[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.