That wouldn't be an issue if we also provided shelter to the most distressed people in our society. As if we don't have the technology to build housing on the cheap. Our lack of communal will to help fellow people is a real shame.
The problem of persistent disorderly conduct by a small minority of highly disturbed people is either an unfathomably complex psychiatric issue, or a fairly straightforward carceral issue.
It's quite possible that these people would have turned out fine if they grew up provided a path to integrating into society that was less burdensome. It's possible you're right, too, but without controlling for confounding factors there's no way to know.
And that is because it is not polite to take up more than the minimum space needed. (Like using seats for your bag, or putting your feet on the seat across from you.)
As for why, two main categories of reasons. First, for the good of the person themselves. By making it illegal, the state then has the authority to compel some sort of action. For a first 'offence' this could simply be sleeping it off in the 'drunk tank' (or in a hospital bed if necessary). For repeat offences, an escalating scale of compulsory treatment. Basically if a person is regularly passing out in gutters, it's likely only a matter of time before they kill themselves, so being nudged, then coerced, then ultimately compelled into treatment would likely benefit them. Of course, this relies on avenues for treatment rather than simple punishment being available.
The other reason is for the rest of society. People do not want to walk down streets where people are passed out in gutters. They will either feel compelled to try to help - which can be, or at least feel, risky, given that intoxicated and/or mentally ill people can be unpredictable - or they may feel badly for not doing anything. Regardless, if it's a regular thing, it will encourage people to avoid the area where they're likely to encounter such things. That will impact local businesses, residences, etc., leading to an overall decline of environment and services for everyone.
Should everything that causes people to feel bad be illegal? Many people are scared by guns.
It's not an either-or. We can build more shelter to help homeless people, and at the same time we can dissuade them from using public transportation as de facto shelter.
After all, everybody's perfectly happy to keep homeless people out of their front yard or the local Starbucks. Nobody says "But we need to tolerate bums smoking weed in the middle of our coffee shop, unless we build enough shelter for all of them. ALL OF THEM."
I wish we could get to a point where we default to “yes” and find solutions rather than making it easier to say “no.”
Having other places with a roof, some security and some public amenities should go a long way to avoid other services getting bogged down by homelessness.
an important factor in improving your life is integration in society. but that only works if you live among people already integrated, not if everyone around you is also not integrated.
the same reason why it's hard for people to escape poverty uf everyone around them is poor too.
If giving away free public services could be grifted to increase the bottom line of the ultra wealthy, we'd have a utopian society.
Aren't half of these wrong?
NIMBY-ism isn't particularly partisan. Find a suburb and it's probably full of NIMBY zoning rules regardless of which party has the majority there. This is one of the things which isn't red vs. blue, it's "got mine" vs. the people who don't get a vote because they can't afford to live there because they don't get a vote.
You also don't have to "solve housing the societal level" to keep the homeless from using the subway as a bedroom. That's the better way to do that, but you can also do things like build homeless shelters that resemble (and therefore have the density of) college dorms in places where the "neighbors" are auto salvage yards, warehouses, prisons, abandoned buildings or the like and are correspondingly less likely to object to putting them there. And then anyone you catch being disruptive on the subway gets a free one-way ticket to the shelter.
Effectively, to offer free public transport, you have to reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money in politics.
To promote solar power, you have reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money.
To promote anti-vaccine ideology, you have to reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money.
To promote a strictly equal society where every person is judged by their abilities and not ethnic history and skin color, you have to reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money.
There are vested interests in every debate and saying we should aim for wholesale societal change for every low hanging result is a recipe for inaction (or at least, very delayed action)
Do you actually though? Or do you just have to do it in a way that they won't stop you?
There are at least three ways to do that. You can do it in a way that it actually doesn't cause trouble for them, you can do it in a way where they can't stop you (e.g. at a different level of government where they have less influence), or you can do it in a way where they can't see what you're trying to do until after it's already done.
"Reduce the influence of lobbyists and money" doesn't even mean anything. If you want something to happen or not happen, you're lobbying. If you spend time or resources trying to achieve your goals, that's money. What people mean is they want to reduce the influence of people they don't like. It's fully generic, you might as well say that in order to win you have to defeat your opponents.