets less shitty is when more people start making these little steps towards revolutionary kindness and then those little steps start getting bigger and bigger
Sorry, but this is absolute nonsense. It’s meaningless. She is homeless.
a woman with a home was made homeless
This is the only story. Let’s not waste time praising the heroic saints who kicked her out.
mate it’s ok and good to acknowledge a small measure of good that may exist in a very terrible situation.
humans are not meant to focus on only the doom, gloom, and cynicism of it all 100% of the time.
