Am not defending this law at all, but the thinking behind it is twofold:
- you might be handing out tainted or expired food
- the bigger issue: you are creating a “nuisance” on the property where you’re doing it, as large groups of homeless people gather there. Some would say it’s a safety concern, for example handing out free food at the corner of a primary school.
Again, I’m not agreeing with either point, but these are arguments I have heard from people who back such laws.
To the second point though, I’ve seen it firsthand. Salt Lake City tried to do a good thing by making the public library a homeless-friendly zone by handing out free food and allowing access to WiFi. This caused a large amount of homeless to hang out there all the time, and some of them would harass and attack non-homeless patrons of the library to the point that pretty much all of them stopped coming to the library entirely, and the area became a no-go zone.
The real issue is that a large amount of homeless people have severe mental illnesses (since public sanitariums all closed in the 70s). So where there are big congregations of homeless, there will inevitably be harassment and possible violence. Cities don’t want people feeding the homeless at any old public building to avoid these situations, hence the laws, which allow you to do it only at certain places the city allows.
To the first point, handing out tainted or expired food should be illegal, not any kind of food. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
“Poisoned or tainted food” is just a sensationalist term for “not FDA approved” or “not handled by a certified food professional”. It’s kinda over the top in this regard but remember when people put borax in their milk to make it taste better or lime and plaster into bread to stretch the flour? It was unregulated food. Just like you can’t open an unregistered and unlicensed restaurant without certfied cooks, you can’t just hand out foods without someone knowing (i.e. licensed) how the food is supposed to be handled.
The real issue is that too many Americans have bought into the bootstrap theory and couldn’t give a shit about their neighbours who don’t have a place to live or food to eat.
Take care of those 2 things first and there won’t be an issue of people hanging out where it’s warm/cool and food is being supplied.
A solution requires more than just providing food and shelter. We have a class of people who are marginally mentally ill or barely literate. They do not function well enough to hold down a job or fill out a welfare form, but they function too well to require that they be locked up. These people need a semi-monitored place with enough oversight to keep them safe. The street can’t do that, but they have no other place to go.
You’re right. But food and shelter is a good place to start lest we overwhelm the pearl clutchers with too many requests all at once.
I hate to burst your bubble, but it’s not just an America problem. Have you been to Paris lately and seen the homelessness situation there, especially on the Metro?
Or in Oslo, where homeless Roma people attack people in broad daylight at Nationalteatret station and steal their luggage?
It’s a big problem everywhere, and attitudes like the type you describe aren’t relegated solely to Americans.
That’s fair. So let’s fix it worldwide then, starting with North America.
