Originally published at: Humans displaced as L.A. cleans beach-side handball courts | Boing Boing
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We need universal basic income so badly.
And simple places for people to live with basic amenities like running water and toilets.
You’d think the richest country in the world could muster this kind of basic human decency.
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@codinghorror But if you treat the cause rather than punishing the symptom, you reduce the fear that keeps the population in line 
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I have all of the sympathy for these folks, i see a lot of homeless encampments where i live in Austin and i’m really frustrated at the impossibly slow progress the city has taken to help them. But i do know that these problems are often complicated and there are no quick fixes
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I’ve always thought a large part of the problem in Austin is that all the other big cities in Texas have extreme anti-homeless stances, so Austin is where they end up.
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Likely true though actually addressing the problem is something that the US as a whole has been really lousy at doing
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It’s pretty nauseating how US handles/ignores/de-persons the poors. Good ol’ protestant work ethic. My mother was “lucky” to have a horrible back that meant she qualified for various assistance and had a place of her own up until she passed last year. I shudder to think of what I could have been dealing with for the past 30 years and where I might be today otherwise.
It was so interesting to do a slum tour in Delhi. Over time people had built up multi-floor brick buildings, and they had some metered power, a school, a one-man clinic, and the local gov’t trucked in tankers of water periodically, and had recently built public restrooms nearby to improve local sanitation (a bit).
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Sounds similar to how barrios build out in Latin America. My parent and their family came out of barrios themselves and were able to achieve success through hard work, but having access to the bare necessities and education is absolutely required. Something the US is very stubborn about providing because they have such an aversion to things that appear to be “socialist” in function.
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Fire & Rescue just found 5 homeless camp/people out in the desert, way out, I was there when they brought them in [we donate to the FD chow when we can]. Never seen dehydration in a human like that before, the pinch the skin technique is when they see if your skin will relax after its pinched up, the skin was still in the pinched position an hour later, two IV’s one each arm. These folks were chased off from one city to the next, turned up in the high desert with zero supplies, no shelter, very dangerous. I really wish someone would hip homeless folks up to the fact that the high desert is not safe…
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People easily underestimate how extreme deserts can get. Yes it gets hot, but it also gets very cold too. Glad those folks were able to be rescued.
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We passed the hat before they were transported to San Bernardino, likely the County Hospital. I wish them well & speedy recovery.
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Cruelty is priority number one in the USA. Give an American a dollar and they’ll be happy, but give dollars to both them and someone who hasn’t “earned it” in their eyes and they will lose their fucking mind.
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Actually, according to reports, of the fifteen people displaced, ten were placed into housing, four declined because they were awaiting Project Roomkey vouchers, and one (1) refused to be placed.
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I don’t feel that describes all Americans. Some, yes… sadly.
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I have tons of sympathy for these folks, but after my street in San Francisco became a homeless encampment during the pandemic I can at least comment on how complicated the issue is. It’s not as simple as just “let them sleep somewhere”. The biggie is that all these people poop, and if there’s an encampment like this without lots of restrooms there’s going to be lots and lots and lots of poop. And pee, but especially poop. The other is that without any kind of services you’re going to have a concentration of people with mental health issues, and it’s all fun and games until there’s a shouting match outside your window at 3am. Again.
And anecdotally it sure looks to me like a huge number of these people are IV opiate users. I see someone shooting up on my street almost daily, which makes me wonder how much of this is a consequence of the fentanyl epidemic. It’s so politicized by much of the country as “the natural consequence of California’s liberal policies” that I don’t see how any progress can be made at the moment though.
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It really grinds my gears that the same people who are anti-lockdown “because of the epidemic of drug ODs” as one of their listed reasons, are usually the same people who are dead set against things like safe injection sites.
It’s almost like they have insincere talking points that they don’t really care about.
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Well, you could always raise taxes, and use the money to buy land, build houses, and give people money to live on. Maybe provide some medical care and prescriptions too. Sounds like a quick non complicated fix to me.
I mean its not like we don’t do the equivalent when companies get in trouble.
“Its complicated” usually translates to “But it would cost me something…” or rather, “It would cost rich people something, and I, of course, will someday be rich…”
I often think of “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” when I see a homeless encampment
It’s like homeless vets.
I’ve figured out that when someone on the right says “but we have homeless vets that we could help instead” what they mean is “There are other “more worthy” people that we don’t give two flips about helping, why would you even think about helping these unworthy people?”
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Give them a god damn place to live with a bathroom.
This isn’t rocket surgery.
OH, well, that certainly means they are less than human and don’t deserve human rights… /s
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according to supply and demand, building enough housing would make existing housing prices collapse
which would be unacceptable to people—voters—whose life savings are in their houses
treating shelter as a venue for investment instead of as a basic service turns it into a giant musical chairs game where the middle class gets more “equity” every time some poor bastard is evicted
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