• Lyricism6055@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Just for the sake of my own learning, how can you help them?

    In my personal experience when I’ve tried to help them they will take free clothes, food, and money… But if they don’t want to get off drugs and actually clean up their act then they won’t.

    How can you help the ones who won’t help themselves? In this case the homeless encampment seemingly hurts business and communities.

    I donate time and money to homeless shelters and things but the problem is just getting worse where I live. When these encampments pop up existing residents are less safe, and the sense of community as a whole goes down.

    These are not bad people, but addiction is hell on earth it seems. I honestly want to know how I could help more than I do, but most people don’t know how to fix it either

    • Bael422@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Publicly paid for rent free housing. Not group shelters. Full on housing. That’s literally all it’s ever taken. Season on some free mental and medical Healthcare and you’ve got a recovery sandwich. Even if they don’t end up fixing their lives, the amount it costs the public to just give them this is cheaper than it costs to have the police harass them, build anti-homeless infrastructure, and repair damages caused by the unhoused from defecation or public property damages. The other one-two punch is fixing economic problems, which rent caps, unions, minimum wage being a living wage tied to inflation, and changing fines to imprisonment for corporations doing crimes will fix a lot of that.

      It’s too bad this can’t happen while corporations can buy the government with “donations” and lobbying (legalized bribery), and massively benefit from homelessness as a way to force people into exploitative work, or imprisonment for cheap legal slave labor (See 13th amendment). Only way I can think to fix that problem is to remove the source of their power, which is to pull money out of the equation. Essentially building communities that work together without money like we used to, though the government has standing orders to kill or break up people who try that (see Malcolm X, M.L.K. Jr., or places like lake Lanier).

    • 2ugly2live@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Someone already wrote a really good answer, but using the money to help fund programs would be a start. Maybe make a safe place where they can hang out that doesn’t offend you (not you specifically, just in general). If possible, I would even try and talk with them, become neighbors instead of enimies. While tackling homelessness would take a system wide change, I think sometimes just not adding to the problem and shame is the best we can do.

      And I get it, I’ve had homeless people scream at me, see them urinate outside, not everything humans do is pleasant, and I also wouldn’t want all of that right in front of my business. But, at least in this example, there is a ton of empty space, the building itself is mostly empty. Come together and make the rest of the unused property a shelter. That parking lot behind them alone was gigantic and I don’t think I saw any cars there, why not let them have part of the parking lot? It just seems easier to be kind and try to work with them than set up a sound system to keep the entire neighborhood up.