3d ago

People are so horrible to homeless people for no reason

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I understand not wanting homeless people close to you - they are dirty, smelly, prone to drugs and crime (which is why they must be helped and housed). But wanting to harm them remotely - wtf
- I believe it's a thought process along the following: "I hate seeing homeless people living on the streets in my neighborhood. They are smelly and cause crime and take our taxes while doing nothing or causing harm. I worked hard to save a lot of money to own a house in this neighborhood and they are ruining it while living here for free. If I help them, they'll continue to stay in this area. I don't want to make them feel welcome in my neighborhood at all so I will not donate my blankets to them."
  We have a high homeless population in my city and homeowners here all have that mindset, even though we are a very liberal city.
  
  I feel like in this case it was... "I wove these blankets for wealthy people impacted by the fires so they can owe me praise & fame. I don't give a shit about other people other than myself."
  
  I mean have you never seen a reddit thread where everyone jerks each other off about not giving homeless people money so as to not encourage more homeless people to ask for money? I assume it's a similar mentality.
  
  Yes, I understood your point of view, and I disagree. It is not a "rational" chain of thought like that. It begins with the emotion. The emotion is not a reaction to the chain of thought, the chain of thought is a rationalization for the emotion.
  
  I didn't respond to you so not sure why you are acting like I did. For the sake of discussion though, both can be true. It may start as disgust and then they can form a logical rationale for why this disgust is warranted in their opinion.
  Not sure what your actual argument is though. Are you saying that their disgust/discomfort with homeless people in their neighborhoods should be dismissed because it doesn't start off as logical?
- People don't come to the decision, "I don't want homeless people near me," for those rational (at least, rational for the sake of discussion) reasons. Rather they use those things as rationalizations for their feelings of disgust, fear of impurity, and insecurity about their own potential poverty.
- Yeah I'm connected with a group that feeds the homeless, provides sleeping pads and connects them with other available resources. The organization has a handful of acres on their site and had tried to allow people to camp there but it was a complete failure on multiple levels. The local govt kept trying to shut it down and insurance was dropping coverage. But the clencher was the twenty dumpsters full of trash that appeared in just a few months, and all of the needles everywhere. There were three or four really good people who stayed there for a little while but most just trashed everything. We still feed them though.
  
  How were these people expected to dispose of their trash? My household generates nearly a bag of trash per person per week, mostly food and drink packaging I think. A couple dozen people could fill a dumpster a week. But it simply disappears if we leave it by the street in front of my home. How does that work when you're homeless?
  
  There was a dumpster on site. They didn't use it. Also, what peregrin5 said.
  
  A lot of the trash isn't generated. It's collected. A homeless person isn't going out and buying stuff off Amazon or food that has lots of packaging. But if you live around homeless folks you can often recognize them by the pile of junk they've collected from various sources, most of which they don't have any actual use for. Many just seem to have a compulsion to packrat things.

54 comments