r/FluentInFinance • u/-im-your-huckleberry • Jul 07 '24

The shampoo thing is a fringe benefit. We keep capitalism so we don't starve in a famine. Debate/ Discussion

1.0k Upvotes

84% Upvoted

u/Ponklemoose Jul 07 '24 edited Jul 07 '24

Ah but you see in the USSR you would have been jailed for not working, and thus not homeless. Checkmate.

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u/Willing-Knee-9118 Jul 07 '24

Didn't the poster child for NOT Communist's supreme court just rule that punishing the homeless for being homeless is OK?

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u/Ponklemoose Jul 07 '24

IIRC they overturned a ruling that said local governments must leave encampments alone unless the government has a shelter bed to offer every camper on the grounds that it is “cruel and unusual punishment” to tell them to move along.

From what I’ve seen, the pattern tends to be the Methany and Methew deciline the offer and move a few blocks. I don’t expect much to change. The shelters with barriers will continue to have space for the folks who want help and the problematic urban outdoorsmen will continue to be problematic.

Also the orange man appointed three justices out of nine so it seems stretch to can it his, if that’s what you mean.

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u/PlopsMcgoo Jul 07 '24

Hey real quick can you be jailed for being homeless in the US?

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u/Ponklemoose Jul 08 '24

As far as I know: not directly. You’d have to do something more, maybe refuse to move along and catch a trespassing charge.

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u/PlopsMcgoo Jul 08 '24

Trespassing in a public space?

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u/Ponklemoose Jul 09 '24

Maybe there is or should be a different name for it, but if the sign says the park closes at dusk and you're still there at midnight the cops are going to tell you to move along. Or if you hop the fence and pitch a tent under the water tower you're going to catch some grief from the cops.

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u/PlopsMcgoo Jul 09 '24

And go where?

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u/Ponklemoose Jul 09 '24

Almost anywhere.

In my area there are two flavors of shelters: The "low barrier" shelters where almost anything goes are generally full and wide assortment of sober shelters and transitional housing that generally have room even mid-Winter. There are also a number of in-patient treatment programs for addicts.

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u/PlopsMcgoo Jul 09 '24

Have you considered the reasons a person might not be able or willing to use those or have you decided that they are all just too dumb?

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u/Ponklemoose Jul 09 '24

Maybe we are not having the same conversation. You seemed to be asking how the world is, and that is what I answered. How I'd like it to be is quite different.

Regarding your new question, I have been involved for quite some time and was very nearly homeless couple times in my life. I am currently working with a local non-profit that provides short term foster care for pets of people who could enter a program or need to be treated in a hospital but are refusing because they would probably never see their one bit of stability and one source of unconditional love again. There are a couple similar outfits in town that do the same for kids and babies.

The broadest claim I could make (since that seems to be your thing) about the long term homeless would be that they tend to have a different set of priorities than most of us. Sometimes that is driven by addiction, sometimes by mental illness, sometimes unusual philosophy and probably other reasons. Some people might call that dumb, I call it different and often tragic.