How’s that old quote go again? “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
This seems like a no-brainer to me… though it probably isn’t. Obviously you have a constitutional right to sleep, wherever you can make space for yourself. If these cities and downs don’t want people sleeping outside, they need to provide indoor space for people who haven’t actually committed crimes. We treat our criminals better than we treat our homeless.
I know this guy who goes to the New York state courthouse everyday to sleep. He doesn’t even try to hide. He does it in an occupied court room during a trial, on tax-paid furniture.
So, they won’t help them and won’t let them be on the streets? Man, homeless folks need to learn to levitate then, so they can sleep in the air instead.
Given these people have nowhere to go why not set aside some public land that allows long term encampments or maybe if it’s a concern about the safety of these encampments, the government could acquire an empty office building and retrofit it with modest accommodations for these peoples.
Or you could just admit it’s not about helping these people it’s about making them go away.
Those are both reasonable solutions and I’m not arguing against them. I just pointed out that this fight isn’t about banning homeless people from sleeping outside. It’s more nuanced than that.
Okay then, why is the solution of making sleeping outdoors illegal bring debated by the highest court in the land? Why is the supreme court of the US even entertaining such an unethical proposition? Doing so is just the US abdicating responsibility for it’s people, and intensifying and welcoming inequality. Why not debate starting housing programmes for people instead, so that people do not have to sleep outside in the first place?
Of course they would. Homeless people aren’t criminals and they can’t make being homeless a crime, per se, so they just do as much as they can to drive them towards crimes. It’ll be safer to avoid being caught if they break in and can be hidden but if they do get caught it’ll be horrendous. They’ll put them in slave camps-I’m sorry, “jails” and away we go.
It is the most heinous shit imaginable and these broken monsters get off to it.
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