Allowing people to overstress an environment that has not been built to allow for the resources they need is allowing a group to condemn themselves to water and sanitation issues. 200 people in a once-manicured park without water or power or washrooms is less than ideal.
What are we owed by the government? Housing the homeless saves more money elsewhere, but what happens when they keep hoarding shared communal space for their own semi-permanent exclusive use?
We need to provide homes, yes. We need to ask them whether they want a home and a leg back up into society. It has to be clear that returning to an area with no fresh water and available sanitation is not an option. Are we building shacks in the woods where density is low enough that a single person won’t stress the environment?
I find your hand-wringing over water and sanitation issues to be disingenuous. Obviously the city can provide freshwater and Porta potty’s so that’s not really an issue.
They are not “hoarding”, they are gathering together for survival. You are confusing the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society with corporations and the wealthy who are hoarding housing. They are in communal space because that’s all they have, they have no where else, they have to exist in communal space. If the tent communities are smashed the people don’t suddenly disappear, they simply disperse into the neighbourhoods making them even more more vulnerable.
What’s this nonsense about building shacks in the woods? Do they have support systems there? Where is the food supposed to come from, what about medical care?
Allowing people to overstress an environment that has not been built to allow for the resources they need is allowing a group to condemn themselves to water and sanitation issues. 200 people in a once-manicured park without water or power or washrooms is less than ideal.
What are we owed by the government? Housing the homeless saves more money elsewhere, but what happens when they keep hoarding shared communal space for their own semi-permanent exclusive use?
We need to provide homes, yes. We need to ask them whether they want a home and a leg back up into society. It has to be clear that returning to an area with no fresh water and available sanitation is not an option. Are we building shacks in the woods where density is low enough that a single person won’t stress the environment?
I find your hand-wringing over water and sanitation issues to be disingenuous. Obviously the city can provide freshwater and Porta potty’s so that’s not really an issue.
They are not “hoarding”, they are gathering together for survival. You are confusing the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society with corporations and the wealthy who are hoarding housing. They are in communal space because that’s all they have, they have no where else, they have to exist in communal space. If the tent communities are smashed the people don’t suddenly disappear, they simply disperse into the neighbourhoods making them even more more vulnerable.
What’s this nonsense about building shacks in the woods? Do they have support systems there? Where is the food supposed to come from, what about medical care?