I welcome correction on this point from someone more versed in civil law than I am, but I don’t believe you can sue to compel a city to perform acts that are discretionary. (I’m thinking specifically here of a writ of mandamus).
It was a wisecrack, but not a snark. Methinks you been whooshed.
Well, but by hanging around there, the they might be breaking laws. Disorderly conduct for one…
Loitering…
(From the New York State Penal Law)
And if the complaints the guy is making are accurate (verbally harrassing and intimidating customers), they’re also violating the laws against harrassment in the second degree:
And by urinating, they’re also undoubtedly violating the law against exposure of a person.
Doesn’t sound very free to me. First you charge him just for existing, then you seize the property just outside his door, and then you populate it with pandhandlers and petty thieves. If that’s your idea of a free market, I’d hate to hear about your bureaucracy.
According to the article, no one has a problem with the man standing there just Kemp. The sidewalk doesn’t belong to Kemp. If it’s against the law to stand there, sue the city.
"Jose Perez, who works at Cesare Paciotti, a shoe store next to Mr. Kemp’s shop, said the bearded man who seemed to be the focus of Mr. Kemp’s complaints never bothered any of his store’s customers. “He has a very bad smell,” Mr. Perez said. “But besides that he causes no problem. We never asked him to leave.”
If we arrest people that smell, I should have made a citizens arrest today at the doctors office. The woman sitting next to me smelled like a cross between stale B.O. and toxic waste.
A bureaucracy would be more efficient: the thieves would collect the taxes and the panhandlers would build and clean the property outside his door.
Seize the property? From whom? The business owner who doesn’t own it? Any law abiding citizen may occupy public space, no matter how raggedy or vile smelling. No one is seizing anything. The business is free to move if they do not prosper at that location. Businesses deserve no special treatment. Let the free market prevail.
So, the business owner can call a cop. What does that have to do with a civil suit?
Keep in mind this is in NYC, where the lawsuit is rapidly becoming an all-purpose problem solver and a mode of personal expression. By 2020, New Yorkers will likely be initiating actions-at-law to get back in touch with old friends, extend dinner invitations, etc.
I’m curious how the problem of homeless people would be solved in the libertarian state. They’d be tossed into debtor’s prisons? Evicted from location after location until they stumble across someone too weak-willed to prevent them from ruining the value of his property? Or do people magically become generous and benevolent in the libertarian state, rendering poverty a thing of the past?
The problem here isn’t that the public allows this nefarious homeless man to do as he pleases on their property, thereby ruining the business of an honest hard-working entrepreneur. The problem is that society allows such poverty to exist in the first place.
So how would YOU solve the problem of the homeless person not having a home? As you point out, you can’t force a person to do anything they don’t want to do. We have eliminated debtor’s prision…we can’t round homeless folks up and force them to live in a shelter or public housing…these options are already available, and people choose not to avail themselves of them. I don’t believe this homeless man has NO option whatsoever but to sleep on that grate. New York has public housing, welfare, foodstamps, shelters, and I’m sure a lot of other program that would keep him from sleeping on the sidewalk. So what should society do to be sure that such poverty does not exist? If he is not availing himself of the programs that are in place currently, what makes you think he would do so with any other possible program someone could come up with (not even quite sure what those would be?) If we created a living wage, for instance, would he clean himself up, get sober if need be, get a job and an apartment?
The property has to be seized to be made public. The problem with you authoritarians is you have no idea how your own bullshit works. Contractor buys a plot of land. Builds some roads and houses. State comes along and takes ten feet from each front lawn and driveway to use as it damn well pleases. Over time, residential becomes commercial. State still claims roads and land on either side. If the free market had prevailed, the store owner would still own the sidewalk in front of his store.
Turns out the main grate guy has a family in Pennsylvania who were pretty surprised to see him in the paper. He abandoned his wife and two children decades ago and wanders the streets yelling about the Gospels. He also has no interest in seeing his remaining family, his own grandchildren, or the brother who was searching for him for a transplant.
I’ve spent a lot of time on the subway, etc. watching cops and social workers trying to coax these people into shelters. Most of them do not want to go, and thanks to decisions made by judges with no sense of reality, they can’t be made to go (except if they’re obviously high and the temperature dips below a certain point) and if they steal and harass other people while they’re there (the main reason people don’t want to go to shelters to begin with), they can’t easily be thrown out.
Thanks for mentioning the Gospel preaching. That should quiet a significant number of people who presently are defending his alleged right to squat in front of people’s stores.
Yes, but it first must be seized to be made private.
In any case, I definitely side with the store owner. Just because property is public does not mean any use of it whatsoever is ok. Unless the store owner is making stuff up or greatly exagerating, then the bums are harassing customers and urinating in public, among other things.
I just need to give a cheer for this. That was beautifully slipped in there. chuckles yet
Exactly. Public property or its equivalent has existed since the dawn of time. From the earliest times that people settled in villages, there were paths between the huts that didn’t belong to anyone. There was never some mythical past where all real estate was privately held, after which governments came along and confiscated property for roads and streets.
The sidewalks are public because they’ve always been public; they’ve never been seized from private owners. Any seizure would go the other way.
I agree, but again, what is the remedy? The store owner has a reasonable expectation that persons will not impede access to his store, or make access unduly unpleasant. The homeless people will inevitably be somewhere (and have a right to walk the streets anyway), and there is no reasonable expectation that permanent residents of the street will share our mores sufficiently to be polite to passersby.
Maybe we should be able to.
Two other store owners nearby apparently don’t have a problem with him, just the one suing. They’re probably not overjoyed but realize it’s a fact of life in NY and nothing to get your panties in a twist about. Not a lot you can do about it because the store doesn’t own the sidewalk. They didn’t say he caused problems, just that he smells. If a shoe store with 10x the volume isn’t complaining about customers being run off, I tend to think this guy might be exaggerating a little bit because he doesn’t want him sitting there. I doubt if any business wants homeless people in front of their store but it’s a fact of life in a big city.
Maybe he ought to move his high class antique shop to Connecticut because in NYC the homeless are a fact of life. It’s like moving into the woods and bitching about trees or suing because you get bird shit on your shoes.
I don’t know about NYC, but in this town store owners have a duty to keep the sidewalks in front of their establishment clean and free of clutter. Generally this means no free standing signs and sweeping up litter and shoveling snow.
So – couldn’t this store owner start maintaining that stretch of sidewalk? If someone is ‘camping’ there, likely there are bags and such lying on the sidewalk, impeding safe travel by pedestrians. Shouldn’t they be cleared away? Or at least their owners made to pick them up: you have a right to walk on sidewalks carrying packages, but I don’t think you have a right to turn part of the sidewalk into your own private storage area.
Similarly, if people have been urinating there, doesn’t that present at least an odor problem, if not a health threat? It seems to me the store owner should have one of his clerks out there giving the cement a good scrubbing down with hose and push broom. As often as necessary to keep the sidewalk clean. Say at 7 and 9 and 11 and 1 and 3 and so forth, for whatever hours the store is open? Sure, that is likely to mean the cement is wet or damp most of the day, but if that’s what it takes to keep the sidewalk clean and free of obstructions, well, that’s what it takes.