Congratulations on discrediting yourself with a blazingly stupid excuse for an analogy.
I’m of the opinion that the poor should be well-treated - hell, let’s coddle them. explicitly and deliberately. Society can only benefit from being actively supportive of all its citizens.
However I’m not of the opinion that, as a prerequisite to getting to that utopian state, we have to embrace people pooping, just, everywhere. Poop here. Poop there. Poop caking the streets and painting the walls. No end to the poop.
You can’t spell ‘utooppia’ without ‘poop’, apparently.
Lovely bit of handwaving you’ve got going there, but I couldn’t help but notice that you didn’t answer the question as to where you honestly expect the homeless to shit and pee.
Larger homeless shelters? Instead of the “home” idea that may or may not work due to ideas outlined by others above. One’s with small, individual rooms with locking drape (room dividers) and personal facilities. If one can get past the “prison” aspect of it, as it would not be run like a prison, free to come and go as you please, eat as much as you want, medication.
Not being sarcastic.
I really only see furthering and modifying the efforts in place as having any effect.
Increasing awareness campaigns can have such a huge impact. Describing how it affects those who are homeless, communities, how getting people healthy and to work can stimulate the economy, anything! You never hear enough about the effects homelessness has and it may actually get those who otherwise wouldn’t help to actually do something.
Homelessness is bullshit! Nobody should have to go through that in a developed country (or anywhere else).
I’ve also thought something like this could work. Build it basically like a prison cell so it can’t be destroyed and can easily be cleaned. Once a week, everyone has to remove their stuff and the rooms get powerwashed. Obviously this isn’t a desirable living situation for most people, but it would at least be a safer and more practical alternative to people sleeping under bridges and such.
Homeless shelters can be a site for rape and robbery - at which point sleeping in a cardboard box and pissing in an alley do start to look like viable alternatives.
Which is not to say all homeless shelters are a cesspit of sin, but there are some genuinely nasty ones out there.
Frankly the only real way to stop this would be to outlaw it, then have a place where anyone caught sleeping on the street is rounded up and sent to. Basically a sort of concentration camp. The only way out of it would be to have a job or a place to stay.
Now then the real problem cases, those on drugs or with mental issues, would have to be kept there. Sounds bad but is it worse than our present situation? Why do we allow people do sleep on doorways or set up tent cities?
Vagrancy charges were a common method to round up free prison labor for local businesses, farms, and road crews etc., and were normally focused on blacks, so yes, we’re more free without them. We do still have community policing that brings street people to shelters, but there’s no way to keep them there. We also have involuntary commitment procedures, also depending on locality, for the mentally ill - but there are capacity constraints and unpleasant conditions there too.
Actually I already did - it prompted you to make that dumbass moronic excuse for an analogy in a pathetic failed attempt to rebut me, remember?
And to repeat, I’m of the opinion that it’s well within society’s power to house the poor in relatively decent accommodations, and that we should do so - possibly at the cost of reversing a tax cut or two.
I still think rounding them up and putting them someplace safe is the best thing. They can leave as soon as they can show they can be on their own like have a place to stay.
Yeah, that. In fact, incarcerating people in the first place is what causes lot of people with a psychiatric diagnosis to lose the housing that they already had.
It’s kind of like doing a Lizzie Borden on your parents and then telilng the court you should be treated with lenience because you’re an orphan.
It’s only not easy to say if you have enough privilege to assume that you will never be the target of those laws. Otherwise, it’s very easy to say you are more free as a result.
That’s the beauty part of Urbanredneck’s plan. We outlaw being poor, then we lock up poor people in prisons—excuse me, “concentration camps”—until they have jobs. But since they can’t look for jobs, they’ll be there forever, never to befoul our streets again. Brilliant!
But why stop there? We should sterilize them while we’ve got them locked up, so they don’t pass on their lazy, entitled genes to future generations. Only productive people with a sense of personal responsibility should be allowed to reproduce.
We could also use the homeless people for big jobs, like cleaning up toxic waste, oil spills, and things like that. They’d develop a work ethic, and build a sense of esprit de corps. It would be fun—they’d never want to leave!
Oh, and they’d be available for medical experiments too. Think of the incredible scientific advancements that could be made with this enormous pool of human subjects!
It’s amazing to me that nobody’s ever thought of this before. We Dopers truly are the smartest, hippest people on the planet.