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[parent] [thread] 19 comments
1. II2II+(OP)[view] [source] 2025-02-17 02:12:47
I suspect that few people want to be involved. It is difficult and dangerous work. It requires a personality that both cares for others, while being resilient enough to face the challenges of those in their care. By in large, it is also a thankless job. Just look at many of the responses here. The public don't care about the time and effort involved. Many think that it is best to just lock them up. Quite often the recipients don't care. They are too busy battling their own demons.

It's probably best to have safety nets in place so that people don't reach these depths in the first place.

replies(3): >>aprilt+c2 >>bloomi+da >>tsimio+sQ
2. aprilt+c2[view] [source] 2025-02-17 02:28:48
>>II2II+(OP)
We have social safety nets in the US. We just don't have one robust enough that you can live in housing and have enough income without working in San Francisco permanently.
3. bloomi+da[view] [source] 2025-02-17 03:37:33
>>II2II+(OP)
The safety net for everyone is your friends and family. Drug addiction destroys that, so you are left alone. They kind of don't have anyone else. People see homelessness, but all I see is a slow trek to a suicide for many. They are dying slowly - and do not make any mistake about that. It's fatal.

Overall, there are many drugs addicts and homeless people in the world. It only bothers us when it obstructs our vision, very disgusting sentences like I cant even visit the beach anymore. I think that's fine, there are many beaches and many other places. You can visit the beach somewhere else, these people are dying.

Millionaire Rogan found the sight of homeless people unbearable so he had to leave the state (could be the taxes, but he's also filthy rich. I don't want to say he's just rotten, that's mean. I'll say a few other things instead).

Your society creates an inordinate amount of homeless people, that's first. Worry about the view later. You are lucky that you even get to see poverty up close, most just move the living fuck away from it.

Wait.

Edit:

I bring Rogan up because if you go through his entire catalog, you will see he has hours and hours of content that just bullies homeless people. He has done that to a few other groups, literal hours if you stack them side by side in a compilation. So there was already a lot of damage done in terms of mindshare by this media-arm.

replies(2): >>throwa+Wb >>lynx97+cl1
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4. throwa+Wb[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-02-17 03:51:27
>>bloomi+da
Trivializing other people's concerns and worries is not the best way to get their help - even when priorities are pretty clear. It is very similar to trivializing "oh you shouldn't be an addict in the first place"

We are dealing with humans here, and all of them, including the homeless and people complaining about views, make up our society.

replies(4): >>bloomi+gc >>tdeck+6q >>nullc+ow >>johnny+pt2
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5. bloomi+gc[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-02-17 03:54:14
>>throwa+Wb
Again, I said a specific sentence, and I think it's the most important sentence to me. You have to be lucky to be witness to poverty, it provides incredible perspective. I undermine other's concerns about the unsightly view because I believe their attitude is immoral, and I have no issue drawing a red line there.
replies(2): >>ty6853+fd >>throwa+kd
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6. ty6853+fd[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-02-17 04:07:16
>>bloomi+gc
Having been homeless a couple times the way out is rather simple in most cases if you're sane and sober. A days day labor is enough for food, propane, and bus passes for a week. Anything beyond that us enough to buy a shower at a truck stop and get cleaned up for an interview at a warehouse. You can trivially survive outside with a weeks day labor wages worth of REI gear on the coasts and most the lower 49 ( of course a junky would hawk this as soon as they are dope sick )

On both occasions I used this equation homeless -> day labor for Airbnb to clean up for warehouse/factory interview -> work in factory until deposit on apartment earned to get out.

Most the people actually on the street are nuts or drugged out. People like me would clean construction site, then take a bus to edge of town and climb a flat roof and sleep where no one sees us.

What you're witnessing isn't so much poverty but insanity.

replies(1): >>johnny+It2
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7. throwa+kd[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-02-17 04:07:56
>>bloomi+gc
Yes, you can draw a line wherever your moral compass tells you to. My point was not about morality. It is just that regardless of what you think of morals as an individual, these people are all still part of the same society, and parts of both problems and solutions.

And in many parts of the world you have to be lucky not to see/experience poverty from up close.

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8. tdeck+6q[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-02-17 06:21:53
>>throwa+Wb
The thing is that being homeless is a constant state of emergency for homeless people and we don't talk about it like that.

Imagine if someone spent their time complaining about how pulling over for an ambulance or firetruck made them late to an important life event, so we should stop doing that. I don't think most of us would say "hey wait a minute, this person has a genuine concern. Let's not trivialize it".

replies(1): >>presen+EK
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9. nullc+ow[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-02-17 07:33:22
>>throwa+Wb
Thank you.

I think what you're saying is particularly true on this subject-- the people with skeptical or negative remarks are likely people who they or their families have personally suffered harm. When someone denies your own experience it's natural to write them off if not to actively oppose their position.

Widely contentious issues are usually contentious precisely because the different perspectives are all simultaneously valid.

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10. presen+EK[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-02-17 09:57:21
>>tdeck+6q
I disagree with the idea that we should accept that homelessness and crippling drug addiction are socially acceptable and normal aspects of society just because the people going through them are suffering more than you are. I think it’s totally reasonable to express that the beach feeling dangerous and disgusting is in fact awful and that you do not like the state of things, and I do not want to live in a society where you can’t state opinions like this straightforwardly (which is why I left SF).
replies(2): >>bloomi+ga1 >>johnny+cu2
11. tsimio+sQ[view] [source] 2025-02-17 10:47:47
>>II2II+(OP)
> It requires a personality that both cares for others, while being resilient enough to face the challenges of those in their care.

Not only resilience to the challenges, but resilience to the fact that some people you will just fail to help. The more you care about those in your care, the more it will generally consume you when they don't succeed.

This is a hugely difficult thing to overcome, and it's a big reason why, for example, hospital doctors typically end up with relatively little empathy for patients: it's very hard to maintain your mental health while empathizing with people hurting and dying every day. You really have to build some kind of wall between you and them to cope with the inevitable losses.

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12. bloomi+ga1[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-02-17 13:16:40
>>presen+EK
Can I ask what you do on a regular basis to help homeless people? Was moving away your only actionable item?

I don’t go out of my way to help the homeless either, but I also don’t go out of my way expressing how disgusted I am with them, or rally behind politics that are net bad for everyone just because I really agree that SF is really not to my liking.

You moving away was the adult thing to do. You adding to the carrion call of maga voices is reprehensible.

Enjoy your beaches.

replies(1): >>presen+pd3
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13. lynx97+cl1[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-02-17 14:30:33
>>bloomi+da
I find your way of downplaying the worries of other citizens way more disgustng then the comment you replied to can ever be. This "your problems are a joke" attitude is very condescending and patronising.
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14. johnny+pt2[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-02-17 22:02:04
>>throwa+Wb
To be frank, they never wanted to help to begin with. Why would I care about coddling their concerns if they are being selfish all this time?

Sometimes, awareness is just as much about identifying who to not bother with as it is about empowering future allies.

replies(1): >>throwa+Hw2
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15. johnny+It2[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-02-17 22:04:01
>>ty6853+fd
I can't even find work with experience and a clean record. I can't imagine how bad it'd be to find minimum wage work while not having an address to full a form out with. If it's been a whine for you it's gotten so much worse.

>Most the people actually on the street are nuts or drugged out

The most obvious, in your face example are the crazy ones. For basic human survival we remember those the most. But I bet most homeless people are just a person on the streets getting by. Not even the ones begging for change. It's a lot harder to get by in CA though.

replies(1): >>ty6853+0J2
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16. johnny+cu2[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-02-17 22:08:15
>>presen+EK
You're free to leave. Running is always the fastest solution to avoiding an issue, and you probably can't fix that issue alone.

But I'd hope someone in a thread like this would be interested in a deeper understanding on what factors lead to that.

replies(1): >>presen+Nd3
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17. throwa+Hw2[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-02-17 22:31:04
>>johnny+pt2
Where did the $640B+ that was spent to help the homeless came from? Thin air?
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18. ty6853+0J2[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-02-18 00:32:06
>>johnny+It2
If nothing else works I've also fallen back on commercial fishing in the Bering Sea near AK (free food and board included), and hitch hiking to north Dakota to work on the oil rush. I don't know if they still hire but usually they'll hire anyone and maybe give you free board.

The address you out down generally isn't checked, I'll leave it at that.

Putting professional work experience is a no no for minimum wage job. Word your experience to make it sound much more laborious and uneducated.

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19. presen+pd3[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-02-18 06:09:54
>>bloomi+ga1
You’re making a lot of assumptions.

I am a liberal who believed at some point in my 20s when I lived there that what we needed to fix society’s problems is just to… empathize more. Unfortunately we see how far that gets, as there’s no shortage of “caring” in SF.

I did not vote for Trump, and in fact I was active in SF local politics campaigning for politicians whose platforms I believed would make a real dent in the homelessness problem. Which you’re evidently not interested in doing besides admonishing people for not saying the politically correct thing.

Unfortunately, San Franciscan home owners, when push comes to shove, want a pretty view, the image of a SF frozen how it was when they were young hippies, and inflated housing costs that they profit from, over actually solving any of these problems.

Since then I’ve moved somewhere that prioritizes actually doing things that actually work, and not just feeling bad for people who are downtrodden.

Enjoy your abject human misery and disgusting public spaces, I hope you feeling miserable somehow fixes the issue.

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20. presen+Nd3[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-02-18 06:13:58
>>johnny+cu2
Unlike what you may have assumed, I was active in local politics campaigning for change while I was there. What I found is that San Franciscans themselves neither wanted things to change nor did they want people like me who disagree with them to be there. I realized not only that it was a losing battle to try to change the nature of the people there, but also that I didn’t want to martyr myself for a city that clearly didn’t want me to call it home.

What are you doing for the problem?

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