cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/20776810
Stolen from here: https://social.marxist.network/@yogthos/113583918563324620
cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/20776810
Stolen from here: https://social.marxist.network/@yogthos/113583918563324620
It’s also to help prevent panhandling, vagrancy, public defecation, harassment, theft, and violence. 23rd St. stank of human reek before the pandemic, so removing enticements for them to sleep in the station was much needed.
I once read somewhere that people with lodgings don’t sleep and/or shit in public places! Can you believe that?! Pure delusional nonsense, I’d say, made Lord of The Rings feel like an account of historical facts.
People will sleep when they have to sleep. And if they have a choice between outside or inside on a cold night, they will choose in. These people don’t disappear when you make their lives even harder. They have to adapt to further misery. This isn’t a solution. It isn’t even a solution to the problems you listed. Ride the train early morning or late night? You will see a bunch of homeless people trying warm or get some sleep.
Don’t like it? Spend money fixing it. Not making the lack of adequate current solutions an even bigger problem.
Yes because people obviously choose to sleep where it stinks of human reek instead of somewhere it doesn’t…
Unfortunately there are some who do. Still absolutely use a shelter/housing first model, and give money to those struggling (most homeless people are couch surfing or living out of their cars and have jobs and just need a little boost to get back on their feet) because it helps the vast majority.
For some reason through, the same people that advocate for the programs I listed above refuse to accept that there are some people they won’t work for. The ones who are too mentally ill or violent or otherwise too antisocial.
The homeless aren’t a monolith, and often people are talking past each other because they are each picturing people from opposite ends of the spectrum who have essentially nothing in common except their housing situation. The people installing spikes and removing benches are responding to the second group, and then face backlash as if they were responding to the first.
But that response to the second group is not actually helping the second group at all, just displacing. That’s what many of the people responding are pointing out.
My point is you can’t blame these spaces from using displacement as that’s essentially all they can do. There are better places to direct that scorn than the people who essentially “end up” dealing with a very difficult to deal with group.
And all of those are genuine concerns, but this:
How about we do better as a society and get these people homed?
Removing them from the station isn’t solving the problem, it’s kicking the can down the road, making it someone else’s problem.
No we can’t give them homes, think of the landlords. It’s unfair to them if we just give homes away.
P.S. Tip your landlords
Is it the subway’s job to house the homeless?
No it’s society’s.
The subway making the decision to remove the benches is a failure of society. The homeless being homeless isn’t the subway’s fault or responsibility, but keeping the subway clean and safeis.
The point I’m trying to make is, complaining that the subway is trying to solve their immediate problem instead of solving major societal issues is not going to resolve anything.
… Yeah it is. The subway is run by the municipalities, the municipalities are responsible for housing as part of their scope of governance and by virtue of being part of society.
The subway should quantify costs to the municipality of inadequate services for the homeless. Then the municipality can justify expenditure for programs that will save them money. Same with libraries, community centers etc
People don’t get it. They expect everybody else to accept the burden of this because they don’t have to do shit about it. I wish everyone could experience what it’s like to have a small business that would be devastated by the homeless if you didn’t work hard to get them the fuck out of where they don’t belong. It’s not my fault, my responsibility nor should it be on my limited wallet that the government can’t fix homelessness. I have to kick out homeless every day and anyone else that actually lives in a position where their presence affects their ability to live and stay afloat would do it too. Let them sleep in your house or in your front yard and see how much you all like it and stand for it when they start doing drugs, having sex in the open, shitting everywhere, leaving trash everywhere. See if your friends and family want to come over ever again. Oh poor homeless guy, let me buy him some McDonalds… I’m the dude who has to clean up all the trash he left.