I don’t think the sentiment is that they “deserve to suffer” so much as “why should I be subsidizing the comfort of a group that is so aggressively antisocial?”.
I think it is fair to categorize the majority of interactions the public has with the homeless as negative. With most falling somewhere between simple harassment (aggressive panhandling) and serious crime (mugging, assault, property damage, etc).
Of course, this is a huge generalization and #notallhomeless blah blah blah… But I think even those that advocate for homeless would have a tough time arguing that they increase the quality of life in the neighborhoods they inhabit.
> I don’t think the sentiment is that they “deserve to suffer” so much as “why should I be subsidizing the comfort of a group that is so aggressively antisocial?”.
What is the effective difference between believing someone deserves to suffer, and purposefully withholding aid that could be rendered? One might be dressed up in more comfortable language, but they both result in homeless people not being helped on purpose.
Homeless people have objectively been let down by society, of course they're antisocial. They're hungry, exposed to the elements, and treated like garbage by most people they interact with. Every single one of us would behave in antisocial ways if we were in that situation. If you want them to change, you have to begin changing the circumstances that motive their current behavior. Denying aid until they change is just a polite way to deny aid permanently.
> What is the effective difference between believing someone deserves to suffer, and purposefully withholding aid that could be rendered?
This is silly. By your logic we in the Western world are essentially causing the suffering of the Uyghurs in China because we haven't started a war to stop their oppression.
You aren't complicit just because you don't try to fix every wrong in the world.
The real world is difficult and involves suffering, pain, unfairness, etc. Our resources to limit these negative aspects of existence are finite. When we view someone "suffering" and see it as the result of their own actions, yea, I think we are even more reluctant to do anything.
All that to say: Good luck convincing people that they should allocate scarce resources to help out the people who throw containers of urine at them and defecate on the sidewalk in front of their apartment.
> This is silly. By your logic we in the Western world are essentially causing the suffering of the Uyghurs in China because we haven't started a war to stop their oppression.
The last time we invaded a country to liberate people went so well, right? Clearly we should always be doing that, since it consistently reduces human suffering in the regions we invade with no risks whatsoever. Given the consistent good outcome of invasions, it's obvious that not giving people houses in our cities and not being willing to risk WW3 in order to help out the Uyghurs are morally equivalent things, good argument.
Dripping sarcasm aside, we should absolutely do something about the Uyghur genocide. But trying to draw a moral equivalency between inaction on both these things is pushing the "good faith" rule to the limit. One of them has obvious avenues for harm reduction right now, while the other is a messy thing with plenty of avenues for us to accidentally end up making things much worse for the people we're trying to help and potentially get a bunch of other random people killed to boot. These two things are not the same, at all.
Also, America created its own homelessness crisis. Surely we have a moral obligation to resolve any issues that we ourselves created, no?
> Our resources to limit these negative aspects of existence are finite.
Come now, you can't possibly think that the reason why we don't house the homeless is because of resource limitations, can you? That's just a ridiculous argument; we've magically run out of resources and coincidentally the limit was helping the homeless in our cities. Please ignore any increased consumption anywhere else, we're just absolutely out of resources, and are powerless to change that.
I'm sure you've calculated the cost of sending the police around to harass homeless people, right? Sure would be unfortunate if you make an argument about us being unable to help while we end up spending more money harassing and abusing the homeless than it would cost for us to give them homes[0]. That would make it look like we're just being cruel for the hell of it, rather than because this is the cheaper way forward.
> You aren't complicit just because you don't try to fix every wrong in the world.
You literally said above that people don't want to subsidize the homeless because they're angry at them. That is worlds apart from "terribly sorry, can't help". You’re absolutely moving the goalposts from “too angry to help” to “not my duty to help”.
And that's before we begin to discuss the circumstances that have made homelessness a thing. They didn't just appear out of nowhere, you know. Homelessness is a policy outcome, not an act of god. We absolutely are complicit as a society for homelessness in our society, because it is a consequence of the decisions we’ve made as a society. We have a moral obligation to fix the problems we have ourselves caused at a minimum.
> Additionally, good luck convincing people that they should allocate scarce resources to help out the people who throw containers of urine at them and defecate on the sidewalk in front of their apartment.
Maybe if we send in the cops to tear up their tents and beat them up it'll solve it this time. Hasn't worked for decades, but maybe this last time will be the trick! Heaven forbid we try something new.
Also, maybe we should install some public toilets. Just a thought. Humans have to defecate, if you don't give people a place to do it they will do it in the streets. It honestly seems like a lot of people would rather see their cities literally covered in feces rather than give homeless people a toilet.
If you agree homelessness is an issue than the right attitude to have is to reduce it no? The Finland solution actually works, so do it regardless of how you feel about it? Anything short of that means you actually don't want it to get better.
>If you agree homelessness is an issue than the right attitude to have is to reduce it no?
Back in the mid 1980s, the Village Voice[0] ran a feature article entitled "What do homeless people want?"
The author helpfully provided an answer in the first sentence of the article: "Homes, mostly."
Given the very visible homeless population in New York City[1] at the time, and that more and more of those folks were families with children, it seemed a reasonable question to ask, with a readily available answer.
And in 2000, there was a piece in the San Jose Mercury News[2] about full-time school teachers working in the San Jose public schools who were living in homeless shelters because they couldn't afford housing on their salaries in the South Bay.
And yet, 30+ years later the problem is getting worse -- due to the lack of affordable housing stock, increasing economic insecurity and inequality, among other, lesser, issues.
So let's not continue to believe the Grimm-esque fairy tale that poor people are poor because they're lazy or stupid. And that all homeless people are drug-addicted, mentally impaired losers.
So what is it that homeless people want? Homes, mostly.
Yet our zoning and housing policies make increasing housing stock to meet demand and effectively difficult, if not impossible.
Yes, homelessness is a serious issue. And something I experienced back in those fabled 1980's. And I did have a drug (cocaine) problem while I was homeless. Then again, I didn't start using those drugs until I was already homeless. Hmmm. Correlation isn't causation, but...
> So let's not continue to believe the Grimm-esque fairy tale that poor people are poor because they're lazy or stupid. And that all homeless people are drug-addicted, mentally impaired losers.
Also, substance abuse can be an outcome, not just a cause. People go homeless after getting addicted, yes, but people also get addicted in order to numb the experience of being homeless too. Using drugs is a reasonable response to a loss of hope; I’m sure every single person here has some experience with increased alcohol consumption as a response to stress. It’s perfectly human, and most of us wouldn’t do any better if we were homeless tomorrow.
Also, this attitude is never applied to the rich and powerful addicted to things like cocaine. Which is kind of curious. It makes you wonder if the issue isn’t drugs at all..
I’ll go back to what I noted in my original comment: “why should I subsidize the comfort of people who are so aggressively antisocial?”
This group has generated so much negative goodwill with the general public that any “logical” solution that requires public $ is going to have a difficult time prevailing.
The easiest and intuitively cheapest solution in the minds of most people is: make them go somewhere else.
My point is you subsidize them or the issue is not fixed and the issue persists including the aspects you don't like. Making them go somewhere else doesn't work because somewhere else will make them go back to you.
I get that it's not popular with the public, that's why we have these debates, because the public needs to figure out whether it really wants to solve the issue by partially getting over itself or it doesn't and prefers to live in the bad situation that current exists.
EDIT: usually these arguments from the progressives appeals to morality or whatever, but in this case, it's literally an effectiveness argument. It works, regardless how one feels so it should be done.
Now, if one argues "well, it might not work here," that to me is a more interesting and worthwhile discussion. But if one's point is "well, I don't dispute whether it works or not or whether it won't work here, I just hate the homeless so much I don't want to do the thing that would actually fix it," leads me to question whether one hates it enough to actually address the issue or not.
> Making them go somewhere else doesn't work because somewhere else will make them go back to you.
Not really true at all. If you are a Midwestern city with a homeless "problem", giving them a one-way ticket to San Francisco (or somewhere else that is hospitable to homeless) seems to be a good way to get rid of them for good.
If one is able to look at this situation objectively, this is a really interesting and complex problem to consider at the level of the municipality. Different cities will have different strategies.
...and like in my example above, a change in one city's strategies might actually change your strategy. If San Francisco starts cracking down on tent cities and tries to prohibit panhandling, open drug use, etc. then those Midwestern cities may have to start sending their homeless to another place, or just deal with them in-place.
The equilibrium that this game reaches may be the place that has the most reasonable, humane and probably expensive solution to homelessness actually increases the number of homeless they have to accommodate as they become a permanent draw.
I think it is fair to categorize the majority of interactions the public has with the homeless as negative. With most falling somewhere between simple harassment (aggressive panhandling) and serious crime (mugging, assault, property damage, etc).
Of course, this is a huge generalization and #notallhomeless blah blah blah… But I think even those that advocate for homeless would have a tough time arguing that they increase the quality of life in the neighborhoods they inhabit.