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by odonnellryan
3541 days ago
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> Oh yeah - what if there is a homeless colony right next to your current house? Would you say the same thing then? So, there is actually one near me. Not next to my house, but near me: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/04/01/shantytown-in-hoboken... Weird, right? This is in Hoboken...extremely (bay-area-levels) rich area. SF median household income: $65,519.00
Hoboken: $105,710
(population difference between Hoboken and SF is an order of magnitude, fyi) Weird stuff. Anyway... it's definitely not "a good feeling" to see homeless people around. I donate and try to help, but I definitely get a big pang when asked for some cash for food, and the conversation goes like this: "I don't have any cash on me, can I buy you something from this pizza place with my card?" "No I don't want pizza." |
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The commenters who are disgusted at the lack of compassion, while on the morally-correct side of the equation, fail to consider the practical aspects of streets saturated with homeless people. It's at best 'tolerable', often 'kinda scary' and very often 'downright dangerous'[1]. Seeing this every morning and every night, in a walking city, is a drag on public safety and, yes, neighborhood value and progress. Retail and housing suffer when people have to step over passed-out zombies on their way out of their apartments or into their stores.
I don't know what the right answer is, but from my observation it seems that the police and the prisons play the role of the mental health worker and the shelter. The former is more expensive than the latter, but it's easier.
In the article below, it took several dozen overdoses before the police finally cleared the homeless off the street. It's not a coincidence that in New York City, the homeless (and associated social problems like aggressive panhandling and threatening behavior, as well as sexual assaults) tend to hang out not too far from their shelters. The location being referenced below is near several shelters (in a neighborhood that has a huge percentage of all the shelters of the city).
1 http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/NYC-K2-Synthetic-Mariju...