A spokesperson for SpartanNash, the parent company of Family Fare, said store employees responded “with the utmost compassion and professionalism.”
“Ensuring there is ample safe, affordable housing continues to be a widespread issue nationwide that our community needs to partner in solving,” Adrienne Chance said, declining further comment.
Warren said the woman was cooperative and quickly agreed to leave. No charges were pursued.
“We provided her with some information about services in the area,” the officer said. “She apologized and continued on her way. Where she went from there, I don’t know.”
I feel like there’s very few opportunities these days to say this, but the cops and business owners in this situation actually seem to have behaved in a very humane and decent way here, so that’s a nice surprise
I was 100% assuming she was arrested. Very relieving that’s not what happened.
Yeah, it’s messed up that nearly everyone from the US would read that headline and make the same assumption without batting an eye because we’ve been conditioned to expect nothing else from police. It sure would be nice if we lived in a country where policing was actually a civil service and not a damn street gang.
It sure would be nice if we lived in a country where policing was actually a civil service and not a damn street gang.
The cases you hear in the media are the ones that provoke outrage.
On a day to day basis the police have hundreds of interactions with the public that aren’t remarkable or noteworthy.
cops and business owners in this situation actually seem to have behaved in a very humane and decent way
Well it’s nice that they didn’t beat her to death. But they still kicked her out and didn’t actually provide any more help. “Services in the area” probably will be less adequate than what she’d had before they booted her.
I don’t expect them to actually take care of her, but they don’t get a gold star for declining to bludgeon, strangle, or imprison her. She’s on her own.
I mean, I would add on not sticking her with a criminal charge as an important thing they didn’t do here, because the whole story of “oh you missed a court date because we sent the notice to an address you haven’t lived at in years, so now we’re fining you on top of the original criminal charge that brought you in here, [soon] wow, you’ve got a lot of missed court dates and unpaid fines, you look like a career criminal who needs the book thrown at them” happens a lot,
And there’s a very real chance that the contractors looked the other way and then this woman’s residence got discovered they could have lost their licenses or otherwise gotten in trouble
Like, I think what you’re pointing out is a really important perspective and we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that a woman with a home was made homeless here, but I think a lot of relatively powerless people here tried to be as humane as an inhumane system would let them be, and I think that’s important too. I think the way this world gets less shitty is when more people start making these little steps towards revolutionary kindness and then those little steps start getting bigger and bigger.
Again, it’s not praiseworthy that they merely declined to abuse her. I’m not scorning them, but they get zero credit for declining to abuse her (beyond the abuse of kicking her out with no help).
there’s a very real chance that the contractors looked the other way
Without evidence, there’s no point in this speculation unless you’re hired by their PR to praise them (which seems unlikely).
the way this world gets less shitty is when more people start making these little steps towards revolutionary kindness and then those little steps start getting bigger and bigger
Sorry, but this is absolute nonsense. It’s meaningless. She is homeless.
a woman with a home was made homeless
This is the only story. Let’s not waste time praising the heroic saints who kicked her out.
I agree it sucks, but they can’t reasonably let her continue living there after they found out. There’s so many legal and ethical issues with that. They are not qualified to provide housing. We need to provide better alternatives.
Legal problems? Yes. Ethical problems? Fuck no.
She was living rent free pulling resources from a company that likely fights against social programs for homelessness. That, to me, 1000% ethical.
It would only be unethical if the US has an adequate social safety net.
I think it’s sad af, if she was a bird or raccoon they’d let her stay. We give people less dignity than a bird.
Would you like the officer to take a second mortgage out on his home and build her a room on his house? The system is broken, the cop did his best to not make it worse.
I’m not blaming the cop. But I’m also not praising him. Nobody here helped the woman. Let’s just lament her homelessness without weirdly congratulating the people who kicked her out.
Cop shoulda pulled one of these
You know back during the Great Depression, we used to let widows buy their homes for pennies rather than let them be homeless. It’s sad that these days, our sense of community is so fucked that people would pick profit over making sure everyone in their community has a house.
They behaved kindly because they were in the wrong - it’s almost certain that if they’d used force and she’d resisted that it’d end up in front of a judge and she would be able to claim the area as a residence.
Contractors curious about an extension cord on the roof of a Michigan grocery store made a startling discovery: A 34-year-old woman was living inside the business sign, with enough space for a computer, printer and coffee maker, police said.
“She was homeless,” Officer Brennon Warren of the Midland Police Department said Thursday
Sounds like she had a home you goddamn narcs
“There are much better options”
She had private shelter, no rent, probably HVAC. about the only thing missing was a bathroom, but there’s no mention of any waste she could ha e left.
Sounds like a pretty good deal. Wonder what “better” is.
Who snitched??
Not really “homeless” now is she?
Setting aside whether they want her living in their sign, if they know that she’s there and let her stay, I’m pretty sure that they have liability if there are problems. She was living on the roof of a building, no obvious way up or down, and if they say “sure, go ahead and stay” and she is climbing off the roof one night and falls, that’s on them. Not to mention that I am pretty confident that a store-roof-sign is gonna violate a long list of code requirements for legal housing, from insulation to having a bathroom.
And even if you’re gung-ho on the concept of relaxing liability and code for property owners who don’t charge or something like that because you want a lower bar for homeless shelters or something, I am almost certain that the kind of place that they’re gonna aim to permit isn’t gonna be people living on a roof in a sign.
EDIT: Also, while I don’t know the specifics of this store, it’s apparently in a shopping center (and the article referenced that she may have climbed up from other commercial buildings, so they’re probably adjoining). I think that the way those work is that the stores don’t normally own their individual properties, but that they lease from a property owner who owns the strip mall or shopping center, and it’s not like the store can just go start treating the property as residential even if it wants to, even aside from zoning restrictions from the municipality.
Lemme check Google Maps.
Yeah, it’s the “Northwest Plaza” shopping center. Looks like they share a building with a pet food store and a UPS store and such, and there are other buildings in the shopping center.
Yeah, and at Street View level, you can see that there are more businesses in the same building. Like, a buffet restaurant, a pharmacy, etc.
Like, setting aside the whole question of whether society should subsidize more housing, this just isn’t somewhere that it makes a lot of sense to put someone, even if that’s the aim.
