I would hope that these behaviors are already illegal under current laws.

>Furthermore, encouraging the homeless to beg and subsist off of random passerby is an incredibly demeaning thing. It encourages the bad element of panhandling, begging, and lies to encourage donations. It creates an atmosphere where the most seriously poorly off end up being "out begged" by the devious looking to snag a quick meal, or beer money.

I agree we shouldn't encourage this behavior. I disagree that we should make the behavior illegal.

>Last, but not least, it completely ruins standardized initiatives to solve the problem. The homeless are less likely to congregate in safe areas where organizations dedicated to help them are located. They're less likely to receive a steady, nutritious diet. They're less likely to be exposed to further job programs and mental health help. They're more likely to sleep in an alley somewhere instead of, at worst, gathering near a shelter, or at best, getting a bed in a shelter where they are safest and most secure.

I'm inclined to suggest that if not "making feeding homeless people illegal and strictly curtailing their movements" completely ruins the standardized initiatives, the standardized initiatives need a lot of work.

My big problem with forcing homeless into these safe areas by making things outside them illegal, is that you end up with "out of sight, out of mind". These programs already don't receive enough attention and support.

This is the intended consequence, not a side-effect.

Cities want to reduce their homeless population, because it's distasteful and discourages consumers in those areas. The place I grew up in gentrified rapidly over the course of the 90's and 00's and homeless people made the rich whites that wanted to go to the starbucks feel uncomfortable. On a large scale this would hurt the economy.

A city in this situation has two options. They can treat the underlying causes of homelessness, build more affordable housing, spend more on mental health, etc. But this is expensive and takes money out of the economy at both ends, because you can always make affordable housing unaffordable and collect more property tax and income tax from the new residents.

So, the city went with the cosmetic option: Make it extremely difficult to be homeless within the areas the city wanted homeless people gone from. This entails a number of very cheap, but very effective changes to the environment to just make it difficult for homeless people to be around:

* They installed bars on benches, so that nobody could sleep on them, and encouraged property owners to install spike strips in doorways so that homeless people couldn't sleep there.

* They installed "help the homeless" parking meters so that people could "give their change to the homeless" (really, give their money to a charity, that would have overhead, administrators to pay, etc., resulting in much less going to homeless people), and made it illegal to panhandle and to give money to pandhandlers.

* They made it illegal to serve food without a license, criminalizing Food Not Bombs (a group that collects and distributes food for free, for everyone, not just homeless people) and also giving food directly to homeless people.

* The few homeless people that remained in the area after they left were harassed by police and driven out directly.

At the same time this was going on, the city was closing shelters and selling the land to developers.

Writ large, no city has any incentive to actually address homelessness when it could just try to drive homeless people out of its borders and make it Not Their Problem. And that's what's happening here.

As an aside, it's disgustingly dehumanizing to refer to homeless people as "the homeless" or as "homeless" in the noun form. These are people. They are exactly like you. As we technologists destroy more and more jobs while simultaneously increasing the degree of inequality in society, we will be causing more and more people to become homeless, so we should be more conscious than normal about this problem and how we can fight it.

You even said it yourself, there's not enough money or support. So save the extra $3 you would otherwise be giving out and make a year end donation to a worthy organization. Maybe give a weekend of free time. That will go miles beyond just throwing cash out of a car window at a random intersection. Ever wondered how many homeless get hit by cars begging at intersections by the way? It's more than you'd like to know.

There is no "solution to homelessness" while there are people made homeless. A society where many people are made homeless is going to be unpleasant. In ways, it should be unpleasant, the unsolved problem, that being the existence of homeless people, should be visible.

The solutions are the existence of jobs, affordable apartments (and mental-health care for those with serious mental disabilities, etc).

Talking about "a solution to homelessness" is essentially saying we need to make intolerable situation orderly - to turn some section of each city into something like an open-air prison. In that sense, "solving homelessness" while there are still homeless is undesirable.

Why not just say, "This is the status quo. I want to change things by --" ?

The reason this article is trending is that the status quo is broken. Instead of outlawing Good Samaritans, why not take the time and make the effort to educate them?

The educational information in your posts is quite valuable and deserves more attention than it is getting.

Part of the problem is the mentality people go into this issue with, and changing that will do wonders for the various initiatives trying to tackle this. That said, it's something I had to go through myself so I should probably be more empathetic

You sound reasonable on first blush but your words are aimed to harm and crush the weak. That you put your apologies for a regime for the policing of the poor in apparently plausible and benevolent terms simply makes your words more harmful.

I think you should be ashamed of yourself.

Edit: Your parent post is very eloquent (if deceptive imho) argument for "give up on helping your fellow human, instead trust the authorities". Are you happy with living in a world like that really?

You can't expect good communication to occur when you restrict it as you suggest. His comment wasn't anywhere near as disparaging as it can get.

I just don't think you should ban panhandling because it punishes the people who need help instead of helping them.

I also don't support the "this behavior creates problems, so ban it" mentality, as it allows people to avoid addressing the underlying issues.

Mindless and even well-intentioned behavior can have as much to do with socially adverse consequences as actual malice or recklessness. The more closely you connect law and morality, the harder it becomes to accept this. But that doesn't change the reality that it's possible for lots of individually well-intentioned choices to add up badly.

It's a legitimate concern, and an obvious downside. However, things like this should be considered in their aggregate effect - there are pros and cons to both approaches, and the one that should win is not the one that sounds good, but the one that makes the most good experimentally.

Your opponent pdeuchler appears to have substantial first-hand experience with what works and what doesn't, while your retort seems a lot more theoretical. I think both of you should elucidate not just the strength of your convictions, but also basis in facts. That's how we will make progress.

edit: didn't mean to imply I don't have first hand experience, I do, but I was also mentored by people who were/are passionate about and extremely involved with this problem. My understanding of the underlying issues comes from both sources

On a relate note - I found that most startup advice is useless, because people who are giving that advise try to summarize their experience (at best) or someone else's experience (at worst), and they inevitably leave out important caveats. Add in some narrative fallacy and it gets completely ruined. If you listen long enough you will find equally convincing, but completely opposing startup advice on any subject. For that reason I only ever listen to first-hand accounts of what happened, not to any "life lessons", "lessons learned", "10 things that every startup should do" etc.

It's an interesting distinction.

...

>The homeless are less likely to congregate in safe areas where organizations dedicated to help them are located.

or in other words, it is harder to ghetto-ize the homeless, to take them off the sight of good citizens. A good citizen just need to know that somebody is taking care of these people, and so s/he don't need to think about that problem, better should forget about it and just mind his/her own business and pay taxes.

To summarize your post as i see it - the homeless people make wrong choice between wonderful services available to them and all the horrors you described, and we need to apply force (i.e. law) to make them make the right choice and to fend off the "good-intentioned" enablers of the wrong choice.

Somehow i don't think that homeless need even more force applied to them than they are already subjected too.

In practice it's extraordinarily hard to centralize the homeless. Like, proving P=NP hard. Consider the nature of the homeless, how they've been treated their whole lives, the way society talks and acts around them, etc. etc. They are not very willing to just hang around. To "ghetto-ize" the homeless would require mass sweeps by police to essentially arrest and forcibly move the homeless population. Yes, we always are in danger of marginalizing the people we're trying to help but that's going to be an easier job for a militarized government force, not a woefully underfunded and understaffed soup kitchen.

However, to the extent that cities seek to solve the problem by making certain behaviors illegal, I am skeptical about how dedicated they are to helping the homeless.

I'd rather force the cities to find new solutions help the homeless rather than allow them to push the homeless towards areas with lower property values (or to other cities).

We should probably make it a pre-requisite for anyone who wants his/her opinion to be considered. First-hand experience is invaluable.

An argument should be able to stand by itself. Remember, when discussing something, you're discussing the points, logic and facts. Not someone's experience. Now fine, they can present their experience/observations as points/facts, and if they're true, then they become part of the argument they're making.

*Edit. Fixed bad grammar. My bad.

The nerve!

Seriously though, I think there are two kinds of arguments - logical arguments from validated facts with statistical control, and opinion arguments from some amorphous expertise.

The former can always stand by itself. Ideally, that would be all we ever need, and we get by in hard sciences quite well with just that.

However in softer areas of human knowledge we don't have the luxury of repeatable experiments, so we have to rely on "expert" opinions. I propose we restrict this to the opinions of people with first-hand experience, because if we don't we're running risk of baseless arguments that will never converge. When two people argue from personal experience, there is always an opportunity for them to compare the direct experience of each other and resolve their differences. When people argue from someone else's experience that opportunity is gone, and all that is left is two people sticking to their believes no matter what.

You will note there aren't any facts mentioned in the GGP post (by trhway), only opinions. I think it's ok to do that, but only if it came from direct exposure to the subject matter.

He chose to sleep outside in a park most of the time because of all these things, as he preferred it to the shelters.

Many of them are, that's the problem!

I'm sure you're well-intentioned, and I'm sure the "smart, experienced people" you speak of are as well. But you have to understand what this thing you're advocating is doing. You're making it illegal for ad-hoc, spontaneous communities to fix their own problems. Essentially, saying that only "parental-figure" government can fix it, via only the approved means. Because, "smart, experienced people" have agreed that this is the best way to do it. You're breeding dependence on the state, and you're commoditizing guilt/empathy/whatever you want to call the thing that is driving free-people to help their fellow man. So then, people can "buy" this feel-good fix by throwing money at the state that promises to take care of the poor, whether it ends up working or not. Instead of actually getting their "fix" by doing the work themselves, or giving it to an organization they feel is doing it the best way.

Politicians use it as a selling point, people feel good giving their money away and getting a fix from it, and social-workers get a salary and probably their own little fix as well. Hint, have a look at this (first search-hit, there were others) if you don't believe the obviously catastrophic failure of the state attempting to help these poor individuals: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/09/the-war-on-...

Calling it a noble effort is just a curtain over the real issue. The state making yet another market illegal and establishing itself as the "approved" monopoly.

Second, you've developed one heck of a straw man. I don't know where people think this law says you "can't feed/help the homeless". It never says that. It makes it illegal to reward destructive behavior patterns. If you want to help or feed the homeless you may do so! Just donate a couple dollars to your local shelter, or spend a night doling out mac n' cheese. Of course, now you can no longer do these things on your own terms, but then again this isn't about you (as in the royal "you"). This is about helping the people that get no help otherwise.

We're trying to encourage the use of the existing community solutions here, not ban them. This "ad-hoc" method of random gift giving that you seem to approve of is actively harmful to both the community and those it aims to help.

And actually (insert meme here), this removes state action from the equation, believe it or not. Police everywhere spend ridiculous amounts of time dealing with unscrupulous panhandlers, jerks who want to mess with the homeless, etc. etc. Now this law is probably just as unenforceable as "don't feed homeless people poison on purpose", but hopefully it creates a culture shift where people are pre-disposed towards more beneficial methods of activism, and the police don't have to worry about ne'er do wells messing with defenseless people, or people taking advantage of other's generosity. Nobody is throwing money at the state, nobody is getting a "fix". In fact, this places more burden upon people to take it upon themselves to support their local organizations, and places a heavier burden on those organizations (because now they have more people to feed! which is an excellent problem to have, because now we have people seeking real help, instead of just trying to make it through the day!).

I appreciate your gracious hints, but I highly recommend you see the problem for yourself instead of relying on knee jerk reactions and the top google result.

The distinction is not between state-owned solutions vs. private solutions, the disctinction is between organized and structured solutions, vs. random hand-outs on the street.

It's hard to kind of shut off the automatic empathy that pops up, but you have to realize these are people just like you that ended up with a serious short stick in life. You need to treat them like that, instead of infantilizing them.

Oh, these are people like you, that's why you can't help them. Just let that sink in...

I guess the conclusion of the parent is that everyone who has any needs must be herded and controlled by professionals and that all human solidarity just makes people lazy, greedy and out-of-control. That is the story of the modern neo-liberal order right?

-from a liberal who agrees with the meat of your opinion 100% but questions the polarized political content

What the GP is talking about seems more neo-liberal than neo-conservative (which are different, overlapping, right-of-center, "conservative" in the sense usually used in politics, movements.)

I feel like Doc Cochran, in Deadwood

Al Swearengen: What the fuck are we talking about?

Doc Cochran: A man being cared for and made comfortable 'til he expires. Girls you put to the task, deduct your time from my pay.

Al Swearengen: I get the bag of shit. Doc Cochran: You get to care for a human being in his last extremity.

Al Swearengen: A human being in his last extremity IS a bag of shit.

Doc Cochran: Aw, FUCK YOU AL!

Any way, with that said, homelessness _is_ a difficult problem, and, yes, some of the homeless _are_ bags of shit. But a lot of them aren't, and it isn't fair to treat all the homeless the same way.

I certainly don't have all the answers. But I have to believe that America, with it's wealth and power, can do a lot better.

I didn't actually want 2 pizzas. On my walk home, I passed a homeless guy that has been in the neighborhood for nearly two years. And he's a really homeless guy. The kind of guy that doesn't have a sign, doesn't ask for anything, and is out there when its 20 degrees in february under a bunch of blankets. He also happens to be nice, I haven't had a conversation with him but he'll say good morning sometimes.

So when I passed by, I gave him the free pizza. He thanked me for it. I felt good about it.

Is it solving the problem that he is homeless? Absolutely not. Neither of thought 1 pizza would do that. But you know what, it was a friday night, someone did something nice for me, I decided to pass it along.

Should that be illegal? How can that be illegal? Imagine if a cop saw me do that and he gave me a ticket. He doesn't know that I can tell the difference between this guy that is on the corner every night for 2 years, and the other guy that is totally faking it and shows up on Saturdays only (when the weather is nice) and loudly asks for change, and I doubt is actually suffering from any of the things listed on the sign.

And how are the police going to tell the difference between me giving a pizza to a homeless guy I don't know, and me giving the pizza to a friend of mine that I texted "hey I got a free pizza, meet at the corner and I'll give it to you". The answer to that is plain old discrimination based on appearance, but no one will say that.

You are 100% right that random acts of kindness will not solve homelessness, but I simply can not see how making this illegal is workable or helpful. It just seems like a great way or nice people to have run-ins with police, and a law that basically can only work with discriminatory enforcement.

However, I did say that I think it's deeply wrong to make it illegal to outlaw street feeding of the homeless. For one thing, it's not going to help. For another I feel deeply that I have the right to help people, and sometimes that means giving them food.

Street-feeding isn't a major factor in any of the homeless people I know, and I know a lot of homeless people. I interact with the homeless several times a week, and have for several years. I volunteer at soup kitchens, talk to them, give them rides, take them to doctors, buy them meals, and loan them money on a regular basis. Some of them are close personal friends.

As far as I can tell you want to see it made illegal to feed the homeless -- fair enough. However, there is nothing stopping the homeless from going to shelters or the city/county/state to get help right now. But without more resources for those programs there is very little that will change long-term.

If you are worried about exposing the homeless to programs I think it would be better for the police to have more mental health training, or a social worked they could call, or something similar. As far as I know, most of the soup kitchens around here already have a social worker on staff, but maybe they could have more available. The point is that I'm sure it could be improved, but making it illegal to street feed the homeless just isn't the answer you seem to think it is.

As far as a solution to homelessness goes -- I don't think there will ever be anything like a complete solution. However, I think putting a lot more money into social services and human development programs will help, as will directly funding shelters and government programs will be a tremendous help. But the best thing, the thing homeless people really need? People who actually care about them and try to directly help them. It's about human contact. It's about getting out and talking to them. Maybe I can't solve their problems, but I can make it better for a little while. And sometimes that's enough.

Many homeless I've spoken with on the subject consider homeless shelters unsafe places (more than once someone has told me that they are worse than being in prison).

Shelters don't provide adequate mental health services and due to curfews and wait times are not useable by people looking for employment. That eliminates them as useful services for the two largest homeless populations: those homeless due to mental illness, and those homeless due to being poor. Zero-tolerance drug policies eliminate shelters as an option for alcohol and drug addicts.

What's most telling is that the homeless by choice (train hoppers, gutter punks) won't go anywhere near shelters.

What does work are long-term mental health facilities, wet houses, and free abortions. The idiotic conservative rhetoric in the United States will keep these solutions from being implemented: "taxes!" "bunks for drunks!" "fetuses are people!"

Unfortunately, this is not a field for experimentation. People whose job is to take care of others can suggest this line of thinking, but to me, the problem is not to justify and pay those helping but to solve the underline problem. It is easy to say one thing and mean another. What are you fighting for? Your job, your career, your research, or do you really care <bold> beyong your own interest <bold> for the well being of all those people who are really suffering?

My first reaction to such laws was that it was mainly upper middle class and above folks who would be the only ones supporting such bans. A NIMBY mentality gone too far. Clearly my first reaction was wrong. There are other reasons, as you elucidated, to be in favor of this ban.

The areas where organizations dedicated to help the homeless are located are almost never, to even a first approximation, "safe areas". They are quite often in nearly the worst parts of the city they are in to start with, and often made less safe by the congregation of the homeless there.

> They're more likely to sleep in an alley somewhere instead of, at worst, gathering near a shelter, or at best, getting a bed in a shelter where they are safest and most secure.

Many homeless avoid shelters because their experience is that crimes against their person and meagre property are more common in shelters than otherwise. Its probably reasonable to say that in shelters there is less danger from the elements, but it is far less clear that they are "safest and most secure" considering the totality of the circumstances.

My experience volunteering with them says that it's a mix of mental illness/behavioral issues and bad luck. While the precise mix varies by individual, so there may be 100% bad luck cases, I've found some mix to be more common.

I do agree that they need support. The local shelter was just telling us one of their success stories, where a formerly-homeless person had become a manager at a local Amazon warehouse with support from them.