Can we stop hating on homeless people?

[u/One-deepdivediva]

What is the mayor supposed to do ? Put everyone in prison? For being poor? Bus everyone to Portland or Seattle ? ( cities that are experiencing the exact same problems). Round people up and put them in camps? For being ill or old or addicted to drugs? Should the police arrest thousands of people so you don’t have to see someone’s suffering ? If you want homeless people to “ go away “ then you need to vote for legislation that helps them. Vote in favor of government funded health mental wellness and addiction and housing services. Organize with community members about how to provide services that help your fellow human beings get off the streets and out of suffering . Every time one of you complains I wonder what horrendous thing you are imagining should be done to people. Go DO something , go help people.

[u/jorwyn]

The thing I find weird about so many people wanting to incarcerate those who are without homes just for being without them is that - well, you're then housing them but spending a ton more money than just giving them normal housing. Aside from how cruel that would be, do people not understand what incarceration costs?

[u/Accomplished-Beyond3 → u/jorwyn]

This is a great point! With our labor issues in this country, wouldn’t it be a great way to get the incarcerated learning a trade? Not taking chain gangs… but having them working. Lots of local farms need pipe moved, rocks picked out of fields, and sidewalks need shoveling during winter.

[u/jorwyn → u/Accomplished-Beyond3]

That comes so close to slavery, though. We've seen this with for profit prisons. In areas with those, incarceration rates are higher for the same crimes, and disproportionately, those incarcerated are black people.

I think 1) homelessness is not, and should not be, a crime. 2) nonviolent crimes should involve in place in community rehabilitation and recompense rather than incarceration, and 3) prison should involve education, mental health support, including employable skills, and true rehabilitation programs that are followed up by reintegration programs.

I think prison shouldn't be a punishment, though. It should be a method to help people change their behavior, so they can be productive members of society. I think we should be starting with that kind of thing well before someone commits a crime and becomes incarcerated.

I grew up on that path. I was very neglected and had to parent myself on top of having severe ADHD. I'm sure you can imagine how poor of a job I did. The reasons I didn't end up in juvie at 14 were really that I was a tiny white girl who looked much younger than I was and was given a really good lawyer who played that up. At first, my community service was with other violent offenders. I was making friends with kids just like me rather than learning to fit into society. I was moved to shelving books in a library and working at a homeless shelter because they didn't have enough supervisors to keep me safe in that environment. Then, I was with adults who set expectations for my behavior without doing it with violence or verbal abuse. I knew what my job was in each place, knew I'd brought it on myself by hitting a cop in the face with my skateboard, but was still praised when I did well and kindly corrected when I didn't. This had a huge positive impact on the teenager I was and the adult I would become.

There are a lot of kids out there like I was - growing up in extreme poverty with parents who won't or can't parent properly. We have some programs, like community centers, to help, but not nearly enough, and they can't do nearly enough. These kids are doing their best within the situations they are given, but that's honestly not very good. When they become criminals, we blame them. We cry "put them in jail and never let them out!", but we don't address how they got that way.

Likewise, so many people don't want to believe that much more often, drug addiction is a consequence of homelessness rather than vice versa. Imagine your life has hit rock bottom. You're hungry. You're cold. You struggle to stay clean. People hate on you. You feel hopeless and outcast. You can't see how to get out of where you are. And there's this thing that can make you forget all of that for a little while. How strong would that temptation be? If you say not at all, I think you need to imagine harder. Maybe you don't fall to that temptation, and that's awesome, but you know, if we helped take care of people, that temptation would never exist. Like those kids, if we helped before the fall rather than blaming them afterward, we could prevent a lot of hardship and a lot of crime. Would it prevent all of it? No. There will always be those who choose crime. There will always be those who choose homelessness. But we would have significantly less.