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.
they are alive, so they need to shit and piss. they consume things, so they will create trash. if they are addicted to drugs, they need a place to do them. if we don’t provide for people public restrooms, public trash receptacles, and places to do drugs safely, they will do them in public where you can see them. nothing about any of these behaviors are unique to unhoused people, you just don’t see housed folks getting high and shitting in the street because they because have a far more comfortable, safe place to do their private business. you don’t see housed people’s trash because they have a bin to put it in that takes all the trash to the dump. how are they supposed to do anything different when they have nowhere else to go?
this whole antipathy towards people on the street makes me so fucking angry. they can’t go anywhere else. they have to keep all of their belongings out on the sidewalk, they have to shit on the fucking street, they have no other options but to live every moment of their lives in a public place, and we pass judgement on them when it doesn’t look pretty. these are human beings you’re talking about, not pests, not monsters, they’re people that you’re watching live in abject poverty, and all you can muster up is fear and disgust. its disgraceful.
im not sure youre catching on to the nuance of what im saying here. i am not unaware that i am one or two missed paychecks from being in the same position financially as them. im not saying their subhuman because of their hardships. but the reality of their addiction is that they care only about getting their next fix. to the point they will rob and assault any one they need to to get it. there is a certain point where my concern for mine and my family and my friends and my coworkers well being outweighs the pity i feel for these people. again im not advocating for killing or arresting them or anything inhumane like that, but something has to be done about it. no one whos lived around these camps for any amount of time thinks differently than i do about it.
the idea that unhoused people are usually addicted to drugs is a falsehood. the idea that these people are dangerous to the public as a self-evident fact is a falsehood. i do live around many camps. i walk by homeless encampments every single day. i don’t agree with you, and your biases are not some logical result of your proximity to them. i don’t think you can characterize unhoused people as dangerous or irrational categorically, i don’t think you can make assumptions about them being on drugs, and i don’t think that addicts are dangerous by virtue of their addiction. i don’t think the perception you have of these people in need is in any way a rational appraisal of them, and it plays into long held prejudices about impoverished people that cast them as less than rational, incapable of making good decisions, and addled by drug abuse, rather than what they are, people who have fallen into desperate circumstances and need help. attitudes like yours, that see them as threats to your community, rather than community members themselves, make it easier for systems of governance to further deprive them of resources. forcing them into camps, police raids that ruin their tents and dump the few belongings they have into landfills, building hostile architecture that makes the only places they can live unlivable, making laws that criminalize the only way they can survive. pitting your concern for your people against your “pity” for your unhoused neighbors is a false dichotomy.
i dont have to make assumptions about them being on drugs when i watch them tweak everyday and clean up their blood from them shooting up in our bathroom every day and watch them shoot up in their car and see them assault my friends while their high as a kite. maybe its not all unhoused people are drug addicts and maybe its all drug addicts are unhoused but i cant tell the difference when i have to console elderly women that just got mugged by them or my coworker who was just sexually assaulted by them.