A San Francisco Library Is Turning Off Wi-Fi At Night To Keep People Without Housing From Using It (theverge.com) 251
In San Francisco's District 8, a public library has turned off its Wi-Fi outside of business hours in response to complaints from neighbors and the city supervisor's office about open drug use and disturbances caused by unhoused individuals. The Verge reports: In San Francisco's District 8, a public library has been shutting down Wi-Fi outside business hours for nearly a year. The measure, quietly implemented in mid-2022, was made at the request of neighbors and the office of city supervisor Rafael Mandelman. It's an attempt to keep city dwellers who are currently unhoused away from the area by locking down access to one of the library's most valuable public services. A local activist known as HDizz revealed details behind the move last month, tweeting public records of a July 2022 email exchange between local residents and the city supervisor's office. In the emails, residents complained about open drug use and sidewalks blocked by residents who are unhoused. One relayed a secondhand story about a library worker who had been followed to her car. And by way of response, they demanded the library limit the hours Wi-Fi was available. "Why are the vagrants and drug addicts so attracted to the library?" one person asked rhetorically. "It's the free 24/7 wi-fi."
San Francisco's libraries have been historically progressive when it comes to providing resources to people who are unhoused, even hiring specialists to offer assistance. But on August 1st, reports San Francisco publication Mission Local, city librarian Michael Lambert met with Mandelman's office to discuss the issue. The next day, District 8's Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial branch began turning its Wi-Fi off after hours -- a policy that San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) spokesperson Jaime Wong told The Verge via email remains in place today.
In the initial months after the decision, the library apparently received no complaints. But in March, a little over seven months following the change, it got a request to reverse the policy. "I'm worried about my friend," the email reads, "whom I am trying to get into long term residential treatment." San Francisco has shelters, but the requester said their friend had trouble communicating with the staff and has a hard time being around people who used drugs, among other issues. Because this friend has no regular cell service, "free wifi is his only lifeline to me [or] for that matter any services for crisis or whatever else." The resident said some of the neighborhood's residents "do not understand what they do to us poor folks nor the homeless by some of the things they do here." Jennifer Friedenbach of San Francisco's Coalition on Homelessness told The Verge in a phone interview that "folks are not out there on the streets by choice. They're destitute and don't have other options. These kinds of efforts, like turning off the Wi-Fi, just exacerbate homelessness and have the opposite effect. Putting that energy into fighting for housing for unhoused neighbors would be a lot more effective."
San Francisco's libraries have been historically progressive when it comes to providing resources to people who are unhoused, even hiring specialists to offer assistance. But on August 1st, reports San Francisco publication Mission Local, city librarian Michael Lambert met with Mandelman's office to discuss the issue. The next day, District 8's Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial branch began turning its Wi-Fi off after hours -- a policy that San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) spokesperson Jaime Wong told The Verge via email remains in place today.
In the initial months after the decision, the library apparently received no complaints. But in March, a little over seven months following the change, it got a request to reverse the policy. "I'm worried about my friend," the email reads, "whom I am trying to get into long term residential treatment." San Francisco has shelters, but the requester said their friend had trouble communicating with the staff and has a hard time being around people who used drugs, among other issues. Because this friend has no regular cell service, "free wifi is his only lifeline to me [or] for that matter any services for crisis or whatever else." The resident said some of the neighborhood's residents "do not understand what they do to us poor folks nor the homeless by some of the things they do here." Jennifer Friedenbach of San Francisco's Coalition on Homelessness told The Verge in a phone interview that "folks are not out there on the streets by choice. They're destitute and don't have other options. These kinds of efforts, like turning off the Wi-Fi, just exacerbate homelessness and have the opposite effect. Putting that energy into fighting for housing for unhoused neighbors would be a lot more effective."
Fun fact (Score:3, Insightful)
Also I somehow doubt a lot of people are shooting up and then going on
But hey, out of sight, out of mind. I think Jesus said that.
Re:Fun fact (Score:4, Insightful)
And that giving people housing gets them off drugs.
Funny. People here in San Diego refuse shelters that don't allow them to continue using drugs and alcohol.
Also another fun fact, 40% of homeless in America have full time jobs.
I guarantee you that 40% of the people sitting in camps on 5th Ave do not have full time jobs. You're committing a category error. Someone couch-surfing or crashing at a friend's place for a month is technically "homeless", but they are obviously not the people at issue here. Besides, the friend probably has wifi.
Re:Fun fact (Score:5, Insightful)
People here in San Diego refuse shelters that don't allow them to continue using drugs and alcohol.
Drugs and alcohol can be addictive.
With 40% working full time (Score:3, Insightful)
But punching down is fun isn't it?
I agree with you that 40% of people in camps on 5th ave don't have jobs. I'm assuming you mean New York, so it's probably closer to 80%. How do you think somebody can cook & clean for you in NY restaurants earning $15/hr when an apartment the size of a water closet costs $
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: With 40% working full time (Score:5, Informative)
https://ciceroinstitute.org/re... [ciceroinstitute.org]
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Works well in Finland: https://www.theguardian.com/ci... [theguardian.com]
and https://www.un.org/development... [un.org]
Nothing in there contradicts GP (Score:5, Insightful)
You responded to someone saying:
> Housing first - taking in people without requiring drug treatment- does not work. In fact it has been a failure by a wide margin.
By linking to a Guardian piece about Rukkila, where they say: "Rukkila does not allow drug or alcohol use; some other Housing First units do" without quantifying how much of each exist and a powerpoint slide that doesn't mention drugs at all, none of which seems to show that it's an idea of housing first wherein there is no drug treatment.
None of this does anything to rebut the idea that drug treatment works far better than no drug treatment, which is the original claim that grandparent made.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: With 40% working full time (Score:5, Interesting)
Housing first - taking in people without requiring drug treatment- does not work. In fact it has been a failure by a wide margin. https://ciceroinstitute.org/re... [ciceroinstitute.org]
I read your link. My conclusion is the federal government screwed up by leaving it to the states. Only a tiny handful of states actually built any housing for the homeless, and there's no one more mobile than a homeless person. So they crossed the country and occupied the new housing just as soon as they heard about it, resulting in the 10:1 ratio cited of housed vs local homeless finally taken off the streets.
The complaints about the wildly inflated per-unit cost of that housing are part and parcel of that problem. It was a mistake to let the states handle it because they're too incompetent to prevent such waste, and the only ones who even tried to solve the problem were the ones already suffering from stupidly high real estate costs. The federal government should have handled it themselves, taking over abandoned property in cities and refurbishing it into cheap housing units, distributed all over the country so there wasn't a sudden influx of homeless into a handful of areas.
Too late now I guess.
Re: With 40% working full time (Score:4, Interesting)
In Portland (don't know if this is a factor in SF), they legalized all drugs.
So in Portland at least, housing had absolutely nothing to do with the homelessness problem. They came because they can do any drugs they want, all day long, and cops can't do anything about it. And they didn't massively expand drug treatment or mental health first, like they did in Finland.
The resulting hellscape was entirely predictable, yet none of the idiots who voted for it are willing to undo it, because that would mean admitting their "compassion" is causing death and destruction. Just like the public housing / ghettos causes black crime to triple in the 70s and 80s: the left does not admit error.
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In Portland (don't know if this is a factor in SF), they legalized all drugs.
No, we did not.
decriminalization != legalization. Stop lying. You can still be cited for possession with intent to distribute, which sends you to jail. You can still be cited for possession of a controlled substance, but it's a civil fine instead of jail... unless you don't pay the fine.
Uselessly jailing a guy for buying a dime bag of whatever is a multiple-decades-long failed policy that doesn't fucking work, unless your goal is to fill up jails.
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> Housing first - taking in people without requiring drug treatment- does not work. In fact it has been a failure by a wide margin. https://ciceroinstitute.org/re... [ciceroinstitute.org]
"Adding one PSH bed reduces the homeless count by up to 0.10 people, and I can reject a reduction of more than 0.72 people at the 95% confidence level. Finally, I discuss several possible explanations for the relatively modest impact, including poor targeting, differential exit rates into private housing from PSH relative to homelessness, inc
Re:You know we have Google right (Score:5, Informative)
....and that's a logical fallacy...The source of something doesn't make it right or wrong. If Hitler said the sky is blue, it's not false just because it came from Hitler. Biased? Certainly. But it's basically impossible to eliminate bias anyways. So, if you cared to actually research any topic, which it doesn't seem like it given the way you repeatedly make the same errors over and over again here, you'd dig a bit further. The author even made that easy for you, he provided numerous citations. Like this one:
https://newsroom.ucla.edu/rele... [ucla.edu]
I like this bit in particular:
Unsheltered people were more than four times as likely as sheltered people to report that physical health conditions contributed to loss of housing — 46% compared to 11%.
For mental health, 50% of unsheltered people reported that these issues contributed to their loss of housing, compared to 17% of sheltered individuals. Unsheltered people were more than eight times as likely to report that use of drugs or alcohol contributed to loss of housing — 51% versus 6%.
So basically, a narrative that you've been parroting here, about drug use not leading to homelessness, is directly contradicted by researchers at UCLA. Not that they're incapable of bias, nobody is after all, but I'd like to hear your reasoning for why you think they'd be a terrible source of information for this.
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The homeless can be divided into categories. The latest boom over the last decade is not your stereotypical incoherent bum with a drug problem, many of these had normal lives until bills got out of hand: lost a job, got divorced, had medical bills. I would see ten years ago that there were lots of RVs, campers, and cars with sleeping bags parked around the block at work; some would move every day but be back in the evening, others would move once a week to avoid towing, but it was clear someone was living
So there are no such things as bums (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a large contingent of people who would like to keep the money that we would otherwise use to end homelessness for themselves. They would also like you to be in a constant state of fear of becoming homeless so that you'll take a lower salary from their businesses. They spend a lot of money putting the image of the lazy drunk bum into your mind. It's propaganda.
Re:So there are no such things as bums (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: With 40% working full time (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you think somebody can cook & clean for you in NY restaurants earning $15/hr when an apartment the size of a water closet costs $2,500/mo? They're homeless.
They can move somewhere else, perhaps a place with more affordable water closet rentals...
Some cities offer homeless residents bus tickets to other cities, maybe the homeless could go somewhere more affordable?
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Some cities offer homeless residents bus tickets to other cities, maybe the homeless could go somewhere more affordable?
Shipping your homeless problem somewhere else doesn't solve the fucking problem. It just makes it someone else's problem in a crass, craven, heartless way. And in some cases, it's made that someone else's already-existing problem into a really big fucking problem because they aren't crass, craven, heartless assholes that just want to play the "out of sight, out of mind" game you suggest.
These are fucking people we're talking about. Not garbage that you load up and send to the landfill. Take the tourniqu
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Re:Fun fact - you got the timeline wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, drugs are bad because they are addictive. So for some reason people that use drugs cannot simply decide to stop just because some hateful person says they cant get housing unless they quit cold turkey. But if you give them housing and let them continue to use drugs, then it becomes possible for them to quit.
The people that ended the wifi the ones committing the category error. They assumed that moving the homeless by making their life harder solved the problem. NOPE. The problem was not homeless people near the library, but crime caused by homelessness. Very unlikely that turning off the wifi reduced total crimes. It is quite possible that it INCREASED crime, just in other areas where they drove the homeless too. Oh, crime went up, but not in my neighborhood, so I don't care, NIMBY fools.
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crime went up, but not in my neighborhood, so I don't care, NIMBY fools.
You made the first stat up. Do you have any evidence to back it up?
And yes, wanting to get rid of crime in your neighborhood is absolutely rational.
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So you're saying the shelters there contain only social workers and crickets?
The majority of homeless are inconspicous (Score:5, Insightful)
I guarantee you that 40% of the people sitting in camps on 5th Ave do not have full time jobs. You're committing a category error. Someone couch-surfing or crashing at a friend's place for a month is technically "homeless", but they are obviously not the people at issue here. Besides, the friend probably has wifi.
The majority of homeless are living out of their car or a shelter, or sleeping where they can, not on the street. You can ignore the problem and pretend that the homeless are filthy, drug-addicted, mentally-ill bums on the street and you could never be one of them, but that's just a lie you tell yourself to feel better at night.
We have a shit safety net and terrible healthcare in the USA. A single moderate injury or lump found on your body could cost you a few years of income. Many of the homeless are hardworking folks who didn't make mistakes, like getting addicted to drugs, and have no mental illness, other than PTSD from having shitty luck. A lot of the homeless are children or families.
So yeah, that dude is "technically" homeless, but your phrasing makes it sound like it's not that bad. What about when it's a mom who had to flee her abusive husband?...who works full time, but can't afford an apartment because rents are out of control? There are few places in the country where a full-time job at minimum wage can afford you any sort of apt. There are few places where a full-time worker at a WalMart or McDonald's can afford an apt. Also, even if you have a good job and are an upstanding citizen, your landlord could break the law. It happened to me in college. Fucking slumlord in Chicago shut off the heat "by accident"..as well as cut off the electricity several times. I had to crash at a friend's house. They get by with doing shit like that in college neighborhoods or with poorer tenants. You could be paying rent properly and suddenly find your house uninhabitable...while you have small kids. Sure, it's against the law, but it happened to me and has happened to many people I know. The landlord knows you can't afford to take him to court and gets by with it nearly every time.
While the data on that is missing,I would wager the majority of homeless are not addicts. The data they have been able to gather certainly suggests that. They're people who were normal people like you and me who had just a little bad luck...illness with bad insurance, issues with their spouse, even just a landlord who decides to break the law. Many are fleeing violence.
Homelessness is one of the most complex problems in America. It's largely a symptom of the failure of our implementation of capitalism. Our safety net is a farce and we rely on exploiting the poor for our basic goods and services. Nearly every person you depend on: from food service to those who stock the shelves at your stores is just an unlucky day away from being homeless and there our ability to get them back on their feet it shameful and inadequate. The most visible are addicts with severe problems, but for every visible case, there are many more keeping it together, maybe serving you coffee or lunch or ensuring YOU can get the food you need from your local grocery store.
I wouldn't be so smug. It could be you or someone you love someday.
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"Shitty safety net"? Please explain. As I understand it we offer homeless people housing, job training, food benefits, welfare payments, section 8 housing subsidies, etc. and if they are disabled, we offer them SS disability payments, and if they have dependent children they also can collect money to help care for them.
If this were actually true, wouldn't there not be any homeless people?
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If you want the forever plan, you gotta get locked up.
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Funny. People here in San Diego refuse shelters that don't allow them to continue using drugs and alcohol.
Of course they do. Drug dependency is borderline impossible to quit cold turkey. Meanwhile in places where this situation is under control the housing that doesn't allow use of drugs and alcohol is combined with places where they can use drugs and alcohol. The two methods together allow people to ween off it naturally.
You can't combine the removal of a barrier instantly (housing) with the requirement for something that takes time (recovery from addiction). It simply does not work despite what you *think* pe
Re:Fun fact (Score:5, Insightful)
studies show drug use doesn't cause homelessness, it follows homelessness. i.e. it's a coping mechanism from the incredible amounts of stress.
I would be interested in seeing a citation to those studies.
Re: Fun fact (Score:4, Insightful)
Jesus said lots of things but I'm pretty sure he didn't say you get to leave human shit and drug needles around the public library.
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Re: Fun fact (Score:2)
Did he deliver that sermon at Dodgers Stadium the other week?
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Re: Fun fact (Score:2)
No, I was taking a shit.
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Re: Fun fact (Score:4, Insightful)
Jesus said lots of things but I'm pretty sure he didn't say you get to leave human shit and drug needles around the public library.
Yeah why don't these homeless people shit and dispose of needles in their own homes!
I love your mentality. You provide people no alternative and then you complain about the action they take. It's like you are out to make yourself angry and miserable, like some kind of right wing nut job.
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The library is, or was, providing 24/7 wifi. They have decided that free wifi at night is a mistake, because it seems that the free wifi turns the garbage and shit of a number of homeless into their responsibility. Not sure if you understand the financials of a library but this isnt a "business is too good to handle the demand" problem.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
My guess is the majority of folks hanging around for the free wi-fi are job hunting, doing homework
You almost had me until I choked taking a sip of my drink while reading this, as I don't think that's the case. They're probably watching TikTok videos to get a laugh. If they were job hunting and doing homework, then that means they had their shit together and wouldn't be homeless and/or on drugs.
As to your first paragraph, I don't doubt there are some studies showing a correlation between homelessness and falling into drugs, as I believe many of these people just fell upon hard times (major stuff, li
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There! Technology solves the problem!
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Do you think libraries sell those books? what the fuck its a city library not a billion dollar corporation
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We just need more government funding for homeless services and then things will all get better, right?
Re:Fun fact (Score:5, Insightful)
>Also another fun fact, 40% of homeless in America have full time jobs
Notice the disgusting shift to "unhoused" as if someone took their house.
The issue is that some percent of the made up term "homeless" doesn't have a full time job. A hobo isn't even the main problem, to say nothing of someone who works a full time job and doesn't have a home (I'm not even aware of the proper term for such a person, though obviously our society has desperate need of one). The issue is bums and vagrants, who shit up the place they are, do drugs, sometimes flip out violently, and generally make everything they touch awful. That's who this is about, and that's why this library has turned of all their bum-magnets. While this probably does screw over some normal people, no one is going to round up the vagrants in California, so this is the best that they can do, given their legal restrictions.
Life is not fair (Score:2)
I don't think it is a good idea to make the life more miserable, for the people already quite unlucky in life.
I know, there might be some lazy & dumb among them. They have probably made some bad decisions in their life. I'm sure that most of them simply had bad luck.
But I don't see the point of punishing them even more.
Re: Fun fact (Score:2)
So are war and race-baiting. And neither of those are going away any time soon.
Danger, conspiracy (Score:5, Funny)
Or ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Make it a captive portal at night that only routes to job, housing and online education sites.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, those damn homeless need to be ordered about to do things we want them to.
We know better.
They don't need access to entertainment, emails and social media - despite the fact that emails and social media are the main ways to get jobs. And children are homeless so screw them over, make them miserable with no entertainment.
When some shmuck thinks they know better and wants to tell others what they can do, the proper response is to make them live by the rules they want to enforce on others, with those ot
Re:Or ... (Score:5, Interesting)
You noticed where I said "at night" -- right? So they'd be still able to access all those other things during the day. You should come down from your high-horse, the thin air seems to be affecting you. Also, *some* internet access a at night seems better than *no* internet access ...
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When some shmuck thinks they know better and wants to tell others what they can do, the proper response is to make them live by the rules they want to enforce on others, with those others in charge.
Aren't those rules called laws?
I'm not saying removing their wifi is right. I know very little about the situation of the homeless in SF, but saying society can't impose rules on others is also ridiculous.
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I'll also note that public services aren't free and I imagine homeless people aren't really contributing property/income taxes to support the library, the "free" wifi, and the police who may be dispatched to handle the noted neighborhood disturbances. Unless totally free and unfettered 24/7 WiFi is an "essential service" (Wait! It's not in the Constitution is it?) I don't see a problem with limiting the service if the people using is are causing problems. [Malory Archer: "This is why we can't have nice t
*Homeless People (Score:2)
Considering their ostensible education centers around written language and persuasion, you'd think the Newspeak Media Dipshits could at least come up with terms that don't sound so godawful clunky.
Free WiFi is everywhere (Score:3)
Just about every major retailer, hotel, and fast food restaurant has WiFi that you can pick up from the parking lot. I'd venture a guess this was really more an issue of getting the hobos to move on from the library after dark than truly preventing them from getting online.
Additionally, aren't there supposed to be connectivity programs through the government where you can get cellular service if you're completely broke? Last time I was at Walmart (which is in a low-income part of town), there were some folks with a table set up at the entrance signing people up for generic Android tablets with free cellular service as part of the Affordable Connectivity Program.
Of course, as TFS says, the real problem is homelessness itself, not the lack of interwebs access to watch cat videos. And as much as people are gonna turn this into a red vs blue state thing, I'm here in Florida and I can tell you our red state hasn't come up with any better solutions for homelessness either. They just mostly seem to live in the woods, so it's out of mind until you fly a drone over their encampments and see all the garbage.
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I'd venture a guess this was really more an issue of getting the hobos to move on from the library after dark than truly preventing them from getting online.
San Francisco also provides free wifi in other locations [sfgov.org], such as along Market Street (which is only a small block away from the Eureka Valley library) and in the larger city parks. Not every access point is actually reaches the Internet (they hand out a DHCP address but not much else), but there's enough of them that work.
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Every hotel I've visited ih the past decade has a practically unguessable WiFi password unless you know someone's last name and the room they're in, or a similar password scheme you only get to know at hotel check-in.
It's not at the WiFI level of security but it is a captive portal that won't let you browse the web if you don't know the password.
Nope... leave it off.... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not just some "uncaring jerk" about the homelessness issue. My own daughter had to suffer through it when an abusive b/f kicked her out of his place, not all that long ago. It caused me to have to drive almost 1,000 miles up there to get her so she could live back with me to try to start over. Not everyone is fortunate enough to even have family or relatives/friends who'd help them in situations like that.
But you've got to draw a line when it comes to giving people free services like this. The library offers it the whole time it's open,with no real restrictions on using it. That's more than fair, IMO. Not that long ago, high speed Internet wasn't even a thing, and people got by without it. They still can today. What about these government programs to give people free cellphones? Do they deny them to anyone who can't prove they have a roof over their head first?
Despite this Jennifer person's claim that "folks are not out there on the streets by choice", I find that's really not genuinely true in many/most cases. By that, I mean, your decisions have consequences. They might prefer to have an apartment or house if you asked them, but that's very different from them taking the steps needed to achieve that result. I've definitely encountered homeless people who live that way by choice. Some people just don't want the responsibility that comes with it. They refuse to deal with saving money, paying regular bills, handling taxes, etc. They don't want to work within society's system in that respect. Hand it to them free and they might grudgingly accept it, but they sure won't take care of what they're given or try to use it as a launchpad for gainful full-time employment. At the end of the day, they're good with a more nomadic lifestyle.
For others, it's really all the downsides of homelessness that motivates them to get back out from it. If you give them enough reasons to remain relatively safe or comfortable in their status-quo, that's what they'll do. Mental illness is a big problem too. Many of them aren't able to hold jobs for that reason, but we don't lock them away in asylums anymore like we once did. So now they're just out in the general public, where everyone sees them. Some of these mental problems really have no cure, so not sure what can be done there? The asylums we were quick to get rid of in the name of being more "caring" might have been the better option?
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It can also be as simple as not being able to find a job that pays enough to make rent. I suppose you could make the argument that they should just enlist in the military at that point, but as you said - some people value their freedom, even if that means living on the streets.
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So what you're saying is "You can't lock 'em up. They're all crazy or wanna be destitute anyway. So fuck 'em."
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Your post explicitedly demonstrates you are the uncarring jerk.
The idea that somehow, people (or some - implying many despite the real answer being FOR LESS THAN WE CURRENTLY SPEND on the homeless. The difference is we spend it on housing and utilities rather than cops, emergency room visits, jail and lawsuits. (Always makes me laugh when some shmuck is willing to arrest a homeless person putting them in four walls, bed, food, shower and guards, but won't give them a home without the guards)
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Cut off half the paragraph.
Basically anyone that thinks more than 5% of the homeless deserve it (for any reason) is an uncaring jerk.
Then the real answer is to give them free housing and base utilities, for less than we currently spend on them (tiny houses and studios condos not granite countertop homes).
Also, those couch surfing people? They usually end up on the streets. It's hard to cobble together friends based housing for more than 6 months. Easy for the first couple of months, but eventually it ends.
T
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That "pie in the sky" idea never works..... Sure, it sounds good to just "spend money on giving them small homes and paying all their utilities" instead of cops, ER visits, jail, etc. Guess what though? When you give people things they didn't have to work for or earn in any way, shape or form, they tend not to appreciate or respect them. You'll just have people needing those same ER visits, calls to police about the problems they're causing, jail and lawsuits WHILE you're also paying out to house them in
It doesn't sound like your daughter suffered (Score:2)
I guess what I'm saying is is I don't think you actually learned empathy for homeless people from that experience.
I've mentioned before at a minimum 40% of homeless people have full-time jobs. Many studies show it closer to 60 to 70%. These are actual studies conducted by univ
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You have no proof whatsoever that 70% of the drug bums shitting up public spaces have full-time jobs. We've already covered the difference between homeless people in general and long-term street-dwellers. The latter most definitely do not hold down jobs and almost always have no interest in doing so.
Time to bring back the asylums.
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Nope. Try again.
You can't apply for most entry level jobs without doing it online. All the sh*tty retail jobs are online application only. Heck, most other jobs also are online application only.
Plus, plenty of things are online - if you need to check your bill to pay it, you have to do it online. Same with paying bills - most places won't take checks anymore and you pay
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But you've got to draw a line when it comes to giving people free services like this.
Yep. You're all for driving 1000miles to pick up someone and take them into your home. But you draw the line at them having Wifi.
*facepalm*.
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your decisions have consequences
Like your "decision" to get cancer, lose your job and medical insurance, and then lose your home through bankruptcy?
If we want to reduce the homelessness problem we shouldn't focus on drugs - rather we should start by looking at our healthcare system, our safety nets, and stop blaming the victims of these terrible systems.
https://www.kff.org/report-section/the-burden-of-medical-debt-section-3-consequences-of-medical-bill-problems/
"Energy" (Score:2)
Choice (Score:5, Insightful)
>"Jennifer Friedenbach of San Francisco's Coalition on Homelessness told The Verge in a phone interview that "folks are not out there on the streets by choice."
Yeah, keep telling yourself that sweeping statement. They didn't choose their paths. They aren't responsible at all for any of their decisions or actions. They are all victims. They didn't choose drugs. They didn't choose to goof off or drop out of school. The didn't choose to have instant gratification. They didn't choose gangs. They didn't choose to not not seek employment. They didn't choose anything. It is just everyone else crushing them- all of us "others", who apparently had no challenges or suffering or health issues or broken homes or bad luck but are not hanging out on the streets on wifi at night.
Sorry, that narrative is just getting really old and tired now. Yes, life is hard. Yes, people deserve compassion and opportunity. But let's not pretend they are all faultless. Perhaps the people working hard with a mortgage and family near the library are ALSO in need of some consideration.
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Is there a housing shortage or not? Because if there is not, cool, I've heard SF has some nice things going and I'm game to move to the area. If there is, then all you're basically arguing that if someone loses an musical chairs, it's their fault for being bad at musical chairs, against people who's argument is "why the hell are we playing musical chairs?"
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>"If there is, then all you're basically arguing that if someone loses an musical chairs, it's their fault for being bad at musical chairs"
I am not saying that at all.
Life is complicated. I am saying that not all of them are faultless. We are all full of faults. If one thinks they are all just victims of bad luck, then I am saying such a person is naive. There are consequences in life for making bad or poor choices, regardless of what is thrown at you. A good choice is to be kind to others, help oth
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The amount of crime, the amount of homelessness, the amount of open drug use, the percentage of kids dropping out of school... these are things that vary from place to place.
Human beings don't vary THAT much, so you'd expect once you have a large enough population that the rates would be pretty much statistically identical. They're not, so if you're intellectually honest you start looking for what's different about the places.
Culture, laws, differences in opportunity... these are the things that start gen
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I don't disagree with anything you wrote.
I would argue that the main problem is poor government policy that has, over time, created bad culture and parenting. And there is some really bad culture all over the place, but it gets especially explosive when it meets with even more bad government policy. And SF has some really, really bad policy.
Any solution that doesn't ALSO include accountability to those being helped is doomed to fail. Accountability is what creates responsibility and that is what creates
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And that is why the US is in decline. There is no sane reason for life in the west to be _this_ hard with current industrial productivity levels. It is due to unfettered greed by a few.
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>"And that is why the US is in decline. There is no sane reason for life in the west to be _this_ hard with current industrial productivity levels. It is due to unfettered greed by a few."
To me that sounds like something written by someone driven by envy. A collectivist/socialist mantra.
The downfall has much less to do with greed than other factors. Even the poorest have it better here/now than anyone could even imagine a few hundred years ago. At least when it comes to food, shelter, goods, medicine,
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Okay. Let's say someone did all those things. They chose drugs. They chose to goof off or drop out of school. They joined gangs. And as a result of their poor life choices, they're homeless. Natural consequences of their actions.
Now what?
Yeah, they done fucked up. Now they're in a hole they can't get out of. People who, by definition, were unable to hold it together to do it right the first time. They couldn't manage when it would have been easiest. Now, how do you expect them to make their lives bet
Headline conflicts with the summary... WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
Headline: A San Francisco Library Is Turning Off Wi-Fi At Night To Keep People Without Housing From Using It
First line of Summary: In San Francisco's District 8, a public library has turned off its Wi-Fi outside of business hours in response to complaints from neighbors and the city supervisor's office about open drug use and disturbances caused by unhoused individuals.
Nobody has a problem with a homeless person using library Wi-Fi. No one has a problem the library leaving their Wi-Fi on after normal hours for passers-by to access it. The problem is that (recently) the after-hours crowds brings with it open drug use and loud altercations thereby making going out at night unsafe.
More to the point, this is just another example of San Francisco relying on every facility but their own decision-making to care for the unhoused.
- People living in their cars? Demonize the neighborhoods and city parking department for ticketing and towing.
- People selling stolen goods and shooting up BART stations? Tell people who want more security that they're elitist.
- People getting high and causing problems at the library because they have 24/7 free wi-fi? Accuse those living near the library of being insensitive to the plight of the unhoused.
- Mass shoplifting going on throughout the City? Label it "need-based crime" and popularize the phrase "If you see someone shoplifting, No you didn't,.."
San Francisco is run by a City Council that seems like they ran on high ideals and then choked once elected. "Oh shit... I actually have to do something about this now?"
Love the title wording (Score:2)
Bad Humans (Score:4, Insightful)
The comments here fill me with so much hate.
I don't get how people react to homeless people with derision instead of compassion.
I see the homeless problem in San Francisco regularly with my own eyes. It does not make me hate homeless people. But reading the way allegedly "good citizens" react to homeless people? THAT fills me with hate.
What is it anyway, psychologically? Are you insecure about your own position in life? So hating homeless people makes you feel superior? Or like there's more separation between where you currently are and yourself being homeless someday? Does the hate on homeless people make you feel more secure somehow? Safer? Just by sharing how worthless you think these people are?
Do you tell yourself you are so upset and cruel in your descriptions of homeless people because its a safety issue? Even if most of you live in suburbs, and most of the interactions with homeless people scenarios you run through in your mind are purely hypothetical and not actual memories? Did you have one bad interaction that makes you feel justified in characterizing all homeless people as imminent threats?
When you'd rather people be dead and gone, rather than help them, you've failed at being a human. Your parents raised you wrong.
Re:Bad Humans (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have young kids? How would you feel if a child started crying because they saw a guy walking around with a drawn knife and muttering to himself? Do you think children should be seeing public urination, defecation and drug use on the street? With all the drug use and desperation going on, is it safe for a child or a vulnerable adult to walk outside at night? That's how some of us experience your favorite city.
As for help, sure, but first there is little I can do personally that would make a durable difference. Even if I give someone $100 and they use it wisely, this will not get them off the street for more than one night. Help needs an organization with resources and training, to which I am willing to donate or pay taxes or whatever. Second, helping often does mean gone from the street and probably gone from San Francisco. Say someone gets help with mental illness, and substance use issues, and job training. The realistic goal is then a job in a place with low cost of living that pays for a little apartment with a roommate. If this is impossible and we are going to be caring for an adult with permanent disability, again we have to be cost conscious so that can help more people.
You seem to be intimately familiar with feeling intense hate and may be projecting it on others who don't hate anyone and are simply trying to take care of themselves and their families, which includes having clean and safe streets.
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1) Don't be an irresponsible parent taking kids down dangerous streets filled with the people who society can't be bothered to care about.
2) If your kid sees a homeless person and is understandably upset at seeing what happens when the world writes off human life as unsalvagable junk, consider it a teachable moment. Your kid could come away from the experience with compassion and a broader perspective.
3) If YOU have young kids and they see this, I'm afraid it just means a new generation just learnt how to i
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If your kid sees a homeless person and is understandably upset at seeing what happens when the world writes off human life as unsalvagable junk, consider it a teachable moment.
Again, if you had kids, you would know age and circumstances for teachable moments. You do not comfort a two your old with a CRT lecture and you do not ignore the practical danger of a deranged man with a knife for the sake of their future enlightenment. What you do is resolve to not take your family to such a hellhole again and vote
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Since you are making random and false assumptions about me without knowing anything about my life, I don't see why I should pay attention to anything you say. Also I don't see what is your moral authority to lecture people who assume that all homeless are just bums who want to keep using drugs while being unwilling to do any work? You are making up things about strangers just as they do.
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What part was false about you?
The problem is you think homeless people should act like fully functioning adults without recognizing them as (long or short term) incapable of caring for themselves. They aren't going to just go away. There will always be new homeless people. It's society's job to care for people who are incapable of caring for themselves. If you can't see that then you are more broken than they are.
Moral "authority"? I'm just pointing out stuff that's obviously immoral. That doesn't take auth
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You made a specific claim that I have not given $100 to homeless over my entire life. Since it is false and you pulled it out of your behind in the first place, you have no business criticizing people who assume that $5 they give to someone who claims to be a homeless army vet will just be spent on crack. Also, it's clearly useless to debate more nuanced and abstract concepts with you while you are busy stereotyping people based on a few paragraphs they wrote on a social media site. If you are interested in
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Indeed. A society where compassion is dead does not have a future. And, of course, blaming the homeless for their own fate is both very convenient and makes the problem worse. The insane thing about it all is that at current productivity levels, there is zero need for this at all. The problem is the increasing uneven distribution of wealth. Of course those that blame the homeless for their fate cannot admit that, because then they may have to do something. Far easier to make it "those people of low quality
Newspeak (Score:2)
Really? "People Without Housing"?
The correct term is "crackheads."
Why not set up free WiFi in other locations? (Score:2)
"people who are unhoused" (Score:2)
I used to rail against people who made jokes about Political Correctness.
But now those jokes are all coming true. And it's not fucking funny.
They are (Score:2, Insightful)
But even if they didn't, so what? What's wrong with somebody homeless taking the edge off with a YouTube video? Good chance it's a kid, maybe one of them gay or trans kids who fled abuse (or worse) in their home state.
Why is it when somebody's homeless we want them to
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You are such a lying asshole.
Writes the guy who has dozens of accounts with slight spelling variations on rsilvergun intended to make it look like rsilvergun is posting.
Re: Using WiFi (Score:2)
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How about as an alternate to incarceration, we provide them with dormitory-style housing and employ them producing cheap consumer goods which we could then export to wealthier countries?
Somehow, that just sounds more aligned with conservative principles than locking them up and making society foot the bill. Just don't look at which *ism did it first.
Re: Round them up and put them in a hole (Score:3)
You know, there are institutions the world over that put people who can't otherwise take care of themselves to work doing completely to mildly useless things for reasons ranging from charity to just the compassionate goal of giving people some way to fill their time.
No bad isms required.
Re: Round them up and put them in a hole (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay. So I get to shit on your front steps and strew sharp objects on your lawn because you don't have a right to expect me not to?
Or is there one set of rules for normies and a whole other, looser, set of rules for crazies and adicts?
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People keep repeating this. It's just not that common. Even in San Francisco, despite this being a regular Faux News meme.
Re: Round them up and put them in a hole (Score:2)
I don't know about San Francisco* but here in Boston, "Mass and Cass" is full of all kinds of wholesome entertainment, like the two hobos I saw fighting over the best stripe in the crosswalk as I was on my way back from Boston Medical Center one weekend about 8 years ago for some reason I don't remember at this point. And the complaints about needles and unsanitary conditions sneak their way into the pages of the Globe. No Herald subscription or Fox News required.
Re: Round them up and put them in a hole (Score:2)
*I haven't been there since 2011. It was quite lovely at the time but people I know have had their stuff stolen out of their cars more recently than that.
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Does it happen to everybody and every day? No, sure not. Neither does the common cold.
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Lock them away so they don't interfere with your life in any way, because you are the better person, right?
Lock them up won't work. Kurt Russell will still escape the living h3ll /s
I recommend you go out and meet some addicts (Score:2)
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It looks like today is housing day on Slashdot. This sounds like a great idea. Let's do it in your back yard. Ooopsie!
As I've said countless times before, affordable housing is a difficult problem because there are too many powerful interests who depend on expensive housing.
That's why NIMBY is a thing.
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Even better...
Let's just ship them all to Norway.