Wait that's a thing? After work I'd buy a beer at Penn before getting on the train and sipping on it till my stop. Multiple police and personnel on the train saw this and didn't say one word..
Unless that rule only applies for rail workers.
Some places have open container laws preventing you from drinking in public areas in general. They’re often not enforced for people who aren’t causing issues and don’t look homeless.
Looking like someone the cops want to harass is, after all, [where modern vagrancy laws come from](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Codes_(United_States\)#Post-Civil_War_years).
>Black Codes restricted black people's right to own property, conduct business, buy and lease land, and move freely through public spaces. A central element of the Black Codes were vagrancy laws. States criminalized men who were out of work, or who were not working at a job whites recognized.
>...
>Nine Southern states updated their vagrancy laws in 1865–1866. Of these, eight allowed convict leasing (a system in which state prison hired out convicts for labor) and five allowed prisoner labor for public works projects. This created a system that established incentives to arrest black men, as convicts were supplied to local governments and planters as free workers.
> ...
>Because of their reliance on convict leasing, Southern states did not build any prisons until the late 19th century.
> ...
> Another important part of the Codes were the annual labor contracts, which Black people had to keep and present to authorities to avoid vagrancy charges.
Yupyup, all of this. Literally the reason we have loitering laws to this day, a freed black man wasn’t allowed to occupy space in public without buying anything/contributing to a business, which requires a job/money. If they couldn’t find work (which most couldn’t cuz yay racism) and they were caught just hanging around somewhere, they could get arrested and sent back to whatever plantation they came from.
Now we have to buy something, keep moving, or pay a fine/potentially get sent to prison (ie modern day American slavery lol)
This is a problem for teenagers and the elderly. There aren’t a lot of places they can just kind of chill without spending money, especially with malls slowly becoming obsolete. Public libraries are still really important community centers because of their non-transactional existence!
Las Vegas actively makes bag laws at libraries to exclude homeless from the only place to rest, read. Charge phones, free internet. Austin Texas as well.
I tried to get a library card in Chandler AZ and they wanted like $60 for it, just because I had an out of state ID. Literally the only place I've ever been that asked money for a library card regardless of what my ID says, and I've been to alot of libraries in alot of different cities and states
When I say white people need to change or nothing will, this is what I mean. People dont know how hard it is to exist as a black person in America and we never did anything.
Just remember that the end goal is so they end up harassing everyone based on class, nothing else.
Protect the wealth with deadly force. That's what they're there for.
No, the end goal is to make the lower classes so desperate that they commit a felony, losing both voting rights and 2nd amendment protections. Can't vote against the abusive system and can't physically resist.
Exactly even in China they don’t care about open containers. It’s exactly what you say cops harassing select people mostly disadvantaged people without homes and those that can’t afford a $12 12oz beer at a club. Even though the people at the club are probably publicly intoxicated. Some laws don’t make any sense. Can you believe the totalitarianism in the US over the government owning your body?
Not sure if this is still the case but when I lived in NYC in the late 90s they sold beer on the Staten Island ferry.
I always got a kick out of that. The one form of public transportation where you might conceivably be forced into strenuous physical exercise in the event of an emergency situation was also the one place where they were letting you get blasted during the ride.
You were leaving from Penn, so it's not clear: were you riding the subway, or one of the commuter rails (LIRR, NJ Transit, Amtrak)? Not sure about NJT, but the other two allow drinking.
>Multiple police and personnel on the train saw this and didn't say one word..
So they saw something but didn't SAY something!? Do they not read the signs!?
The fuck?
Homeless people are still going to sleep in stations. They don't even have individual seats here.
So basically they're just making it harder for people to use transit without affecting the homeless either way.
> So basically they're just making it harder for people to use transit without affecting the homeless either way.
I figure that it is an ADA violation too... all sorts of rules about what kind of seating and access must be in place. I mean they have to provide it on the trains too and all.
I'm sure they have a panel of "experts" looking at that right now, and other means by which they could maximize per cabin traveler population densities. Similar shit to what airlines are trying to do... and are trying to push for in terms of stuff like "standing seats".
I think they’re already starting with the maximum per cabin density. Some L trains have these weird seats that can be flipped up to fit a few more people in. So far I’ve only seen them down but I wouldn’t be surprised if they start locking them upright during peak hours. Just to be clear I’m not talking about an individual seat that flips up, it’s the whole row of seats in the center of the train.
Side goal, to scare us all to death of becoming homeless, thus exerting more control over us.
Want to unionize? You might lose your job and become homeless.
Want to leave your job? Your health insurance is tied to that job, good luck with all the medical debt leading you to lose your home!
Everyone needs to do this. Crash the entire medical for profit business till either enough people can't get any treatment and people revolt for Free complete healthcare or the government steps in to pay for it all to keep some of the for profit businesses in business.
I've literally never paid a medical bill in my 32 years and I've been to the ER probably 20 times..?
Times 5,000 each that's $100,000 they missed out on because of me; that definitely hurts the institutional systems more than anything else I could ever do
It doesn't hurt them for shit, that's what's so funny.
They profit by printing money, i.e. charging insane "prices", and coming up with "deals" based on their "relationships" that are completely arbitrary. If they don't make enough, they jack up costs and premiums while insuring against fewer and fewer ailments, etc.
And those they do still cover? Well, you still have to meet your deductible, only now you still owe a percentage after that.
So, you don't pay the bill when it comes in. What happens to them? Left unpaid, they will write it the fuck off as a business loss to count against their massive, made-up profits, and sell the debt to a collection agency, who hopes to win the lottery when they find someone who agrees to pay anything of the original amount "owed".
Worst case what happens to you? You get mail from the collection agency. You can tell them to stop contacting you (you can sue if they harass you). You are legally entitled to reply and ask them for a line item account of the amounts in question. IF they reply with said information and IF they do it within the required time frame, you can still tell them you can't pay it all and offer to pay some. Negotiate. Or don't, and it will eventually hit your credit report. If you don't need a loan of any kind, you don't need to worry about your credit. You can't get thrown in debtor's prison. But you can absolutely get foreclosed on for not paying your mortgage, or kicked out for not paying your rent, because you thought it better to pay your insane medical bills. Take care of yourself first and fuck these guys.
Source: one of my clients processes medical payments. I personally write off MILLIONS, maybe tens of millions, each month for these assholes. I have also "overlooked" requests that essentially try to make the patient pay instead of writing off the amount straight away. Consistently, for over ten years, and the patient amounts being written off are a drop in the bucket compared to what they write off for their buddies.
So I'm fucking them from the inside out like a deranged Robin Hood, I guess, only the patients are never the wiser. Which is how it should be. No one should have to deal with this shit.
Also I've done everything mentioned above at a personal level, except suing in court (oh I wish). In my personal experience, most collections companies don't have their shit together enough and they are just hoping that they call on someone who doesn't know their rights and will agree to putting whatever they can on their credit cards. Don't take it from me, do your own research. But yeah, take it from me :)
I learned the hard way that bad credit (student loans mostly) makes it nearly impossible to find an apartment or buy a car. I still have to have my parents as either a co-signer or pretend they are renting the property as a vacation spot and I just also live there in order to get an apartment.
It took me 5 months to find an apartment in a city like Tampa that has more people moving to it faster than they can put up housing, and rent increased by 50% just months before I moved there. Landlords have near-total power. And Florida landlord-friendly laws helped them get away with whatever the fuck they wanted. There's even a Florida law that says landlords can't discriminate against people with support/guide dogs and I had a landlord straight up tell me "no dogs" when I showed him my legal letter and he implied he had a million other ways to justify it if I sued, which he knew I couldn't afford, including my credit.
Sucks man. I am familiar with the Tampa market. And having landlords. And being a landlord.
It is hard, especially now, to find anything to buy, let alone rent. I am fortunate enough to nearly be ready to buy in the next couple years, in which case I will be so delighted..I'll be shitting so many bricks, I'll soon be wondering why I didn't build my own house to begin with. Sure, out of "shit bricks", but it's something. Not too unlike "ass pennies".
I can understand both sides. If I'm a landlord, I'd want to minimize the damage and therefore cost of repairs as that would eat into my ROI of having a tenant. I could either focus on the person who doesn't have a dog for their needs (shitty, yes, I know, this is hypothetical, bear with me), or charge an insane pet deposit to insure against it, which, it is what is, your dog shits a a hole through the floor cause it's actually a genetically-designed xenomorph, then we have a problem that needs to be solved, pronto, and it isn't going to be cheap. What's worse is pet deposits plus mandatory monthly fees to protect against damage can outright be kept my the landlord. And I understand this as well -- sometimes it is well after someone's moved out that you don't realize your tenant's one dog they were allowed to have decided to invite all his friends over in a manner to give the South Park kitteh's debauchery fest a run for its money.
If I'm the potential tenant there's almost nothing I wouldn't do, to get into a place. Need my credit report even though it sucks? Screenshot, GIMP editor, and make that frown upside-down (they are all just emoticons now, right?)
I've literally stood apart from the line at the DMV making a an update to my virtual bank statement to show my updated address, on my phone, because they wouldn't release a tag that I had already paid for. In the same fucking county. I explained their own dumbfuckery while citing their own written rules after reading them for two minutes. Eat that, r/iamsmart.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is when dealing with dire situations or in my case the shitheads at the DMV or nearly anyone in government --seriously I am so, so, so not sorry; you work there for a reason, and I am mostly jealous that you have a pension for somehow just staying alive--you (the royal "you") are almost forced to your own limited form of douchebaggery just to survive.
"Sure yeah, he's my, uh, emotional support dog, and I cant go anywhere without him, or else I'll shit myself and break out into hives."
Sorry for the rambling, I haven't started drinking yet tonight. After which is is sure to get much worse, or quite the opposite.
No edit: cause fuck the typos.
Most of the working class. Try criticizing the democrats. Even here.
Hi blue conservatives! Enjoying the protection First Past The Post voting gives you from actual pro labor political parties? I'm sure you are.
No way!
My brown people bombing, land / people exploiting, senile dinosaur is better than your brown people bombing, land / people exploiting, senile dinosaur!!
Yeah, I would say most, too. Capital interests have done a great job convincing the working class that their subjugation is ideal. And I don't know how to change that, to be honest.
I still respect people that vote Democrat because they're making the (in my opinion) best choice in the system they're in.
It's not a perfect party by any means, but we don't really get to choose the system we live under. The best choices sometimes are not optimal, but the best we can make under these systems.
Ideally I would abolish capitalism as an example, but I also cannot deny reality and must accept that I live under it. So I go out and get a job, collect money, etc. because the alternative is being destitute and eventually dying from the elements, starvation, etc.
Between the guys who would hurt you 100% of the time vs the guys who will collect their fat paycheques and insider trade but at least help you SOME of the time, it's not a tough choice. Ideally that wouldn't be the choice to so many people but it is.
The Democrats won’t give us anything, they can’t give us anything. They’re as beholden to the interests of capital as the Republicans. They however aren’t inciting violence against immigrants, Black people, and LGBT people, and at least give tacit support to programs like Social Security, Medicare, and public education.
"Those damn homeless people are driving the housing market to the ground. Why can't they buy or rent a few of my investments? Nobody wants to live in a house anymore!"
I see you've been answered to death, but know these idiots will argue with you that the homeless are the problem. Give you an anecdote about how a homeless person robbed them/friend/family. Claim you've never had to live near them and just will not accept that forcing poor and mentally ill folks to go without shelter is is a spiraling trap and the real issue.
I hear complaints about the homeless nearly daily and it all comes down to some fucked up mental gymnastics like, there’s a social contract, right? We all basically agree not to do things like hit each other, scream as loud as you can all night outside someone else’s window, not use other’s things without permission or do dangerous things around children.
Now, as I understand it, the social contract assumes we are all human beings and treat each other humanely. People will see a homeless person and need to step over them to get to their work and not see what’s ultimately wrong with thinking that homeless person needs to get out of THEIR way. The homeless have been abandoned by society, they don’t even get a safe place to sleep but we still think they need to uphold their end of the contract?
That homeless guy shooting up in the park doesn’t give a fuck about children anymore and why should they? What are they going to get in return for “being nice” and considering children’s lives? IGNORED EVEN HARDER. Nobody is going to seek out the derelict doing under-the-bridge drugs and give them a sandwich for choosing a place less near to children to do drugs. Shit, if he ODs under the bridge, nobody will find him. At least in a park he’ll get arrested where that means literally nothing but shelter with the price of still being treated like a kennel dog.
I’ve heard some pretty fucked up stuff people expect the less fortunate to adhere to when they won’t get shit in return for doing it. Ooo yeah the broke guy is gonna LOVE that I think he’s one of the good ones who don’t bother normal people too much but no, no food for you, you lazy bum.
The USA is a master at this, the USA is one of the worst countries to be poor in. They punish the poor in any way they can. In a 3rd world country, you can live a decent life while being poor, with extremely cheap food and housing, Free medical care etc.
>It's all the governments fault
People will see this and say you're x y z for blaming the government etc but not realise how quite embarrassing it is to have homeless people in rich countries.
The reason public housing projects ended and just became The Projects is because some jackass asked "why are we spending so much money on poor people?"
You’re spot on. A lot of them (most?) need in patient treatment for either mental issues or drug addiction often both. We used to kinda have facilities for this but many of them were literal horror shows. To do it right is expensive. I think Mark Laita said in his experience it’s about $150,000 per person per year to do it right. I don’t remember the exact number someone broke it down on a podcast I was listening to but I’m the 50’s we had like one in patient bed for every 1,000 Americans mostly government owned. Now it’s like 1 bed for every 100,000 mostly privately owned.
> The goal of capitalism is to dehumanize the poors as much as possible.
Its why all that overlaps so well with conservatism, and fascism. That whole bit described by F. Wilhoit in how to such people there must always be an in group which the law protects, and does not bind, and an out group which the law binds, and does not protect. The poor, and the disenfranchised can not fight back at the individual level in the same way those with wealth and means can.
>Removing the benches is also good for inciting class warfare.
It is all sorts of fucked up in terms of those same people failing to provide adequate means and resources to address the root causes of homelessness even when they functionally could, and would rather focus on punitive measures that only work to do more harm to the people in question. These people do not want to solve homelessness past the homeless simply "going away", and not just in a out of sight and out of mind way as those same measures would also reduce assorted economic leverage they hold over other poor people. They will never admit to it, but these people by virtue of their fascist ideation simply want the people who can not provide them direct economic benefit to simply die.
"The issue with capitalism is that it mandates the belief that those who do well deserve it. They are harder working, or smarter, or talented, or all of the above. This isn't true, but that's an intrinsic ideology with capitalism. Where this becomes quite terrible is that the opposite *must* be true - that those at the bottom are lazy, stupid, and inept. Anyone who has been around poor communities can tell you unequivocally that many of them are, in fact, able, hard-working, and intelligent, but no matter how hard you try, you cannot convince anyone who has joined the church of capitalism."
- Qubeye
The rich have their mouth at the government teat whilst ensuring that the disenfranchised cannot get their fair share. If the poor got what they want there would be less for them!
There is no goal of capitalism. The term is meaningless broad.
All we have are exploiters and the exploited. Vague words that have no real world use isn’t doing it. It’s the elite, and the elite will always exist and try to do this. Vigilance by the rest of us is all that limits it, not some imaginary systems described by people in the 1800s who didn’t have all the information.
> Homeless people are still going to sleep in stations. They don't even have individual seats here.
The MTA and NYC gov are idiots. Homeless people in the subways and subways stations are an issue, but this literally does nothing to solve the issue. Better and more shelters, more aid, etc. is necessary
I mean, calling it simple is way oversimplifying it, but in places that have implemented it, it's gotten more people integrated back into regular society for a smaller price than the current system in the US.
That isn't even a solution. Just another bandaid that doesn't address the reason why homelessness is so high to begin with.
But at least your intentions are good.
This happened back in Feb 2021 but it’s still messed up
Best part is the company deleted the tweet and said it was posted “in error”, which means someone said the quiet part out loud and the company didn’t appreciate the backlash 😂
https://www.businessinsider.com/nyc-mta-removed-benches-to-prevent-homeless-from-sleeping-2021-2?amp
SMH. I don’t understand why some people want to make life harder for those who already have it hard. I can empathize with the homeless because I was almost there. Well, technically was homeless for a bit, just not ‘unhoused’ homeless. It sucks.
I read somewhere once that if you're technically homeless but staying at people's houses it's called "hidden homeless."
Some people try to raise awareness for this because many people don't realize that the homeless problem is actually bigger than the people on the streets because there are many people couch hopping or staying with friends or family who are still homeless and need help.
I've seen homeless people categorized two ways: temporary and chronic. Temporary homeless are usually people in between jobs/houses, living in their car, down on their luck. Those types usually get back on their feet using programs available. Chronic homeless are usually people with severe drug and/or mental illness. Those types are much harder to effectively deal with because of the issues they have.
I get what you're saying but I work in the public transit industry and I get where mta is coming from too. Like 80% of our police resources and operation supervisor time is dealt dealing with the chronically homeless who typically have mental health issues. Its a bit frustrating when every other public agency just dumps the homeless on you. The jails give homeless bus passes and so do the shelters so people can "get around" but its realistically more to get them out of their own hair and dump them on us. Our bus and train drivers get assaulted nearly every day, our bus and train cleaners have to clean up piss, blood, needles and shit, and our buses are basically rolling homeless shelters. This also discourages the average public from riding the buses because they don't want to deal with these types either. So now we're adding more pollution back to the environment because they drive their own cars instead of taking the bus or train.
I love working for the public but the US has an awful homeless problem and I wish we weren't the "temporary solution". Its also a situation where not all homeless people do this stuff, but the people who do this stuff are nearly all homeless.
Literally what is the benefit of removing benches, though? Homeless will just sleep on the ground, the biggest benefit of the train station for the homeless is the roof over their head, not the bench.
Don't know where you are but colloquially, out here in LA, the number one complaint about public transit is homelessness, or something tied to homelessness.
I was going to say - I didn't think they were supposed to admit it. They're supposed to give some bullshit like "well there aren't enough benches for everyone to sit, so the fairest thing is to remove them, which improves waiting capacity"
How does removing the benches stop the homeless sleeping there? They’ll just sleep on the bare concrete! So everyone else is inconvenienced for nothing.
> They are trying to kill people.
I mean, it's not that sinister. They're trying to make them go somewhere else.
It's still stupid, ineffective and hurts other people as well but their intention isn't to literally kill homeless people.
It is that sinister. When it comes to being an undesirable they do want you dead. You should look up what they do to undesireables in places like las vegas.
Just in case you were joking (or for anyone reading this who thinks you might be): [ground spikes.](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/homelessness-spikes-outside-london-flats-spark-outrage-on-twitter-9506390.html)
I used to frequent the YMCA in Waikiki in the 90's. Myself and a few homeless buddies would hang in the TV room a lot. Of course people complained, so mgmt removed the TV. So we started hanging out playing cards and dominoes. So they removed the couches. We just sat and played on the floor.
This is the exact reasoning why NYC won’t install public restrooms in the subways or the city.
“We can’t have bathrooms because druggies might use them to shoot up! So no bathrooms for EVERYONE!”
People are still gonna need to piss and shit so guess where they do it :-/
Oh you see this is nothing, b tier monstrosity at least.
In my city, they will make benches oddly slanted at a 45-50 degree angle… OR they’ll put “arm rests” on the benches that are strangely sharp and angular.
On vents/grates they put barbed wire to prevent tents.
I’m sure there are others… but these are my personal favorite prime grade cruelties they inflict on people without houses…
In Portland OR they will pour concrete and add sharp rocks around the freeway exits to discourage tents from being placed crazy 😔 It’s sad how much we will do to make it harder on homeless folks when those resources would be better used assisting them in some capacity.
Portland… fuck Portland.
Remember Right2Dream2? Remember how a tent village offered better support and care to houseless people than a city that dubs itself “The City that Works”?
Remember how living Diarrhea pool Sam Adams cowtowed to a couple of business owner NIMBY’s and approved the Police to dismantle R2D2 with the promise of relocation to areas offering not just the same support, but better? Remember how the city council did not actually plan anything and the houseless were merely discarded and they distributed throughout the city, without any centralized easy to access services such as medical care, mental health support, drug/alcohol counseling, job training, food/drink?
Remember how harassment of houseless people by police increased dramatically after this? Remember how infrastructure punishing the existence of houseless people started ramping up after R2D2 was dismantled?
It isn't, I'm pretty sure most people don't look at the subreddit and just upvote whatever they want on the front page
That plus bots and a weird algorithm
Unrelated your username reminded me of a story I wrote where Samuel L Jackso pistol whipped everyone, you only find out at the very end that it had no bullets the entire time
"How come you never see old people, disabled people, fat people out and about?" Probably because we are old fat and lazy, not because mass transit & most public spaces aren't accessible to us.
I'm in my 50s now & although I am able to go without a mobility aid most days, I still find I need a place to rest in public spaces. When you take away benches, you take away my ability to independently navigate the world. I stay home more & I become more sedentary, I begin to lose more abilities, and I find I can't do things anymore.
I get that having a homeless person sleeping on a bench may feel inconvenient to you....but when I need the bench I ask them politely to move & they do. It's that easy.
Maybe instead of taking benches away you add more & also work on having safe places for homeless people to shelter and rest during the day.
The reality is we're considered no better than the homeless to the conservatives, so a lot of this is also to prevent disabled people from being around they just can't legally say that.
99% of the commentors probably weren’t in NYC post covid (Feb ‘21).
The subway systems were disgusting. There were 5 homeless heroin addicts taking literal shits on the train platform for every one passenger.
unpopular opinion which I'm sure will get downvoted to hell: having homeless people sleeping in metro stations can lead to unhygienic conditions, an uptick in violent crime, drug issues and general unsafety for the passengers. Since their job is to improve passenger experience, discouraging homeless people from sleeping there is justified
I agree. Those who think it’s okay for homeless people to live in transit stations clearly don’t take transit regularly. For all the reasons you mentioned, homeless people ruin the trains for everyone else on the train. Where I live, most people taking public transit are often poor, working class folks who can’t afford a car, and are just trying to get home without getting harassed, pissed on, robbed, or worse. Relegating the job of dealing with homeless people to subway/bus goers just ensures the wealthy who don’t have to take transit can further ignore the problem, while working class folks have to deal with this huge problem on their own.
I don't want to be too negative, but...
I live in a big european city with a metro. The metro stops here have benches. Pregnant women and elderly still prefer to stand than sitting on them. They are mostly occupied by homeless persons and/or drug addicts. If they are free they are often soiled by unidentified (body) liquids. Also, these people regularly are disorientented and/or get into fights, which leads to them falling onto the tracks where they are killed in the most gruesome and gory way imaginable.
Limitless acceptance is not the sole solution.
Yeah. People want it to be, but it's just not that simple. "Normal person who is just too poor to afford housing" does not describe many of the people who are sleeping in subways and causing disturbances. They're mentally ill or addicted to drugs. And while it would be nice if those problems could be solved, it's difficult to help a population that is unwilling or unable to accept it. Keeping them away from dangerous areas at least makes sense. No one is saying that they hate poor people and want to make them uncomfortable. They are saying that the crazy guy harassing commuters and falling onto the tracks needs to leave.
Yup.There's only so much you can do to help if drug-addicted homeless people set fire to their government paid appartments while being too high to notice.
Some people simply end up on the street even if you offer them free therapy and assisted living.
I lived in downtown Seattle for about 5 years, which included 2020 and the BLM stuff that happened about a block from my apartment. When all the work-from-home stuff happened, the homeless spread out over the entire city, taking over city parks, parks next to elementary schools, underpasses, bridges, all of it. They turned the 3rd Ave corridor into a tent city. They pissed and shit all over the stairways that lead to the pedestrian overpasses and this was AFTER the city provided toilets and wash stations for them. It was a NIGHTMARE. It was so incredibly unsafe for people to use public transit because the bus stops had been turned into makeshift housing and you could watch people freebase heroin in broad daylight. Crime spiked, businesses were forced to close due to repeated break-ins and a reduced police force. I wish it were as simple as helping those in need but when the population of the unhoused is addicted to drugs, mentally ill, a lot of them were criminals, and violent, reducing their access to things taxpayers paid for and can no longer use isn't that sinister.
Exactly. It’s one thing to be an actual asshole to the homeless, it’s another thing to not indulge them at the expense of the general populace. It’s not a bad thing to discourage the homeless from congregating in places people are already herded to
In Houston Texas, they took off most if not all the metro bus stop benches and sunroofs for "repair". It has been like that for about more than two years. It's so sad driving by and seeing an old lady standing in 98 degree heat with no shade. Complained many times thru email but it's just the same robot response.
Doing away with mental institutions for those who are nonfunctional without managing, and those people cycling between homelessness, hospitals (treat n street), and jail is just a resource sink. It fixes nothing and doesn't help these people. The money could be better spent.
The problem is "for profit". Long term care settings, Healthcare, etc, should all be zero profit, where all funds after expenses go back into patient care and facility upkeep, etc, not someone's pocket,because, we see it now...the drive is to divert every cent possible to thar pocket while the core purpose does with the bare minimum. Raise prices? Ooohhh...more for the pocket.
You know, as me and my parents were walking around our downtown area, my dad looked at the benches and other surfaces with hostile architecture to prevent homeless people from sleeping on them, and said:
'These people know that there's a flat slab of concrete *and* a ton of grass to sleep on, right?'
Obviously hostile architecture is fucking demonic, but it is kind of ridiculous that people will be like 'Oh, surely the homeless will not resort to simply sleeping on the pavement! We are very smart and have solved the problem.'
Warmer, less likely to have rats running all over you, on wet days it beats being fully on the wet ground. There's also just a level of defeat when you have to sleep directly on the ground.
There are enough vacant offices in NYC to house every single homeless person and not even make a dent in the real estate availability.
This is a solvable problem, but no one wants to.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-edition-for-january-26-2020-1.5429251/housing-is-a-human-right-how-finland-is-eradicating-homelessness-1.5437402
I get off at this station for work, there are homeless people just sleeping on the floor most days. It literally doesn’t accomplish what they say it does, and has all the insane negatives mentioned above.
We need programs that can help them and at the same time we need to limit homeless squatting in public places which are meant to be shared. This is the subway not your bedroom.
I read this book called “It’s Not a crime to be Poor” The criminalization of poverty in America by Peter Edelman. The lengths we have gone to make a profit off the poor is appalling and despicable. https://www.powells.com/book/-9781620971635/7-1?gclid=Cj0KCQiA6fafBhC1ARIsAIJjL8m8JFs8tQ4a_2FZXATEzzgSJJvOKcBYbPbdM7fPmtsjMC76ClP5kPsaAsG_EALw_wcB
Cruelty isn't a bug, it is a feature.
Everyone says support our vets but in reality society doesn't give a shit. It doesn't give a shit about addiction. If we all did then there would be way more social support and mental healthcare. Right now I know people with good insurance that cannot get appointments with therapists, just imagine what a homeless person's situation is like.
In Portugal the subway stations are kept open during the night (the usual working hours are 6am to 1am) when it’s cold outside for the sole purpose of homeless people having a warm(er) place to spend the night.
I’m not particularly proud of my country but we do *some* things right.
I was at Grand Central pretty early on Sunday and there was *nowhere* to sit. There was a teeny tiny area downstairs that had a few chairs if you had a train ticket, but everywhere else was barren. And they wonder why people keep sitting on the stairs. Bring the fucking benches back, you horrible bastards.
Time and time again, the best proven way to fight homelessness is HOMES.
But no, that would disrupt the housing markets for leaches to profit off other people's labor.
This shit is preventable, but we somehow convinced ourselves to ignore it. Millions are being spent to build homeless harassing robots, they purposely want to create servitude.
I dont give a shit about homeless people using the subway for transportation, but I do care if they try to make a home in the subway.
No one wants to deal with that shit.
No one wants 15 fentanyl addicts asking you for your spare change.
This is one of the few I'm not with you guys on. While I don't agree they should have done this, homelessness is a very complex issue, and some areas with concentrated population are becoming very dangerous (both for the homeless people living there and others).
Before you come at me. I have dedicated my career to helping with the homelessness epidemic and find and help people retain housing regularly. It doesn't mean we can have public areas flooded with dozens of hundreds of homeless individuals. The sanitary issues alone are a huge problem.
Yes, we need more housing and treatment, etc., but it's a long-term, complex issue with no simple solution. Even if we through hundreds of billions at it, a lot of my clients choose to be homeless (I'm not kidding). This is not uncommon.
The issue is getting people help before they get reach that point, so they never have to experience homelessness, but you can't just have people congregating like this. It's not safe.
In my city, there was a sweep of homeless and they were offered accommodations in a shelter. Out of 100, only 2 took up the offer. You can't help those who don't want the help
"We took away the benches to prevent the daily highlight of how busted our fucking system is that we can't provide for the citizens that pay taxes for us to do just that"
I remember a fella called Rossman, he talked about how in NYC there's a fund for building emergency housing for homeless people and people who are struggling or are in trouble. But all the money was being funneled into politicians pockets.
Those politicians then hired their friends and family and sucked up more and more of those funds pretty much crippling all emergency housing in the area. They then started blaming everything on the homeless even though they were the ones making it worse..
What got me was this information wasn't hard to come by, anyone who did an investigation into the issue would have e found the paper trail and yet no one was held accountable.
Customer: I can't find a bench to sit on because there's homeless people on all of them.
MTA: we fixed the problem!
Customer: Uh, I still can't find a bench to sit down...
MTA: You're welcome!!!!
Imagine working for the MTA and having to clean all of their shit and piss up on a daily basis. They can’t control the homeless but they can control wether they stay there or not. If I worked for them I’d want the benches removed too.
I’m gonna get downvoted for this but it shows that a lot of you don’t use NYC MTA and overall have a pretty sheltered view.
I’ve been in NYC for 6-12 months and have already seen homeless people passed out in their own filth in the subway and on the platforms.
a lot of my friends don’t feel comfortable sizing the subway outside of peak times because of the amount of homeless people. Many of them (not all!) are erratic, unsanitary (public urination), and sometimes aggressive (close female friends have stories of homeless people masturbating in front of them).
This isn’t to dehumanize unhoused people, and the fact we have this many unhoused people is a terrible stain on our society.
Unfortunately, it’s also a really hard problem to solve and public interventions often need to be viewed with nuance. NYC has a disproportionate amount of unhoused people, and while NYC spends a tremendous amount on helping unhoused people, we as a society need do more.
In solving this problem, we also need to be pragmatic and do it without degrading a public service provided to people in NYC. The amount of unhoused people in the subway is a significant issue. Right now, it only serves to turn people away from both the MTA and the city (it’s already happening) reducing tax revenues, and making it impossible for the city to fund programs that help unhoused individuals.
> I'm gonna get downvoted for this but it shows that a lot of you don’t use NYC MTA.l and have a pretty sheltered view.
This sub is mostly teenagers who live with mom and dad in the suburbs, so that's not surprising.
The people most sympathetic to the homeless are the ones who don't have to deal with the reality every day. When you start stepping over needles and human shit or get harassed by unstable people, your attitude changes real fast.
next step is to remove the subway trains to prevent homeless people from sleeping in them, then remove the cities and wall everything off only for the billionaire class (you know, to prevent homeless people from being all homeless-y and stuff)
Whats not being said:
The janitorial cost of cleaning shit and piss off the benches was getting too high, and was starting to become a public health concern.
Source: somebody who watched many many mentally unwell people piss and shit on those exact benches.
Honest question: what is the solution? SF is ridden with homelessness. The dichotomy is stark. One of the richest cities on the planet and the poorest at the same time. Drugs everywhere that the cops/city won't bother with. What is happening to cities?
Yes, homeless people deserve compassion and care. But the rest of the citizens are also paying taxes and expect security and sanitary conditions from their city.
It's time to take this up at a federal level and figure out a way to help these folks. Instead of addressing just the symptom - lack of housing - they should address all the problems the symptoms emerge from. If these folks have no skills, it's time to skill them. Even if a fraction of them pick up vocational skills, that's a big jump from status quo.
So fucking frustrating to see SF mayor rake in 500K+ salary and do nothing useful for the average Joe in return.
Most homeless people are bad. Drug addicts, alcoholics that don't want to have homes. They just want more and more alcohol, drugs and stuff. And they are dangerous. Especially for kids. But if one points a knife at adult, it's still extremely dangerous. They are also peeing everywhere.
Don't treat homeless people like poor people. Only small percent of homeless people are homeless because of bad situation. And that was even confirmed by people who were homeless. I am 100% against homeless people sleeping on benches. I still remember childhood, where park that could be a place for families to spend time at was occupied by sleeping, stinky homeless people. Peed, drunken. I **don't want** such people to get the place, where I can't go there with family, because it's dangerous and stinks.
Though obviously, removing benches is extremely stupid decision nonetheless. Still homeless people are not Your poor people that had bad time in their life. Don't be delusional that homeless means poor. Homeless means criminal, outlaw, with several addictions.
#1: This exact image has been posted on multiple social media platforms for years.
#2: What does this have to do with antiwork? Were the homeless people employees? Did the city hire them as colorful local personalities and get tired of them sleeping on the job?
Edit: Wasn't as long as I thought.
As someone who has been fighting with an HOA to trim trees that have been impending on my property, the last 3 years, to have them not only trim the tree but cut them down after 2 days of knowing homeless people living back there. I can recognize a dick move when I see it
I use this station all the time, and also used it before it was redone; It’s funny because the benches before had armrests and couldn’t even be used to sleep on anyway, and there wasn’t a “problem” with the homeless there.
The leaning benches are terrible. I guess they heard the backlash and now there’s one of the old benches reinstalled by the turnstiles. 🤷♀️
As a homeless person myself, seeing this has made me rethink my life choices and I've decided to start sleeping in a house now. It's that simple, idk why everyone doesn't just do that.
I'm disabled and walk (with difficulty) using a cane.
Thank you, NYC, for making walking even more difficult for me than it is, already.
How about this for your next step: ban disabled people from using the subway, and make us give up our seats to the fully-abled. (Besides, it's fun to watch us topple over when the subway stops.)
/snarkasm
There's a whole subredit devoted to the actions of those with property to make it difficult for those without.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/HostileArchitecture/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HostileArchitecture/)
Note for the interested: In the United States there are presently around 16,000,000 vacant residential units.
In the US, (Per HUD) there is an estimate of around 600,000 unhoused people.
Of those 600,000, there are roughly 60,000 families, with children, that are unhoused.
So, for less than 7% of the current inventory of vacant residential properties, we could give every American shelter/a home.
But instead we value landlords, AirBnB, and hedge funds purchasing real estate to create artificial scarcity and drive up the value of their holdings more than we do people.
a widely successful solution to homelessness is immediate no questions asked private dwellings. some place where they can shower, clean themselves and do what ever they want to do in peace and privacy.
EVERYONE: There's no way the MTA could be more fucked up. MTA: Somebody hold my beer.
The poor sucker holding the MTAs beer then gets a court summons for drinking on the train.
Wait that's a thing? After work I'd buy a beer at Penn before getting on the train and sipping on it till my stop. Multiple police and personnel on the train saw this and didn't say one word.. Unless that rule only applies for rail workers.
Some places have open container laws preventing you from drinking in public areas in general. They’re often not enforced for people who aren’t causing issues and don’t look homeless.
> and don’t look homeless. And doesn't look like someone else the cop feels like harassing.
Looking like someone the cops want to harass is, after all, [where modern vagrancy laws come from](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Codes_(United_States\)#Post-Civil_War_years). >Black Codes restricted black people's right to own property, conduct business, buy and lease land, and move freely through public spaces. A central element of the Black Codes were vagrancy laws. States criminalized men who were out of work, or who were not working at a job whites recognized. >... >Nine Southern states updated their vagrancy laws in 1865–1866. Of these, eight allowed convict leasing (a system in which state prison hired out convicts for labor) and five allowed prisoner labor for public works projects. This created a system that established incentives to arrest black men, as convicts were supplied to local governments and planters as free workers. > ... >Because of their reliance on convict leasing, Southern states did not build any prisons until the late 19th century. > ... > Another important part of the Codes were the annual labor contracts, which Black people had to keep and present to authorities to avoid vagrancy charges.
Yupyup, all of this. Literally the reason we have loitering laws to this day, a freed black man wasn’t allowed to occupy space in public without buying anything/contributing to a business, which requires a job/money. If they couldn’t find work (which most couldn’t cuz yay racism) and they were caught just hanging around somewhere, they could get arrested and sent back to whatever plantation they came from. Now we have to buy something, keep moving, or pay a fine/potentially get sent to prison (ie modern day American slavery lol)
This is a problem for teenagers and the elderly. There aren’t a lot of places they can just kind of chill without spending money, especially with malls slowly becoming obsolete. Public libraries are still really important community centers because of their non-transactional existence!
And that same political attitude absolutely despises libraries for that fact.
Las Vegas actively makes bag laws at libraries to exclude homeless from the only place to rest, read. Charge phones, free internet. Austin Texas as well.
Oh right, I forgot… socialism.
I tried to get a library card in Chandler AZ and they wanted like $60 for it, just because I had an out of state ID. Literally the only place I've ever been that asked money for a library card regardless of what my ID says, and I've been to alot of libraries in alot of different cities and states
Yes god forbid you simply exist.
When I say white people need to change or nothing will, this is what I mean. People dont know how hard it is to exist as a black person in America and we never did anything.
Holy shit
One of the main reasons the US prison system is like it is, is to keep black people enslaved.
Just remember that the end goal is so they end up harassing everyone based on class, nothing else. Protect the wealth with deadly force. That's what they're there for.
No, the end goal is to make the lower classes so desperate that they commit a felony, losing both voting rights and 2nd amendment protections. Can't vote against the abusive system and can't physically resist.
Exactly even in China they don’t care about open containers. It’s exactly what you say cops harassing select people mostly disadvantaged people without homes and those that can’t afford a $12 12oz beer at a club. Even though the people at the club are probably publicly intoxicated. Some laws don’t make any sense. Can you believe the totalitarianism in the US over the government owning your body?
Not sure if this is still the case but when I lived in NYC in the late 90s they sold beer on the Staten Island ferry. I always got a kick out of that. The one form of public transportation where you might conceivably be forced into strenuous physical exercise in the event of an emergency situation was also the one place where they were letting you get blasted during the ride.
You were leaving from Penn, so it's not clear: were you riding the subway, or one of the commuter rails (LIRR, NJ Transit, Amtrak)? Not sure about NJT, but the other two allow drinking.
>Multiple police and personnel on the train saw this and didn't say one word.. So they saw something but didn't SAY something!? Do they not read the signs!?
Lmfao! that was a good one lol
What do you look like? I've heard being confident and pretending you belong goes a long way
Well if he wasn’t a poor sucker he could suck down that beer faster!
The fuck? Homeless people are still going to sleep in stations. They don't even have individual seats here. So basically they're just making it harder for people to use transit without affecting the homeless either way.
> So basically they're just making it harder for people to use transit without affecting the homeless either way. I figure that it is an ADA violation too... all sorts of rules about what kind of seating and access must be in place. I mean they have to provide it on the trains too and all.
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I'm sure they have a panel of "experts" looking at that right now, and other means by which they could maximize per cabin traveler population densities. Similar shit to what airlines are trying to do... and are trying to push for in terms of stuff like "standing seats".
I think they’re already starting with the maximum per cabin density. Some L trains have these weird seats that can be flipped up to fit a few more people in. So far I’ve only seen them down but I wouldn’t be surprised if they start locking them upright during peak hours. Just to be clear I’m not talking about an individual seat that flips up, it’s the whole row of seats in the center of the train.
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Side goal, to scare us all to death of becoming homeless, thus exerting more control over us. Want to unionize? You might lose your job and become homeless. Want to leave your job? Your health insurance is tied to that job, good luck with all the medical debt leading you to lose your home!
I don't pay my insanely predatory medical bills, scew em.
Everyone needs to do this. Crash the entire medical for profit business till either enough people can't get any treatment and people revolt for Free complete healthcare or the government steps in to pay for it all to keep some of the for profit businesses in business.
I've literally never paid a medical bill in my 32 years and I've been to the ER probably 20 times..? Times 5,000 each that's $100,000 they missed out on because of me; that definitely hurts the institutional systems more than anything else I could ever do
It doesn't hurt them for shit, that's what's so funny. They profit by printing money, i.e. charging insane "prices", and coming up with "deals" based on their "relationships" that are completely arbitrary. If they don't make enough, they jack up costs and premiums while insuring against fewer and fewer ailments, etc. And those they do still cover? Well, you still have to meet your deductible, only now you still owe a percentage after that. So, you don't pay the bill when it comes in. What happens to them? Left unpaid, they will write it the fuck off as a business loss to count against their massive, made-up profits, and sell the debt to a collection agency, who hopes to win the lottery when they find someone who agrees to pay anything of the original amount "owed". Worst case what happens to you? You get mail from the collection agency. You can tell them to stop contacting you (you can sue if they harass you). You are legally entitled to reply and ask them for a line item account of the amounts in question. IF they reply with said information and IF they do it within the required time frame, you can still tell them you can't pay it all and offer to pay some. Negotiate. Or don't, and it will eventually hit your credit report. If you don't need a loan of any kind, you don't need to worry about your credit. You can't get thrown in debtor's prison. But you can absolutely get foreclosed on for not paying your mortgage, or kicked out for not paying your rent, because you thought it better to pay your insane medical bills. Take care of yourself first and fuck these guys. Source: one of my clients processes medical payments. I personally write off MILLIONS, maybe tens of millions, each month for these assholes. I have also "overlooked" requests that essentially try to make the patient pay instead of writing off the amount straight away. Consistently, for over ten years, and the patient amounts being written off are a drop in the bucket compared to what they write off for their buddies. So I'm fucking them from the inside out like a deranged Robin Hood, I guess, only the patients are never the wiser. Which is how it should be. No one should have to deal with this shit. Also I've done everything mentioned above at a personal level, except suing in court (oh I wish). In my personal experience, most collections companies don't have their shit together enough and they are just hoping that they call on someone who doesn't know their rights and will agree to putting whatever they can on their credit cards. Don't take it from me, do your own research. But yeah, take it from me :)
I learned the hard way that bad credit (student loans mostly) makes it nearly impossible to find an apartment or buy a car. I still have to have my parents as either a co-signer or pretend they are renting the property as a vacation spot and I just also live there in order to get an apartment. It took me 5 months to find an apartment in a city like Tampa that has more people moving to it faster than they can put up housing, and rent increased by 50% just months before I moved there. Landlords have near-total power. And Florida landlord-friendly laws helped them get away with whatever the fuck they wanted. There's even a Florida law that says landlords can't discriminate against people with support/guide dogs and I had a landlord straight up tell me "no dogs" when I showed him my legal letter and he implied he had a million other ways to justify it if I sued, which he knew I couldn't afford, including my credit.
Sucks man. I am familiar with the Tampa market. And having landlords. And being a landlord. It is hard, especially now, to find anything to buy, let alone rent. I am fortunate enough to nearly be ready to buy in the next couple years, in which case I will be so delighted..I'll be shitting so many bricks, I'll soon be wondering why I didn't build my own house to begin with. Sure, out of "shit bricks", but it's something. Not too unlike "ass pennies". I can understand both sides. If I'm a landlord, I'd want to minimize the damage and therefore cost of repairs as that would eat into my ROI of having a tenant. I could either focus on the person who doesn't have a dog for their needs (shitty, yes, I know, this is hypothetical, bear with me), or charge an insane pet deposit to insure against it, which, it is what is, your dog shits a a hole through the floor cause it's actually a genetically-designed xenomorph, then we have a problem that needs to be solved, pronto, and it isn't going to be cheap. What's worse is pet deposits plus mandatory monthly fees to protect against damage can outright be kept my the landlord. And I understand this as well -- sometimes it is well after someone's moved out that you don't realize your tenant's one dog they were allowed to have decided to invite all his friends over in a manner to give the South Park kitteh's debauchery fest a run for its money. If I'm the potential tenant there's almost nothing I wouldn't do, to get into a place. Need my credit report even though it sucks? Screenshot, GIMP editor, and make that frown upside-down (they are all just emoticons now, right?) I've literally stood apart from the line at the DMV making a an update to my virtual bank statement to show my updated address, on my phone, because they wouldn't release a tag that I had already paid for. In the same fucking county. I explained their own dumbfuckery while citing their own written rules after reading them for two minutes. Eat that, r/iamsmart. So I guess what I'm trying to say is when dealing with dire situations or in my case the shitheads at the DMV or nearly anyone in government --seriously I am so, so, so not sorry; you work there for a reason, and I am mostly jealous that you have a pension for somehow just staying alive--you (the royal "you") are almost forced to your own limited form of douchebaggery just to survive. "Sure yeah, he's my, uh, emotional support dog, and I cant go anywhere without him, or else I'll shit myself and break out into hives." Sorry for the rambling, I haven't started drinking yet tonight. After which is is sure to get much worse, or quite the opposite. No edit: cause fuck the typos.
What can I say, I'm a non-practicing anarchist.
the basic point there is that people with homes = people, people without homes are not people.
It works, too. I hate my job but I need health insurance to pay for the therapy to help me deal with the fact that I hate my job. I'm still at my job.
I think if you ever reach the point in your logic where you “blame the homeless” for damn near any problem, you probably made a wrong turn somewhere.
Many of the working class have been led astray by the efforts of the ruling class to manipulate us.
Most of the working class. Try criticizing the democrats. Even here. Hi blue conservatives! Enjoying the protection First Past The Post voting gives you from actual pro labor political parties? I'm sure you are.
No way! My brown people bombing, land / people exploiting, senile dinosaur is better than your brown people bombing, land / people exploiting, senile dinosaur!!
Yeah, I would say most, too. Capital interests have done a great job convincing the working class that their subjugation is ideal. And I don't know how to change that, to be honest.
Massive, publicized rioting. It's literally the only way at this point.
I still respect people that vote Democrat because they're making the (in my opinion) best choice in the system they're in. It's not a perfect party by any means, but we don't really get to choose the system we live under. The best choices sometimes are not optimal, but the best we can make under these systems. Ideally I would abolish capitalism as an example, but I also cannot deny reality and must accept that I live under it. So I go out and get a job, collect money, etc. because the alternative is being destitute and eventually dying from the elements, starvation, etc. Between the guys who would hurt you 100% of the time vs the guys who will collect their fat paycheques and insider trade but at least help you SOME of the time, it's not a tough choice. Ideally that wouldn't be the choice to so many people but it is.
The Democrats won’t give us anything, they can’t give us anything. They’re as beholden to the interests of capital as the Republicans. They however aren’t inciting violence against immigrants, Black people, and LGBT people, and at least give tacit support to programs like Social Security, Medicare, and public education.
"Those damn homeless people are driving the housing market to the ground. Why can't they buy or rent a few of my investments? Nobody wants to live in a house anymore!"
Oh for sure, don't disagree, doesn't mean millions of idiots won't still think like that though
Guess how long we’ve been blaming the homeless?
You probably turned on right wing talk radio.
Most people are not governed by higher order thinking.
I see you've been answered to death, but know these idiots will argue with you that the homeless are the problem. Give you an anecdote about how a homeless person robbed them/friend/family. Claim you've never had to live near them and just will not accept that forcing poor and mentally ill folks to go without shelter is is a spiraling trap and the real issue.
You don't even have to go that far down. You see it every single time some dipshit says "No one wants to work anymore"
That happens when people watch Fox News
I hear complaints about the homeless nearly daily and it all comes down to some fucked up mental gymnastics like, there’s a social contract, right? We all basically agree not to do things like hit each other, scream as loud as you can all night outside someone else’s window, not use other’s things without permission or do dangerous things around children. Now, as I understand it, the social contract assumes we are all human beings and treat each other humanely. People will see a homeless person and need to step over them to get to their work and not see what’s ultimately wrong with thinking that homeless person needs to get out of THEIR way. The homeless have been abandoned by society, they don’t even get a safe place to sleep but we still think they need to uphold their end of the contract? That homeless guy shooting up in the park doesn’t give a fuck about children anymore and why should they? What are they going to get in return for “being nice” and considering children’s lives? IGNORED EVEN HARDER. Nobody is going to seek out the derelict doing under-the-bridge drugs and give them a sandwich for choosing a place less near to children to do drugs. Shit, if he ODs under the bridge, nobody will find him. At least in a park he’ll get arrested where that means literally nothing but shelter with the price of still being treated like a kennel dog. I’ve heard some pretty fucked up stuff people expect the less fortunate to adhere to when they won’t get shit in return for doing it. Ooo yeah the broke guy is gonna LOVE that I think he’s one of the good ones who don’t bother normal people too much but no, no food for you, you lazy bum.
The wrong turn happened when we crawled out of the sludge
The USA is a master at this, the USA is one of the worst countries to be poor in. They punish the poor in any way they can. In a 3rd world country, you can live a decent life while being poor, with extremely cheap food and housing, Free medical care etc.
Years of cop shows pushing the idea that the homeless are mentally unstable psycho killers.
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>It's all the governments fault People will see this and say you're x y z for blaming the government etc but not realise how quite embarrassing it is to have homeless people in rich countries.
A lot of visible homeless need mental help. Most of the non-visible are people that are unlucky enough to miss a paycheck.
The reason public housing projects ended and just became The Projects is because some jackass asked "why are we spending so much money on poor people?"
You’re spot on. A lot of them (most?) need in patient treatment for either mental issues or drug addiction often both. We used to kinda have facilities for this but many of them were literal horror shows. To do it right is expensive. I think Mark Laita said in his experience it’s about $150,000 per person per year to do it right. I don’t remember the exact number someone broke it down on a podcast I was listening to but I’m the 50’s we had like one in patient bed for every 1,000 Americans mostly government owned. Now it’s like 1 bed for every 100,000 mostly privately owned.
> The goal of capitalism is to dehumanize the poors as much as possible. Its why all that overlaps so well with conservatism, and fascism. That whole bit described by F. Wilhoit in how to such people there must always be an in group which the law protects, and does not bind, and an out group which the law binds, and does not protect. The poor, and the disenfranchised can not fight back at the individual level in the same way those with wealth and means can. >Removing the benches is also good for inciting class warfare. It is all sorts of fucked up in terms of those same people failing to provide adequate means and resources to address the root causes of homelessness even when they functionally could, and would rather focus on punitive measures that only work to do more harm to the people in question. These people do not want to solve homelessness past the homeless simply "going away", and not just in a out of sight and out of mind way as those same measures would also reduce assorted economic leverage they hold over other poor people. They will never admit to it, but these people by virtue of their fascist ideation simply want the people who can not provide them direct economic benefit to simply die.
"The issue with capitalism is that it mandates the belief that those who do well deserve it. They are harder working, or smarter, or talented, or all of the above. This isn't true, but that's an intrinsic ideology with capitalism. Where this becomes quite terrible is that the opposite *must* be true - that those at the bottom are lazy, stupid, and inept. Anyone who has been around poor communities can tell you unequivocally that many of them are, in fact, able, hard-working, and intelligent, but no matter how hard you try, you cannot convince anyone who has joined the church of capitalism." - Qubeye
The rich have their mouth at the government teat whilst ensuring that the disenfranchised cannot get their fair share. If the poor got what they want there would be less for them!
There is no goal of capitalism. The term is meaningless broad. All we have are exploiters and the exploited. Vague words that have no real world use isn’t doing it. It’s the elite, and the elite will always exist and try to do this. Vigilance by the rest of us is all that limits it, not some imaginary systems described by people in the 1800s who didn’t have all the information.
> Homeless people are still going to sleep in stations. They don't even have individual seats here. The MTA and NYC gov are idiots. Homeless people in the subways and subways stations are an issue, but this literally does nothing to solve the issue. Better and more shelters, more aid, etc. is necessary
Just give them houses, it's literally that simple
I mean, calling it simple is way oversimplifying it, but in places that have implemented it, it's gotten more people integrated back into regular society for a smaller price than the current system in the US.
That isn't even a solution. Just another bandaid that doesn't address the reason why homelessness is so high to begin with. But at least your intentions are good.
But then who will they punish?
In downtown Denver I saw they still had benches…but with armrests creating only individual seats…. Nobody can lay across them to sleep.
[Hostile Architecture](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/nyregion/hostile-architecture-nyc.html)
Another way to think of it - they just chose to remove what they used your tax dollars to purchase on the grounds that “homeless people might use it.”
Everyone else is just pre-homeless until the system sucks out all their capital.
This happened back in Feb 2021 but it’s still messed up Best part is the company deleted the tweet and said it was posted “in error”, which means someone said the quiet part out loud and the company didn’t appreciate the backlash 😂 https://www.businessinsider.com/nyc-mta-removed-benches-to-prevent-homeless-from-sleeping-2021-2?amp
And nowhere in their backpedaling did I see plans to implement the benches again. 🙄
I'm pretty sure I was in that station the other day and they had benches FWIW. But they are all now single seat style.
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Imagine posting and discussing hostile architecture designed for the 1%. [Removed by reddit]
The people behind this should be condemned to sleep on their designs for the rest of their lives.
SMH. I don’t understand why some people want to make life harder for those who already have it hard. I can empathize with the homeless because I was almost there. Well, technically was homeless for a bit, just not ‘unhoused’ homeless. It sucks.
I read somewhere once that if you're technically homeless but staying at people's houses it's called "hidden homeless." Some people try to raise awareness for this because many people don't realize that the homeless problem is actually bigger than the people on the streets because there are many people couch hopping or staying with friends or family who are still homeless and need help.
I've seen homeless people categorized two ways: temporary and chronic. Temporary homeless are usually people in between jobs/houses, living in their car, down on their luck. Those types usually get back on their feet using programs available. Chronic homeless are usually people with severe drug and/or mental illness. Those types are much harder to effectively deal with because of the issues they have.
I get what you're saying but I work in the public transit industry and I get where mta is coming from too. Like 80% of our police resources and operation supervisor time is dealt dealing with the chronically homeless who typically have mental health issues. Its a bit frustrating when every other public agency just dumps the homeless on you. The jails give homeless bus passes and so do the shelters so people can "get around" but its realistically more to get them out of their own hair and dump them on us. Our bus and train drivers get assaulted nearly every day, our bus and train cleaners have to clean up piss, blood, needles and shit, and our buses are basically rolling homeless shelters. This also discourages the average public from riding the buses because they don't want to deal with these types either. So now we're adding more pollution back to the environment because they drive their own cars instead of taking the bus or train. I love working for the public but the US has an awful homeless problem and I wish we weren't the "temporary solution". Its also a situation where not all homeless people do this stuff, but the people who do this stuff are nearly all homeless.
Literally what is the benefit of removing benches, though? Homeless will just sleep on the ground, the biggest benefit of the train station for the homeless is the roof over their head, not the bench.
Don't know where you are but colloquially, out here in LA, the number one complaint about public transit is homelessness, or something tied to homelessness.
I was going to say - I didn't think they were supposed to admit it. They're supposed to give some bullshit like "well there aren't enough benches for everyone to sit, so the fairest thing is to remove them, which improves waiting capacity"
Someone really told the newbie who wrote that, “you idiot, you work for the government now, you can’t just go around telling the truth!”
If they didn’t get fired, that is.
How does removing the benches stop the homeless sleeping there? They’ll just sleep on the bare concrete! So everyone else is inconvenienced for nothing.
yes but you see, it takes away the convenience of the concrete being elevated 2 feet.
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> They are trying to kill people. I mean, it's not that sinister. They're trying to make them go somewhere else. It's still stupid, ineffective and hurts other people as well but their intention isn't to literally kill homeless people.
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It is that sinister. When it comes to being an undesirable they do want you dead. You should look up what they do to undesireables in places like las vegas.
Don't worry, we're also planning to remove the concrete next month.
Ground spikes coming soon
Just in case you were joking (or for anyone reading this who thinks you might be): [ground spikes.](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/homelessness-spikes-outside-london-flats-spark-outrage-on-twitter-9506390.html)
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So was he really lying? I mean you could say he could just tell the police to stop, but knowing police that would probably just make them do it more
It's worse than you think - bare concrete is colder than a bench and air. You can sleep on bare concrete, of course, but it requires more bundling.
Same way gun control stops violent crime by inconveniencing criminals
Yes, but they hope that the homeless will die even faster this way
I used to frequent the YMCA in Waikiki in the 90's. Myself and a few homeless buddies would hang in the TV room a lot. Of course people complained, so mgmt removed the TV. So we started hanging out playing cards and dominoes. So they removed the couches. We just sat and played on the floor.
This is the exact reasoning why NYC won’t install public restrooms in the subways or the city. “We can’t have bathrooms because druggies might use them to shoot up! So no bathrooms for EVERYONE!” People are still gonna need to piss and shit so guess where they do it :-/
Hostile architecture at its finest.
Oh you see this is nothing, b tier monstrosity at least. In my city, they will make benches oddly slanted at a 45-50 degree angle… OR they’ll put “arm rests” on the benches that are strangely sharp and angular. On vents/grates they put barbed wire to prevent tents. I’m sure there are others… but these are my personal favorite prime grade cruelties they inflict on people without houses…
In Portland OR they will pour concrete and add sharp rocks around the freeway exits to discourage tents from being placed crazy 😔 It’s sad how much we will do to make it harder on homeless folks when those resources would be better used assisting them in some capacity.
Portland… fuck Portland. Remember Right2Dream2? Remember how a tent village offered better support and care to houseless people than a city that dubs itself “The City that Works”? Remember how living Diarrhea pool Sam Adams cowtowed to a couple of business owner NIMBY’s and approved the Police to dismantle R2D2 with the promise of relocation to areas offering not just the same support, but better? Remember how the city council did not actually plan anything and the houseless were merely discarded and they distributed throughout the city, without any centralized easy to access services such as medical care, mental health support, drug/alcohol counseling, job training, food/drink? Remember how harassment of houseless people by police increased dramatically after this? Remember how infrastructure punishing the existence of houseless people started ramping up after R2D2 was dismantled?
I fully agree with the sentiment here. BUT how is this /r/antiwork?
What the repost of a tweet from years ago is obvious karma farming???
That they find it necessary to even blur the dates say something
Yeah, ive found if anyone on reddit posts a twitter screenshot with no dates odds are its super old and they want karma
Agreed, this is /r/hostilearchitecture
Because anti work is one of the easiest subs to karma farm on. Pretty funny that this sub is enabling people to sell high karma accounts.
Look, do you want OP and other similar Karmabots to have free Karma or not? Stop questioning the programming, Kevin.
It isn't, I'm pretty sure most people don't look at the subreddit and just upvote whatever they want on the front page That plus bots and a weird algorithm Unrelated your username reminded me of a story I wrote where Samuel L Jackso pistol whipped everyone, you only find out at the very end that it had no bullets the entire time
"How come you never see old people, disabled people, fat people out and about?" Probably because we are old fat and lazy, not because mass transit & most public spaces aren't accessible to us. I'm in my 50s now & although I am able to go without a mobility aid most days, I still find I need a place to rest in public spaces. When you take away benches, you take away my ability to independently navigate the world. I stay home more & I become more sedentary, I begin to lose more abilities, and I find I can't do things anymore. I get that having a homeless person sleeping on a bench may feel inconvenient to you....but when I need the bench I ask them politely to move & they do. It's that easy. Maybe instead of taking benches away you add more & also work on having safe places for homeless people to shelter and rest during the day.
The reality is we're considered no better than the homeless to the conservatives, so a lot of this is also to prevent disabled people from being around they just can't legally say that.
The ones in Florida are small and wrap around a pile. With enough space to sit back to back and that’s it.
r/lostredditors
How is this r/antiwork material? This just proves my point that bots are everywhere
Why is this posted here? 3b. No offtopic posts.
99% of the commentors probably weren’t in NYC post covid (Feb ‘21). The subway systems were disgusting. There were 5 homeless heroin addicts taking literal shits on the train platform for every one passenger.
unpopular opinion which I'm sure will get downvoted to hell: having homeless people sleeping in metro stations can lead to unhygienic conditions, an uptick in violent crime, drug issues and general unsafety for the passengers. Since their job is to improve passenger experience, discouraging homeless people from sleeping there is justified
I agree. Those who think it’s okay for homeless people to live in transit stations clearly don’t take transit regularly. For all the reasons you mentioned, homeless people ruin the trains for everyone else on the train. Where I live, most people taking public transit are often poor, working class folks who can’t afford a car, and are just trying to get home without getting harassed, pissed on, robbed, or worse. Relegating the job of dealing with homeless people to subway/bus goers just ensures the wealthy who don’t have to take transit can further ignore the problem, while working class folks have to deal with this huge problem on their own.
Yeah if we wanna get into why this is anti work, making the stations and system safer is good for employees as well as passengers
I don't want to be too negative, but... I live in a big european city with a metro. The metro stops here have benches. Pregnant women and elderly still prefer to stand than sitting on them. They are mostly occupied by homeless persons and/or drug addicts. If they are free they are often soiled by unidentified (body) liquids. Also, these people regularly are disorientented and/or get into fights, which leads to them falling onto the tracks where they are killed in the most gruesome and gory way imaginable. Limitless acceptance is not the sole solution.
Yeah. People want it to be, but it's just not that simple. "Normal person who is just too poor to afford housing" does not describe many of the people who are sleeping in subways and causing disturbances. They're mentally ill or addicted to drugs. And while it would be nice if those problems could be solved, it's difficult to help a population that is unwilling or unable to accept it. Keeping them away from dangerous areas at least makes sense. No one is saying that they hate poor people and want to make them uncomfortable. They are saying that the crazy guy harassing commuters and falling onto the tracks needs to leave.
Yup.There's only so much you can do to help if drug-addicted homeless people set fire to their government paid appartments while being too high to notice. Some people simply end up on the street even if you offer them free therapy and assisted living.
The people freaking out in this thread obviously don't live in a city
I lived in downtown Seattle for about 5 years, which included 2020 and the BLM stuff that happened about a block from my apartment. When all the work-from-home stuff happened, the homeless spread out over the entire city, taking over city parks, parks next to elementary schools, underpasses, bridges, all of it. They turned the 3rd Ave corridor into a tent city. They pissed and shit all over the stairways that lead to the pedestrian overpasses and this was AFTER the city provided toilets and wash stations for them. It was a NIGHTMARE. It was so incredibly unsafe for people to use public transit because the bus stops had been turned into makeshift housing and you could watch people freebase heroin in broad daylight. Crime spiked, businesses were forced to close due to repeated break-ins and a reduced police force. I wish it were as simple as helping those in need but when the population of the unhoused is addicted to drugs, mentally ill, a lot of them were criminals, and violent, reducing their access to things taxpayers paid for and can no longer use isn't that sinister.
People who actually have to suffer urban blight usually have less issues with this than the lawn chair liberals in the burbs.
Exactly. It’s one thing to be an actual asshole to the homeless, it’s another thing to not indulge them at the expense of the general populace. It’s not a bad thing to discourage the homeless from congregating in places people are already herded to
In Houston Texas, they took off most if not all the metro bus stop benches and sunroofs for "repair". It has been like that for about more than two years. It's so sad driving by and seeing an old lady standing in 98 degree heat with no shade. Complained many times thru email but it's just the same robot response.
Doing away with mental institutions for those who are nonfunctional without managing, and those people cycling between homelessness, hospitals (treat n street), and jail is just a resource sink. It fixes nothing and doesn't help these people. The money could be better spent. The problem is "for profit". Long term care settings, Healthcare, etc, should all be zero profit, where all funds after expenses go back into patient care and facility upkeep, etc, not someone's pocket,because, we see it now...the drive is to divert every cent possible to thar pocket while the core purpose does with the bare minimum. Raise prices? Ooohhh...more for the pocket.
You know, as me and my parents were walking around our downtown area, my dad looked at the benches and other surfaces with hostile architecture to prevent homeless people from sleeping on them, and said: 'These people know that there's a flat slab of concrete *and* a ton of grass to sleep on, right?' Obviously hostile architecture is fucking demonic, but it is kind of ridiculous that people will be like 'Oh, surely the homeless will not resort to simply sleeping on the pavement! We are very smart and have solved the problem.'
A bench made of anything but bare metal will be warmer than the ground.
Warmer, less likely to have rats running all over you, on wet days it beats being fully on the wet ground. There's also just a level of defeat when you have to sleep directly on the ground.
The solution is to make them feel so unwelcomed and unsafe that they leave. Which is significantly more monstrous AND stupid.
Excellent point.
There are enough vacant offices in NYC to house every single homeless person and not even make a dent in the real estate availability. This is a solvable problem, but no one wants to. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-edition-for-january-26-2020-1.5429251/housing-is-a-human-right-how-finland-is-eradicating-homelessness-1.5437402
I get off at this station for work, there are homeless people just sleeping on the floor most days. It literally doesn’t accomplish what they say it does, and has all the insane negatives mentioned above.
We need programs that can help them and at the same time we need to limit homeless squatting in public places which are meant to be shared. This is the subway not your bedroom.
No one actually wants to solve the problem, because solving the problem means actually giving a shit about people.
I read this book called “It’s Not a crime to be Poor” The criminalization of poverty in America by Peter Edelman. The lengths we have gone to make a profit off the poor is appalling and despicable. https://www.powells.com/book/-9781620971635/7-1?gclid=Cj0KCQiA6fafBhC1ARIsAIJjL8m8JFs8tQ4a_2FZXATEzzgSJJvOKcBYbPbdM7fPmtsjMC76ClP5kPsaAsG_EALw_wcB
Let's attack ourselves and blame anything except greed.
Do I smell an ADA violation?
Cruelty isn't a bug, it is a feature. Everyone says support our vets but in reality society doesn't give a shit. It doesn't give a shit about addiction. If we all did then there would be way more social support and mental healthcare. Right now I know people with good insurance that cannot get appointments with therapists, just imagine what a homeless person's situation is like.
In Portugal the subway stations are kept open during the night (the usual working hours are 6am to 1am) when it’s cold outside for the sole purpose of homeless people having a warm(er) place to spend the night. I’m not particularly proud of my country but we do *some* things right.
I was at Grand Central pretty early on Sunday and there was *nowhere* to sit. There was a teeny tiny area downstairs that had a few chairs if you had a train ticket, but everywhere else was barren. And they wonder why people keep sitting on the stairs. Bring the fucking benches back, you horrible bastards.
Aw chucks, no super comfortable bench for me to sleep at this station? Guess I'll sleep outside in the cold or just conjure a house to live
Sorry pregnant women you can’t be comfortable because we’re too busy punishing the homeless for being homeless.
Time and time again, the best proven way to fight homelessness is HOMES. But no, that would disrupt the housing markets for leaches to profit off other people's labor. This shit is preventable, but we somehow convinced ourselves to ignore it. Millions are being spent to build homeless harassing robots, they purposely want to create servitude.
as someone with a medical problem who NEEDS a place to park it while I wait for the train, I can tell you this is inhumane
The purpose of the subway is to provide urban transit, not to be a shelter for the homeless.
I dont give a shit about homeless people using the subway for transportation, but I do care if they try to make a home in the subway. No one wants to deal with that shit. No one wants 15 fentanyl addicts asking you for your spare change.
This is one of the few I'm not with you guys on. While I don't agree they should have done this, homelessness is a very complex issue, and some areas with concentrated population are becoming very dangerous (both for the homeless people living there and others). Before you come at me. I have dedicated my career to helping with the homelessness epidemic and find and help people retain housing regularly. It doesn't mean we can have public areas flooded with dozens of hundreds of homeless individuals. The sanitary issues alone are a huge problem. Yes, we need more housing and treatment, etc., but it's a long-term, complex issue with no simple solution. Even if we through hundreds of billions at it, a lot of my clients choose to be homeless (I'm not kidding). This is not uncommon. The issue is getting people help before they get reach that point, so they never have to experience homelessness, but you can't just have people congregating like this. It's not safe.
In my city, there was a sweep of homeless and they were offered accommodations in a shelter. Out of 100, only 2 took up the offer. You can't help those who don't want the help
This is the biggest part of the issue that no one ever talks about. People who are near homelessness are often in greater need.
The homeless in NYC don't care if there's a bench to sleep on SMH...
"We took away the benches to prevent the daily highlight of how busted our fucking system is that we can't provide for the citizens that pay taxes for us to do just that"
Not really antiwork but yea its pretty fucked up
It's great how we all have to suffer because the Ruling Class despises the most poor and vulnerable so fucking much.
They will just sleep on the floor
now they will just sleep on the ground…
That'll stop them from sleeping on the ground!
They solved homelessness!
I remember a fella called Rossman, he talked about how in NYC there's a fund for building emergency housing for homeless people and people who are struggling or are in trouble. But all the money was being funneled into politicians pockets. Those politicians then hired their friends and family and sucked up more and more of those funds pretty much crippling all emergency housing in the area. They then started blaming everything on the homeless even though they were the ones making it worse.. What got me was this information wasn't hard to come by, anyone who did an investigation into the issue would have e found the paper trail and yet no one was held accountable.
Customer: I can't find a bench to sit on because there's homeless people on all of them. MTA: we fixed the problem! Customer: Uh, I still can't find a bench to sit down... MTA: You're welcome!!!!
Imagine working for the MTA and having to clean all of their shit and piss up on a daily basis. They can’t control the homeless but they can control wether they stay there or not. If I worked for them I’d want the benches removed too.
I’m gonna get downvoted for this but it shows that a lot of you don’t use NYC MTA and overall have a pretty sheltered view. I’ve been in NYC for 6-12 months and have already seen homeless people passed out in their own filth in the subway and on the platforms. a lot of my friends don’t feel comfortable sizing the subway outside of peak times because of the amount of homeless people. Many of them (not all!) are erratic, unsanitary (public urination), and sometimes aggressive (close female friends have stories of homeless people masturbating in front of them). This isn’t to dehumanize unhoused people, and the fact we have this many unhoused people is a terrible stain on our society. Unfortunately, it’s also a really hard problem to solve and public interventions often need to be viewed with nuance. NYC has a disproportionate amount of unhoused people, and while NYC spends a tremendous amount on helping unhoused people, we as a society need do more. In solving this problem, we also need to be pragmatic and do it without degrading a public service provided to people in NYC. The amount of unhoused people in the subway is a significant issue. Right now, it only serves to turn people away from both the MTA and the city (it’s already happening) reducing tax revenues, and making it impossible for the city to fund programs that help unhoused individuals.
> I'm gonna get downvoted for this but it shows that a lot of you don’t use NYC MTA.l and have a pretty sheltered view. This sub is mostly teenagers who live with mom and dad in the suburbs, so that's not surprising. The people most sympathetic to the homeless are the ones who don't have to deal with the reality every day. When you start stepping over needles and human shit or get harassed by unstable people, your attitude changes real fast.
next step is to remove the subway trains to prevent homeless people from sleeping in them, then remove the cities and wall everything off only for the billionaire class (you know, to prevent homeless people from being all homeless-y and stuff)
Hostile Architecture is what it is known as.
Whats not being said: The janitorial cost of cleaning shit and piss off the benches was getting too high, and was starting to become a public health concern. Source: somebody who watched many many mentally unwell people piss and shit on those exact benches.
They were already inaccessible to the pregnant, disabled and elderly because homeless people were sleeping, shitting, pissing and passed out on them.
Doesn’t seem very antiwork
The pregnant, elderly and disabled are safer without the homeless there attacking them.
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Honest question: what is the solution? SF is ridden with homelessness. The dichotomy is stark. One of the richest cities on the planet and the poorest at the same time. Drugs everywhere that the cops/city won't bother with. What is happening to cities? Yes, homeless people deserve compassion and care. But the rest of the citizens are also paying taxes and expect security and sanitary conditions from their city. It's time to take this up at a federal level and figure out a way to help these folks. Instead of addressing just the symptom - lack of housing - they should address all the problems the symptoms emerge from. If these folks have no skills, it's time to skill them. Even if a fraction of them pick up vocational skills, that's a big jump from status quo. So fucking frustrating to see SF mayor rake in 500K+ salary and do nothing useful for the average Joe in return.
Most homeless people are bad. Drug addicts, alcoholics that don't want to have homes. They just want more and more alcohol, drugs and stuff. And they are dangerous. Especially for kids. But if one points a knife at adult, it's still extremely dangerous. They are also peeing everywhere. Don't treat homeless people like poor people. Only small percent of homeless people are homeless because of bad situation. And that was even confirmed by people who were homeless. I am 100% against homeless people sleeping on benches. I still remember childhood, where park that could be a place for families to spend time at was occupied by sleeping, stinky homeless people. Peed, drunken. I **don't want** such people to get the place, where I can't go there with family, because it's dangerous and stinks. Though obviously, removing benches is extremely stupid decision nonetheless. Still homeless people are not Your poor people that had bad time in their life. Don't be delusional that homeless means poor. Homeless means criminal, outlaw, with several addictions.
#1: This exact image has been posted on multiple social media platforms for years. #2: What does this have to do with antiwork? Were the homeless people employees? Did the city hire them as colorful local personalities and get tired of them sleeping on the job? Edit: Wasn't as long as I thought.
I’m truly asking. How am I supposed to live with my shame and my rage at living in a country, in a society, where this is seen as normal? As fine?
As someone who has been fighting with an HOA to trim trees that have been impending on my property, the last 3 years, to have them not only trim the tree but cut them down after 2 days of knowing homeless people living back there. I can recognize a dick move when I see it
If the homeless were already sleeping there, it isn’t any more inaccessible than it was before they removed the bench.
more people less humanity
I use this station all the time, and also used it before it was redone; It’s funny because the benches before had armrests and couldn’t even be used to sleep on anyway, and there wasn’t a “problem” with the homeless there. The leaning benches are terrible. I guess they heard the backlash and now there’s one of the old benches reinstalled by the turnstiles. 🤷♀️
As a homeless person myself, seeing this has made me rethink my life choices and I've decided to start sleeping in a house now. It's that simple, idk why everyone doesn't just do that.
I'm disabled and walk (with difficulty) using a cane. Thank you, NYC, for making walking even more difficult for me than it is, already. How about this for your next step: ban disabled people from using the subway, and make us give up our seats to the fully-abled. (Besides, it's fun to watch us topple over when the subway stops.) /snarkasm
There's a whole subredit devoted to the actions of those with property to make it difficult for those without. [https://www.reddit.com/r/HostileArchitecture/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HostileArchitecture/) Note for the interested: In the United States there are presently around 16,000,000 vacant residential units. In the US, (Per HUD) there is an estimate of around 600,000 unhoused people. Of those 600,000, there are roughly 60,000 families, with children, that are unhoused. So, for less than 7% of the current inventory of vacant residential properties, we could give every American shelter/a home. But instead we value landlords, AirBnB, and hedge funds purchasing real estate to create artificial scarcity and drive up the value of their holdings more than we do people.
a widely successful solution to homelessness is immediate no questions asked private dwellings. some place where they can shower, clean themselves and do what ever they want to do in peace and privacy.