Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor? | Hacker News Reader

Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?

nytimes.com

33 pointsgnosis24 comments

This puts into words really well what's been stewing in my brain the past few years. Having spent the last few years traveling the world and seeing the many different ways people live, it's sometimes a bit of a shock to come back to the States and having to check if there's a nearby police officer before jaywalking across an empty street or enjoying a beer outside in the sun.

The more I leave and come back, the more it seems to me that, as this article states, we punish, ticket, fine, and incarcerate for the slightest of "offenses", things that in other places would be chalked up to "live and let live," or at worst, a verbal warning. There's the commonly cited statistic that we have more citizens in prison than China does. A country needs laws, but there's certainly a difference between laws that keep peace and laws that are petty and domineering.

All of it (among other factors, not least of which are health care and wild militarism) adds up to an environment that I'm increasingly less inclined to return to. For a country that prides itself on its freedoms, I'm constantly surprised at how successful here people are at imposing their desired behavior on others.

My ex is from the Philippines, she used to say "Why do you always say America is the land of the free? If you have a party that's too loud the cops come, you get tickets for parking anywhere, you get in trouble for crossing the street, you get fined for everything! Where is the freedom? Why are there so many laws dictating what you can do?"

While most of the issues raised by the article are entirely valid, I did notice one point with which I have to take issue:

Flick a cigarette in a heavily patrolled community of color and you’re littering

Cigarette butts are litter, and there's the only reason I can think of for treating them differently from other forms of litter is that they're often burning when discarded and have the potential to start fires. Unlike many of the other behaviors cited as criminalizing poverty, this one is entirely voluntary. It is not, in any way a necessary consequence of being poor.

I live in San Francisco, and I voted for the recent sit-lie ordinance. I would've have done so had I not recently been working in the civic center area, and come face to face with the dirty reality of homelessness. The sidewalks smell like urine, people are belligerent and drunk or passed out often. I was punched in the face while waiting for a bus outside of work. A lot of the opposition to sit lie used the rallying cry "Sidewalks are for people". I agree; they're for me too. And I don't want a bunch of drunks sleeping on my sidewalks; dirtying them up

that "would've" should be a "wouldn't"

I think SF is a bit of a strange case. I grew up and lived in the area for a long time. SF has the unfortunate confluence of very limited land, desirable living conditions that drive real estate prices sky-high, a core of super-wealthy people willing to pay those prices and more, and a culture of "hip-poverty" (think hippies and the kids you see today hanging out in Lower Haight) that lends itself to a more relaxed attitude towards the poor. Unlike cities with more land, there really is nowhere for people to go... just as you can't leave homeless on the street, you can't put them out on a raft in the bay. And buying the land for shelters is likely prohibitively expensive.

It's a homeless situation that I think is a little more complex than many other big cities face, and I don't know what the right answer to it is. But if people truly have no other place to go than the Civic Center sidewalks, I'd let them lie there for want of a better solution myself, just because the situation in SF is so particular.

Anyway, just kind of musing out loud.

Another possible contributing factor: If I were homeless, I'd try to go somewhere with mild weather.

"I don't want a bunch of drunks sleeping on my sidewalks"

Who's sidewalks do you want them to sleep on?

What is your solution, exactly? Where are they to go?

Hey, welcome to SF. Take the good with the bad.

Couldn't agree more. One of my biggest complaints about living in SF was the endless panhandling, the odor, and the general sketchiness that comes from having homeless people everywhere. I'm very "live and let live" but everyone has a line - and SF is well past that point for me. I've spent plenty of time in other big cities and the problem is nowhere near as bad. I don't know what the solution should be, it isn't an easy problem to fix - but the current situation isn't workable. At least not for me.

So you want homeless people to be jailed, because you like a clean side-walk? I find that... Strange.

I walk by a typical homeless sleeping spot every morning, and while I do not enjoy the smell, my first reaction is to wonder: Why are these people out here, why do they have no home, why is there no toilette for them to use, etc, etc?

How about donating some money to groups like Glide and other organizations that help the homeless? That's what I do.

Why indeed. Where I live we have vacant free shelters where one can get a bed, a shower and a meal, and yet there are those who absolutely insist in pan handling for their next bottle. A sad picture.

Have you ever spent a night in a shelter?

More to the point, have you ever been mentally ill and spent weeks, months, or even years in shelters?

I haven't done any of those things. Yet I'd wage it would be better to live on a shelter than on the streets, unless one has some serious psychological demons, in which case an hospital with specialized care should be preferable.

>...absolutely insist in pan handling for their next bottle

What assholes! I mean, I know plenty of people who have the audacity to work in high tech to support their alcoholism!

I live in SF too, and I don't think that someone who was siting or lying down punch you in the face. They were probably standing when they punched you.

We should have a law against standing on a sidewalk. I mean, you could get punched in the face! for crying out loud.

Additionally, I heard when SFPD was on the NPR promoting the ordinance as a TOOL that SFPD needed - I dont think criminalizing shit should be seen as a tool.

Now, on the other side of the coin, I had walked out of Macy's in Union square, and there were protesters sitting right in front of the doors to Macy's protesting the anti-sit/lie law.

I said to them "Don't you think sitting in front of the doors and blocking access to the building works AGAINST your cause!"

Sure, I don't agree with making more laws to criminalize anything - we are enough of a police state already - but seriously, sitting in front of a business to call attention for your rights to sit is retarded!

1) "Poverty" and "homelessness" are entirely different things. Conflating them is simply stupid.

2) There's actually a HUGELY valid point, here - in many jurisdictions around the country, it's basically illegal to be homeless for reasons described in this article.

People have to sleep, whether they can pay for a place or not. Protecting private property is one thing, but what do people expect the homeless to do if you chase them off of supposedly "public" land and carry out what amount to raids on homeless shelters?

Honestly? Die. Or, more realistically, stop being. Whether that means stop being homeless or stop being alive is entirely irrelivant.

I believe (Because I can't speak for them) that these laws come about because people judge the homeless and/or feel guilty about them. Either you see them and you feel angry that "They're messing up the park by sleeping there! They don't pay taxes!" or you feel guilty/uncomfortable (Because 'that could be me' or 'why doesn't someone help them?')

The only way to 'get rid' of the problem is to make them go away, and since killing them would be unacceptible, the next best thing is just make it illegal for them to be anywhere you have to encounter them being all homeless.

Or at least "not be where I can see them".

Of course, people won't admit when that's their thought process.

It turned out that Mr. Szekely, who is an ordained minister and does not drink, do drugs or curse in front of ladies, did indeed have a warrant — for not appearing in court to face a charge of “criminal trespassing” (for sleeping on a sidewalk in a Washington suburb). So he was dragged out of the shelter and put in jail.

The utter insanity of this is astounding. There are so many actual criminals that law enforcement officials could expend their efforts on, but instead they're raiding homeless shelters in the middle of the night. Why?

Homeless shelters might house blue collar criminals, but in order to alleviate the "cost" of blue collar criminals, the law needs to be more aggressive in finding and stopping the white collar criminals. White collar criminals (Bernie Madoff, the NAR, etc.) are the usually the underlying cause of blue-collar crime. Blue collar crimes tend to be about survival; white collar crimes are about greed.

Disclaimer: I have been in a place where I've seen it up front and know not all homeless people are drunks or derelicts.

If you are unable to take care of yourself, then the state has a responsibility to take care of you.

However, with freedom comes responsibility, so if you cannot be responsible to take care of yourself then it follows that you should lose some freedoms too. They should not be free to mill around corners drinking and doing drugs, using the sidewalk and street as a toilet.

Here in San Francisco we have many street people and most of them are not capable of taking care of themselves. Most have mental illness, drinking and/or drug problems. It would be nice if someone could triage the ones who have potential to be rehabilitated. As for the ones who cannot be rehabilitated, they should be warehoused somewhere where they are not a danger to themselves or others. As of today, they are warehoused in the streets, and it is lose-lose for everyone. Everyone seems to blame Reagan for shutting down most of the mental hospitals. I do not know to what extent that is true.

Overall I fear that there are now too many people in the wagon and not enough pulling it.

"they should be warehoused somewhere"

I've heard there was once a proposal to round up all the homeless in San Francisco and ship them off to Treasure Island.[1]

Does anyone know if that's true, and if so, what the history of that proposal was?

[1] - https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Treasure_Isla...

Warehoused? How do we prevent them from leaving the warehouse? Maybe we need some fences and armed guards.

And now that we've prevented them from leaving, how do we keep them from fighting and misbehaving? Maybe we put them all in separate rooms so they can't get at each other.

Congratulations, we've just created a prison and made it a de facto crime to be homeless.

How can this be hacked?

I'd suggest improving education, making it easier to get involved in politics, taking an approach in which different remedies for ($homelessness, $drug abuse, etc.) can be tested instead of assuming our legislatures or courts know best.

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