Edit
I kinda made this post out of spite for the fact the most previous post in this community, whose title I quoted/copied, was getting so many downvotes… At the time I posted this, the previous post had about a 30% downvote rate, and it really, really made me mad.
I am relieved tho to see people in the comments here who have real, actual empathy for their fellow humans. Thank you for contributing here.
It blows my mind how normalized it is to hate on those who are struggling. Especially in 20fucking23 when so many of us now are on the verge of it ourselves. Let’s be better, everyone - to everyone. I beg you.
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A friend of mine once said “no one healthy wakes up one day and decides to try heroin, just for fun.”
That really stuck with me. There are many reasons why people use substances, and there are many reasons why people may refuse help. This doesn’t make them less than. You, as an outsider, have no knowledge or understanding of the circumstances that lead them to where they now are.
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Being in perpetual debilitating pain from botched operations, wounds sustained during battle or plain accidents are not a choice. Neither is having any number of diseases that leaves you in said chronic pain.
The healthcare system is nothing but an administrative nightmare in many places, and it can be nigh impossible to get the help needed to recover to a functional life depending on where you live.
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You’ve clearly never lived with any sort of chronic pain condition. I’ve only ever gotten fentanyl once - in the hospital, with a doctor’s hand inside my stomach. You also clearly have no idea how hard it is to rebuild a normal life after several surgeries that don’t end well.
I’d be dead or in the streets too except I happen to live somewhere halfway decent, and even then I barely get by on a monthly script. Do you have any idea how it feels when your insides are filled with cysts? Ever had your intestines on the outside of your body involuntarily? How about breaking open your nose bone to get even more cysts out?
You feel like people unlucky enough to go through things like that should just suck it up for their remaining years? It’s just a little pain, right?
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Those “paragraphs” has been the past 6 years of my life. My son was 3 when I got sick, and he’s only ever seen me lie in bed or hobble around awkwardly.
I’m not manufacturing anything, I’m living it.
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I’m very sorry for your loss.
Everyone deserves love, even those who are too lost to help theirselves.
Those are the folks who need it most
this is entirely valid. and our kids deserve to walk to school without getting stabbed by the needles all over the place.
I think a balance needs to be found and the unhoused communities need to police their own residents; Seattle has had success with this and the tiny housing communities it’s established - they give people an address to start seeking assistance for their issues, and don’t tolerate violence and dangerous behaviors like leaving needles everywhere.
I don’t understand the appeal of going onto the internet just to lie about a group of people who have done nothing to harm you.
I used to live in next to a homeless encampment. I used to walk by it every single day for 2 years. I have never ONCE seen a needle on the ground, day or night. You know what I did see a bunch of? People claiming that there were needles everywhere, without a single shred of evidence whatsoever.
I’ve lived in Northeast Seattle (near 125th) and South Seattle (othello) - seen needles at the Van Asselt community center when taking my kid to daycare. The staff had to sweep the park and wading pool daily. In Lake City, all around the Lake City mini park and what’s now the skate park.
I’m an advocate for finding solutions but to disregard the reality faced by parents just trying to prevent their kids getting stuck with used needles is real man.
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The only way tent shelters will ever work without simply adding to the public health crisis, is to heavily legislate urban camping rules.
Make it legal to use an emergency outdoor shelter, provided it has a permit, to be renewed every week, confirms to size and placement regulations, is constructed from flame retardant materials, and (barring hazardous weather) that it’s taken down every day from sunrise to sunset.
We then attach to the free permitting process, an identification check, automatic enrollment in welfare services, career counseling, etc. and immediate access to mental health and substance abuse rehabilitation.
Care for those who obey the rules and scrape up those that don’t.
We can’t just let people rot indefinitely, huddling half naked under a leaky plastic tarp, searching for that last good vein, and call it compassion.
Oh look! Someone MAKING SENSE!
Everything below is anecdotal, take it how you want:
The major issue you’ll have with implementation of a program like this, is having the neo-liberal agenda calling it “homeless-tagging” . Which, in their eyes, equates to tagging a wild animal so it can be traced. You better believe the next high influence, Tiktok warrior would make a scathing I comment on it without research.
Like “Yeah, no shit, we tag animals to check on their well being and locations. All to necessitate the proper procedures for handling them when they need help or guidance. We tag ourselves when we get social security card or ID’s, or when we take a Goddamn selfie with location settings on. The only difference is that social media and the government is handling you.”
It’s getting out of hand here in Los Angeles. Venice was the worst. I DARE all the commenter’s in this thread that say ‘it’s not that bad’ to take a stroll underneath an overpass here in LA proper to ask if they need help. They don’t want it. Trust me. I’ve tried. Multiple times. I’ve almost got myself killed.
The suburb I live in is currently seeing a rise in homeless people just sleeping wherever they want sans tent. For example: Today I saw a dude sleeping right next to the driveway of a public plaza on the ground with a pookie in his hand. Half a block away.
There was also another dude just sleeping in our laundry room 3 weeks ago. Strung out. I asked him if he needed help and he told me to “fuck off”. So I called the cops, and said “hey this guy needs medical attention. I think he’s on drugs and in and out of consciousness”. You know what the cops/paramedic did? They came over, woke him up, told him to leave because this wasn’t his property. EMT asked him a few questions, checked him out and he was barely coherent enough to say, “I don’t want your help, go away”. He told the cops to fuck off as he was leaving. EMT’s followed him out and he left on a stretched after arguing with him for a few minutes. The cops said “he’s gone now, call us when he comes back”. Not “if” but “when”. Sure enough, dude was caught sleeping there again a week later by a neighbor. This time sober, but belligerent. “I’m just charging my fucking phone! Leave me alone!” was his excuse.
So the Manager called the cops again… Rinse… Repeat. Happened again with different person this week.
We tried the whole “Hey, come back during the day with the Manager’s permission” thing or "Hey you want some food, we have plenty. Sooner or later it was like that book “If you give a mouse a cookie”. They steal clothes from the laundry room and try to knock on people’s doors to get cigarettes. Not food. Fucking. Cigarettes.
On the flipside, a year ago we had a lady and her old, disabled dad just wandering the streets at 1 Am in front of our apartment. We asked them if they were OK and she had explained that her dad’s medical bills made them homeless, She explained that they were just trying to get through the night without being attacked by other homeless dude. So my neighbors rallied together and gave them about 2 weeks worth of food and supplies. We all paid for a hotel room for a week to help them get some relief. Her dad passed away a few weeks later, but she was grateful for it as he was suffering. We gave her some resources on how to get some help locally. Haven’t heard back from her after that… Hope she’s doing alright.
What a clusterfuck this whole thing is.
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Most unhoused are mentally ill they are not junkies who do not want help.
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