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Comment by dan_the_welder | Hacker News Reader

Ugh. My lovely cafe is in an edge neighborhood. Things were looking up and then a day labor place opened up on the block.

Not all day laborers are homeless but many are. Initially I was very laissez faire about them but eventually they began to create a mess of empty bottles and trash, and harass the customers.

It killed business. It ended up taking about 4 months of calling the police on a daily basis and getting dozens of homeless trespass warranted to get things back on track.

It sucks but I felt I had little choice. If I had left things alone I would have gone out of business. Defaulted on my loan and had to lay off 12 people.

What you gonna do, this problem is huge.

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I hate to ask, but are there any organizations that could have helped? (And maybe still can) Maybe some church or homeless shelter that you could donate to that would use your donations bring free breakfasts for day laborers a few blocks away?

I'm not sure how to solve the problem for your city, but it would help them out and solve your problem without anyone getting locked up. Not to mention providing a little bit of PR for doing an honest favor to the working poor. Combine that with something like city harvest (end of day food that would usually get tossed out is picked up and distributed to hungry people) and I'd go out of my way to eat at your cafe.

The answer is no. Nobody gives a shit but the local business owners. Sure, someone will give them food... and they'll gather at that spot for more.

This is a really common situation: local business owners are put in a position of being the bad guy and using the police against the homeless, because the rest of society chooses not to care for these people.

This is how and why the 'bum bot' was created. http://www.oterrills.com/bumbot.htm Its a terrible thing, and yet Rufus is not a villain. Society's burden was placed on his doorstep. He responded with a squirt gun robot. That neighborhood is very, very dangerous because of the shelters. It sucks.

As a cafe owner... I don't think there is much you can do. As far as I can tell, you did the right thing (or certainly not the wrong thing). The problem is that this is happening in the first place...

I'm not sure i can reasonably come up with a solution. My first thought is to have more shelters, some policies about not enforcing crimes that a) don't hurt people and b) are unavoidable and lessons for cops on dealing with the homeless in a productive manner, but I am as far from an expert as one can me. Anyone with more knowledge on this topic have any ideas?

Edit: Sorry, I went a little off track here. Obviously what was happening did hurt you (in the form of lost business), but I'm seeing what happened as the end result of a problem.

Just be willing to learn.

http://www.nrc.nl/international/article2321531.ece/No_more_h...

Sorry, not sure how this helps dan_the_welder or any other care owner in the situation described?

The problem is the bums themselves. Japanese homeless don't make garbage messes or harass people. They generally manage to peacefully scrape by without imposing themselves. It's much the same in other more homogeneous industrialized countries as best I can tell.

The problem is the American underclass.

Do you think you'll also be upset when the edge neighborhood becomes bougie? Or is that the general purpose of these kinds of businesses moving into poor places?

I am sorry, but this is a most asinine logic. Correlating "the opening of a day laborer place on the block" with your failing business does not make sense.

Defaulted on my loan and had to lay off 12 people.

So how are these 12 people you laid off different from the day laborers? I've worked countless restaurant gigs, and restaurant work definitely counts as "day labor". The problem that people like you don't understand is what it's like to not own anything. You can't take out a loan against something you don't own.

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