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the purpose of a system is what it does
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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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Yes. They should do it like NYC, where it's basically illegal to live on the street. The city is required by law to offer free housing at a certain quality level for anyone who needs it. It's not amazing but you get a door that locks and a security team, plus a bathroom.
If you don't want to sleep inside, you literally have to leave the city. It's not cheap but it works much better than letting people live in tents.
Why the illegal part, though? People don’t really need an incentive to have shelter. It just punishes people who are struggling with even deeper issues.
Technically it's not illegal to sleep on the street, but there are sanitation rules regarding it. NYC has 8 million people. Any problem you can think of is magnified. It's literally a sanitary issue if you allow thousands of people to camp outside.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/26/nyregion/nyc-homeless-camp-bill-of-rights.html
Note that these rules also restrict people who have homes too. No one can have a party in the park after hours or take up a ton of space on the subway. Note also that you can sleep outside if you don't get in the way.
This doesn't apply because the law doesn't forbid anyone from sleeping under bridges. Also, you can get housing for free. That's my point. It's the opposite of that quote. Unless you're pro-theft or something.
I am not sure what the housing situation is actually like for homeless in NYC because I've never spoken to anyone there who experienced it. I don't take your word for it that it's good or ethical.
I am not protheft. I'm not wealthy like that. https://www.edelson-law.com/blog/2022/10/wage-theft-outpaces-all-other-theft-in-america/
There are a ton of articles on it. The system is huge and has been around for decades. Look it up if you like. If you don't care, don't.
No one said it was good at all. It's a necessary service in a big city. Obviously some shelters are very different from others. None of them are at nice hotels, but you can get your own room and a place for some of your stuff.
The major complaints are usually "it's too small" or "they don't let me have pets". Guess what? There are actual apartments people pay for that are too small and don't allow pets. It's NYC.
I'm talking about reality in this century. You're quoting an 1800s writer from another country. The system is a complicated solution to a complicated problem. So there's not going to be any simple answer, and definitely not from online quotes.
If you lack a sense of humor and can't see how close your quote was to his, that's fine. It was funny to me and maybe others. That you haven't learned something people were joking about hundreds of years ago is kinda on you.
The effects of violating these fair and just laws - do they impact the homeless and the housed the same? Do the laws, say, give fines based on income? Or do they give preferential treatment to people with better, often more expensive lawyers?
But no, your statement wasn't silly at all. The law is totally fair to the poor and wealthy alike.
I would have to talk to a homeless person who was homeless recently in NYC and used these programs to assess them.
Where should they leave their pets, ESAs, and service dogs when they stay in the shelter? Do you think roaming packs of dogs at night would be good?
It's a glowed up version of "The law binds both rich and poor equally". A transparently untrue statement that's meant to draw attention to laws that are a mere inconvenience for the rich but seriously hurt the poor.
Obviously they restrict people who have homes but that isn’t really relevant here, is it? Those people have choices, they get to choose to stay late in a park and the alternative for them is go home.
It’s not even close to the same thing.
They didn't say it was the same thing, they just mentioned that it's not just to target the homeless.
As you said in another comment, things are often more complex than one thing or another.
Exactly. These are necessary rules for a large city. No one can camp without a permit because then parks would be unusable. The same permit is for weddings, parties, whatever. It's pretty easy to get one for a few hours, but they will reject it if you ask to use the park every day and night.
People living outside in public parks and on streets is a really bad use of urban space. It takes public space and makes it private. That's why the city gives out free room in old hotels and shelters. It's a good thing people can't sleep wherever.
That's not to mention that it gets very cold in NYC in the winter, unlike San Francisco. If you're stuck outside in the winter in NYC, you will die.
Not necessarily true. For example if the place has "no alcohol and no being drunk" policy, some of them will rather stay out.
Right but that’s a choice the shelter can make and not a point against the idea that people, ultimately, won’t really refuse a place to sleep. It’s a more complex issue that takes more time than an evening so rules like “no being drunk” which sound fine don’t really help anyone.
I'd imagine it'd help make the unhoused who don't want to have to deal with drunk people feel a lot safer about using them.
So what are the people who depend on alcohol supposed to do? They aren't allowed to have seizures and go through withdrawal there either.
and if you want to use public money on it, then the goal has to be to help them get back to society, to which dealing with problematic behavioral patterns, like substance abuse, is a necessity...
Have you seen alcohol withdrawal?
What's your point? They should continue drinking themselves to death?
You let them continue until they can get a spot in a medical setting where they can safely withdraw.
that safe setting may very well be the shelter we are talking about
you are steering away from subject. it is absolutely fair to tell them "being homeless and nuisance in the street is from now on illegal. either you want help to get back to society and then you will accept the help with its terms - you are really not in a position to make demands - or you can move to some unabomber cabin in the middle of nowhere, and there you can do whatever you want"
No, alcohol withdrawal can cause seizures and death. A shelter is not a safe place, especially because they won't have alcohol for emergencies.
So you want to create an alternate society in the wilds?
Well that's one I haven't thought about since the last time I read Brave New World and thought, good thing we'd never do that.
Not what I wrote
This you?
That me. You can easily tell from my name above the text you quoted.
Unfortunately some people do.
no. shut the fuck up with this authoritarian garbage. when the "shelter" offered comes with a slew of dehumanizing draconian traditions, forces them to abandon other resources (including pets, which are also functional when you're homeless) and wildly precarious, you would have to be fucking stupid to take the deal. cut this shit out, or let me impose those conditions on YOUR shelter.
Hey, just to get it off my chest since you attacked me for no reason other than some preconception you brought with you, fuck you too!
Now that I've dealt with that, back to the topic. Some people don't want structure, or shelter, or society, or any of it. It doesn't matter if there's no conditions applied, they just don't want it.
I remember years ago reading about this guy who was the director of a huge hospital. He was worth millions of dollars. He could do anything he wanted to do. Guess what he wanted to do? He wanted to live on the streets and drink alcohol until he died. He left his mansion, and his family, and went and drank himself to death on the streets. Was he mentally ill? Probably, man! But if anyone had access to every available option for help that existed, it was him. He didn't want it. He wanted to be a drunk homeless person.
So my point stands. You can offer whatever catch-all, condition-free solution you want, and some people are still going to reject it. That's just reality, regardless of what we wish.
Are you talking about Todd Waters? Otherwise link source. It's pretty rare for someone to want that lifestyle unless they've already involuntarily experienced it previously. Todd had started trainhopping when he was in high school.
I know of one other individual who is a millionaire and has a mansion he sleeps in, but during the day appears to be homeless and pushes a cart around cleaning up cans and trash. He's beloved by his local community (very nice man and generous tipper). He also experienced living on the street involuntarily previously and got an inheritance.
https://newscut.mprnews.org/2017/07/todd-waters-mission-was-to-make-people-homesick-for-their-freedom/index.html
No, not him. I can't find a source. I read about it in a newspaper, or magazine like 15-20 years ago. If I remember correctly, he was the director of St. Agnes hospital in Fresno, CA.
So 3 people we know of between the two of us were wealthy and lived some type of homeless lifestyle occasionally to full time. And so by your logic, the remaining hundreds of thousands of homeless should be penalized and not offered housing because these 3 individuals would decline it?
I never said any such thing. All I said was that unfortunately some people do need incentive to have shelter. Which I substantiated with an example, and you did as well. They're the minority, but some people just flat out don't want what we want. That has no bearing on what we should do for the people who do want and need shelter.
Oh sorry, I may have mistaken you for a different commenter then. Lemmy's reply system isn't super easy for me to navigate.
I think if a millionaire wants to rough it, camp, etc, they should be allowed to. Any adult should be allowed to roam. It's what our ancestors did.
WHY do these people not want structure, or shelter, or society?
have you considered that? have you fucking asked that? why someone might want to see the world burn? or do you just accept when you're told they do, and assume they're a magical evil monster?
I used to do a lot of work with unhoused populations. I tended to get those people, because nobody else could deal with them. I could, because the structure I offered wasn't coercive, the shelter I offered was clearly defined (when I could offer any) and no-strings-attached, and the society I was working for was one that would include them and give them a voice and treat them like fucking human beings.
okay. so someone wanted to drink on the streets. there's a reason. maybe a dumb reason, maybe a crazy reason, but a reason. I've been pretty close to taking this option before, once after seeing some shit that an emergency room kicked out, once after dealing with police victims. if I had been complicit and tied into existing systems, if I hadn't read all the theory and committed myself to working against oppression, I would have done something an awful lot like that.
seems like you just really enjoy throwing people away, and don't want to put any effort into understanding awful shit that they've experienced and how it motivates them to do the things they do, which you sometimes find odd.
why do the sociopaths who declare noncompliant unhoused people ontologically evil want us to understand them, when they won't even try to understand the people who make THEM uncomfortable?