Yep, even the subways in Times Square have gone all Cartoon Town.
They are all in the Bronx off the exits on the I87 and I95. They are persistant and occasionally scary, especially when they knock on your window after you told them no and are trapped between two cars at a red light.
It happened in Canada to some extent. Many provinces gave their homeless and welfare recipients one-way bus tickets to Vancouver. I was under the impression that San Francisco also recieved a large influx this way too.
First, I was mostly facetious about the wilderness part, but not so much about the relocating them to somewhere else part.
It just strikes me as an extraordinarily poor use of resources to spend $200k per year on homeless people, and see no improvement in their situation.
It would be cheaper to imprison them (avg cost per year: $30k) than the way it’s currently going!
It just seems to me that at $200k/year, we’re just pissing that much money away, and it’s a seriously non-trivial amount. Just think of what a city could do with another $10 million a year (50 homeless worth).
If simply getting a job were a solution, then very few people would be homeless, spingears. There are many reasons for a person to become homeless, but two of the most common are untreated mental illness (which makes finding, and keeping a job, nearly impossible), and unable to financially afford a home. (I’ve never lived in NYC, but I would imagine finding a decent place to live on a 40 or 50 hour per week minimum wage salary is near impossible. Factor in transportation, daycare if needed, and other living expenses, and well…the buck isn’t going far.)
As far as those jobs that “other refuse”–I was to NYC recently, and saw many of those jobs you list being done–by city employees!
Actually, there is a reason that most of them disappeared from Manhattan. It turns out that the NYC police actually began to investigate them and discovered that many of them had rap sheets for much more serious crimes. So when they weren’t squeegeeing, they were robbing old ladies and beating people up for money. As soon as they saw their peers being hauled off to prison, the others left too.
Anyone else see that Subway picture and think, “If they can spend the money for fancy shiny signs like that, maybe they should be spending more on the homeless.”
Although as I’ve learned in this thread, more money isn’t necessarily the solution.
Validation!