Todd’s lawsuit accuses the city of allowing the encampment at the 101 overpass on Gower to remain for a “substantial amount of time,”
Why is she distributing supplies to a group of people she wants the city to throw out?
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/03/typhus-tu...
I really want to know whose history you studied. From what I've read, "losing your way in life" usually resulted in starvation and death. Maybe if you're lucky you get drafted into war, and extra lucky you come back alive and intact.
Seems like it's only been the last hundred years or so that we've made any real progress here.
I agree it’s a bit weird though. She’s definitely not a pedestrian who just happened to be inconvenienced by the tents, but actually sought them out. Should make for some interesting legal arguments.
The encampment has taken over one of the lanes of southbound traffic, and when you hustle to make that left, unless you overcorrect on the turn and slow down, you are going to run into the encampment. It was a very difficult turn to make pre-pandemic when there was maybe 1 or 2 tents on the sidewalk underneath the highway; now that it's the sidewalk plus a lane of traffic, it is only a matter of time before someone gets run over.
As a very-short-term fix, the city needs to move some of those people to the encampment on El Centro, a couple of blocks away.
On edit: Google streetview from February, you can almost see how the encampment takes over a lane of traffic -- https://goo.gl/maps/dySMxTxFmgx43uNj7
> Todd’s lawsuit accuses the city of allowing the encampment at the 101 overpass on Gower to remain for a “substantial amount of time,” creating dangerous conditions for pedestrians and drivers. The city also did not post signs warning drivers that there would be “excessive foot traffic” in the street due to the encampments, the lawsuit said.
She might be hoping that the city will move the homeless people elsewhere, put up signage, or possibly even come up with their own solution.
ahh the downvotes with no reply have begun, is this reddit now?
What is an appropriate response? As an individual who cares about the homeless, you can want, and seek to force, the city to address the problem, but the large-scale remedies that can be pursued by local government are not available to you personally. Do you really think one would occupy a moral high ground by doing nothing, compared to trying at least to alleviate the suffering of the people who are stuck in this position that they don't want either?
(To put it differently, do you think that the homeless are there because it's the best possible place?)
I like that you're asking this question and we should all be asking it but I'm no expert and my opinion on the matter is uneducated at best. We should be demanding this of elected officials
> Do you really think one would occupy a moral high ground by doing nothing, compared to trying at least to alleviate the suffering of the people who are stuck in this position that they don't want either?
Thinking that ALL of these people don't want to be in this position is a dangerous assumption. To me there's different kinds of homeless people form those who have serious mental issues (thank you Reagan!) to those who are undergoing economic hardship (who should make their way to a shelter), drug addicts who will rob you for their next fix, etc. If you can't stand walking by and do nothing consider becoming a social worker and address the problem expertly
> (To put it differently, do you think that the homeless are there because it's the best possible place?)
I have moved around plenty but at every city I've lived in homeless shelters are available. The conditions were usually a curfew and no drugs; it seems fair to me
I hope my message isn't heartless, I just think there's nuance to helping people
The reductionist vitriol is common, but unhelpful for a productive discussion.
In fact, that's probably the reason the homeless were living by a freeway. Anywhere near where people live would see them hassled by police or exposed to violence and harassment.
Whatever the motivation of the lawsuit, the blocking of sidewalks is a legitimate complaint that has come up in other cities such as Portland. Disabled people can’t easily just go around a blocked sidewalk, and anyone else blocking a sidewalk like a homeowner or construction firm would be fined a great deal (like the city did to the federal government last year over fences by the courthouse, up to $500 a day).
She would probably prefer them to be housed, not "thrown out".
Article is paywalled, but presumably she doesn't want them thrown out. There are, in fact, other solutions to homeless encampments...
* House the ones that are functional/capable of taking care of themselves to an extent
* Mandatory rehab for the ones are strung out pm debilitating opiates
* Asylum for the ones are mentally disabled.
Wow. You've got some opinions about homeless people, don't you?
Drug addiction runs in my family and we had to do the same for my uncle. Several weeks of keeping him on a short leash impacted the rest of his life and he was able to take care of his family unlike before. It's not pleasant and it requires a tremendous amount of willpower and people under that spell need every bit of help that can get.