New York Sun – January 17, 2007 via Over Lawyered:
A high-end antique dealer on the Upper East Side is suing four unnamed homeless people for $1 million on the grounds that they’ve driven away customers by loitering on the sidewalk in “old, warn, and unsanitary clothing and cardboard boxes and old blankets which they convert into sleeping accommodations.”
In addition to money, Karl Kemp & Associates Antiques, located near 69th Street at 833 Madison Ave. near Gucci, Chanel, and Prada, is asking a Manhattan Supreme Court judge to force the homeless defendants to stay at least 100 feet away from the store, according to legal papers filed yesterday.
For more than two years, the papers allege, the homeless have spent “significant amounts of time” obstructing Karl Kemp’s storefront window display, “consuming alcoholic beverages from open bottles, performing various bodily functions such as urinating or spitting on the sidewalk, and…verbally harassing or intimidating … prospective customers.”
Sweet.. why not just jail them where they’ll get three squares a day and a warm place to sleep.. it’d be cheaper in the long run.
Sounds good to me… why does homelessness give anyone the right to impinge on my rights to a safe, clean, nonthreatening environment. If someone camps out on your sidewalk in front of your home, and behaves in various nasty ways, wouldn’t it anger you also?
Where do you stand on this SN? Siding with the 4 homeless guys that should be allowed to harass customers and urinate on the sidewalk in front of the store? Or with the store owner for having to resort to this after 2 years of putting up with it?
Also, what does homelessness have to do with it? I personally wouldn’t be allowed to stand in front of someone’s store and harass customers or spit and urinate on the sidewalk or drink booze….why should they?
Also, SN, when was the last time you posted a positive story about anything? Guess you’re too busy equating Jimmy Carter to Hitler or calling Jimmy Wales a pornographer.
Sure, it would probably anger me to have my business obstructed by anything, including the homeless. But, it’s obvious the absurdity of the story is that the business owner is suing HOMELESS people for 1 million dollars.
The store owner spent two years trying to get the attention of someone who could help deal with the problem. I bet suing four homeless guys for $1 million will finally do the trick. And it’s great Theater of the Absurd.
We don’t we just round up the homeless, put them in camps, use them for medical experiments, and maybe just grind them into meat and feed police dogs with them…?
I mean, they are too poor to useful to society in any other way, and they aren’t pleasant, so let’s just kill them.
In fact, lets kill everyone who isn’t useful. The homeless to start… Then American Idol contestants… Then people who derive all their income from the ownership of stocks… Then televangelists… The list can just go on and on…
Maybe the store owners should do what the restaurant owners in Honk Kong do… Tell the homeless they can have some food out back IF they don’t stand in front of the storefront.
Give them each $1,000. They’ll be dead in 24 hours.
3. “Where do you stand on this SN? “
Over towards the left. Nope, too far, closer to that door. Yeah, that’s where I’m standing.
“Also, what does homelessness have to do with it?”
The fact that the bums were homeless?
“Also, SN, when was the last time you posted a positive story about anything?”
Since when am I obligated to?! For some reason I got the impression that John ran this blog.
Regardless, in the past few weeks I’ve posted a story about a hot babe wearing a bikini and playing with her wii. I also posted a story about booth babes. Those are positive right?
“Guess you’re too busy equating Jimmy Carter to Hitler or calling Jimmy Wales a pornographer.”
Actually, John chose the picture for the story about Carter, not me. (I had a goofy picture of a guy wearing a peanut costume.) And Jimmy Wales was a pornographer, that’s a fact. So what exactly is your point in bringing these up?
8. I vote for Big Brother’s solution!
Regardless, in the past few weeks I’ve posted a story about a hot babe wearing a bikini and playing with her wii. I also posted a story about booth babes. Those are positive right?
Yes. Yes they are.
There are two types of homeless. First, you have the guy or gal down on their luck. They usually end up in a homeless shelter and sooner or later take advantage of one of the many programs that are out there to get the homeless back on their feet.
Then there are those that have various stages of mental illness. These folks used to be housed in institutions. And I will admit that many of these institutions were not where you would want to be. But the courts ruled that they couldn’t be forced to take mental health treatment and the real Homeless Problem exploded. Thanks liberals. I’m sure the homeless thank you as well.
I am confused. Why sue them when they have nothing? Is that his only option?
#9 – Regardless, in the past few weeks I’ve posted a story about a hot babe wearing a bikini and playing with her wii. I also posted a story about booth babes. Those are positive right?
No… Not positive… Not negative… Just irrelevant.
I like good looking babes. That’s why I’m glad that there are 4 billion websites already wasting bandwidth on America’s most abundant commodity… Good looking babes… I come here for smart stories and smart discussion about tech, politics, and religion and I’m especially happy when there is fusion between those topics… Sometimes, I even get what i come here for, and given the state of online discourse, I call that a success.
But I wouldn’t complain that you post negative stories. It isn’t as if there is a vaccuum where cute, fluffy, happy, and pointless crap goes. I think this is an important story. It speaks to the contemporary American zeitgeist, and underscores the mean spirit of our culture. We are a weak people because we are a compassionless people. There are many complex reasons for that, but talking about issues like this can only be helpful…
If I were going to say anything critical about you it would only be that fighting topic drift is about as useful as battling windmills…
I mean really, spy chips in canadian pennies is the stuff of UFO fanatics and Bigfoot chasers… but if talking about that leads to a talk, debate, even a fight about health care… well… so what?
14. “If I were going to say anything critical about you it would only be that fighting topic drift is about as useful as battling windmills…”
I know I pissed off people in that spy chip/coin story when I shut down comments relating to health care issues. It appears I pissed off you. And for that I’m sorry.
But the comments play an important role with this blog. Large numbers of comments let us know which stories readers are really interested in. If that stupid coin story got hundreds of off-topic comments, the results would be skewed.
And most importantly, you’re forgetting that the spy/coin story was REAL dude! Canada is out to fricken take us over! Don’t say I didn’t warn you, because while I’m down here in my bunker safe from back-bacon and Loverboy CDs, I won’t let you in. No matter how much you scream!
If I were those homeless people I’d just pay the million so I could keep peeing all over that store. That would teach them…
I think this is a message, at great personal expense, from the store owner to the City of New York and / or the State of New York, that they should do something about the problem of homeless people driving away business. I bet he wouldn’t even mind if they solved the problem of homelessness entirely, in a humane way, of course.
This case will attract media attention, so the City/State will have to resort resources / $ to it in the form of spokespeople. They will have to answer tough questions from journalists. Not just the blah blah blah the store owner got from the police each time he lodged a complaint. If the store owner wins, he will not collect $1 million from anybody, but won’t the City or State have to pay for the courtroom, the judge’s time, and the legal aid lawyer? They may decide that it’s cheaper and less embarrassing to solve the problem.
OTOH, it could be that one of the homeless actually owns a house in the Hamptons which he abandoned in 1968 because his next door neighbor mowed the lawn too often. It’s often the little things ….
I’m glad the address was posted. I’m stopping by while in NYC and deliver an upper decker.
“Where do you stand on this SN? “
Over towards the left. Nope, too far, closer to that door. Yeah, that’s where I’m standing.
Nice, avoid the question. Now answer it. Are you for or against the 4 idiots standing outside the store? Try to be serious for once.
“Also, what does homelessness have to do with it?”
The fact that the bums were homeless?
No you idiot, once again you didn’t get the point. Why should these 4 people be allowed to do this in front of this store when all other people would be arrested if they peed in front of a store or intimidated customers trying to get in. Homeless or not. Are they allowed because they’re homeless? Again, what does being homeless have to do with 4 guys peeing and spitting and drinking booze in front of a store? “oh, they’re homeless, let them do that”.
“Also, SN, when was the last time you posted a positive story about anything?”
Since when am I obligated to?! For some reason I got the impression that John ran this blog.
So John tells you which stories to post and which not to? How come people like Smartalix can post nice, positive stories without spreading hate and cynicism around like you always do? Hopefully, John doesn’t pay you, because he’s getting ripped off. I’ve had it with you….I’ll come back when he wises up and fires your no-talent, cynical ass.
All your refrigerator box are belong to us!
#3 –
“Also, SN, when was the last time you posted a positive story about anything? Guess you’re too busy equating Jimmy Carter to Hitler or calling Jimmy Wales a pornographer.”
None: Now I suppose you want a refund of all the hard-earned money you’ve spent on this site hoping in vain for dispatches from Disneyland, all smiley faces and dancing kittens?
On behalf of mgmt, I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize for that guy holding the gun to your head, forcing you to read posts that you regard as insufficiently upbeat…
Of course, you could always just park your shopping cart out in front of the blog, heckling the passersby and pissing in the doorway, if it’d make ya feel better.
Why not open some cheap housing somewhere? Take away most of the regulations like requirements for posted exit signs, x number of people per restroom, minimum square footage, etc, and let them decide if that ‘s worth the $50 rent.
#20 –
There used to be places like that, but the gov’t couldn’t stand by and allow citizens to foolishly risk their lives by living in places where the doorways aren’t wide enough for a wheelchair, there’s no smoke detectors and the hot water faucets lack warning labels.
#12 “But the courts ruled that they couldn’t be forced to take mental health treatment and the real Homeless Problem exploded. Thanks liberals. I’m sure the homeless thank you as well.”
Actually the Feds (liberal and conservative adminsitrations) were the real force in shutting down the large state mental institutions because those institutions couldn’t deliver safe and humane services. Many states, like Oregon, responded to demands to improve state mental hospital conditions in order to keep medicaid dollars, by giving up the federal match and then closing the institutions under the guise of community based services, but without adaquate funding for those community systems to include subsidized housing and supported employment. Which would have been cheaper than bringing the mental hospitals up to standards, but not as cheap as not providing services.
Further reductions in services by lumping services for the disabled in with “welfare reform” with conditions the disabled cannot meet didn’t help much either.
As for those activist judges letting loonys out on the street: I suspect that as many if not more conservatives and libritarians support the notion of laws and judiicial interpretations that prevent government intervention in personal rights, as liberals. Troouble is, you push that too far in the name of property, greed and anit-gun control, and it’s going to leak over to personal rights to not be forcibly medicatied or be “imprisioned” if you are not cuasing physical harm to yourself or others. And it’s tough for the neocons and libritarians to say outloud what they really want which goes a lot like “No, No! I meant no restrictions for me not for Them.”
Further the push by neo-conservatives /Libritarians to eliminate taxation (in the name of the free-to-exploit-market) has helped strip states of the ability to fund community based social services that can help the mentally ill. The hugh number of homeless disabled are the result of the greed that allows people to have enough money to shop at the upscale shops. Seems only fair that the folks that shop there have the consequences of their greed rubbed in their faces.
#20 & 22. The lack of “flop house” type housing has been seen as many as one of the central causes of the rise in homelessness. I would be willing to bet that it was not safety regulations that closed them down – since smoke detectors and lit exit signs are hardly major costs – but rather gentrification.
Gentrify a neighborhood, and the people who just sunk $400k into a condo don’t want a flop house nearby. Also, the guys owning the flop house can sell it for a few mil to have it torn down for space for said condos.
#24. Supreme Court decisions that limit forcible institutionalization to those who pose a threat to themselves or others was a godsend to the Reagan Administration and other fiscal conservatives, allowing them to herd costly mental health patients out the door in the name of freedom.
Sueing the homeless in this example is just an over-reaction to a problem better solved by kindness. The motto “just be nice” applies here. Did he ever try to be nice and talk to them as an equal? If he were to give them a few small care packages with socks, jerky, hand warmers, etc, he’d have felt a whole lot better as a person and the homeless would respect his desire to conduct business without them being there. Human dignity is worth something.