[slg]

And this is the dividing line on this issue of homeless, how people identify the problem and the motivation for the fix.

Some people want to fix homeless because of empathy while others want to fix it because of selfishness. Your comment reveals that you are in the latter group. You don't actually want to get homeless people into homes because you empathize with how horrible their lives must be without one. You just want to the minority of homeless people who are a nuisance to stop bothering you and people you actually do empathize with. All those other homeless people who aren't attacking the elderly or shitting on the street can keep on living the same invisible life of suffering because their suffering is not actually a problem in your eyes.

[repsilat]

Who says we can't help both groups? Why is my position (that we should help the "noisy" homeless) incompatible with the position that we should not help the "silent" homeless? Where did I even imply one was a higher priority than the other?

And what the hell, how is caring about elderly people being attacked "selfish"?

Fixing part of the problem is a good thing. Different strategies might solve different parts of the problem. Objecting to progress isn't helpful and isn't compassionate, it's the way we got our current harm-maximization policies.

[slg]

> Who says we can't help both groups?

I certainly didn’t.

> Where did I even imply one was a higher priority than the other?

Because your counter to the idea of the invisible homeless population was to complain about the nuisance homeless population.

> And what the hell, how is caring about elderly people being attacked "selfish"?

Because you are the one prioritizing the suffering of one group over another.

[repsilat]

My counter to the dismissal of the problem of "nuisance homelessness" was to insist that they're a problem. But argument aside, it sounds like we're agreed policy-wise: let's aggressively fix the problem of violent law-breaking lifestyle-choice homelessness with all the obvious tools we've been neglecting to use, and with the money and peace of mind freed up by their absence (carried out in tandem, no doubt you'll want to accuse me of favouritism for law-abiding seniors again...) turn our efforts to the more difficult issue of the invisible law-abiding down-on-their-luck homeless.

[goatlover]

The invisible homeless seem like the people that most likely can be helped, and the ones I feel more empathy and respect for. The visible ones that trash public places and make them unsafe, I want them dealt with so that the problem is fixed for everyone else. If that means involuntary commitment because they refuse drug treatment or being relocated to some sort of housing facility, so be it. I don't think people should be allowed to trash parks, camp on sidewalks or use walking paths for bathrooms and doing drugs, all of which should be illegal.