No longer a problem in the way-new America.
We are a "Can-Do!" society. One of the really amazing upticks in American society, as I noticed in a brief walk around various neighborhoods in sodden Seattle, is that we have almost completely cleaned up the streets of our cities.
How well I remember those tours through the various skid roads** of the cities I have lived in -- Los Angeles, New York, Boston, and San Francisco --in days of yore. Gone now. All gone. And their wretched refuse along with them.
Take a walk yourself and you will see that it is true.
Nowhere in today's brighter and more-caring American cities will you see those terrible social wrecks on the streets. Yes, no longer will you find "Bums," "Junkies," "Drunks," "Bull-Goose Raving Lunatics," or "The Hard Core Unemployed" on our sidewalks. They are all gone, a fading memory.
Indeed all that are left, strangely rising up from the background noise of the streets, are the blameless and harmless "Homeless."
They are the last social class to be saved by our loving and caring society and their continuing expansion in our cities is a mystery which yearns for a caring social solution.
My own is simple and solves two lingering social problems at once: "Feed the homeless to the hungry."
Problem solved and it is a two-fer. Paging Dr. Swift!
"Feed the homeless to the hungry."
Good Lord, man. You don't want to poison anybody!
Posted by: B. Durbin at January 10, 2007 5:22 PMI work in the "welfare business" here in a large California city which is next to a big bay and has a large orange bridge. I just can't say where.
Our little city has 700,000 people, with over 10,000 "indigent" adults on General Assistance.
We spend over $200,000,000 on "the homeless" every year. Consequently, we have legions of "the homeless" all over town. It is considered brutal to order them out of your doorway when you are trying to open your business in the morning. After all, they are just "the homeless".
If you coddle them, they will come. And they came. And they are still coming.
Rational cities stopped this nonsense long ago.
The solution to "the homeless" is to cut all government social programs that enable them to be "homeless", such as shelters, free food, free medical care, free clothes, and all the other things the city here does to "help" them.
Turn it all back to churches and other private charities. They will help those who want help, and turn away those who do not.
When things get hard enough for "the homeless", they will cease to be "homeless".
Posted by: Scott at January 11, 2007 9:10 AMWe do have a bad habit of romanticizing certain things. I got off the street because somebody took the initiative and got me into hospital. I agree with Scott, all our assistance does is enable the homeless to remain homeless. We want to get people off the street we have to stop making the streets a viable alternative.
And give me no shit about bums and derelicts. Filthy, criminal, diseased. Many are drunkards where they're not addicts, and a fair number have both addicton and mental illness to contend with. The homeless culture also makes it easier for fugitives from the law to hide out. Pedophiles, pederasts, and serial killers are disproportionaltely represented among the homeless.
Time and again local authorities will clear out homeless camps along the San Diego River, only to find the homeless back again just a few days later. Those living nearby complain about public displays of drunkenness, public sex, solicitation for sex, public urination and defecation, and other acts. To be blunt about it, the homeless are rarely victims of circumstance, and they are never knights of the road. The typical bum is a loser, slovenly, antisocial, a thief, a liar, and a user. He manipulates, and games the system with a skill that could take a new venture far if that skill was applied in that direction.
One more thing, the typical homeless man thinks of you as the enemy. An enemy he'd love to see drug down to his level, rather than struggling to raise himself to yours.
Ultimately homelessness is an act of despair, a slow and agonizing suicide in which the dead man seeks to bring others down into the pit with him.
In their novel Inferno Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle have recently deceased science fiction author Alan Carpenter taking a tour of hell. About half-way through the tale Alan realizes what Hell is really for. Hell is where God lays the smack down on people too proud to pay attention in life. People too proud to change their ways and live as productive human beings. I say we start putting the smack down on the homeless, and show them a small taste of what Hell is like.
San Diego CA is now ticketing people for something called "inappropriate sleeping". There are those complaining about this. Those ticketed are saying it denies them a place to sleep. It doesn't. All it's saying is that you can't sleep in certain areas. In public as a matter of fact. You want a place to sleep, find a way off the streets.
Posted by: Alan Kellogg at January 12, 2007 4:02 AMI'll drink to that!
Posted by: Dennis at January 16, 2007 7:56 PMFunny.
Back in the early '90s, municipalities in New Jersey had a problem with landfills running out of room for garbage. They also had growing numbers of bums -- aka, the homeless -- roaming the streets.
I penned an op/ed piece for my employer, a medium-sized daily newspaper, advocating an obvious solution: bus the bums into the dumps, where the could feast on the world's largest, open-air buffet.
My editor spiked it, saying, "Suburban Jersey-ites aren't big on Jonathan Swift."
Great minds, and all that rot.
Posted by: Mike Lief at January 17, 2007 9:51 AM"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.