As someone who lives in the vicinity of homeless people.
Your compassion starts to wear thin when you start finding needles and feces on the bike path on the way to work. Not to mention the harassment. Do these folks represent the majority? No. But they color the problem for people who live near it.
I want to end homelessness. But I also want to be able to be around my apartment and feel safe and have stuff be clean. There is no conflict in any of that.
What often happens is that homeless people just get moved around so someone else has to deal with the problem. And there is stuff like this That's done instead of a systemic push from the top and from the bottom to get them necessary support to get off drugs, find housing, get mental health care, and have the opportunities to get them to be not homeless.
I mean it isn't supposed to be how much can you tolerate before you give up and demand they get exiled... it's supposed to be your compassion/patience wears out while fueling your motivation to bug the people who are in charge of a solution. It isn't oh finally they're gone, it should be "HELLO CITY HALL et al WHY ARE PEOPLE SUFFERING LIKE THIS" until they you know, close those fucking tax loopholes and provide services
The bigger issue is, there is no single simple solution and it’s not something that can be fixed by simply throwing money and resources at the problem.
Before the pandemic I used to volunteer quite a bit to help at shelters, do outreach and the like. You would be surprised how many WANT to live in a tent under an overpass, and even if you gave them a house, car, job, and some money tomorrow they would still live in a tent under an overpass. It’s the lifestyle they want to live, and while mental illness does play a part it’s not the case for all of them.
Where I used to live they went on a binge of opening homeless shelters to try and filter them away from the areas they didn’t want them in, they found that a shit ton of them don’t want to stay in shelters and ended up closing them down.
There are absolutely people on the street that need help, and people that would jump at the chance to get out of it, but also a lot that wouldn’t leave if you literally paid them to.
Homeless shelters aren't always great though. There's constant theft and chaos, which is why some will opt to sleep outside rather than the shelter. I read a good post on it awhile ago but don't remember the thread, but having to constantly watch your stuff and getting harassed by other people were the things that stuck out to me, especially if you're a homeless woman.
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u/flacdada Oct 12 '21
As someone who lives in the vicinity of homeless people.
Your compassion starts to wear thin when you start finding needles and feces on the bike path on the way to work. Not to mention the harassment. Do these folks represent the majority? No. But they color the problem for people who live near it.
I want to end homelessness. But I also want to be able to be around my apartment and feel safe and have stuff be clean. There is no conflict in any of that.
What often happens is that homeless people just get moved around so someone else has to deal with the problem. And there is stuff like this That's done instead of a systemic push from the top and from the bottom to get them necessary support to get off drugs, find housing, get mental health care, and have the opportunities to get them to be not homeless.