Does Lemmy support polls? Seems like this would be a good poll.

What do you mean incentives to stay homeless? Does this include anything that reduces the discomfort of homelessness like food and medical care? I don’t have statistics about the number of homeless that actually choose to be homeless, which sounds like an impossible question to answer because. It seems likely that any homeless person would want an improvement to their lifestyle of some kind. Given the option of becoming a homeless drug addict versus not, what right-minded person would make that choice? It just isn’t a choice. Certainly, once you’re a homeless drug addict it really isn’t a choice anymore. A homeless drug addict can’t just decide not be a homeless drug addict. In fact I’d wager that once you’re a homeless drug addict, if you become housed it’s a lot harder to remain so. If a homeless drug addict becomes clean, it’s a lot harder for them to remain so. Virtually no one would choose that lifestyle. If it is such a great choice then choose it yourself!

We can certainly agree on the desire to improve society. We likely agree that there is a better solution to the homelessness situation than continuing as it is. Starting with a law that criminalizes homelessness is not the right place to start. We should be moving in the direction of cities or counties having to provide a minimum level of services for food, shelter and drug and mental health treatment. When that minimum level of support is available then it may be reasonable to consider laws that criminalize homelessness. You accuse the liberals of virtual signaling but any laws that criminalize homelessness are nothing but. They’ll do nothing to solve the actual problem and are really only intended to assuage people’s conscience and fool them into thinking that they’ve fixed a problem that they can simply no longer see. You profess to want an efficient productive society but then elect for options that are pure fantasy. If the end goal is to jail homeless people I can’t see how that is going to be cheaper than housing them. It makes a lot more sense to build a society that works for all the people, picks them up when they fall and helps them return as productive members. Will there be some people that just can’t be productive members of society? Yes, and we’ll certainly agree that laws and jails are appropriate. In fact we have those laws. It’s already illegal to steal and assault whether your homeless or not. Who is advocating removing those laws? The Marxists? The Christians? With all your arguing you certainly seem to want to live in a rational world but somehow continue to support irrational solutions.

Now the root of your objections are shown to be just callous indifference to human suffering. That’s fine, just come out and say you don’t care and can’t be bothered. You want to live in a world of machiavellian justice. Be careful what you ask for as maybe that knife will fall on your head or someone you care about if you are capable of that.

It’s hard to take you seriously when you try to conflate Marxism and religion, the guy that viewed religion as “the soul of soulless conditions” or the “opium of the people”. Or when you intimated that society was structurally fair. In what way is it fair that one person can be born to wealth and privlegde and another to poverty and lack of options? But even beyond the rules of society, there is no fundamental fairness in the universe. Some people get lucky others don’t. Some people are healthy others aren’t. It’s impossible to have any reasonable discussion when the starting point is so fundamentally divorced from reality.

You’re making a lot of spurious assumptions and generalizations. The overwhelming majority of the time the homeless are just minding their own business. Some are certainly more annoying than others, some smell worse than others but that doesn’t justify criminalizing all of them nor does it justify abdicating moral responsibility as a society to care for those that often for no fault of their own fail to integrate into the structures that have evolved. There are other solutions, none of them are going to be perfect. Maybe criminalizing sleeping on the street is fine as long as the city provides places to sleep that are reasonable.

As always it’s important to get the thoughts of sports or movie stars before making any judgements.

According to German soccer star Toni Kroos, Germany is worse off which doesn’t seem like a metric of success.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/07/07/germany-has-been-overwhelmed-by-migrants-says-toni-kroos/

He said he felt that Germany had become less secure since he left, and was now concerned his child would not come back “unharmed” from a night out alone.

Kroos told the Lanz & Precht podcast: “I think Germany is a great country and I’m happy to be here, but it’s not really the same country that it was 10 years ago when we left.”

But of course he hasn’t lived there for 10 years so who knows what he’s basing this on.

Homeless people have money, just not enough for housing. People with houses also use drugs. All people get money from different places. Not sure what your point is but your generalizations aren’t useful.

I live in a pretty liberal larger city and had a similar experience when the city was considering installing bike lanes on an arterial road. People love their parking. There is a sense of entitlement that someone should be able to drive door to door anywhere in the city. Honestly that was the way it used to be. The problem is partly having built a lifestyle that requires a large number of cars combined with not wanting anything to change. I’ve been a biker for a long time and recently bought an e-bike so I’m obviously biased but in a city, even one not designed for bikes, e-bikes are often a superior way to travel. Weather and needing one bike per person are the main problems. Can e-bikes reduce the number of cars in a given area and free up more parking so we can accommodate more bike infrastructure? Car share is another option I was a fan of and my city has seen those options come and go. A ubiquitous car share problem would help a lot. Not sure why those programs struggle so much.

This is a great strategy. Let’s see how much blood they can squeeze from those stones. Can’t afford a place to live? Lets charge rent for that park bench!

But of course the real idea here is to give municipalities the ability to harass people. It’s certainly not about the fines. The less annoying homeless will be driven off by the harassment and then all that will be left is the annoying ones which might be a more manageable number to throw in jail.