Public spaces belong to the public by right. And the unhoused public, who have the greatest need for public spaces, have therefore the greatest right

MrMakabar , 10 months ago

Seriously public housing and universal basic income should make sure that I do not have to see some improvised shelters on public squares. This should not happen.

stabby_cicada OP , 10 months ago

I hope that's just bad phrasing. You are not the victim. The problem is not that you have to see the improvised shelters. The unhoused people in that photo are the victims - of economic injustice, of discrimination, of the myriad social failures of our society and government. Their problem is lack of shelter. They solve it with improvised shelters in public spaces.

I want to emphasize this because it's a way of thinking that's very hard to maintain in a society so prejudiced against homeless people. Tent cities and improvised shelters and unhoused people sleeping on the streets are not problems. They are solutions, used by the unhoused, to the problem of lack of shelter.

Those solutions are suboptimal, obviously, and cause other problems, including your own negative emotional reaction to seeing them.

But if government and society see tent cities and improvised shelters as problems to be eliminated, instead of bad solutions to the deeper problem of housing inequity, government and society will implement "solutions" that merely relocate or eliminate the shelters to remove them from sight, and leave the unhoused even worse off than before.

MrMakabar , 10 months ago

Why do you think public housing and universal basic income would not solve the actual underlieing problem of forced homlessness. I have no problem with people camping and large tent cities are perfectly fine, but there needs to be facilities around, which provide some basic services like toilets, waste removal and so forth. So I rather have nomads living in places with some infrastructure to help them out, rather then some random street. However I suspect a lot of people would rather live in proper public housing then in a tent like that.

CarbonatedPastaSauce , 10 months ago

It’s not the sheltering that most people object to, it’s the open drug use, violence, theft, and sanitation issues.

If we as a society would just help these people get some stability, starting with housing, the vast majority of these folks would get their lives back together. We pay more to deal with the other problems homelessness creates, all in the name of not giving someone a “handout”. It’s nonsensical and shameful.