This is true where I live also. This feral subset of the homeless are ruining every nice public space that we used to have. Libraries, parks, trails. Patience and tolerance is wearing thin; everything that is tried to help them is just abused and shit on (often literally). More and more people are starting to say no, we don't want to tolerate this behavior here, if that's how you want to live then do it somewhere else.
If my fellow Americans hated the rich people that are responsible for all of these homeless individuals half as much as they do said homeless then American wouldn't be half as fucked as it is right now.
The homeless problem is all downstream of shit like the Sacklers pushing opioids and creating millions of addicts for profit. Yet they avoided jail and even can start up new businesses.
My nihilism is exacerbated by the people who are actively making the problem worse and viciously attacking anyone who criticizes the problem or proposes solutions.
IMO some activists are exploiting homeless people and drug addicts for power and profit.
You are right, the people being exploited are human beings, and rather than working to end the suffering, some people end up prolonging the suffering and creating more of it, because fixing problems ends the flow of funds and power.
You aren't refuting what I am saying, you only seem to justify corruption and incompetence because the apparent intention is noble.
What I'm saying is whatever "activists" are doing or saying is often an excuse for others to continue to ignore the ugly problem. This is not limited to one locality.
What I am interested in is long term support and funding for workable, humane solutions.
These things require bipartisan support at the state and federal level (rooting out many of the causes and aiding homeless prevention), and I'm pretty sure that's fucking toast.
What I am saying is is there is part of the activist movement (at the top) that is either incompetent or corrupt and have no interest in solving problems efficiently and often make them worse, because the incentives are not aligned. Problem solving would cut off revenue and salaries.
A side note, but I don't think all homeless are helpable. Some just have some kind of self-destruction about them and are beyond helping, unless they really want to start living differently. I personally know one such guy - a combination of bad upbringing, big ego, a defiant character (that got him fired from every job) has set him on a path that ultimately made his own family kick him out to the streets.
There's a lot of this. Seattle's main library was explicitly built with the awareness that libraries are one of the few places homeless people can get out of the weather for a while, and has an entire floor full of public-use computers with a lot of pointers to what little social safety net remains.
The depressing part isn’t that it’s happening, but that it continues to occur despite objections, because the “progressive” activists shame any objects and stop any plans or discourse to rectify the problem.
The activists should be blamed for causing disruption at the local level for a problem that can only be solved at the federal level.
There isn’t a thing Seattle can do to fix drug addiction/mental health/housing costs (it will remain a high priced local for the foreseeable future). So why should the people of Seattle fall on their sword because the rest of the country won’t get their act together?
In fact, the rest of the country loved that activists in certain cities take on the brunt of the problem, as it lowers their costs.
What do you propose locally instead of "falling on the sword"? Unless the city council purposely makes the library a drug den there is no easy cheap solution. Especially since the symptoms are an indication of a malfunctional city in the first place in which I wouldn't trust them with some sort of radical endouver.
It’s no longer a nice or safe place to go.