Different take on the bench. The dividers allows for the pregnant and the disabled to sit. Which I believe is more important than letting some homeless sleep on that particular bench.
You can have those arm handles at the ends of benches without being dividers, accommodating both, people with movement problems and homeless people who need a spot to sleep.
No they’re point was if there is someone sleeping on the bench there isn’t space for someone to sit who needs to sit
Most people sleep at night. Pregnant and people with movement impairments are usually not met at night.
So you’re supposed to sit on the homeless person as if they were some piece of cloth?
Ok.
Because as we all know, without dividers every bench in the city would have a homeless person sleeping on it 24 hours a day non-stop, never allowing anyone to sit down ever again.
We still have those benches because there’s still homeless and honestly them taking over those benches ruins it for everyone else. Not because they’re homeless because they’re almost always addicts and drunk people or people on drugs who might also have mental issues are a bit threatening and unpleasant to others.
hey! so it turns out you can treat people with mental illness and addiction. it also turns out that untreated mental illness often contributes to addiction. it also turns out that untreated addiction can exacerbate mental illness. oh! AND it turns out that homelessness can exacerbate mental illness and addiction!
but you know. those people are also unpleasant, so we should probably just make sure they can’t lay down anywhere. i mean, eff those assholes.
hey! so it turns out you can treat people with mental illness and addiction
What a novel idea, we’ve never tried that here in Finland. If we had heard about that we might’ve made a lot of programs to help them, house them. Surely that should’ve solved the issue completely. But alas, we never knew about such things.
but you know. those people are also unpleasant, so we should probably just make sure they can’t lay down anywhere. i mean, eff those assholes.
It would be unfair to them to make the public spaces, meant for all public, unpleasant for most people to cater to those who are hostile and threatening to others. Which is unfortunately the case with drunk and high addicts. You don’t want to exclude homeless but you also can’t allow them to exclude others with unacceptable behaviour. And public transit stations for example aren’t meant for living or sleeping in, the benches are for temporary use, often for those with trouble standing. Someone using the bench to sleep on is taking it away from others. It’s a tough situation. And housing is provided for everyone. Not everyone takes the offer, often for addiction and mental health issues. You can’t exactly force them either.
I feel like you live in a much more magical world than I do, with much simpler solutions to what others consider big and difficult issues.
i assumed i was responding to the typical hateful conservative american here (and yes, i have made the typically american error in that) who pretty much has the attitude of “eff those losers, why should i care, etc.” hostile architecture in a country that does not universally offer alternatives (some cities/states are better than others as far as offering services) just seems like an extra kick in the shins for people who may not have alternatives. our country is not as progressive as yours in this regard (and many others).
so i stand corrected in my understanding of the context behind your statement.
as for my magical world? i doubt it. many of my clients are homeless or mentally ill. and i do, in fact, have such a person in my family. i understand that it’s not at all easy to help some people.
What happens when those people leave the housing provided and leave because they want their freedom to move around and be on the street again?
Then they’re just a person exercising their freedom to move around on the street. Unless you’re suggesting that they prefer to be homeless, which is ridiculous.
Housing isn’t prison. You can go out on the street, come back home to sleep/shower/eat/warm up/play Night Crawlers or whatever you want to do at home. I hope we aren’t getting confused how houses work.
But the main point is that some need housing because of their condition, and some need it to even get a starting chance at life, getting a job or go to school and later get a job, etc. We as a society benefit from both. And as for the very very few that want to be homeless or just became homeless, there are shelters (which I think USA actually kinda does have or has had a lot).
All of the above also makes financial and economical sense.
Isaiah 3
14 The Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
15 What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord God of hosts.
Also Deuteronomy 15:
7 If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.
8 You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be.
9 Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought, thinking, “The seventh year, the year of remission, is near,” and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing; your neighbor might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt.
10 Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake.
11 Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”
If you’re going to follow the Bible, make sure you’re not picking and choosing the parts you want to follow. If the commands from your god are that important, you can’t ignore half of them.
2 Kings 6:28-29 But then the king asked, “What is the matter?” She replied, “This woman said to me: ‘Come on, let’s eat your son today, then we will eat my son tomorrow.’ So we cooked my son and ate him. Then the next day I said to her, ‘Kill your son so we can eat him,’ but she has hidden her son.
Psalm 137:9 Blessed the one who seizes your children and smashes them against the rock: the children represent the future generations, and so must be destroyed if the enemy is truly to be eradicated
Leviticus 25:44-46 “Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.”
1 Timothy 2:11-12
“A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.”
Your quotations seem to be heavily paraphrased, and are really taken out of context from the original stories. These are also not commandments, but rather things that happened in history and were a part of the culture at the time, thus there isn’t really any moral law to “follow” in these verses in the first place.
Not really looking to argue, just adding context.
I don’t follow the Bible and I agree with you. Just pointing out the same hypocrisy from the other side of the equation.
Also, I would argue it would be a very good thing for those who do follow the Bible to selectively follow the parts that say to be nice to people, help those in need, don’t hurt or steal from others, etc. even if it is hypocritical.
“Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.”
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James 5%3A1-6&version=NIV
But they didn’t solve it. They are doing something but there are still homeless people. Looks like their plan of action is definitely better though.
I don’t know the exact way they are enforcing this, but if there are still homeless people then either there are some preconditions to apply or people want to be homeless or government can’t afford to house everyone.
In the first case, preconditions shouldn’t exist, everyone deserves to not freeze to death. In the second case, there is no real problem, if someone doesn’t want to live in a house, than they should be allowed to not live in a house. And in third case, you can’t have millioners and billioners and tell the country you just don’t have money to house the homeless, tax them and build homes.
It’s true. Even with the extensive social safety net, programs for mental health, addiction, income assistance, housing provided etc, there is always people who fall through the cracks. A lot of it seems to be addiction (alcohol, drugs) or mental health related, often a combination of the two. Some don’t take up the programs, housing, assistance. I don’t think the situation can be entirely solved ever, without of course literally forcing people to live in a house or something. That’s actually something that used to be done up to fairly late in the 1900s. “Vagrants” could be locked up and made to do forced labour or forced to join the military. I suppose it’d be one way to make the statistics prettier, though even with our current right-wing government, it might be a bit extreme these days.
