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Comment by jahaja | Hacker News Reader

Wow, that article's rhetoric is seething with social darwinistic class hatred. All these voluntary homeless seems to be conspicuously absent in western Europe. At least at this scale.

Insisting on, which the author clearly does according to a quick googling, firmly supporting and perpetuating an economic system that creates these dystopian features and then calling for their forceful removal, through weasel language, is cynical at best, and evil in practice.

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Your point side-steps the social responsibility of lifting drug-addicted and mentally-disadvantaged victims of so-called “social Darwinism” out of their state of despair. The case made by the article for social change is rock solid and borne out by a quick walk through the TL.

In what way? I'm trying suggest to address the root cause, albeit very long term, rather than just moving poverty out-of-sight.

> voluntary homeless

I lived deep inside the homeless prone parts of SF. 99% of the homeless in my neighborhood couldn't hold down a job if they wanted one. I was homeless for a while, and I certainly didn't do that voluntarily. Drugs, inability to afford housing & find a job (my issue), alcoholism, landlords playing games to get people evicted, mental health issues, lack of skills to compete, etc. The list goes on. I'll shut up now before I say what I REALLY think.

Lets do an experiment. Go to a park in the middle of London, and set up a tent, and scatter used needles on the sidewalk. You'll be involuntarily moved out of the park within a couple of hours.

Since your governments go ahead and remove people who are trying to live in public spaces, you don't see them, and you assume they don't exist.

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/10/berlin-has-been-payin...

https://www.politico.eu/article/homelessness-qa-freek-spinne...

where are they moved to? Police station/overnight jail? Or a shelter of sorts?

Europe in general has MUCH tougher laws against "anti social" behavior and public nuisances that the homeless by definition of their lifestyle are bound to violate. They also have better safety nets and support systems (shelters, discounted housing, addiction treatment, etc). Details vary by country and city, obviously.

To stereotype the heck out of it:

In the US a homeless person pitches a tent under an overpass and everyone tries their hardest to ignore it.

In Europe a homeless person pitches a tent under an overpass and within the hour the cops show up, rough him up for constructing an unauthorized shelter on the crown's land and then cart him off to a shelter that keeps him a few nights and then sends him on his way with all the support he needs to not be homeless anymore.

Me knowing that homeless people exist and seeing them every day hasn't really done then much good. They're still homeless, the homeless population is increasing, and for our end of the bargain we get public health hazards on every sidewalk and public park.

I used to live next to Hyde Park, and one of the subways leading towards the Marble Arch had a group of homeless that stayed there for at least a couple of years without being disturbed by the police. This is not unusual.

In the royal parks, on the other hand, you'd be right - in the Royal parks putting up tents and the like will get the attention of the police very quickly. There are parts of London outside the parts where the police likes to try to make the problem "disappear" by moving people on, but London's homeless problem is overall very visible.

That's because there are decent welfare systems in most those countries, reducing the scale of the problem to individuals, rather than volunteers trying to mitigate the immediate needs.

My point regarding hypocrisy is more important long term; you're immoral if you're a supporter of the Arsonist party then demanding to forcefully remove all the wildfire refugees because they're causing inconvenience to the "proper" citizens.

> Since your governments go ahead and remove people who are trying to live in public spaces, you don't see them, and you assume they don't exist.

From this, I assume you aren’t from the UK and don’t actually have any idea about homelessness here?

[Shelter](https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness) and [Centrepoint](https://centrepoint.org.uk/) are two of the biggest homeless charities here and they do a lot of work and are closely related with the local councils. Maybe do some research, the provide so much good information.

Please also bear in mind, the local councils have a [legal responsibility](https://www.compactlaw.co.uk/free-legal-information/public-h...) to look after homeless in their borough.

And this is purely anecdotal, but a lot of people I know here care a lot about homeless people. Walk around London and see how often you’ll see people buying a homeless person a coffee or some food.

Whereas in the US, I heard a lot of people say that homelessness is a choice and that they should just stop being homeless. Bewildering.

In the US, in San Francisco specifically, many homeless get not just a free coffee, but free needles, methadone, and pretty much a blind eye to all drug circulation downtown. The city spends $300 million on homeless every year, yet in the other thread here they say that SF has more homeless than all of the UK, and that number keeps growing every year. There are people defecating every day in the street around my office in the Financial District, I guess I should start buying them coffee or some food and things will get back on track.

Isn't it obvious that way you pay for, you get more of?

I don't mean that cynically--just seems like common sense.

I imagine it also depends on what it’s being spent on. If it’s not used effectively, no amount of money will make any difference - and as you said probably exacerbate the problem.

Okay? I was talking about your egregious remarks about the homeless situation in London.

It’s by no means peachy, as austerity is making things worse - but it can’t be compared to homelessness in the US where there are barely any social safety nets.

> I guess I should start buying them coffee or some food and things will get back on track.

Comprehension would lend itself well to the context of what I said.

Edinburgh has people living in tents. There was someone I used to see from the bus who lived on a park bench for months, surrounded by a pile of black bags of his stuff. Nicely situated park bench too, just far enough out to be away from the tourists but with a great view of the hills.

I hear reports of a used needle problem but haven't seen any myself.

The problem in northern Europe is not so much that the police will move on people in tents as the winters are colder than SF; Norway has zero long-term street homeless because the winter will kill them quickly.

I wonder how this compares to US cities that gets proper winters, like Detroit, Denver or Minneapolis, etc.

I can say that there are plenty of homeless people in New York. And some do freeze to death each winter, but the city spends a lot of money to avoid that as much as possible.

Berlin is a bad example and a complete failure, there the drug dealers get assigned special spots in parks so they don't disturb other visitors too much.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/09/berlin-park-sets...

As I remember it, the park manager decided to create these zones (And I don't remember reading about a gag order so he could not talk to the press, but rather reading an interview with him, though I can't find it at short notice now). And it's important to note that the park manager is more a lone social worker than anyone really in authority here. And from this point, the solutions does not seem unreasonable. He can't himself get rid of the drug dealers but tried to contain them, that despite them being there the park could be used by other people. Of course that does not solve the problem overall and the city of Berlin surely does so many things wrong, it is reasonable to conclude they could do better here as well, but the story itself seems to get quite blown out of proportion.

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