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This cartoon has four panels. All the panels show a gritty commercial doorway – the kind that’s recessed a few feet into the building – on a city sidewalk. There’s litter and graffiti here.
There are two characters in the comic strip. The first character is a homeless man sleeping in the doorway, wearing a zip-up sweatshirt over a t-shirt and a dull red knit cap, and with a full beard. The other character is a muscular-looking cop dressed in a police uniform and carrying a baton. In defiance of tradition, he is cleanshaven. I’ll call these two characters KNITCAP and COP.
PANEL 1
Knitcap, covered by a brown blanket and with his head pillowed on some rolled-up clothes, is lying in a doorway, apparently asleep. The cop is using his baton to poke knitcap in the side. The cop has a somewhat sadistic grin.
COP: Hey, you! Get up! We’ve outlawed sleeping in public! You’re not allowed anymore!
PANEL 2
Knitcap is sitting up, rubbing sleep out of his eyes with one hand. He speaks calmly. The cop watches, smirking, arms akimbo.
KNITCAP: In that case, I guess I’ll sleep in a hotel tonight.
PANEL 3
A close-up of Knitcap. He’s stroking his chin with a hand, as if thinking through his options.
KNITCAP: Or should I sleep in my townhouse instead? Or my Hamptons place? I’ll call my butler and ask what he thinks!
PANEL 4
Knitcap, grinning, is now holding a hand next to his face, thumb and pinky finger extended, pretending it’s a phone as he talks. The cop is glaring and slapping his baton against his palm.
KNITCAP: Smithers? Smithers old boy! My super fun street sleeping holiday is done. Which of my mansions shall I sleep in tonight.
COP (thought): Next step: Outlaw sarcasm.
I’ve seen this comment before and I hate it. The second that NON WHITE homeless dude talked back to the white cop he’d have a face full of curb and probably be on his way to jail if not death. What kind of ridiculously naive person drew this?
Pretending like people who have issues with homeless people camping just hate the idea of seeing poor people in the presence is a massive straw man.
A lot of homeless who choose to camp in heavily urban areas are deeply disturbed, and almost proudly violate every rule of society.
Considering this is meant to be NYC, I don’t really think that’s relevant.
I’d think that if society fucked me over enough to the point that I had to sleep on her streets, I’d proudly violate all the rules too.
You expect people to respect the institution that bent them over until they broke? Fuck that.
Respect is reciprocal. I’ll give it at first but if it’s obvious I’m not getting any back, then there’s no sense in continuing to give it.
So on that last part, residents in areas with a high population of disruptive homeless would feel well within their rights to criminalize their behavior.
To that I would say society is failing them either further.
How much does it cost to criminalize homelessness? Between enforcement, jailing, feeding, clothing, trials, lawyers, DAs, etc. It’s a fucking fortune.
Why do we go right to the stick, when the carrot is cheaper and more humane? Why aren’t we helping them instead of spending more money to strip away whatever shreds of dignity they have left?
God forbid we help people down on their luck. Much better for us to exert even more effort and capital to dehumanize them. Surely that’ll keep everyone from choosing a vagrant lifestyle and make them pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
I have bit of a nuanced take on the subject (ie: I’m going to get downvoted into oblivion.)
So here goes. To me Homelessness isn’t the problem. Rampant drug addiction and mental illness are. For the mental illness part, we need comprehensive and affordable mental health care for everyone. That’s not going to happen in my lifetime though.
The drug addiction however…
Places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver (where I’m from) have followed the decriminalization theory of drug rehabilitation. This posits that by providing clean drug paraphernalia and safe places to use drugs, will help people to overcome addiction. But the current state of these cities prove that this theory is false. In order to make someone change, they have to want to change. When you make drug use easier, there is less incentive for that person to want to get clean. Homelessness and the accompanying problems are to most of them just the “cost of doing business.”
Their lives should be made more difficult as to incentivize them to want to change their ways. Of course there should be certain exceptions, such as when it’s too hot or cold out. But we have to somehow give them a reason to change their ways.
At least where I live there are systems in place to help you get off the street. I would know as I was homeless for a year living on the street. But when COVID hit, I finally had enough and decided to get help. I went to a shelter, got signed up for disability and through BC housing I got myself a room in a shared complex. I’m proof that when you really try, there is help out there for you to make your life better.
Now bring on the downvotes.
Drug addictions spiral out of control because their lifes suck and they want an escape. If you make their lifes harder you dont help anyone. Drug addiction should be treated in the same way as mental illness.
But the most effective way to help them is to give them a perspective and a way to get out of their situation before they have to stop using the drugs, i.e. give them housing and have a doctor supply them their drugs, then slowly taper them off.
Or just dont let people get homeless in the first place.
When you make drug use easier, there is less incentive for that person to want to get clean.
You seem to have some very naive ideas about drug abuse. Drug addicts always have problems that caused them to become drug addicts. For someone without underlying problems, getting clean is its own reward and requires no extra incentives. If you truly care about getting people off drugs, you have to fix the problems that caused them to become addicts in the first place, but that’s difficult and expensive so nobody wants to talk about it.
I know it’s almost an oxymoron, but homeless is closely tied to housing prices.
If you lost your job how long would you be able to keep living where you are? Maybe a long time, but for maybe 10% of the population it’s a much shorter frame. Add on some other twists of fate (or bad planning): a medical emergency; an abusive spouse; an unplanned pregnancy; a substance abuse problem; and you have a concoction that could land you on the streets in a few months if not weeks.
The “free drug paraphernalia” (e.g. services to help save addicts lives) has followed the wave of addicts, not the other way around. People were dying long before they showed up.
Affordable housing, shelters, and housing first programs are the real keys to solving this. But there’s a lot of people who would rather eat their right arm than see a drug addict (or other undesirable) get government assistance.
I’m with you on the point that (mental) healthcare should be affordable and accessible. Drug use however isn’t the problem, but merely a symptom as well. Figure out why people turn to drugs, solve the underlying issue (generally mental health related), and the drug issue is gone.
Can they sleep outside your house?
Literally everywhere but your house is outside your house.
They already sleep outside our houses
Give them their own houses.
I’ll pledge a % match of my networth to a billionaire’s % networth in tax dollars to solving the housing crisis, healthcare crisis (including mental, dental, and vision care) and providing a UBI to US inhabitants.
I’m in. I wonder what the actual numbers on this are.
Am I gonna be out the thousands I’ve been promised by the “UBI can’t work” crowd, or is it going to be like seven cents (total, for my lifetime) because I have no real concept of what a billion dollars is compared to what I earn…
I travel to the West Coast a lot. SF, Portland and Seattle are crawling with homeless. Urban Highways in the PNW have tons of homeless camping on the sides of the road as well as in and around residential areas. During my last trip I was greeted in the morning to a view of a homeless person taking a shit under a bridge next to the river where my hotel was located.
Communities have a right to regulate how the public commons is used. If outlawing sleeping in the commons is needed to clean up homelessness in their city then so be it.
![[Lefty Cartoons] Let’s Outlaw Being Homeless! That’ll Work!(feddit.org)](https://feddit.org/pictrs/image/30c824c8-ccf8-4951-b2d5-d26038e65f12.png){kind=link}
If you feel that way you could always break out your credit card and get a hotel room for a rando homeless person. 👍
Only to get closer to that yourself? Endebted and on a brink of bankruptcy?
Those who have wealth should be first in the line. They won’t have to risk losing everything.
Fuck. This. Conclusion.
Cities in the US have always been able to police sleeping in public spaces GIVEN there was an alternative (e.g. a non-full shelter) where people could go to instead. What changed with the new US supreme court ruling is that they are now allowed to do this regardless of weather or not there is any alternatives.
People need to sleep. It is a biological necessity. Homelessness is often not a choice, but can be temporary if the right resources are available.
How narcissistic do you have to be to think that the person you witnessed wanted to be there? Homelessness is out of control on the west-coast of the US (and elsewhere) but fines and jail time aren’t going to make these people magically stop existing.
Side note: Multiple studies have shown that homelessness is directly correlated to housing affordability. If you want to help fight homelessness, support building more affordable housing (which usually equates to denser housing).
Cities in the US have always been able to police sleeping in public spaces GIVEN there was an alternative (e.g. a non-full shelter) where people could go to instead. What changed with the new US supreme court ruling is that they are now allowed to do this regardless of weather or not there is any alternatives.
Cities always had this right the Supreme Court just upheld it.
How narcissistic do you have to be to think that the person you witnessed wanted to be there?
I never stated that.
Homelessness is out of control on the west-coast of the US (and elsewhere) but fines and jail time aren’t going to make these people magically stop existing.
I don’t see homeless encampments out in the open by highways in other parts of the country. Yes there are homeless, but it is on a whole other level on the West Coast.
Side note: Multiple studies have shown that homelessness is directly correlated to housing affordability. If you want to help fight homelessness, support building more affordable housing (which usually equates to denser housing).
Cool idea sounds like something you should fight for in your community.
This is about human rights vs. city spending
When someone posts about how unpleasant it is to see other humans sleeping/eating/pooping and concludes from that cities should be able to stop them (or throw them in jail) to make themselves feel better; the implication is that these people have alternatives and are just being rude or lazy.
I’m pointing out that many of these people are stuck and have no alternative. By appealing this case to the supreme court, Grants Pass (an city) was admitting that these people had no alternative and they still wanted to punish them.
The one basic rule that was upheld by the ninth circuit was that cities must first give them an alternative. If they have no alternatives, then it is cruel and unusual punishment. I don’t know how anyone can argue that it is not cruel to throw someone in jail for sleeping in their car (one of the plaintiffs was sleeping in her car) when they have no where else to go. People need to sleep: it is not a choice.
Additionally, large homeless encampments in other parts of the country has two main drivers:
- In many cities, the majority of the homeless population is sheltered (there’s enough shelter beds). e.g. NYC
- In other parts of the country (e.g. not any of the cities you mentioned) housing is more affordable, often because the population centers aren’t as large (see Wyoming)
Do you… actually think this solves anything? Like, at all? It’s short-sighted, pointless, and genuinely selfish. “I don’t like looking at the unhoused, so they need to go… elsewhere.”
Housing is becoming unaffordable for the middle class, what are these people supposed to do!? We as a society have abandoned them, and it’s now costing more money to harass and bully them, and to get them some semblance of health care and remove their bodies when they die out in the streets than it would to house them. Look it up! We have enough housing for everyone, but investments in homes and AirBNB and time shares and tourist rentals and property management companies have to continue making rich assholes more money every year…
The moment living on the streets is a choice for all the unhoused in this country is when I will join with you to regulate where they choose to slum it and not a second before.
Do you… actually think this solves anything? Like, at all? It’s short-sighted, pointless, and genuinely selfish. “I don’t like looking at the unhoused, so they need to go… elsewhere.”
No it’s a sanitation, public health and safety issue. Citizens who live there and experience the problem first hand feel the same way or they would not be passing vagrancy laws.
Housing is becoming unaffordable for the middle class, what are these people supposed to do!? We as a society have abandoned them, and it’s now costing more money to harass and bully them, and to get them some semblance of health care and remove their bodies when they die out in the streets than it would to house them. Look it up! We have enough housing for everyone, but investments in homes and AirBNB and time shares and tourist rentals and property management companies have to continue making rich assholes more money every year…
Yep, all of which are issues caused by low interest rates and the elevation of capital over labor. Raise rates, reshore jobs, make unions more powerful and housing will change.
The moment living on the streets is a choice for all the unhoused in this country is when I will join with you to regulate where they choose to slum it and not a second before.
If they were living in your back yard you may think differently.
Hope there are enough homeless shelters for them to move into. Otherwise you would be suggesting the inconvenience you face from having to see them sleep in the streets justifies making it impossible for them to in their desperate situation have even that.
Yep, sure do hope those communities are wealthy enough to support housing the homeless. I wonder how that will play out with the local tax payer when they are deciding how to allocate money to local schools, the park system or a homeless shelter.
I wonder how they would like to see their tax dollars spent…🫤
Said communities would rather indirectly “house” them in tax-funded prisons? I’d point them to studies on how incarcerating and enforcing these laws end up costing Americans more than it does to house people, such as this: https://homelessvoice.org/the-cost-to-criminalize-homelessness/
What a strange state of affairs. People may not live outdoors because that looks unsightly. But you will also not give them a place to go.
Or you could just give them homes for a lower cost than criminalizing and incarcerating them.
Or you could just give them homes for a lower cost than criminalizing and incarcerating them.
You’re pretty aggressive trying to give away someone else’s money.
Maybe you could aggressively give away your own money and get them a hotel room to start.
Or you can since you seem to be the one so against reasonable limits be placed on housing costs. Or it seems more like you don’t give a shit about them and don’t want them inconveniencing you or even in your line of sight.