• KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Yes. They should do it like NYC, where it’s basically illegal to live on the street. The city is required by law to offer free housing at a certain quality level for anyone who needs it. It’s not amazing but you get a door that locks and a security team, plus a bathroom.

    If you don’t want to sleep inside, you literally have to leave the city. It’s not cheap but it works much better than letting people live in tents.

    • Soup@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Why the illegal part, though? People don’t really need an incentive to have shelter. It just punishes people who are struggling with even deeper issues.

      • 14th_cylon@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        People don’t really need an incentive to have shelter

        Not necessarily true. For example if the place has “no alcohol and no being drunk” policy, some of them will rather stay out.

        • Soup@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Right but that’s a choice the shelter can make and not a point against the idea that people, ultimately, won’t really refuse a place to sleep. It’s a more complex issue that takes more time than an evening so rules like “no being drunk” which sound fine don’t really help anyone.

          • Zorque@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            I’d imagine it’d help make the unhoused who don’t want to have to deal with drunk people feel a lot safer about using them.

            • 14th_cylon@lemm.ee
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              3 months ago

              and if you want to use public money on it, then the goal has to be to help them get back to society, to which dealing with problematic behavioral patterns, like substance abuse, is a necessity…

      • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        Technically it’s not illegal to sleep on the street, but there are sanitation rules regarding it. NYC has 8 million people. Any problem you can think of is magnified. It’s literally a sanitary issue if you allow thousands of people to camp outside.

        https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/26/nyregion/nyc-homeless-camp-bill-of-rights.html

        In New York City, there are many rules on the books that have been used to restrict sleeping rough.

        One is a piece of sanitation code that makes it unlawful to leave “any box, barrel, bale or merchandise or other movable property” or to erect “any shed, building or other obstruction” on “any public place.”

        In city parks, it is illegal to “engage in camping, or erect or maintain a tent, shelter or camp” without a permit, or to be in a park at all between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. unless posted rules state otherwise.

        And on the property of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, both underground and in outdoor elevated subway stations, it is a form of banned disorderly conduct to “sleep or doze” in any manner that “may interfere” with the comfort of passengers. Nor may subway riders “lie down or place feet on the seat of a train, bus or platform bench or occupy more than one seat” or “place bags or personal items on seats” in ways that “impede the comfort of other passengers.”

        Note that these rules also restrict people who have homes too. No one can have a party in the park after hours or take up a ton of space on the subway. Note also that you can sleep outside if you don’t get in the way.

        someone who did not violate any of those rules — say, someone who set a sleeping bag in an out-of-the-way spot under a highway overpass and did not put up any kind of shelter — was legally in the clear, at least in theory.

        • LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Note that these rules also restrict people who have homes too. No one can have a party in the park after hours or take up a ton of space on the subway. Note also that you can sleep outside if you don’t get in the way.