"Public spaces belong to the public by right. And the unhoused public, who have the greatest need for public spaces, have therefore the greatest right"
Edit
I kinda made this post out of spite for the fact the most previous post in this community, whose title I quoted/copied, was getting so many downvotes... At the time I posted this, the previous post had about a 30% downvote rate, and it really, really made me mad.
I am relieved tho to see people in the comments here who have real, actual empathy for their fellow humans. Thank you for contributing here.
It blows my mind how normalized it is to hate on those who are struggling. Especially in 20fucking23 when so many of us now are on the verge of it ourselves. Let's be better, everyone - to everyone. I beg you.
If someone sets up a spot to sleep and keep their stuff close to your house, try talking to them like a person. I live in the City, so there are plenty of people I see all the time. Sometimes they ask for help, sometimes we just talk. I help when I can, but I also say no when I can’t. I stand outside and talk to some of the struggling people close to me for a while sometimes. They’re just people
The healthy homeless people struggling in my city get plenty of aid. The ones you find camping out are the ones who choose to be homeless, and the ones too mentally ill to seek help. But since we've become so sensitive, we just let them sleep outside instead of forcing them into programs. Until we accept that the mentally ill homeless who refuse aid need to be picked up and forced into it, things will never change.
I don't mind the homeless through no fault of their own camping on my street. But I've seen plenty of drugged out mofos camping in front of or near my work I wouldn't want anywhere near my house or those of my neighbors who have kids. I'm talking about the mofos who take apart cars and bikes and whatever else and then just leave everything when they move on. The mofos with piles of garbage that attract rats bigger than cats.
See, this is part of the issue. Too many people recognize the problems, but as soon as any solutions to those problems inconvenience them, any empathy for those problems then goes right out the window....
I remember this guy in my city set up fake signs for the opening of a new homeless shelter in one of the wealthier and more liberal neighbourhoods in the city, where the "provide for the homeless!" Crowd tend to live.
The neighborhood was up in arms at the idea of the shelter getting set up in THEIR neighborhood. There's a video about it around somewhere.
Maybe address that problem in a more direct way than letting tent cities be the solution? Here's a crazy idea: actually provide housing. Treat mental illness and substance abuse. Provide training and job assistance. Create an actual social safety net.
Jokes aside: I was homeless for 8 years, it really fucking sucked but I'd say that the worst part wasn't trying to stay warm when it was below freezing or trying to stay dry in the rain, it was being treated as less than human simply because I was worse off than other people.
Even after I got a job and started building my life back up, when people realized that I was homeless they would immediately become either cold or hostile
I'm not sure if I'm owner class since I live in a rented apartment but I dislike all the needles and feeling unsafe just going in and out of my apartment. Doubly so for my wife who gets harassed more than I do. So much so that she's afraid to go anywhere.
It just sucks. Dunno if it counts as shit behaviour but I wish they wouldn't camp there.
i dont mind letting people use public areas as a place to stay for the night. but its not just a place to stay for them. its a place to do drugs, shit and piss all over the place, steal from and harrass and assault everyone around them, and let their trash pile up and attract pests. its a huge problem where i am and these people are fucking terrifying to be around. like, i dont want to be inhumane to anyone but where do we draw the line?
, i dont want to be inhumane to anyone but where do we draw the line?
Imo we draw the line when someone who wants to be housed is threatened with being houseless and provide them with housing. Providing housing first is also the best way to deal with all the issues connected to being houseless like drug use, trauma from violence, mental health issues, etc
Imo the line has been crossed long ago and gets crossed every day and its important to keep in mind when trying to find solutions that are more like band aids on a broken system.
yeah im not advocating to kill them all or arrest them all or anything. i dont have the answers. but its pretty much weekly that someone at my job is assaulted or cars are broken into daily or a kid finds a dirty needle or so on. and most of these people seem like they dont want help. they really do revel in being awful it seems. they steal and harrass us gleefully without a look of remorse in their eyes so idk.
It's always interesting to me how no one ever complains or overgeneralizes about people who are criminals, drug addicts, and/or severely mentally ill who live in houses. There are news stories daily about people losing their shit on airplanes. Every retail store and restaurant I've ever worked in had some kind of ongoing bathroom and/or dressing room issues where people can't be bothered to utilize toilets or put their menstrual products or kids' diapers in garbage cans. I've dated several people who were physically abusive to me and the people they dated before and after me. Yet, they are now parents with careers and, you guessed it, a mortgage or rent bill. I've also been around plenty of people who are either "functionally" mentally ill, meaning they are raging narcissists who don't hesitate to harm others in any way possible as long as they get what they want, or who are just raging fucking assholes, like the twenty something year old girls at my college who are so invested in being at the top of their class and kissing the professors asses that they put effort into sabotaging other students and talking shit about everyone around them.
Bit I don't hear anyone generalizing every single college student as being a self-obsessed sociopath just because there's a subset of them that are bitches. I don't hear anyone overgeneralizing every blue collar worker as being immature woman beaters with anger issues just because there's a subset of them who are like that. And you get my point.
In addition, I think dealing with the presence of unhoused people and their camps is far less impactful for me at least. Ok, so downtown is dirty and dangerous. Wtf else is new? My college campus has had a problem recently with fake uber drivers picking up female students and assaulting them. Somehow, I don't think any of the drivers were homeless. But I guess we should all stereotype uber drivers now as violent perverts, and outlaw all rideshare companies from the area. So it doesn't really matter whether you're downtown or near some camp or what have you. Crime is everywhere, and unhoused people are no different than the average population.
And what about car camping? I never hear anyone complaining about people who live in their cars being violent or dirty or crazy? If all unhoused people were all of those things, shouldn't car campers be a huge problem? Especially when they're not limited to doing all their crime in urban areas and can drive to wherever they want?
ive worked in retail for 10 years. this job is the first job ive had where there are drug addicted homeless people camped all around it. its different then your average karen or douchebag kyle. and yes ik that bathrooms are perpetually disgusting. but this is not like that. its a special kind of fucked up idk.
I disagree... public space is our space. No one's need is greater than anyone else's. The homeless need help, the pubic space that we use to get to the store, play with our children, buff highway noise is not the place to get that. Now, I'm not saying financially penalizing or jailing them are the only alternatives but safe camping/RV spots with access to access social services, Wi-Fi, gather for ac/heater, etc seems like a better approach.
I'd rather we just give them housing and a support network to prevent homelessness in the first place. Until then, homeless people have a right to access third spaces for as long as they don't have a living space.
Where I live housing is provided but some homeless people are so because they trash the apartments or they can't or won't respect very basic rules of not constantly causing a disturbance and the like. Addiction is big part of that. There's lots of programs and services for that too but can't really force people to use those services.
You can do a lot by offering help but some still refuse it. In that case I feel like it's fair to make sure they're not a disturbance to other people just wanting to go about their day.
Make it happen then. All those things you'd like to see instead of the unhoused finding shelter are great. But the hypothetical "better" solution is meaningless until it's implemented. Until then, decriminalize survival like the pic says.
Seattle is working through it's shit albeit slowly and with many mistakes. Mental health funding was the ballot just recently, our homeless authority CEO was basically fired for incompetence, small homes and apartments available with more on the way, RV/camp sites are growing, anti-open use law is still in the works, camp removal is stalled due to too ambiguous definitions of "blocking".
I live and work in the city and I'll be the first to vote on sensible laws and bonds. What I find no longer tolerable is bottomless unquestioned empathy.
Seattle is working through it's shit albeit slowly and with many mistakes. Mental health funding was the ballot just recently, our homeless authority CEO was basically fired for incompetence, small homes and apartments available with more on the way, RV/camp sites are growing, anti-open use law is still in the works, camp removal is stalled due to too ambiguous definitions of "blocking".
I live and work in the city and I'll be the first to vote on sensible laws and bonds. What I find no longer tolerable is bottomless unquestioned empathy.
I'm all for helping but you can't expect people to tolerate being threatened, feeling unsafe, people trashing or stealing others' property, littering places with human feces and needles...
Nobody should have to tolerate that. Offer help yes but you can't expect anyone to put up with that. Not the homeless or those with homes.
In my view it's not about accessing the recreation area - I'd rather that space be used temporarily for occupancy while we fix up society. Having said that, ad-hoc homeless camps have very real safety risks associated with them. Often crime rates near these camps rise, and it's reasonable for residents to also want to feel safe in their neighborhoods.
What we need is funding for real shelters with real long-term addiction and crisis counseling support. Blindly saying "any and all public spaces should be fair use for homeless camps" is not helpful to anyone.
Youtuber i seen with a trend of stealth camping in urban locations, had a video of camping overnight in the middle of a roundabout with a lot of shrubbery. And it had kind of a survival horror feel with cops patrolling around, and i remembered...this guy existing in a public space at night shouldnt be this terrifying or feel so taboo.
In general you're correct but camping in a roundabout should be terrifying. You never know if the next person to come along has never been in a roundabout, is raging at anything, is under the influence, or whatever else and might just go plowing through the middle of the thing.
Yep I would never, just because the signs on the roundabouts near where I live are always in bad shape, so people must be hitting them somehow. Not like roundabouts are an unknown thing around here either, drivers are just notably worse here than other places (ik the bar is usually low, but it's even worse than that)
I basically agree but with a caveat: the majority of people would rather noone is camped in parks. More importantly, people needing to camp in parks is indicative of a far greater problem. I think it's imperative to address the root if we have a hope of effectively combatting homelessness.
You don't need to be an empathetic holistic person to get behind free housing for the homeIess. If you're a truly selfish and purely economically oriented person, then you have to admit giving the homless free homes is economically the best solution for all involved. Alternatives include the taxpayer eating the cost of all the damage they do seeking shelter and survival, or paying a ton of money to police to violently deal with them.
If you prefer those to giving them housing, you're choosing options that are more cruel and more costly -- I don't understand how that makes sense and yet plenty of people seem to choose that.
Because many people perceive homelessness as a proxy for moral failings (such as drug abuse) worthy of punishment.
Of course this is rarely the full picture or even true at all, but we need to get people to understand that this is not a problem that can be solved by punishing people.
Totally agree, just frustrating to try to communicate with people who say they are pro-business and rational, and then they vehemently make emotional moral/spiritual arguments.
I'm fine with this in theory, but in practice the homeless/unhoused don't care whether the property is private or not. I have witnessed them trying to set up tents in people's yards multiple times. Not even big yards, we are talking condo yards.
"Private" property that's left vacant is a crime against the right to shelter, and as far as I'm concerned it should be open to squatting.
Squatting in the backyard of an occupied house when there's thousands of vacant houses in every city in America? That's not an action I would agree with, and that's also not what the average unhoused person would do, if for no other reason then because it's much riskier for them than squatting in a public space or a vacant house.
There's no epidemic of entitled dangerous homeless people setting up camp in innocent families' yards. And I certainly wouldn't generalize all homeless people as threats to people's homes.
My understanding is that It partly differentiates housing (having a place indoors, a shelter, etc.) from having a home--an apartment, etc. So you could be homeless, living in a shelter, but still not unhoused.
For a "Solar punk" instance, this community seems to have very little of the "punk" aspect, and in these comments it sounds more like a "Solar rich liberal" place.
The amount of slander towards homeless people, the propagating of stereotypes, and the removal of personhood in these comments really blows my mind. There are even people defending that homeless people should be sent to prison and have their life managed for them; others claim how it's their own fault they are homeless; some cry about "private property".
And of course a bunch of people claiming this isn't a final/permanent solution, and so it shouldn't be done... as if to say, until we come up with better solutions, these people should just go without shelter. What is really a priority to them, is not having to look at homeless people.
In a nutshell: "It's their own fault! They're probably all heroin addicts anyway. Someone else should come up with and implement better solutions, but in the meantime I don't want to have to see and walk by people who don't have a home!". A Solar Punk Neolib community.
When a post gets enough points, it does the Lemmy equivalent of "hitting the front page" and comment character becomes indistinguishable from a brigade. Most of the people commenting on this post aren't from the Slrpnk.net instance. Check out the locals who are though -- excellent people every one -- @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected]. These people are making this instance great.
The amount of slander towards homeless people, the propagating of stereotypes, and the removal of personhood in these comments really blows my mind. There are even people defending that homeless people should be sent to prison and have their life managed for them; others claim how it’s their own fault they are homeless; some cry about “private property”.
And of course a bunch of people claiming this isn’t a final/permanent solution, and so it shouldn’t be done… as if to say, until we come up with better solutions, these people should just go without shelter. What is really a priority to them, is not having to look at homeless people.
It was absolutely heartbreaking to wake up and see a deluge of comments like what you described above... But please don't throw blame on our instance for that. The vast majority of the comments are from outside this instance.
And I'll accept responsibility too for having posted something "controversial" in a c/ that's lacking active moderation.
I also don't think people realize how much more space efficient tent cities are. If they buy a giant ass suburban that has a driveway half the size of the house and backyard of perfectly manicured grass that no one walks on it brings house prices up. If do actually want them to start getting off the street try your best to support them and be a good person. If not leave them the fuck alone and atleast don't make their lives more difficult than it already is.
Also some unhoused people do not want to be "in the system" so a tent city gives them a place to be while honoring the desire to not be tracked like that.
Tent cities are a public safety hazard. Needles, fires, weapons, toxic chemicals, shit everywhere, violence, etc. There are good reasons for cities not wanting them on city/public property.
Sure, some people are homeless. If they take care of their tent and the space around it to keep it safe, the rest of society won't have a fit when they and their closest hundred buddies move into a local community park.
I do agree there they are a fire hazard and have to be regulated but there are ways to mitigate that like gun control, installing porta-potties or public bathroom near tents, making sure tents are well spaced out, etc...
People have to go somewhere and if they can't afford housing and you simply disband their settlement they will move somewhere and become someone elses problem. This does not solve the issue. Helping them does and so does making denser housing to bring down house prices.
"We make the community by defending it: Calling police on people that don’t have a house is a violent act to those seeking shelter in the community they belong to."
I prefer we consider Michael Moore's proposal from "The Big One". He posited that we have all these empty spaces in wealthier communities in the form of golf courses. He suggested we convert those lands into public housing as they would not only have open space to build on but because the wealthier communities can absorb the schooling costs more easily.
I'm so sick of people talking about needles whenever homeless people come up. It's slander, plain and simple.
I used to live in Seattle directly next door to a homeless encampment. I used to walk by it every single day for 2 years. I have never ONCE seen a needle on the ground, day or night. You know what I did see a bunch of? People claiming that there were needles everywhere, without a shred of evidence.
This is one of those things that's gonna vary greatly based on location. Your experience doesn't change that other people may be experiencing something different
From first-hand experience, Vancouver downtown Eastside does have needles everywhere. Then again, nobody really walks through downtown Eastside, so I guess it's fine.
Are all homeless folks users that leave needles lying around? Statistically, no, of course not. Is it a likely correlation? The data is above for you to draw your own conclusions.
The people by you might not be IV drug users and the people leaving needles around aren't necessarily homeless. Almost all of the opiate addicts I know are or were housed but the IV users would still use in public.
Those needles found in camps could belong to housed people who used near the camp or in the camp and do not live there.
Also worth mentioning unhoused people are not necessarily drug users. I know a lot of sober Iraq vets on the streets of NYC.
Honestly some of these comments really dont fit to the solar punk ideals and should get removed.
Especially because land squatting, building low tech communes and working together on problems is what happens in many of those camps and thats just so solar punk to me.
Nope nope nope nope nope. How do you know what communities and organizations the people in the tents belong to? Or how they've organized their network of tents and mutual aid, what relationships they have with nearby homeowners and business owners, how they gather and share resources and make decisions?
Squatters and the unhoused routinely, out of necessity, form partnerships and communities with other unhoused and insufficiently housed people. We'd call those communities "communes" if they were made of rich white people owning homes. And yeah, people in those communities use drugs just like people who own houses do.
Thinking more deeply about it, I think you've identified by example one of the many ways neoliberal ideology encourages discrimination against unhoused people. Neoliberalism teaches us that every unhoused person is an individual whose individual choices are to blame for his low social and economic status. So we assume unhoused people are alone, that they don't belong to communities, that they have no family or social support, that they don't have a network of mutual aid - even though, when someone is unhoused, having networks of mutual aid are even more important than they are for people with secure housing. And that lets us dismiss the unhoused as people without social connections who only care about their personal self interest.
But no, that dude in the tent shooting up fent probably is part of a commune. He meets with other unhoused people to pool money and buy food or take advantage of free meals at the local gurdwara or use a gym membership to take a shower. He advises newly homeless people, he seeks advice from elders in the community, he hangs out outside his tent or at a local meeting spot and chats with other community members. He's part of a network of mutual aid that shares intellectual and social and financial resources to help each other in their disadvantaged circumstances. And if he's not in a network of mutual aid which fits the definition of a commune, it's not because he can't be, but because he chooses not to be.
Unhoused people are not animals. They are humans. That means they communicate with other humans. And that means the unhoused form the same networks of politics and society and economics and mutual aid as everyone else.
It baffles me that anybody today would say memes aren't or shouldn't be political. I think politics and ideology are the primary reason people create and share memes today. The funny animal cheeseburger phase of meme culture is long over. As witness Reddit meming Trump into office and all the racist conservative memes your boomer relatives share.
Public spaces typically have intended uses. When those spaces aren't used for what they are intended, something needs to change. When the homeless set up 1000 survival spaces in a public park... the rest of us should suffer because of their bad decisions/luck? Use your energy to make a difference instead of an ineffectual post. Vote in better policy makers.
I would be cool with chill people setting up tents for a day or two or at night or whatever. But who's going to be picking the used heroin needles up out of the grass and wrangling the drug dealers and gang members when they start showing up? The reason peole don't want tent villages is this, not because they simply hate the "unhoused".
Don't pretend like you've ever seen a needle on the ground. People that say stuff like that are too scared to even walk near a homeless camp, let alone look at the ground while you do so.
There are literally homeless tent villages along the city bike/river trail I use multiple times per week. I ride by homeless people walking along, riding along, and camping a foot off the trail on a regular basis. Some of them have dogs which inevitably are off their leash, and they chase and try to attack me. I literally said I was okay with homeless people, but not the trouble that inevitably follows. And yes, I have seen needles on the ground, so stop making things up to feel like you've made a point lol. They also leave trash everywhere, turned over carts full of their belongings, and random clothes strewn about the grass. Some of them drive their cars along the bike path to get to the homeless village. There are people who obviously are gang bangers who go back into the woods too. It's silly.