But what if a non-homeless person wants to sit on a bench taken up by bench warmers? Does the warmer have to stand around, waiting for the ‘real’ person to leave? So many unanswered questions.
Of course, actually helping the homeless to, you know, not be homeless is apparently too much work for these folks.
Esther Viti isn’t about to stand by and watch transients take over public benches along the streets of her beloved La Jolla.
She’s prepared to sit on it. Literally.
Viti wants to recruit volunteers to sit on benches in La Jolla’s business district so the homeless will have to keep on walking.
[…]
Earlier this week, Viti e-mailed 45 community activists and members of the La Jolla Town Council asking for volunteers to sit on benches in three-hour shifts.The e-mail suggested that bench warmers should bring something to occupy themselves, such as a book, knitting needles or a pen and stationery. No bathroom breaks allowed.
What a perfect job for the homeless. All ya gotta do is get some decent threads and a shower from the shelter, go to the library and get the job. BAM. Instant dough.
How is getting someone else (not a homeless person) to loiter on a bench anything but creating the same problem this is allegedly to solve?
Oh yeah…I left out the disgust these folks feel for someone not neat and tidy like themselves.
People suck.
What kind of bench is that in the picture ? Oh, the kind you can’t get out of once you sit on (or in) it !!!
Ester Vitti needs to be punched in the gut. Hard.
Being always “uneasy” about the future—just what is the homeless person supposed to do?????
Just curious, and hope I never find out.
What happened to vagrancy or loitering laws?
Why don’t they do what they did in a town near me? City hall actually removed all the benches in the city parks, and put up “Keep off the grass” signs. Now no one uses the parks at all. Keeps out all those pesky humans.
There will always be homeless people! In Canada we have all-you-can eat free healthcare, generous welfare programs and enough social programs to give Ted Kennedy a hard on. Still they are there.
The idea that the homeless are good solid hardworking people who just need a helping hand to get back on their feet is pure bull.
99% of the homeless are drunks, drug addicts and the mentally ill who refuse treatment. And guess what? They choose to live on the streets. This is their “lifestyle choice”.
I personally think they should be arrested or otherwise harassed until they go somewhere else.
#6 asked: What happened to vagrancy or loitering laws?
La Jolla is a seaside resort community within the sanctuary city of San Diego. Sanctuary cities like San Diego and San Francisco do not enforce loitering laws because it conflicts with their well-know progressive policies.
You know, things such as: encouraging illegal aliens, dishing out drug needles, refusing to cooperate with ICE and other border control organizations, and on and on.
California – the land of fruit and nuts.
Try giving them a job. Of course, some people are homeless by choice. They can’t handle settling down, or maybe are just too used to it after awhile in poverty.
>Now no one uses the parks at all. Keeps out all those pesky humans.
Sounds like the federal park policy.
#7;
You’re a worthless excuse for a human being, and you should feel bad for it. I hope you don’t consider yourself Christian.
#7 – And guess what? They choose to live on the streets. This is their “lifestyle choice”.
Back up your bullshit.
>99% of the homeless are drunks, drug addicts and >the mentally ill who refuse treatment.
Wow. I mean, wow! I am going to salute your wisdom. You are a great American (Canadians count)! I, however, would go one step further than you and use the death penalty to remove the unproductive from our society. No need to let these people live. Better yet, screen them through the use of a eugenics program (because that worked so well… rolls eyes).
Of course in order for your wisdom to be heard we are going to have to find out about your background. Do you have a degree in sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science or criminal justice? Medicine? Law? Hopefully, you have a graduate degree and can quantify your findings through some use of statistics. I hope you have at least written a couple of research papers on that topic (so that you have some actual knowledge with the subject matter).
If not, please shut-up and try not to spread your opinion as gospel. Better yet, why not go back to listening to Rush and Hannity and stop trying to pretend that you are a Canadian.
#10 and #12 What part of my post to you disagree with? Do you not believe that the majority of homeless people are drunks, drug addicts and untreated menatlly ill people?
As far as the Rush and Hannity comments go…I would not consider myself a conservative at all. My opinion of the homeless has come from my interaction with these people. I live downtown, I do not own a car. I use public transportation and do a lot of walking.
I speak to homeless people just about every day. Do you? I have been to countries where everyone works because the people who do not work starve to death.
I have observed that many of the people whose hearts bleed so profundly for the plight of the homeless, have never encountered any.
You may want to hold your fierce opinions until you observe someone taking a shit on a public sidewalk next to the entrance to a shopping mall (which contains public restrooms) as I did last summer.
The unemployment rate in the US and Canada is around 5%. Many economists believe that the number will never be lower than 3% because that is the percentage of people who will not work under any circumstances
Actually, the unemployment number has nothing to do with homelessness. If they won’t work, they’re not counted as unemployed.
The homeless are a convenient tool that liberals need to make themselves feel compassionate and better than others. If there were no homeless, they would probably start crying, and try to create some.
Well, it’s La Jolla. It is a beautiful place where the air is constantly purified and sidewalks are towel dried after a morning mist. I can see where a homeless person may distract from the sterile surroundings.
I wonder if a common flu virus will wipe out a third of the LaJolla population?
I remember reading an article awhile back that seemed to indicate that homelessness in Amerika was only permanent for 15 to 20 percent of those homeless because of mental disorders and alcohol and drug issues. For the rest of the homeless it was a two to three year “process”, that began because of illness, job loss, divorce, any interaction with the Judicial Industrial Complex and other income destroying situations, people became homeless to one degree or another, and had to find out what they had to do to drag themselves out of homelessness during that two to three year period. In other words, about 80% of those homeless at the present time won’t be the same 80% who are homeless in five years time. They may not be the homeless you see that fit the “crazy person” stereotype. They may be largely invisible, other than at the shelters and soup kitchens. And they may living next door, working where you work or in your sphere of social interaction next year, once they’ve clawed their way back into what passes for normal life here in Amerika.
Hello.
I was homeless from 1993-1996.
I had a job, an apartment, a car and I got sick. I got behind on everything and so it was taken away. I had no family to support me as my family was a broken one. One of many from the 70’s and the 80’s.
There was little help and little hope. I was fortunate not to have been killed or injured for JUST being homeless. I was able to get some support from a ministry, but there was too much of a demand and many times I did not find a bed in time. Nor a meal in time.
Water was a big problem. One WOULD think that in an urban setting it would be easy to find. A library, a bus station, a bank, well maybe a hose in someone’s yard. Try it sometimes when you don’t look fresh, clean and shaved. Watch how fast simply filling an old bottle you find on the street gets you hustled away or have the police come and roust you.
I will freely admit that there are a lot of people that are professionally homeless. They have lost all hope, they have a defeatist attitude where they have fallen into the trap that no one cares and so why should they?
Sound familiar? It happens with people that HAVE homes. The apathetic, I don’t give a rats ass because no one else does. The ‘why should I’ mentality. It is human nature. And so its part of the homeless as well.
Because, they are HUMAN.
There are people that have no insurance and are mentally ill. When you have insurance you are in the treatment center. When it runs out, they KICK you out. Great system. But when bleeding heart liberals (as they are called by some) try and make insurance possible or mental institutions available, that is struck down, because it means someone has to have a heart to be compassionate and pay someone else’s way. What a shame. Americans helping Americans. That can’t be right.
There are some that are drug users and want no home. Makes it easier to get away with what they do. Few are lazy and just living on the streets. Trust me there is NOTHING easy about that.
Police, “normal” citizens and all manner of creeps can and do prey on you. Only recently have we heard of the homeless getting beaten or killed. It is nothing new. I lost people that I would hang out with, people I called friend suddenly not show up one day. Then a week later we hear second or third hand they were in the hospital (sucking up all your hard earned taxpayer money for being bums) or dead (filling your tax payer pauper unmarked graves). Boo-hoo huh? Just another low life insect gone, am I right?
The amount of people that are homeless and struggling, whole families with no net under them to catch them, is staggering. And many of us really do try as hard as we can. It’s not easy, it’s not for the lazy. Charities were limited and it is worse now because of a poor economy.
Yes there are some that want to be homeless. They are nuts or broken which is worse than being nuts. Is it 99%? No, not even close. Is it 80%, no. Is it 70%, 60%? No, its about 50% of those that can, will struggle to get out.
And many DO get out. Some outreach center gets a break, might find an old friend or family member and that is when you get a break. Sometimes it is just getting there at the right time, the right day and you get a break that gets you back on your feet.
Sometimes it’s not a break. It’s a theft, a drug deal, sex act that nets enough cash over time and doing crime that gets you up. You feel like hell afterwards and you never forget how low you had to go to get out. Survival, urban survival.
Of the other half, only about 5% max would be so mentally crippled to not be able to get out. The rest are broken people and the habitual drug user that just won’t give up his/her drug. Whether that drug is smack, crack, ice, booze or whatever; it is a mean taskmaster and you are the slave.
I can tell you these things because I was at the right place at the right time. But I can tell you also that I stole a lot of things and I am not at all happy with myself about it. But when you steal something and pawn it and then get a hotel room for 15 bucks for a few hours and sleep safe and have a shower, it kind of grows on you.
Now where you go in this country it changes. The country homelessness is a whole other set of survival skills. And some cities have it harder or easier than others. Some cities have NO ‘homeless’ problems because they ship it off to other cities and towns. So experiences will vary. But overall no one deep down in the hearts if they are not messed up, on drugs or have lost all hope wants to be homeless and its not a single percent.
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#13;
All anecdotal evidence. Got any FACTS?
#15;
Wonderful opinion, now, do you have any facts to justify it?
This will totally work because homeless wouldn’t be caught dead sitting on the ground, right?
natefrog, Well run a Nexis Lexis search on homeless when a Democrat is President and when a Republican is president. They somehow disappeared during the Clinton Presidency except when they wanted to do photo ops, but once Bush became President, they showed up again.
#21,
As laughable as it is, you call THAT evidence? You’re hopeless, then.