> It's rare, but not unheard of, for stupid kids to give the homeless sandwiches laced with, say, exlax. It's rare, but not unheard of, for people to entice the homeless into essentially handyman jobs with the promise of a meal, or payment, only to "reconsider" at the last second once the job is done. It's rare, but not unheard of, for well meaning people to give out food that has gone bad, or can exacerbate terrible allergies or medical conditions.
I would hope that these behaviors are already illegal under current laws.
>Furthermore, encouraging the homeless to beg and subsist off of random passerby is an incredibly demeaning thing. It encourages the bad element of panhandling, begging, and lies to encourage donations. It creates an atmosphere where the most seriously poorly off end up being "out begged" by the devious looking to snag a quick meal, or beer money.
I agree we shouldn't encourage this behavior. I disagree that we should make the behavior illegal.
>Last, but not least, it completely ruins standardized initiatives to solve the problem. The homeless are less likely to congregate in safe areas where organizations dedicated to help them are located. They're less likely to receive a steady, nutritious diet. They're less likely to be exposed to further job programs and mental health help. They're more likely to sleep in an alley somewhere instead of, at worst, gathering near a shelter, or at best, getting a bed in a shelter where they are safest and most secure.
I'm inclined to suggest that if not "making feeding homeless people illegal and strictly curtailing their movements" completely ruins the standardized initiatives, the standardized initiatives need a lot of work.
My big problem with forcing homeless into these safe areas by making things outside them illegal, is that you end up with "out of sight, out of mind". These programs already don't receive enough attention and support.
So again, this is the kind of mentality I addressed. Your solution is no solution, a continuity of the status quo. What we're doing ain't workin'. Full stop. Yeah, that stuff is already illegal. It's also a nightmare to police and enforce, and you end up in the same moral quandaries. Do we treat Good Samaritans like criminals because of a few bad eggs? Do we now have to interrogate all pan handlers? The general and most effective solution is to ban all handouts that haven't been well thought through.
You even said it yourself, there's not enough money or support. So save the extra $3 you would otherwise be giving out and make a year end donation to a worthy organization. Maybe give a weekend of free time. That will go miles beyond just throwing cash out of a car window at a random intersection. Ever wondered how many homeless get hit by cars begging at intersections by the way? It's more than you'd like to know.
Your solution is no solution, a continuity of the status quo. What we're doing ain't workin'.
There is no "solution to homelessness" while there are people made homeless. A society where many people are made homeless is going to be unpleasant. In ways, it should be unpleasant, the unsolved problem, that being the existence of homeless people, should be visible.
The solutions are the existence of jobs, affordable apartments (and mental-health care for those with serious mental disabilities, etc).
Talking about "a solution to homelessness" is essentially saying we need to make intolerable situation orderly - to turn some section of each city into something like an open-air prison. In that sense, "solving homelessness" while there are still homeless is undesirable.
You make good points but your message gets twisted by saying things like "this is the kind of mentality I addressed. Your solution is no solution"
Why not just say, "This is the status quo. I want to change things by --" ?
The reason this article is trending is that the status quo is broken. Instead of outlawing Good Samaritans, why not take the time and make the effort to educate them?
The educational information in your posts is quite valuable and deserves more attention than it is getting.
I realize that I probably sound like a bit of a dick, and I apologize for that, but I've been having this argument for many years and it definitely gets frustrating to explain the situation and have people essentially ignore everything you just said and say "well yeah but what about..."
Part of the problem is the mentality people go into this issue with, and changing that will do wonders for the various initiatives trying to tackle this. That said, it's something I had to go through myself so I should probably be more empathetic
You sound reasonable on first blush but your words are aimed to harm and crush the weak. That you put your apologies for a regime for the policing of the poor in apparently plausible and benevolent terms simply makes your words more harmful.
I think you should be ashamed of yourself.
Edit: Your parent post is very eloquent (if deceptive imho) argument for "give up on helping your fellow human, instead trust the authorities". Are you happy with living in a world like that really?
I never, ever give money to panhandlers. When I lived in a city where the most common panhandling request was for bus fare, I used to carry ride vouchers to give out.
I just don't think you should ban panhandling because it punishes the people who need help instead of helping them.
I also don't support the "this behavior creates problems, so ban it" mentality, as it allows people to avoid addressing the underlying issues.
Ironically, he's also making a strong argument for legislation. Inadvertently, of course. But if the point being demonstrated here is that reasoned arguments based on years of experience and plenty of data in areas where the problem is strongly pronounced have no persuasive effect whatsoever, involving the law may—in fact—be necessary.
Mindless and even well-intentioned behavior can have as much to do with socially adverse consequences as actual malice or recklessness. The more closely you connect law and morality, the harder it becomes to accept this. But that doesn't change the reality that it's possible for lots of individually well-intentioned choices to add up badly.
>My big problem with forcing homeless into these safe areas by making things outside them illegal, is that you end up with "out of sight, out of mind".
It's a legitimate concern, and an obvious downside. However, things like this should be considered in their aggregate effect - there are pros and cons to both approaches, and the one that should win is not the one that sounds good, but the one that makes the most good experimentally.
Your opponent pdeuchler appears to have substantial first-hand experience with what works and what doesn't, while your retort seems a lot more theoretical. I think both of you should elucidate not just the strength of your convictions, but also basis in facts. That's how we will make progress.
Nowhere near substantial, I just had good role models growing up :)
edit: didn't mean to imply I don't have first hand experience, I do, but I was also mentored by people who were/are passionate about and extremely involved with this problem. My understanding of the underlying issues comes from both sources
That's how we get in trouble - by rehashing other people's experience. Everyone has his own unique way to rehash, and the further we are all removed from the facts the further we diverge from each other, driven apart by our own biases.
On a relate note - I found that most startup advice is useless, because people who are giving that advise try to summarize their experience (at best) or someone else's experience (at worst), and they inevitably leave out important caveats. Add in some narrative fallacy and it gets completely ruined. If you listen long enough you will find equally convincing, but completely opposing startup advice on any subject. For that reason I only ever listen to first-hand accounts of what happened, not to any "life lessons", "lessons learned", "10 things that every startup should do" etc.
>My big problem with forcing homeless into these safe areas by making things outside them illegal, is that you end up with "out of sight, out of mind". These programs already don't receive enough attention and support.
This is the intended consequence, not a side-effect.
Cities want to reduce their homeless population, because it's distasteful and discourages consumers in those areas. The place I grew up in gentrified rapidly over the course of the 90's and 00's and homeless people made the rich whites that wanted to go to the starbucks feel uncomfortable. On a large scale this would hurt the economy.
A city in this situation has two options. They can treat the underlying causes of homelessness, build more affordable housing, spend more on mental health, etc. But this is expensive and takes money out of the economy at both ends, because you can always make affordable housing unaffordable and collect more property tax and income tax from the new residents.
So, the city went with the cosmetic option: Make it extremely difficult to be homeless within the areas the city wanted homeless people gone from. This entails a number of very cheap, but very effective changes to the environment to just make it difficult for homeless people to be around:
* They installed bars on benches, so that nobody could sleep on them, and encouraged property owners to install spike strips in doorways so that homeless people couldn't sleep there.
* They installed "help the homeless" parking meters so that people could "give their change to the homeless" (really, give their money to a charity, that would have overhead, administrators to pay, etc., resulting in much less going to homeless people), and made it illegal to panhandle and to give money to pandhandlers.
* They made it illegal to serve food without a license, criminalizing Food Not Bombs (a group that collects and distributes food for free, for everyone, not just homeless people) and also giving food directly to homeless people.
* The few homeless people that remained in the area after they left were harassed by police and driven out directly.
At the same time this was going on, the city was closing shelters and selling the land to developers.
Writ large, no city has any incentive to actually address homelessness when it could just try to drive homeless people out of its borders and make it Not Their Problem. And that's what's happening here.
As an aside, it's disgustingly dehumanizing to refer to homeless people as "the homeless" or as "homeless" in the noun form. These are people. They are exactly like you. As we technologists destroy more and more jobs while simultaneously increasing the degree of inequality in society, we will be causing more and more people to become homeless, so we should be more conscious than normal about this problem and how we can fight it.
This makes me wonder:
What proportion of our laws make an action illegal, not because it is socially 'wrong', but because it often leads to an already-illegal action in a (perhaps to some) not so obvious way.
I would hope that these behaviors are already illegal under current laws.
>Furthermore, encouraging the homeless to beg and subsist off of random passerby is an incredibly demeaning thing. It encourages the bad element of panhandling, begging, and lies to encourage donations. It creates an atmosphere where the most seriously poorly off end up being "out begged" by the devious looking to snag a quick meal, or beer money.
I agree we shouldn't encourage this behavior. I disagree that we should make the behavior illegal.
>Last, but not least, it completely ruins standardized initiatives to solve the problem. The homeless are less likely to congregate in safe areas where organizations dedicated to help them are located. They're less likely to receive a steady, nutritious diet. They're less likely to be exposed to further job programs and mental health help. They're more likely to sleep in an alley somewhere instead of, at worst, gathering near a shelter, or at best, getting a bed in a shelter where they are safest and most secure.
I'm inclined to suggest that if not "making feeding homeless people illegal and strictly curtailing their movements" completely ruins the standardized initiatives, the standardized initiatives need a lot of work.
My big problem with forcing homeless into these safe areas by making things outside them illegal, is that you end up with "out of sight, out of mind". These programs already don't receive enough attention and support.