[scoofy]

>That's why I felt angry reading your comments. I figured that's what you really wanted.

I'm sitting here arguing for improving outcomes for everyone and you think I'm trying to make people angry??? What?

Yes, I think analysis like the authors and yours is naive... but that is because I actually give a shit. For every one of me, there are probably a dozen folks who don't care at all, and would happily literally criminalize homelessness. I'm merely proposing that we prioritize efficient functional systems while also providing other places for folks in need to rest their heads.

That a bench in a subway system should be for people using the subway does not mean that we can't also have a bench in another place that could be used to sleep on. In a place that does not do more harm than good.

[squibonpig]

Yes, it seems like you're only focused on the disruption they cause. To paraphrase you said something like

>They'll sleep on the benches and this will cause disruption, so the benches will be removed

Why? What if we just didn't remove the benches, or we installed more? The solution you immediately reached for was to kick the homeless person off the bench while saying it was their duty not to block the bench and that if they were allowed to sleep on the bench it would, to be a little hyperbolic, cripple the transit system. I don't hear any solutions being suggested other than "kicking them off the bench" and the logic you're advocating where you blame them for their situation immediately justifies basically throwing them in jail. They failed their fellow citizens, after all.

And to be clear I know you're saying we should install more benches, but it seems secondary to you man. With how you're thinking I don't see why you think we ought to do that.

[scoofy]

> Why? What if we just didn't remove the benches, or we installed more? The solution you immediately reached for was to kick the homeless person off the bench while saying it was their duty not to block the bench and that if they were allowed to sleep on the bench it would, to be a little hyperbolic, cripple the transit system.

I live in San Francisco. Our transportation systems are on the verge of collapse. The #1 concern people have about using the system is anti-social behavior.

https://www.kron4.com/news/why-arent-people-riding-bart-hint...

The transit systems have already had a $1.1 billion, and a second bailout coming this year. This is very large amounts of money wasted, that could be very easily used elsewhere. This is real money.

The system was effectively anarchy from 2020-2025, and anti-social actors made the system extremely unpleasant, even smoking on trains and platforms.

Enforcement of anti-social behavior began last year and there was an immediate burst in usage, and a non-trivial increase in revenues.

These are real, pressing issues where I live. The consequences of acquiescing to anti-social behavior is trivially demonstrated in the article. Private institutions are removing benches because anti-social behavior is affecting business, not because they’re just mean. They’re literally making their own services worse… that doesn’t happen without genuine concern.

Again, your mileage may vary. If you live in a place where anti-social behavior is tolerated, then by all means, do not remove the benches. The point of the article is that effectively universally, these behaviors do harm the level of service.

[squibonpig]

I'm aware of the problem. I live in Sacramento, up until recently I lived in LA, and I visit San Francisco often. The place we will disagree is solutions. Your language constantly implies stuff without saying it outright, and it makes me think the solutions you find attractive will differ, and it makes me think your motivation is the well-being of people who aren't homeless (for now) at the expense of those who are.

Let's take pooping in the street. I figure we can call this an anti-social behavior. I see two reasons someone would do this:

1. They need to shit and have no restroom. Presumably even then they'd still try to get some privacy, which leads me to

2. They're fucked in the head, completely calloused to it out of years of living like that, or off their ass on something (or choose multiple). Now the act is "anti-social" in technicality, but of course this person is just messed up and needs serious help. They aren't out to bother you or destroy society or whatever, and the solution isn't whacking them harder with a baton so they make the correct choice of not shitting there, it's not a choice.

Say we adopt the simplest policy that seems to directly follow from your outlook. "It is now a crime with a 1 year minimum or something to voluntarily shit on the street." By extension all you're doing is moving the crazy or drug addicted people into prisons. Prisons aren't built to help people, they're generally thought of as punishment and administered as such. So you're taking a bunch of people many of whom are not beyond help and happen to just be fucked up or addicted to something, and shunting them off into a torture cage because you don't want to see them shit on the street. What am I missing?

I'm not saying you should do nothing and let them shit on the street. The solution just needs to recognize that we're dealing, generally speaking, with people who need help. It would involve investment and well-designed systems built with the goal of helping those people, and most importantly an attempt to build more of a safety net to keep people from falling into that state. I'm inferring from how you talk about this that you would disagree. Word choice like "anti-social actor" (as though they just want to give people a hard time for the fun of it) or "asquiessing" (as though a large coordinated group just wanna shit on the street and do heroin because it's fun and everyone is just unwilling to do what needs to be done) and "enforcement of anti-social behavior" (as though policing the symptom is anything other than just criminalizing homelessness to shunt them off out of sight) makes me think you're approaching this from a counterproductive angle. There is a problem but what you're describing is a bandaid, and if I'm inferring correctly it's also cruel.

[scoofy]

>By extension all you're doing is moving the crazy or drug addicted people into prisons.

Prisons? What, no. You don't got to prison for falling asleep in a bar. You just get asked to leave. That's all I'm suggesting for high-cost city services, that they actually enforce the rules, and ask people who are breaking the rules to leave the premises.

Obviously, the services must be valuable enough to enforce, but BART and Muni are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenues every single day due to anti-social behavior (SF Muni loses about $750,000 every single day to fare non-payment alone), so it trivially justifies having folks out here issuing citations and asking people to leave the service.

[squibonpig]

Alongside other stuff I have no issue with that, and if that's your entire point then sorry for grilling you about it.