This is not the homeless thread, but it’s related. Every day, I walk by a man’s little tent area and have for five months. He has two tents set up on a sidewalk in a high-traffic, high-pedestrian, shopping and student district.
Here’s a list of activities I’ve seen— just me, personally, and not stories:
1. Burning things in a make-shift fire pit on the sidewalk.
2. Writing in his own semi-cuneiform script all over the sidewalk and walls.
3. Flashing his dick at people
4. Lunging at a woman and telling her he’s going to kill her.
5. Screaming at everyone he is going to kill them.
6. Shitting on the sidewalk.
All these conversations keep coming back to the idea of dignity and human treatment and I just have to ask myself every single time— where is the dignity all around? Where is the dignity for that man who is shitting on the sidewalk and screaming for hours in a tent compound, not to mention every single person who lives or works or just passes by. Is this really a “choice” anyone makes to live that way?
I mean, gotdam, I’m not in favor of confining people to awful mental asylums out of sight but what if we confined people to nice mental asylums where they were treated with dignity and not left to shit on the streets and dickflash pedestrians? Would that be an option anyone discussed?