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Comment by ninth_ant | Hacker News Reader

The fact that shelters have "drama" and "rules" is not a compelling reason for someone to make a home in an area that is intended for public use, and render it unusable and unsafe for others.

Is this really a hard problem to solve? I can certainly buy the argument that criminalizing homelessness doesn't make sense when the "criminal" has no other options. But if someone has a viable option for not living on the street, I'm considerably less sympathetic given the downsides to everyone else involved.

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> someone has a viable option for not living on the street

I guess it depends on how we define viable. In my experience working with the homeless, there are a lot of valid reasons shelters are avoided; they can be more dangerous, don't allow pets (who are sometimes the only companions they have), and don't allow families or couples. Whether that is viable or not depends on how you use the word.

I really doubt homeless people are good pet owners. Food scarcity, lack of medical care for your pets, etc, etc…

What does that have to do with anything? Being a bad pet owner doesn't make you a non-pet-owner.

Not always, but it certainly can. Many animal control departments consider leaving a dog outside 24/7 to be neglect/cruelty and will take that dog from you.

Funny that our standards for animal safety are higher than those for humans.

We only have a standard for animals because humans are deemed their stewards. US citizens are their own stewards and most would cry foul if there was some standard that governed what weather they were allowed to go out in and/or for how long.

Pets don't really need medical care per se. There's a huge glut of unwanted dogs, so is it better to euthanize so many unwanted dogs right away, or would it be better to just allow some of them to live on the street with homeless people, and then be euthanized when they have medical problems (which usually takes years: pets are typically fairly healthy until they get older unless they get injured, much like humans)?

Maybe instead of guess, go spend some time with people in transition or otherwise sleeping rough. You’ll probably learn a lot

They'll often, if not always, prioritize their animals over themselves. They're no different from housed pet owners in that way.

24/7 companionship, with owners that don't leave all day for work...

I don't say this often, but you are absolutely wrong about this.

Yeah, no. Dogs owned by homeless people are literally the happiest dogs around: they get to spend all their time outside, by their owner's side. They have a clear purpose as a companion, and are cared for deeply.

It's the dogs that get left alone inside an apartment for 9 hours a day that are unhappy and neglected.

This is obviously a baseless and naive comment, and I'm glad others have stepped in to call it out. This whole thread is filled with noise like this.

The fact that there are so many strong opinions from people who demonstrate an embarrassingly low understanding of the situation is one of the reasons the problem is so hard to solve in the first place.

They are going to live on the street whether you think it's ok or not. Homeless people avoiding shelters has been a thing since looong before homelessness was even talked about in terms of decriminalizing (and legalized drugs were a literal pipe dream). Having talked to many homeless people over the years, shelters really do sound quite awful, actually worse than jail in many ways.

i felt similarly until i actually ended up homeless and had to deal with shelters. they are shockingly non-viable and since most close early in the day, getting a bed for the night and getting employment so you can stop being homeless end up as mutually exclusive propositions.

> make a home in an area that is intended for public use, and render it unusable and unsafe for others

A tent in a park, unless in the middle of a trail, doesn't inherently or necessarily make it less usable or less safe.

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