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Comment by nrclark | Hacker News Reader

I have very conflicted feelings about this. Homelessness is an epidemic, and it can be easy to fall into and hard to escape from. I want to be a compassionate person.

On the other hand, the walking trails and parks in my community are dangerous and polluted as a result of all the homeless camps. There is a bike trail from that goes right from my subdivision to the local library, and my kids can’t use it because it’s physically blocked by a homeless camp. They’re noisy, and they leave broken glass and condoms all over the place.

What are our options as a society? My community offers all sorts of aid programs, but the campers mostly don’t seem to use them. Jailing the homeless seems immoral, unethical, and also impractical. How can we crack this nut?

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It seems obvious to me that society should prioritize the future generations. Kids should be able to use libraries and parks, especially those from poorer neighborhoods. Families should be able to take their kids out for walks and not have to worry about dodging needles and other biohazards on the ground. There are always tradeoffs, but if some group in society has to make sacrifices it shouldn't be the kids.

See Slab City for an example of what a controlled and sustained homeless camps look like.

No jobs in sight?

Not like the homeless who are blocking a bike trail were working anyway. The options are have them not work near you are away from you, I think its obvious what most people would choose.

I wonder if anyone has asked any homeless people this question, in a serious manner.

They have, and the reality is that it's simply wrong that such services exist. It's a delusion. People want to believe such services exist, and in practice they have limits of 30 or 60 days in the very best of cases.

How does one distinguish between asking homeless people, and asking them seriously?

I think the distinction between "Doing X" and "Doing X seriously" may be a lot more important than people realize.

> and the reality is that it's simply wrong that such services exist.

I agree with the general direction of your sentiments, but it is technically true that more than zero services exist, thus "services exist" is a true statement - pretty clever eh? Imagine if the whole world ran on tricks like this!

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