Should people have a right to sleep on city streets?

I don't think that it is nonsensical. Why can't I live on the beach if I want to? Is being a surf bum cause for imprisonment?

 

What's your alternative? You question mine but offer no solution of your own

 

Shelters are over capacity as is and many won't live there because of strict enforcement of drug and alcohol policies. So far as you berate my solution you offer no solution of your own. All you put forth is hyporbole and opinion such as " let them starve in the desert".

 

I think that you are missing the point of vagrancy laws. They do not exist so that the jails can be filled long term with homeless people. It is the threat of spending a night in jail that helps to control the actions of those same homeless people, and that is the benefit in having vagrancy laws. The unintended consequence of the well intended concept of eliminating vagrancy laws is that you lose all control of their actions and movement.

When vagrancy laws exist and a homeless person sets up a tent in a city center, the police can tell them to move on or they will be arrested. This forces them to go to a place that is more desirable for the community at large such as a nearby field or highway underpass etc., where they will not be hassled by the police. Such a location is FAR better for the community, and it does NOT involve "filling the jails with homeless people". It merely involved the threat of jail for homeless people and the occasional night in jail for those who refuse to comply. When vagrancy laws do NOT exist, the community loses all control over where these homeless people reside, and you have what currently exists in the well publicized cities that have eliminated those laws. Despite having good intentions, they have unnecessarily created a nightmare for their cities.

 

I do not oppose vagrancy laws. However the realist understands that a 'punishment' of spending a few nights in jail would be much more of a treat than a punishment.

Can you understand that?

When one has nothing live for, literally, spending the night with showers and sheets would be a huge improvement.

The criminal sanction is not magic. It cannot solve society's ills, even though the authoritarians amongst us would have us believe otherwise.

 

Your post hits home with me and is perhaps why I have more empathy for homeless than others in here. I was homeless for a while between 16 and when I finally found a home in the military and was sent off to Vietnam. I did exactly as you said and was a surf bum living on the beach. It was a tough life always waiting until dark to find a remote place in the bushes under a cliff to sleep so the cops didn't roust you out. Taking cold showers in those public beach rinse off showers in the middle of winter. Eating best I could out of tide pools boiling up whatever I found in sea water and shop lifting any food I could. Clothes slowly deteriorating and trying to keep them washed in the same cold showers. People can find themselves in these loneley and desperate situations and having been there done that gives me some compassion for the homeless that's seriously lacking in many in this thread. Once you sink this far it's not that easy to dig yourself out and some people just need a hand up. The Army was there for me and even though I was drafted it was a blessing in disguise.

 

What should people be able to do in the public sphere?

 

I agree with yours but I'm just wondering if you think it would be an acceptable cost to the tax payer.

 

That depends on which day of the week it is, and what hour of the day.

 

To your logical mind, spending a night with a warm cot in jail would be preferable to a city street. By in large, the chronically homeless are not logical. They are severely mentally ill, and/or severely drug addicted. The absolute last thing that they want is to be in jail. If being in jail were their true goal, they could very easily shoplift or commit any of a thousand other similarly minor crimes and easily get their wish.

If you want further proof that your notion is incorrect, you only need look at the current situation. Because LA and San Francisco have eliminated vagrancy laws, they have attracted thousands upon thousands of additional homeless rather than the reverse. If being jailed were their goal, the absolute last place they would go is a place that does not have vagrancy laws. Sincerely, if you step back and look at your premise with a critical eye, it doesnt make any sense. LA has attracted more homeless by eliminating those laws. Absolutely NOT the reverse. Vagrancy laws exist in almost all communities and there is not a run on the jails from homeless people anywhere. If being jailed were their goal, there is an infinite number of ways for them to make that happen. Vagrancy laws are not required to fulfill that aim.

I am not advocating for jailing more homeless. I am advocating for maintaining the ability to control their actions so that it benefits society as a whole, which is the goal of essentially all laws. What is taking place in LA and San Francisco is utterly absurd.

 

I think if people were offered city streets free of beggars and homeless garbage and filth and crime and general degradation to quaityif life yes they would be willing to pay for it and communities now in blight would suddenly be places people could go and business could prosper.

 

I figure we paid for the street so if there isn’t an alternative than go for it. At least the action puts the issue(s) front and center and makes them more difficult to ignore.

A little empathy is needed in this craptastic let’s pretend status quo culture.

 

I believe that the worst think we can do is to tell the homeless, or anyone with a problem condition, that they should blame outside forces. While it's true that outside incidents present problems, the outcome is generally determined by how the person handles those problems. Life presents challenges of many kinds, and everybody encounters them one way or another. By far, the greatest causative factor in homelessness is in the mindset of the homeless person. While it is true that most would like to "have a home", most of them will not work for that. Most of them would turn it into a shithole if you gave them one.

I was once part of a team of builders who built 100 new brick homes, 3 & 4 bedroom, for a low-income housing program. They had grand ideas, they were going to give desperate people a break- and a new home. The deal was that rent, if you can call it that, was to be a portion of what the person had left over from income after all else was paid. Average rent was about $25 a month. We built those houses in 180 days, and most became occupied immediately from a waiting list of applicants. Before the last house was built, the housing authority was complaining about problems with the"workmanship". I was part of a tour along with architects and other experts to examine the conditions of the property. We chose 10 houses that day, in three different project sites. The houses were vacant, tenants gone. Nine of the ten- were unlivable; needed not just cleaning but major repairs. One house had severe floor damage; the neighbor explained the tenant got mad at management, threw a garden hose in the window and drove away. Ever enter a house where people had been urinating down the heating ducts? Defecating in the kitchen sink? Beat hundreds of holes in the drywall with a baseball bat? Had blood graffiti on the walls where a murder took place?

This was a random choice of ten vacant houses; none could have been occupied more than 4 months. When we met with the housing authority running the project to discuss what we found- They defended the tenants, rejected the idea that the damage was related to the character of their 'clients". Literally- I was asked to leave the meeting for being "prejudiced", specifically over the house where the angry tenant had flooded it. They wanted the damage fixed under- warranty.

You simply can't gift people with self-respect, nor with ambition or personal responsibility. Those things come from the inside of the individual, nowhere else. We can be sure we are not standing in the way of those willing to try, and we can give a hand-up to those who truly are- to speed their climb- but a hand-out so that we can tell ourselves we care and we are doing good.... perpetuates the idea in some people that they can't do anything- because it is all somebody else's fault.

This problem is increasing rapidly, because social foundation elements like family values, traditions, civility, self-respect and pride are being attacked everyday. We are promoting weakness instead of strength, literally excusing people for failing to try and blaming society. It's good to be good- but you have to know when it's better to be tough, to step away and let people learn. Some will fall and stay down- but others will get up angry, and try harder. Some will realize that it has always been their choice, and that they alone can control their destiny. If we are to promote that concept, we have to stop taking the blame and responsibility for the way they chose to deal with the challenges of life.

 

"I guess the theory is that the best way for them to get better is to let them lie in their own filth for the rest of their lives. How compassionate!"

So- we should say WE can't let them do what THEY have chosen to do.... we must be compassionate, wipe their butts and clean up for them. Become turd nannies.

I think people who believe we should do that must come forward and volunteer, because it's not something taxpayers should have to pay for. They have already spent tens of millions trying to help, and the problem grows instead of shrinking... which should tell them that the kind of help they are using is making matter worse. That has yet to occur to city management, of course.

Cleaning up after them is a big job. How big? Take San Francisco; it seems be leading the competition for shittiest city in America. Here's a map that shows the reports made to the city of feces on the sidewalks. Doesn't include Oakland or neighboring areas, just SF proper. This will give you an idea of how extensive the problem has become. This doesn't include drug needles, condoms, etc- it's just feces reports. Of course, one could expect that most people will simply step around the poop and go on their way without reporting- so the reports probably represent less than 10% of the facts. Take a look. See where you can go in city of San Francisco and expect to keep clean shoes.

 

so let me get this right; if i lay down in the middle of the street in Austin and block traffic, no one will bother me?

 

No need for that, just enforce the vagrancy laws in the surrounding communities and they'll stay there, get their acts together so they don't have to, or head for some other locale that's dumb enough to tolerate them.

Dunno who the hell you think you're kidding.

 

Under current law they have no choice the most they can do is pass out flyers and pamphlets though the cops will sometimes take some passed out boozer their or direct them to one of the various places around town but it is pretty much up to the homeless to show up there. Met more than a few over the years that were down right scary people. Some studies suggest that as much as 60 to 80% depending on area are varying degrees and kinds of mentally ill who themselves are all over the degree of danger ball park, from zero to lock that crazy dude up before he kills some one and of course the crossover with drug abusers is huge.

 

You'd be surprised. A goodly chunk of them mirror the old hobo population staying out of the way and out of sight as much as possible any wooded area in and around town will have a small population of homeless more or less living there. We had a small forest fire / brush fire here in town a few years ago because some loon set his little tent on fire trying to cook meth over an open fire in a wooded area behind a strip mall.

 

Given that only 1 in 100 people serve in the military and the overwhelming majority of those are support personnel not that many.

Most of those went straight to public housing. By the way if you are ignorant enough to believe that you can afford a 200k house when you are having trouble with 500 dollar a month rent and someone else covering the maintenance you need a remedial math course.

 

Back when America was great and before California became a third world state I was able to sleep on the beach in Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach. Catching some waves as the sun rose over the horizon at dawn.

If you sleep on the beach today and if you don't get jacked up by the cops you better be packing because you're more than likely to get jacked up by some hodads or gang bangers.

 

Why the hell does it depend on that?

 

How does it make them more difficult to ignore?

 

When you said "street" earlier I assumed that you meant the sidewalk. Did you mean the road?

 

What does current law say?

 

At the end of the day we need to provide some minimum level of shelter for the homeless in order to maintain a functional society ... so I do not have a problem with providing resources to this end.

What I have a problem with is how this money is spent. A huge chunk of money allocated to the poor goes into administration. Giving some single mother money for her own apartment in some slum is inefficient and does not deliver a functional environment for raising the child.

We should have a big complexes - all these women would be in the same place. There would be food provided, child care, education and so on. Many of the women utilizing the complex would actually work there - preparing food, child care, cleaning and so on. The ones that do not work at the complex would be free to find a job because their child is being cared for.