Comment by pkdpic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pkdpic | Hacker News Reader

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This is crazy but cities really are putting neighborhood residents and businesses in a position where they can either break the law by taking enforcement into their own hands with actions like this or let their neighborhoods descend into anarchy.

There are descent people that are pushed into homelessness, but one camper can turn to a dozen in less than a week and only one of them has to start threatening to hurt your family, breaking into vehicles or set a fire to turn a benign situation into one that can threaten your life or livelihood.

Speaking from personal experience, we turned a blind eye to a middle aged man living out of his car next to our garage for a few months. Then we woke up one night to find the van had erupted into a two story fireball that almost burned down our entire block.

I go out and talk to people now when they start forming an encampment in our neighborhood. Its incredibly difficult work and I have never had both more and less sympathy for their situations and the real threats encampments pose.

This is a complex issue but it is an issue that is the city's responsibility to address. Shame on them for putting people on both sides of this issue in impossible positions.

New York figured this out in 1979. Cities have a constitutional obligation to build shelters for everyone that needs them. They did.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callahan_v._Carey

New York in the 80s also got the other part of the puzzle: they enforced the laws. The people who are breaking the law - all of them, not just the politically convenient ones to go after - need to be fined and/or arrested.

Those blocks will come down really quickly if business owners started getting fined for putting them up and van-dwellers started finding their houses getting towed. However, the city likely can't do one without the other.

If the van dwellers were being towed nobody would have put up the eco-blocks in the first place.

That was the point of the comment you are responding to...

There is no one to fine for the blocks. You can't prove who placed them, and you can't fine someone for something that isn't on their property.

Yes you can. I used to be a homeowner. Even if the area past the sidewalk wasn’t my property, I was expected to keep it reasonably maintained.

My suggestion: If debris was left in front of my property irrespective of whether it was within my property or not, I’d get a notice to rectify. If I didn’t within a reasonable time frame, the city would rectify it for me and send me the bill. Failure to pay the bill within six months would simply result in it being folded into the property taxes. Consequences for not paying taxes don’t need explanation at this point. Very effective strategy. Not my fault someone dumped something in front of the house, but how to track who did it? Easier to shift it onto the property owner.

In my case I would simply put up security cameras that are clear enough to pick up license plates. The city would be only too happy to pass on the bill to the vehicle owner of whoever dropped off the crap.

A city full of security cameras can't find out who placed a block? The city can always remove one round and wait to catch someone putting up another one.

They can make permits required to place eco blocks on city streets then inform every cement company and trucking company that failure to get a permit will result in a $10,000 fine and impounding of the delivery vehicle for 14 days at the expense of the trucks owner. Then offer citizens $5000 for proof of companies dropping these blocks off kind of like how they pay citizens part of the fine for recording vehicles idling in New York. There definitely is a way but not sure there is the will to do it.

When cities aren't enforcing public camping, illegal parking, dumping trash in public places, property crimes, or openly using hard drugs--what on earth makes you think they'd prioritize going after someone anonymously leaving a concrete block to prevent junkies camping there? I guarantee the cops won't put any resources into this. At most they remove the blocks and then it starts all over again. San Francisco had the same issue only it was with boulders, not eco-blocks.

The blocks were placed by a business. Businesses are nice and juicy legal entities that lawyers and police can hassle.

That is not at all how the legal system works.

A business is hired by an individual to do a thing, and that business won't hesitate to give up information about that person later.

A big part of the problem in California is that county jails are releasing "non-violent" criminals (and often violent criminals as well) almost immediately due to COVID protocols. This is why property crime is going off the charts... there are no consequences for stealing.

> The people who are breaking the law - all of them, not just the politically convenient ones to go after - need to be fined and/or arrested.

Context and proportionality are important too.

Police and DAs seem to be abusing this idea. Both of these things should matter when writing laws, but not when enforcing them. We basically take selective enforcement of the law as a given these days, and it turns out that can cause a lot of social problems.

> There are descent people that are pushed into homelessness, but one camper can turn to a dozen in less than a week and only one of them has to start threatening to hurt your family, breaking into vehicles or set a fire to turn a benign situation into one that can threaten your life or livelihood.

> Speaking from personal experience, we turned a blind eye to a middle aged man living out of his car next to our garage for a few months. Then we woke up one night to find the van had erupted into a two story fireball that almost burned down our entire block.

This reads like an inflammatory article. Nothing but anecdotal reports of sample of one.

I see your point, but the option space is not limited to two extremes. For example, getting press coverage is a viable third option as well.

I'll bet there are a broader range of options available worth considering. What about trying the public sanitation angle? Does that open up some options?

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