Unlike some here, I came away with a deep sense of empathy, and today’s HN snark and frustration bounced off me pretty hard. The public order issues - homelessness in parks, the challenges of shared spaces—have certainly impacted me. But more than that, I struggle with how to translate the state of the world to my boys. I always remind them: every unhoused person was once a little boy or girl. We might be older now, but we’re still kids inside, and nobody dreams of growing up in these circumstances.
What struck me most was the balance of compassion and pragmatism that Amanda brings to her work. It’s easy to be frustrated with the policies and bureaucratic inefficiencies that slow down real solutions - but they are, in some ways, understandable.
The biggest frustration for me is the gap between the mental state of many unhoused individuals and the requirements needed to secure housing. The city surely understands the long-term costs of its policies, and it’s run by highly pragmatic people with limited budgets. But rules are rules, and at some point, top-down accommodations (including medical interventions...) are necessary to bridge this gap.
Nothing about this article strikes me as pragmatic. She's spending all her energy attempting to help people with the least likelihood of success and then gets angry at the system when they inevitably fail. The city didn't kick Morrisette out of the hotel because they like zero-tolerance policies, but because other people deserve a chance a chance to live in a free hotel room as well.
There are those that do succeed but those are certainly the most motivated to do so. Others are in transition: know they should get indoors but know their difficulties.
Rather than kicking them out, maybe they are required to attend some mandatory psych sessions. Maybe they go maybe they don’t but at least there support to help them work thru their issues of why they blew up at the staff (as in this instance).
This is what I'm saying the ranger is doing. Someone who gets extremely distressed by indoor living is not a good candidate taxpayer funded indoor living. On the other hand, that housing given to someone who is capable of navigating welfare bureaucracy on their own may actually enable someone who is at risk spiraling down a path of no return to turn their life around.
Favoring narratives of individual heroes over narratives of systemic changes is a cultural problem. Whether it's Atlas Shrugged, the Odyssey or Harry Potter. It instills a learned helplessness and an artificial desire for a "strong man fix things" that can be very difficult to overcome. But it also atomizes and fractures society and benefits those with the most individual wealth and power.
The ranger is a hero. What she is doing is good. But she shouldn't have to do it. And nobody should have to do so much. The article intentionally buries its lede: if this is what it takes to save one person, how can we save thousands? The implied answer is again helplessness: of course this isn't scalable so we can't. What she is doing is too much for one person, so we can't expect it of others. But the real answer is that literally none of this would be necessary if the system were actually built to help these people.
Her work does not require a herculean effort because it is difficult. It requires so much effort because it is being made difficult. The right question isn't how can we scale this, the right question is how can we make it easy enough that we don't need her to be a hero. The question of scalability answers itself once you've removed the obstacles.
those who cried out to quote Tax The Rich unquote, were likewise upset by the tariffs being imposed which are taxes on the rich... a really uniform and effective one! taxing corporations by tariffs is much father reaching than taxing individuals. individual heroes.
those who cannot interpret epic fantasy sagas as allegory or larger than Life metaphors are already helpless and they just need entertainment and some opiates.