I wouldn’t want to live in Florida even if I had a house.
Anyway, the solution to homelessness is clearly Soylent Green.
1 Like
A few thoughts:
I can imagine how trying it must be for Myers, Bare, and Wingate to work with these dingbats like Wu.
I lived in Gainesville for a few years, which is not even the “fancy” part of Florida, and there was so much hate directed at the homeless, whose crimes paled in comparison to many shady business owners there (northern and central Florida) who profited on the naivete of students and their parents. I was also quite shocked that even in the '90s there was often a twinge of racial prejudice tacked on for spite.
With a functioning school system, five libraries, and the University of West Florida in the vicinity, one might assume city council members would be able to define the word “aggressive” in the proper context.
I think the speaker Janice Wilson was headed in the right direction when she questioned whether the city had a place in mind other than jail when it comes to proper shelter for the homeless. The correctional system is profiting immensely in Florida, and I feel many areas of the state find it a convenient place to stash “undesirables”.
Finally…oh, the delicious irony that visiting journalists from a country strongly criticized for its human right violations feel that they have to point out the human rights violations inherent in this law.
1 Like
Do we live in the same neck of the woods? The homeless have a newspaper, here, too.
No, no, no … you don’t understand, this is a PRO-homeless law! If the police find someone who is homeless, they give them a free* place to stay (albeit kinda small, and with locks on the outside instead of the inside), and a free* meal (for a certain value of “meal”).
* Well, free to them, anyway. The taxpayers are going to have to pay for the food and lodging, as well as the free ride they get by the blue-uniformed chauffeurs to the lodgings.
2 Likes
They call it “self-deportation.”
2 Likes
…but shooting people isn’t!
11 Likes
*free for a certain value of “free”, also.
The Brennan Center for Justice issued a report in 2010 on the Criminal Justice Debt: A Barrier to Reentry. Fifteen states (California, Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Arizona, North Carolina, Louisiana, Virginia, Alabama and Missouri) with the highest prison populations impose “user fees” on people with criminal convictions that may result in sending the ex-prisoners back to prison for not paying these “debts” because criminal defendants are “overwhelmingly poor”:
[…]
States may charge an application fee to obtain a public defender and then later reimbursement costs for using a public defender. Public defender fees can range from mandatory recoupment fees of $50 for misdemeanors and $100 for felonies in Florida to “sometimes in the thousands of dollars.”
In Florida and Ohio, individuals are required to pay defender fees even if they are acquitted or have charges dropped. Source
2 Likes
If you dislike that ordinance, then fine. That’s one thing, and I wouldn’t even argue with you. Although - seriously. Homeless people down here do NOT need any special newspapers or whatever to stand on the curb and ask for money! And there are non-profit shelters that help set them up. Been seeing the same people on the same corners for years on end now .
But this one is an ordinance of the city of Pensacola - nothing to do with the state, which, btw, has literally thousands of miles of beaches outside the Pensacola city limits. Homeless people sleep on a great many of those beaches. And most of them have enough brains left to go much further south for the winters.
The blogger who wrote this is either crap at writing, or purposely tried to make it look as if the whole state was in on Pensacola’s thing. Maybe, writer would take care of some of the plentiful homeless in his home city of Dallas/Ft. Worth? Because - sitting in your undies in your nice warm house blogging about homeless people hundreds of miles away doesn’t do shit for anybody.
1 Like
But by exaggerating and making false statements, he taints all critics of the law with hyperbole, and thus makes the law seem more legitimate. Whose side are we on again?
1 Like
Well, being Florida skin color might be a factor in that. Holding a newspaper while black could well lead to prosecution.
Nahhhh. Trying to hide from the rain just marks you as a tourista.
2 Likes
shooting poor people mind…
We have an anti-camping law here in Austin. I got popped for it once. So I can speculate some authority that the DA’s and the courts must hate it as it just simply clogs their dockets and has very little impact as to the problem that was supposed to be addressed. Me? I got dismissed and it took MONTHS for it to even register in court. I literally gave up trying to get my case heard and only dealt with it quite some time later.
2 Likes
Ok, sure, the police can sometimes (like all of us) be stupid. But they aren’t that stupid. They will simply ticket you which pushes the whole mess into the court system. Kind of a whole new take on the NIMBY concept.
Well, I’m in Nashville, where the paper is The Contributor. It’s been very successful, but I understand there are similar programs all across the country.
It sounds like Pensacola could use one, as long as no one uses the paper to keep the rain off.
1 Like
=8-O
Proof once again that unethical laws and regulations aren’t confined to the South.
3 Likes
… and I thought that’s the favorite pastime of every USian, politician or Joe Average alike.
I’m pretty disappointed. This false story has been up for 21 hours with unarguably incorrect statements and hasn’t been corrected. As documented earlier in the comments, the ordinance does not generally “ban[] sheltering from weather with blankets or newspapers” nor does it “make[]criminals out of anyone who holds a newspaper over her head in the rain.”
One of the things I’ve always liked about BB is it’s media criticism and its advocacy for transparency, so I thought an update would be forthcoming with corrections.
1 Like
Ugh, I had a roommate who had this same “if you’re not going to do anything you’re not entitled to an opinion” attitude. Well he had that attitude when he disagreed with my opinions but he had plenty of opinions of his own he never bothered to do anything about.
That kind of hypocrisy gets tiresome pretty fast.
2 Likes
And you have no clue what I have done, so your name-calling doesn’t really get you very far.
It’s a misleading article, written by someone clearly bent on pontificating. Apparently, your own bent is toward anybody pointing it out. Back to your warm cozy now, dear…
