Personal Space

This new story about the homeless spikes has me thinking. On the one hand, homeless people can be smelly, mentally ill, and unpleasant to be around for other reasons; being homeless is not conducive to showers, mental health treatment, or fitting into polite society. Indeed, not taking showers, having a mental illness, and not being socially adept can make you homeless.

The other hand calls out a line of thought that takes "not in my backyard" to the next level. The though, however unspoken goes, "these people should not be around me, so I will keep them away." Now, it's true that homeless people should not exist; there is enough on this planet to provide everyone with a home and their own space to exist in. 

That's true despite me being a person who knows that the social contract should fail negative; no one should be forced to endure a presence in their personal space that they don't want. Whether you're a woman on a bus trying to get rid of a creeper or a simple worker trying to walk down the road without giving a bum change, you have every right to tell someone "no" and have them fuck off with no further explanation.

The thing is that the richer you are the more space you have. The social and physical zone around a person rises with their wealth. For homeless people that space is nothing, but humans need places to sleep, to sit, to relax.

Homeless people do not sleep in stoops to scare people. They don't camp on park benches because they like the outdoors. They aren't living in cities, the roughest terrain for roughing it, because they like a challenge. Begging for food and getting social services are easier in areas with more population density. Like every other organism on Earth, they are part of an energetic network and move towards the areas that give them the greatest share of energy.

Remove homeless people from places where they can profitably beg, access services, and connect with other homeless people and you put their meager livelihoods at risk. Apartments, businesses, and individuals have every right to expel the homeless from their spaces, but they must be aware that in doing so as a matter of policy creates an environment where homeless people can starve out of sight.

The timeline of Robo Hobo Homo is currently somewhere around the 21st of May right now. In another few days, posts will start mentioning our manpower shortage. Right now, on June 14th, Purgatory Shelter is at capacity.

Even more, we just received word that the non-profit which operates the shelter is going to be cutting the number of beds by 25%. They're going to convert half of the rooms from 3-month free shelters into affordable, long-term rentals.

There just aren't many places-physically-for homeless people to go. 

But hey, the people who don't want smelly, possibly mentally ill people around their buildings don't care about that. For those guys, all I can do is remind them that homeless people also have to piss, and I can't think of a better place than the doorsteps of folks pissing on them.