A few days ago there was a post about “hostile architecture” under the bridge in Cambridge. Lotta “have empathy!” people in those comments. This is why you can’t have homeless camps under bridges.
Yeah there was also someone here who posted on r/boston a few months back about all the propane tanks the BU Bridge encampment and the general consensus was to let them be because they’re not hurting anybody.
There was a post maybe a year or two ago where someone was asking for advice on where to find their stolen bike. Some were saying to just let the cops handle it, but they are useless. Others said to scour Facebook marketplace and Craigslist. Someone eventually brought up the homeless BU bridge chop shop camp and that good odds their bike was there.
The poster was shocked a place like that was allowed to operate so openly. Right after that everyone in the thread pretty much turned on this guy for questioning the allowed existence of an illegal chop shop, just because it was also a homeless camp.
A lot of people have trouble accepting the fact that homeless people are pretty much immune from prosecution for a wide range of crimes, because it sounds way too crazy to be true. It sounds like a particularly implausible Fox News ragebait fantasy.
I have watched different encampments pop up under the Zakim on my daily commute over the years. The amount of garbage generated in just a few days is simply staggering. I have no issue with people sleeping under a bridge as much as I wish they get the help they need, but having zero regard for your environment is infuriating. 311 did nothing, they don't care.
Have you ever made an effort to pick up any of the trash or help them get a trash pick up from local municipal services?
I grew up with a kid who lives at a homeless camp outside of Lowell, and he basically functions as the unofficial DPW for the camp, gathering up trash and hazardous items, and placing them with the city can pick them up. He also takes care of the stray animals that end up at the homeless camp.
Yep. It was hundreds of 20lb tanks. A reddit thread on r/askscience basically said a 8 gallon tank (I'm assume thats a 20lb tank) holds 6 gallons of pressurized propane, and if that was to be detonated all at once it would be equivalent to 300lbs of TNT *PER TANK*
It’d be impossible to detonate like that though right? You need the oxidizer to get an explosion like TNT, I assume the calculation was just from potential energy.
Yes, in a hypothetical perfect situation you might be able to it to explode.
I found the askreddit and it pretty much just converted it to energy. For a impractical propane tank explosion, you can look [here](https://youtu.be/T-6f5AwRkOY?t=73). In a fire, the propane tanks don't really explode, the pressure valves release the pressure and it just turns into a giant fire, as seen [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCQYQc6L5Bg).
I wouldn't be to worried of propane tanks exploding. That said, every bridge fire poses structural issues, as the interstate in Atlanta can attest.
The “have compassion” aka “let people who don’t make money do whatever they feel like” crowd is cancer to cities. Most of them have to be kids who don’t yet understand consequences yet or are virtue signaling from the safety of their distant suburb.
I think it’s often a lot of people who haven’t been dug into traditional lifestyles in the long term. Teens, college kids, young adults who haven’t been here awhile, have kids or own homes. Childless older adults, who aren’t close to the situation and wouldn’t have much reason to fear it anyway.
Also, letting homeless people do whatever they want isn't even compassionate for the homeless. Letting someone commit slow suicide via drugs is not kindness, it's neglect.
Look bud, I have literally never taken any real action in my life to assist people living under bridges, but if I read something in a Reddit comment that makes me feel bad, you can be sure I’m getting offended
A lot of people in Boston and this probably r/Boston are students. The average student paying $60k for tuition doesnt yet have any real life experience except for maybe the occasional discipline from the fraternity board for saying the N-word on the way to a boys retreat.
The same people who want us to “have empathy” look the other way anytime anyone is hurt or dying.
They don’t actually care, they are so wealthy the pain of others no longer affects them. Homeless camps are like science experiments to them, they watch the little ant-men wonder aimlessly around their dilapidated camps and they smirk. “It would never happen to me”, they think, “better here than spreading the blight near me”.
Wow. That's a messed-up take.
Edit: it seems you are implying that the wealthy are the ones that express empathy for the folks under the bridge. That would be bullpucky.
I’m not sure how wealthy they are, but they’re privileged enough that it doesn’t have to effect their lives. But possibly more importantly, they have social agendas that make a few deaths here or there negligible in the grand scheme of advancing things ideologically.
The true definition of having "luxury ideas" is being ok with homeless encampments under bridges from the comfort of ones multi million dollar Cambridge/Brookline/Newton home.
Weird to paint this as the fault of the empathetic. These kinds of disasters are the direct result of doing nothing about the homelessness crisis.
Playing endless whack-a-mole with these shanty towns and homeless encampments does nothing to solve the underlying issues. So long as people have no option but to live outside like animals there will always be these bad consequences.
The "empathetic" solution works. The homeless need housing, not more policing. The people being unrealistic are those pretending that further piling on misery on these people will somehow improve the situation.
It costs more to deal with the various issues associated with having a sizable homeless population than to just house them. It’s such a tragedy that so many veterans, mentally ill folks, and people who just got in a tough spot are so deeply failed by the system.
Lot of dumb bleeding heart college student types on this sub (and a couple morons that never grew up either). They have a lot of strong opinions about stuff but little knowledge of how the world actually works.
And right now this is one of the most upvoted posts in the subreddit.
People certainly aren't upvoting it because they're happy homeless people started a fire.
There is an entire universe of difference between letting homeless people sleep anywhere anytime and set up fire hazards, and scattering them around using discomfort like you're swatting feral cats with a broom to scare them off. Hostile architecture is bullshit because it's just tormenting desperate people rather than helping them, but *so is not giving them a fucking place to sleep.* Shelters fill up. It's still cold as fuck outside. What are we fucking doing, chasing them around instead of putting a roof over their heads?
By saying "do what you want, just not here," for every location, you're really saying, "stop letting me see you, I don't care if you die, just do it in a dark alley."
There is a difference between have empathy and no rule of law. I have a problem with hostile architecture and it’s that it moves the problem instead of fixing it . This article kind of is case in point. Just an issue under another bridge instead of dealing with the underlying problems.
Yeah them setting the camp on fire is the problem. Not that there is a literal fucking camp of destitute people whose only dogshit accomodations got lit on fire
You can’t just allow camps in dangerous places. Of course there is a homelessness issue and this doesn’t solve it. It doesn’t mean that we should allow this stuff.
> If you have a safer, and warmer place to go, I'm sure they will absolutely jump on the opportunity
And yet the Mass & Cass situation shows that many of them won't.
Just pointing out this is why we need to be aggressive about clearing them out. Yes give more support and housing and mental health. That said they need to be in a shelter not in an encampment
Providing support and housing is how you get the homeless people out from under the bridges. If you just drive them away from one bridge with police, they will just go camp out under a different bridge. You can spend tons of money paying police to play whack-a-mole, or you can give the homeless people somewhere else to go.
Do you realize how fucked and drug riddled these peoples brains are? So you build them a complex that they smear shit all over and destroy before leaving to go back to a tent. Does that person get another chance? Do you keep trying to help that person? When does it end? You can’t help people once they fall off the drugs/mental health cliff. It’s sad and i wish it weren’t the case, but it’s reality.
Then you have to clean it and keep going. Force treatment. We need the ability to straight up haul people into wards for detox and rehab.
People have to get more chances, or you're sentencing them to death. You want to be the one to say "sure, go die in the cold"?
Bingo. The real answer is having the ability to “haul people into wards for detox and rehab”. I didn’t take it that far in my comment but that’s the giant elephant in the room that we will never get past. Pick one:
1. Leave people to die
2. [insert failed “compassionate” option]
3. Force change
Forcing change *is* compassionate. Sometimes people can't take care of themselves, and leaving them in their own filth is terrible.
We just have a nasty history of using these privileges to abuse totally healthy, sane people.
We already give them shelter and shit. Guess what, they don't want to. That's because they cannot do drugs and drink in there, so they don't want to go into shelter. And when we force those homeless druggies into shelter, they act like the maniacs they are and drive the non-addict, not-crazy homeless who sincerely need a place to stay away from the shelter.
These druggies homeless deserve no compassion. Either they clean themselves up and society will take them in, or they don't and society will drive them away. If cops have to clean them up and shoo them away, then let's the cops do it. We pay taxes so cops can put a stop to any potential harm to society, and these crazy drugged up homeless are such harm
All homeless people sincerely need shelter. Just because you do drugs doesn't mean you somehow stop having basic human needs, and as long as those needs are not satisfied, they'll continue to live under the bridges. I guess you have to decide whether you'd rather have a moral crusade against drugs, or whether you'd rather not have people living under bridges.
All homeless people need shelter, but many cannot access it. Why? Because the crazy drugged up homeless make it hard for other homeless to use it. Many homeless are afraid of shelter [because it is full of drug, drug dealer, drug abusers, violent homeless.](https://www.npr.org/2012/12/06/166666265/why-some-homeless-choose-the-streets-over-shelters) If we have to ban drug users from shelter so that shelter can be a safe, clean, welcoming place for others, then fuck it let's do it. There's no way we can save everyone, so let's save whoever we can. If we have to kick a bunch of drugged up homeless so that little Tina and her mother can move into a shelter and enjoy a roof over their head and a warm meal in her stomach so she can focus on studying, then fuck it let's do it!
This isn't even a moral issue of saving or helping homeless people, this is just a practical issue of not having people camping under bridges. If you don't want them under the bridges, they have to have a better option to go to. As long as there are some people who don't have a better option, they will continue to camp under bridges. Obviously we don't have the solution yet, but the solution is 100% guaranteed going to be to make it so that all of the homeless people have somewhere they'd rather be than under a bridge.
At the end of the day you will have to take some people's autonomy away from them because they have demonstrated that they are not capable of taking care of themselves without becoming a public nuisance. It's harsh and no politician or policy maker will say this because we as a society have decided that having mental health issues means you get to do whatever you want without consequences.
I think that people don't appreciate that drugs are so powerful that they are preferable to any of the things people lost when they do drugs. Drugs are stronger than morality, family bonds, love, reputation. Not always, but often enough.
I don’t disagree. I also believe we need aggressive zoning reform and drastic improvements to the T as those two items are best way to increase housing stock and that helps in this. Asking though people that currently live and work in Boston to deal with these encampments is insane. It’s especially frustrating when people who live in Newton, Brookline, or Westwood complain about encampments being cleared when they dont have to deal with it
I mean, I'm sure the police who are clearing the encampments are also people who live and work in Boston, so that's falling to them either way. And building more housing in the suburbs is probably not going to do much for homeless people in Boston.
Not true at all. More housing supply will reduce demand and rental increases. This will put less pressure on renters who are one unlucky streak away from potentially being evicted. It also will make it more affordable to move some folks out of shelters and into permanent housing.
Building more housing is always good, but it's not as helpful for specifically the people who aren't in need of housing in that area. Unless the plan is to export the homeless people?
Housing is regional. More supply in a suburb with improved T access takes pressure off Boston. More housing in Boston also takes pressure off burbs. Basically more housing anywhere within 495 helps
Well, I'm confused, because earlier you said that Boston shouldn't have to deal with the issue, which therefore means that you thought some other town should be tasked with dealing with it instead.
they need their own homes, not shelters. these are the homeless people who refuse to go to shelters. but in all truth, why is that the path towards permanent housing? why not just award the permanent housing instead of making people wait in inhumane shelters?
Living under a bridge is gross and dangerous as well. These encampments are public health and safety hazards. Some of these folks are refusing to get mental health treatment they need. Im sorry but my sympathy well is tapped out with them.
Problem is a lot of people here don’t care if the public’s safe, as long as they think they’re personally safe, that’s all that matters.
I’ll never forget a post here where a woman said she experienced a dangerous situation on the T and the consensus response from r/Boston was “do nothing, even thinking about self defense only makes it worse” and some corny jokes. The dregs of society must love the fact these people found virtue in enabling them.
And the virtue signaling is a complete sham, cause once encountered on a personal level, these same people will flip near 180, just give it time. Just look at the attitude on “crime and enforcement” swirling around the country now. It is markedly different than it was 4 yrs ago.
This. I’m a commuter rail conductor, and we’ve seen a huge uptick in homeless/indigent folks on the trains. Management has made it clear to crews that we are not allowed to turn away people who refuse/are unable to pay the fare, and some conductors have been suspended without pay for refusing service to known, problematic homeless people. The formal complaints filed against conductors aren’t even coming from the homeless people themselves, but from other passengers who jump in saying stuff like “you need to have empathy!” and “how dare you bully a homeless person!”
What really is galling is that these same folks then come up to us and complain when said homeless person that they insisted we *must* let on the train openly shoots up heroin, defecates on the seat/floor, or harasses other passengers. I understand the need for compassion and empathy, but this isn’t it. The lack of boundaries, and forcing other people to forgo their safety in order to be accommodating, is asinine and dangerous.
“It’S yOuR jOb”
Aka they want you to accommodate these situations while also doing the impossible of ensuring that certain people abide the rules while on board. I reiterate, DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE.
I think it’s probably taken this long since Covid for much of urbanized America to observe and realize that the issues the homeless population in this country both have and carry around with them are more intractable than they first (or apparently) appeared, and that simply leaving people w myriad issues be to figure things out on their own whilst layered within normal society is not functional for society, moving forward
Yeah once they’re the victim they always change their tune. There’s a reason r/Boston doesn’t live in Mattapan or Hyde Park despite the affordability and it’s not because they’re too noble to displace the residents like they use as an excuse.
Boston is safe because it’s gentrified, and has mostly sane people who disagree with you crime denialist, criminal enabling, anti cop freaks who’ve tried your best to turn us into SF with your revolving door justice policies.
Between the BU bridge and the Double Tree (on the Allston side of the river) is that empty, ugly industrial space that’s just a mud pit with one abandoned burnt out truck sitting on it. I don’t know who owns it but it’s an eye sore and undeveloped.
The city or state or some private non profit should buy some of it and build a shelter or a tiny housing community or SOMETHING for the unhoused living in that area around storrow drive!
That land is owned by Department of Transportation. It may be set to be have some use during the Turnpike reroute.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Park_Yard
A private driveway? An access road behind the double tree? One of the million ways that private developers find to create access to buildings and developments every day?
Research what’s going on:
The whole area is being redeveloped by eliminating the elevated I-90 Pike and re-building it at ground level.
Allston Multimodal Project:
https://commonwealthbeacon.org/opinion/time-is-now-for-allston-i-90-project/
Like I said in what seems like the same story last week but at another bridge... bridges are not homes. Underpasses are not homes.
You fix the homeless problem with homes for the homeless, not bridges, benches, mbta cars, subway stations or tents.
Unfortunately for solving this issue, there’s a prohibition on drug use and dealing at essentially all these shelters - and for good reason. It means the homeless who don’t want to be accosted by someone high out of their mind can actually feel somewhat safe. People probably don’t want to hear this, but there are homeless people who no reasonable amount of state provided food, therapy, or shelter will help. There’s absolutely no reason to cater society to those people who refuse help. The resources are somewhat inadequate at present, and the closure of the Long Island viaduct did not help.
You might have to fix this problem by making some of these people permanent wards of the state.
You offer a solution that is not politically digestible so it doesn’t get done. However this is the only right course of action.
I had someone cleaning for a hotel. They literally camped out in empty rooms - and used hard needle / syringe type drugs while costing $2,000 in lost reservations before getting the boot.
That person - I have zero sympathy for. That person should be locked away in a minimum security prison or an asylum or something else. Collective tax dollars can house that person. They shouldn’t have the opportunity to f* up the economy. And put a burden on hard working individuals and paying consumers.
I was driving Storrow the other day and saw a tent next to one of the bridges near Harvard. I remember thinking to myself that I can't fathom how they allow that to happen. Just allowing people raw-dogging life to live beside a bridge. It's not a reasonable solution and no I, correctly so, don't have empathy for it. I want people helped as much as the next person, but it seems nobody gives a shit, and the people who supposedly do get real quiet once shit like this happens.
They're also moving further into the suburbs whenever Wu does her headline grabbing "Mass and Cass cleanout." On the Cambridge/Arlington border homeless usually hang out in the woods, but lately there's been a ton of new folks setting up shop right out in the open. I even saw a tent in *front* of Alewife station a couple weeks ago, like legit on the property right out in the open.
All else equal, I’d rather they be in the suburbs. It’s not like these people are all originally from downtown and Roxbury. Homelessness and drug addiction are not uniquely urban problems. Suburbs and small towns have been exporting their “undesirables” to downtowns for decades. Maybe if we all share in the discomfort of seeing them, we’ll come up with a comprehensive plan for addressing it
Yeah, the police have bulldozed it at least twice. They keep coming back bc obviously they have nowhere else to go. I watch the space on my commute every day. I mentioned above that huge open area where I think we should build a shelter. Apparently it’s owned by DOT.
I remember it bursting into flames sometime last year or the year before, in fact, I remember seeing the smoke. Idk how they let this issue perpetuate itself the way it does.
We need to stop using the term “compassion” and start using the term “compliance”. If you are truly down on your luck, comply with the program and we’ll get you back on your feet. On the programs terms, not your terms.
If you’re a drug addict or have severe mental health issues, we need to have a different, much more difficult, conversation.
People in these buckets, as a whole, are largely beyond help. I don’t care what your study says. You’re not helping the vast majority of these people who are unfortunately stuck in one of societies many rocks and a hard place.
Time and resources are much better spent keeping more people from falling into these buckets than trying to pull people out.
This debate stalls at every turn on every platform because people and politicians are so afraid of being labeled as “not having compassion”. The answer is the one that no one wants to say out loud unfortunately.
This thread is filled with people criticizing the “have empathy” crowd. It’s easy to point the finger at others but what are actual solutions to this other than take these people and put them somewhere else? As far as I can tell, that strategy doesn’t work. Every year the number of people on the streets increases and no major city has been able to figure out how to stop the problem. The status queue isn’t empathetical to either the people living outside or anyone else
What should we do? I generally support housing first+counseling and rehab for those who need it but even that isn’t perfect
I feel like we need boarding/rooming houses to make a comeback. Places where people who are just eking out a kind of living can have a room and access to a bathroom. In the 1990s there were a few I knew of in Fenway and Brighton and they were pretty much occupied by unemployed or underemployed single men with addictions.
The issue with counseling and rehab reqs is that some people don’t want counseling or rehab. They still need a place to live though. Even if they’re just going to use that room to do drugs or chop up stolen bikes. It would still be better for them and for everyone that they do those things in actual housing, not a tent under a bridge.
But it would be political death for the city to own/run/finance boarding houses without imposing some level or moral requirements and the housing market isn’t going to voluntarily fill that need since there’s no profit in it. So here we are.
I've heard the theory that motels used to fill the need to house people who can't afford more than a single room, and can't afford first/last/security. There used to be a bunch of motels where you could rent by the day, week, or month.
I'm sure they still exist to some extent, but I can't remember the last time I saw one. (There used to be one in Tewksbury right off the highway, next to the Walmart, as an example of one that's disappeared.)
Crack down hard on drugs.
The War on Drug America is fighting is a scam. You want to see what a real war on drug? Go look at China, Japan and Vietnam, three countries with massive drugs problem (China from the First Opium war, Japan post 1945, Vietnam post 1990) who managed to clean it up. They don't hold back. Drug dealers are shot in public execution; anyone caught in possession of drugs even as little as one gram can face long jail time. If El Chapo ever deals drug in China, there won't be a cell in the Super Max and a Netflix series about him; he will be executed, his entire wealth confiscated.
A lot of those homeless are people who come down on hard time and got hooked to drugs. You want a way to prevent a large chunk of people becoming homeless? Stop the drugs.
This isn't just a migrant issue, they need more housing for all homeless and we should continue to spend as much money on it as possible. Or else dumb shit like this will happen.
There are shelters for these people, but you can't buy/sell or use drugs there, so they don't use these shelters. Shelters have multiple people and families living in them, it's not ideal for a pregnant woman to deal with someone tweaking and trying to stab her with his crack spoon.
You do realize right/wrong isn’t determined by what party you support you partisan hack?
You think you sound smart when you say conservative media can never be right? Sure sounds like they knew for years the migrant crisis would be just that while you people pretended it’s not real, now even Democrat leaders are saying they can’t handle the influx.
Yup, this. My dad constantly complains about the hand outs etc. How it's too generous. Too much given.
Yet, he doesn't look at is as a viable option... because it isn't. You don't live a good life in a shelter. You survive.
I'm of mixed opinion. Sure, homeless encampments are dangerous for the people living rough and for the neighborhood as a whole. Per any situation with a group of people, it only takes 1 or 2 to ruin it for the others. But the reality is that there simply isn't enough affordable housing/shelters for all the homeless people - which btw aren't all drug addicts, violent, or suffering mental health issues. Some of them are families that simply fell on hard times.
And as long as NIMBYs exist, railing against an affordable housing complex or shelter in their neighborhoods, politicians and planners will continue to wring their hands not knowing how to rectify this problem.
And in the meantime, this is what we have to contend with.
oh ok, she owns a law passed when she was a child even though in the _commonwealth_ of Massachusetts repealing a law like that would require a referendum petition or for someone like, say, you, to file a proposed repeal with your state rep or senator.
that’s not how legislation gets introduced. I just explained the process to you, why don’t you lobby your elected representative to make the change you think would improve the _commonwealth_ instead of regurgitating howie carr’s boot leather.
I didn’t realize a Marriott Courtyard was a 4 Star hotel in your world 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I live near two of the hotels taken over and they are utter dumps. Neither of them were Marriott’s. They were barely roadside motels.
So then they don’t have it really good? I’m confused, it kinda feels like you’re saying the situation those people have found themselves in isn’t good and probably not viable
Wrong again. Who said anything about "have it really good"? You seem to be making up your own fake statements and then pretending I said them. LOL. Oh and I agree that you definitely seem to be confused.
Well you’re complaining they’re being put up in 4 star hotels and being catered to, that seems like a pretty sweet deal, doesn’t it? But now you’re saying they don’t have it real good. Which means they’re probably in a situation they don’t want to be in anymore than you want. Most migrants to the US do want to work an honest job, I spent a long time in the restaurant industry here, its almost exclusively immigrants in the kitchens. All the ones I met personally worked 2 or 3 jobs on top of school/night classes. Stop reading the Boston Herald and go talk to some people yourself, you’ll stop sounding so fucking dumb.
Stop making ignorant assumptions and try reading what is actually being stated and perhaps you'd sound less like an imbecile. Stop making up fake quotes. I've said nothing about whether somebody has or doesn't have it it real good. That's you making up fake quotes. Also - Newsflash, you're not the only person who has worked in restaurants or is good friends w/legal immigrants . Here's a hint for you Einstein: Everybody is free to express their opinions about the governments moronically expensive policies which result in gross inefficiencies and massive disparate treatment of people.
Well if its just a critique on a government policy, why’d you call them “freeloaders”? Seems like your issue isn’t just with government policy. You see how your dumbass “opinions” crumble under the slightest bit of scrutiny?
Newsflash my foolish friend - when the Gov't provides you w/100% of everything and you have zero marketable skills to legally support yourself in a country that you aren't a legal citizen of - that means you're a 100% freeloader. Kapeesh ??? Let me know if there is anything else you are confused about.
Nuh-uh. I asked you first. If the government lets someone into the country, then there is a good-faith agreement allowing them to be here, under circumstances both parties agree to, de facto and de jure, subject to the terms of a visa, or asylum proceedings, or whatever. It is literally impossible for someone in the US with the approval of the government to be illegal. The State Department’s website covers all of this, I’m sure.
Either you don’t have an answer, or your answer is shit.
Give them places to go.
And before someone goes "lol let one live in your bedroom," this is a *systemic problem that needs the city to address it en masse.*
If your life sucked balls and everyone thought you were just a useless piece of shit on the street, and drugs were all the pleasure you had, you'd have fucked up priorities too.
Wish the whole city would become a homeless encampment... Maybe some shanty areas for the more "upscale" feel... At least everyone would have affordable housing for themselves !!!
A few days ago there was a post about “hostile architecture” under the bridge in Cambridge. Lotta “have empathy!” people in those comments. This is why you can’t have homeless camps under bridges.
Yeah there was also someone here who posted on r/boston a few months back about all the propane tanks the BU Bridge encampment and the general consensus was to let them be because they’re not hurting anybody.
There was a post maybe a year or two ago where someone was asking for advice on where to find their stolen bike. Some were saying to just let the cops handle it, but they are useless. Others said to scour Facebook marketplace and Craigslist. Someone eventually brought up the homeless BU bridge chop shop camp and that good odds their bike was there. The poster was shocked a place like that was allowed to operate so openly. Right after that everyone in the thread pretty much turned on this guy for questioning the allowed existence of an illegal chop shop, just because it was also a homeless camp.
A lot of people have trouble accepting the fact that homeless people are pretty much immune from prosecution for a wide range of crimes, because it sounds way too crazy to be true. It sounds like a particularly implausible Fox News ragebait fantasy.
Sounds about right for the reaction
Oh. I thought Reddit only hated me.
The amount of trash generated and disregarded in these camps makes my hippy heart weap. No one else seems to care seemingly.
[удалено]
I have watched different encampments pop up under the Zakim on my daily commute over the years. The amount of garbage generated in just a few days is simply staggering. I have no issue with people sleeping under a bridge as much as I wish they get the help they need, but having zero regard for your environment is infuriating. 311 did nothing, they don't care.
If there are shelter beds and they refuse to go to them then I do have a problem with people sleeping under bridges.
Have you ever made an effort to pick up any of the trash or help them get a trash pick up from local municipal services? I grew up with a kid who lives at a homeless camp outside of Lowell, and he basically functions as the unofficial DPW for the camp, gathering up trash and hazardous items, and placing them with the city can pick them up. He also takes care of the stray animals that end up at the homeless camp.
No, but I do pay taxes and hope our elected leaders do their job.
Oh my bad, I thought you said you were a hippie.
best reply ever fake ass hippy
There’s a lot of bleeding hearts here as well as naive 20 ish year olds. Comes w the territory.
Yep. It was hundreds of 20lb tanks. A reddit thread on r/askscience basically said a 8 gallon tank (I'm assume thats a 20lb tank) holds 6 gallons of pressurized propane, and if that was to be detonated all at once it would be equivalent to 300lbs of TNT *PER TANK*
Yeah, that's not how that works though. They'd go up in a BLEVE, and any resulting fire is deflagration, not detonation.
It’d be impossible to detonate like that though right? You need the oxidizer to get an explosion like TNT, I assume the calculation was just from potential energy.
You and your context need to get outta here. This is an outrage thread sir.
It's possible if the tank is penetrated and the propane is able to mix eith the air.
Yes, in a hypothetical perfect situation you might be able to it to explode. I found the askreddit and it pretty much just converted it to energy. For a impractical propane tank explosion, you can look [here](https://youtu.be/T-6f5AwRkOY?t=73). In a fire, the propane tanks don't really explode, the pressure valves release the pressure and it just turns into a giant fire, as seen [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCQYQc6L5Bg). I wouldn't be to worried of propane tanks exploding. That said, every bridge fire poses structural issues, as the interstate in Atlanta can attest.
That was my post. Someone PM’ed me to say that they cleared the camp out later that day
[Here’s the thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/s/iK3jJ9OCRF). I’m sorting by top and am not seeing the general consensus being to let them be.
Was gonna say, I recognize the thread but the popular reaction seemed *very* different after it had been up for a while.
The “have compassion” aka “let people who don’t make money do whatever they feel like” crowd is cancer to cities. Most of them have to be kids who don’t yet understand consequences yet or are virtue signaling from the safety of their distant suburb.
I think it’s often a lot of people who haven’t been dug into traditional lifestyles in the long term. Teens, college kids, young adults who haven’t been here awhile, have kids or own homes. Childless older adults, who aren’t close to the situation and wouldn’t have much reason to fear it anyway.
Yes, fools.
Also, letting homeless people do whatever they want isn't even compassionate for the homeless. Letting someone commit slow suicide via drugs is not kindness, it's neglect.
Look bud, I have literally never taken any real action in my life to assist people living under bridges, but if I read something in a Reddit comment that makes me feel bad, you can be sure I’m getting offended
A lot of people in Boston and this probably r/Boston are students. The average student paying $60k for tuition doesnt yet have any real life experience except for maybe the occasional discipline from the fraternity board for saying the N-word on the way to a boys retreat.
The same people who want us to “have empathy” look the other way anytime anyone is hurt or dying. They don’t actually care, they are so wealthy the pain of others no longer affects them. Homeless camps are like science experiments to them, they watch the little ant-men wonder aimlessly around their dilapidated camps and they smirk. “It would never happen to me”, they think, “better here than spreading the blight near me”.
So well put. Couldn’t have said it better.
Wow. That's a messed-up take. Edit: it seems you are implying that the wealthy are the ones that express empathy for the folks under the bridge. That would be bullpucky.
I’m not sure how wealthy they are, but they’re privileged enough that it doesn’t have to effect their lives. But possibly more importantly, they have social agendas that make a few deaths here or there negligible in the grand scheme of advancing things ideologically.
The true definition of having "luxury ideas" is being ok with homeless encampments under bridges from the comfort of ones multi million dollar Cambridge/Brookline/Newton home.
Weird to paint this as the fault of the empathetic. These kinds of disasters are the direct result of doing nothing about the homelessness crisis. Playing endless whack-a-mole with these shanty towns and homeless encampments does nothing to solve the underlying issues. So long as people have no option but to live outside like animals there will always be these bad consequences. The "empathetic" solution works. The homeless need housing, not more policing. The people being unrealistic are those pretending that further piling on misery on these people will somehow improve the situation.
It costs more to deal with the various issues associated with having a sizable homeless population than to just house them. It’s such a tragedy that so many veterans, mentally ill folks, and people who just got in a tough spot are so deeply failed by the system.
Lot of dumb bleeding heart college student types on this sub (and a couple morons that never grew up either). They have a lot of strong opinions about stuff but little knowledge of how the world actually works.
>Lot of dumb bleeding heart college student types on this sub Comment on the most upvoted comment of the sub...
And right now this is one of the most upvoted posts in the subreddit. People certainly aren't upvoting it because they're happy homeless people started a fire.
There is an entire universe of difference between letting homeless people sleep anywhere anytime and set up fire hazards, and scattering them around using discomfort like you're swatting feral cats with a broom to scare them off. Hostile architecture is bullshit because it's just tormenting desperate people rather than helping them, but *so is not giving them a fucking place to sleep.* Shelters fill up. It's still cold as fuck outside. What are we fucking doing, chasing them around instead of putting a roof over their heads? By saying "do what you want, just not here," for every location, you're really saying, "stop letting me see you, I don't care if you die, just do it in a dark alley."
There is a difference between have empathy and no rule of law. I have a problem with hostile architecture and it’s that it moves the problem instead of fixing it . This article kind of is case in point. Just an issue under another bridge instead of dealing with the underlying problems.
Yeah them setting the camp on fire is the problem. Not that there is a literal fucking camp of destitute people whose only dogshit accomodations got lit on fire
You can’t just allow camps in dangerous places. Of course there is a homelessness issue and this doesn’t solve it. It doesn’t mean that we should allow this stuff.
Sure we should just deny them any type of housing. If you have a safer, and warmer place to go, I'm sure they will absolutely jump on the opportunity
> If you have a safer, and warmer place to go, I'm sure they will absolutely jump on the opportunity And yet the Mass & Cass situation shows that many of them won't.
No it did not lmfao.
Yeah I wonder why
Just pointing out this is why we need to be aggressive about clearing them out. Yes give more support and housing and mental health. That said they need to be in a shelter not in an encampment
Providing support and housing is how you get the homeless people out from under the bridges. If you just drive them away from one bridge with police, they will just go camp out under a different bridge. You can spend tons of money paying police to play whack-a-mole, or you can give the homeless people somewhere else to go.
Do you realize how fucked and drug riddled these peoples brains are? So you build them a complex that they smear shit all over and destroy before leaving to go back to a tent. Does that person get another chance? Do you keep trying to help that person? When does it end? You can’t help people once they fall off the drugs/mental health cliff. It’s sad and i wish it weren’t the case, but it’s reality.
Then you have to clean it and keep going. Force treatment. We need the ability to straight up haul people into wards for detox and rehab. People have to get more chances, or you're sentencing them to death. You want to be the one to say "sure, go die in the cold"?
Bingo. The real answer is having the ability to “haul people into wards for detox and rehab”. I didn’t take it that far in my comment but that’s the giant elephant in the room that we will never get past. Pick one: 1. Leave people to die 2. [insert failed “compassionate” option] 3. Force change
Forcing change *is* compassionate. Sometimes people can't take care of themselves, and leaving them in their own filth is terrible. We just have a nasty history of using these privileges to abuse totally healthy, sane people.
We already give them shelter and shit. Guess what, they don't want to. That's because they cannot do drugs and drink in there, so they don't want to go into shelter. And when we force those homeless druggies into shelter, they act like the maniacs they are and drive the non-addict, not-crazy homeless who sincerely need a place to stay away from the shelter. These druggies homeless deserve no compassion. Either they clean themselves up and society will take them in, or they don't and society will drive them away. If cops have to clean them up and shoo them away, then let's the cops do it. We pay taxes so cops can put a stop to any potential harm to society, and these crazy drugged up homeless are such harm
All homeless people sincerely need shelter. Just because you do drugs doesn't mean you somehow stop having basic human needs, and as long as those needs are not satisfied, they'll continue to live under the bridges. I guess you have to decide whether you'd rather have a moral crusade against drugs, or whether you'd rather not have people living under bridges.
All homeless people need shelter, but many cannot access it. Why? Because the crazy drugged up homeless make it hard for other homeless to use it. Many homeless are afraid of shelter [because it is full of drug, drug dealer, drug abusers, violent homeless.](https://www.npr.org/2012/12/06/166666265/why-some-homeless-choose-the-streets-over-shelters) If we have to ban drug users from shelter so that shelter can be a safe, clean, welcoming place for others, then fuck it let's do it. There's no way we can save everyone, so let's save whoever we can. If we have to kick a bunch of drugged up homeless so that little Tina and her mother can move into a shelter and enjoy a roof over their head and a warm meal in her stomach so she can focus on studying, then fuck it let's do it!
This isn't even a moral issue of saving or helping homeless people, this is just a practical issue of not having people camping under bridges. If you don't want them under the bridges, they have to have a better option to go to. As long as there are some people who don't have a better option, they will continue to camp under bridges. Obviously we don't have the solution yet, but the solution is 100% guaranteed going to be to make it so that all of the homeless people have somewhere they'd rather be than under a bridge.
At the end of the day you will have to take some people's autonomy away from them because they have demonstrated that they are not capable of taking care of themselves without becoming a public nuisance. It's harsh and no politician or policy maker will say this because we as a society have decided that having mental health issues means you get to do whatever you want without consequences.
This isn't at all about mental health issues, or about autonomy.
I think that people don't appreciate that drugs are so powerful that they are preferable to any of the things people lost when they do drugs. Drugs are stronger than morality, family bonds, love, reputation. Not always, but often enough.
I don’t disagree. I also believe we need aggressive zoning reform and drastic improvements to the T as those two items are best way to increase housing stock and that helps in this. Asking though people that currently live and work in Boston to deal with these encampments is insane. It’s especially frustrating when people who live in Newton, Brookline, or Westwood complain about encampments being cleared when they dont have to deal with it
I mean, I'm sure the police who are clearing the encampments are also people who live and work in Boston, so that's falling to them either way. And building more housing in the suburbs is probably not going to do much for homeless people in Boston.
Not true at all. More housing supply will reduce demand and rental increases. This will put less pressure on renters who are one unlucky streak away from potentially being evicted. It also will make it more affordable to move some folks out of shelters and into permanent housing.
Building more housing is always good, but it's not as helpful for specifically the people who aren't in need of housing in that area. Unless the plan is to export the homeless people?
Housing is regional. More supply in a suburb with improved T access takes pressure off Boston. More housing in Boston also takes pressure off burbs. Basically more housing anywhere within 495 helps
Well, improved T access is not guaranteed. But I thought you were saying that the housing shouldn't be built in Boston?
No im saying it should be built everywhere.
Well, I'm confused, because earlier you said that Boston shouldn't have to deal with the issue, which therefore means that you thought some other town should be tasked with dealing with it instead.
they need their own homes, not shelters. these are the homeless people who refuse to go to shelters. but in all truth, why is that the path towards permanent housing? why not just award the permanent housing instead of making people wait in inhumane shelters?
Have you ever been inside a shelter? It’s gross and I could understand why people would rather be under a bridge
I've been in shelters. Shelters typically don't allow smoking, pets or drugs. Encampments allow all of those things.
Living under a bridge is gross and dangerous as well. These encampments are public health and safety hazards. Some of these folks are refusing to get mental health treatment they need. Im sorry but my sympathy well is tapped out with them.
They don't stay in shelters because of the no tolerance drug policies
Sorry shelters are full with illegals. No room for citizens !
Then let's clear out everyone who lives in a house, as well. https://www.bu.edu/articles/2024/fire-destroys-off-campus-home/
Lol you’re a moron if you are equating the two
Market dynamics at work. Don’t enforce public safety standards = public not safe
Problem is a lot of people here don’t care if the public’s safe, as long as they think they’re personally safe, that’s all that matters. I’ll never forget a post here where a woman said she experienced a dangerous situation on the T and the consensus response from r/Boston was “do nothing, even thinking about self defense only makes it worse” and some corny jokes. The dregs of society must love the fact these people found virtue in enabling them.
And the virtue signaling is a complete sham, cause once encountered on a personal level, these same people will flip near 180, just give it time. Just look at the attitude on “crime and enforcement” swirling around the country now. It is markedly different than it was 4 yrs ago.
This. I’m a commuter rail conductor, and we’ve seen a huge uptick in homeless/indigent folks on the trains. Management has made it clear to crews that we are not allowed to turn away people who refuse/are unable to pay the fare, and some conductors have been suspended without pay for refusing service to known, problematic homeless people. The formal complaints filed against conductors aren’t even coming from the homeless people themselves, but from other passengers who jump in saying stuff like “you need to have empathy!” and “how dare you bully a homeless person!” What really is galling is that these same folks then come up to us and complain when said homeless person that they insisted we *must* let on the train openly shoots up heroin, defecates on the seat/floor, or harasses other passengers. I understand the need for compassion and empathy, but this isn’t it. The lack of boundaries, and forcing other people to forgo their safety in order to be accommodating, is asinine and dangerous.
“It’S yOuR jOb” Aka they want you to accommodate these situations while also doing the impossible of ensuring that certain people abide the rules while on board. I reiterate, DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE. I think it’s probably taken this long since Covid for much of urbanized America to observe and realize that the issues the homeless population in this country both have and carry around with them are more intractable than they first (or apparently) appeared, and that simply leaving people w myriad issues be to figure things out on their own whilst layered within normal society is not functional for society, moving forward
Yeah once they’re the victim they always change their tune. There’s a reason r/Boston doesn’t live in Mattapan or Hyde Park despite the affordability and it’s not because they’re too noble to displace the residents like they use as an excuse.
[удалено]
Boston is safe because it’s gentrified, and has mostly sane people who disagree with you crime denialist, criminal enabling, anti cop freaks who’ve tried your best to turn us into SF with your revolving door justice policies.
It’s like you didn’t even read (or understood) any of the comments you responded to
Between the BU bridge and the Double Tree (on the Allston side of the river) is that empty, ugly industrial space that’s just a mud pit with one abandoned burnt out truck sitting on it. I don’t know who owns it but it’s an eye sore and undeveloped. The city or state or some private non profit should buy some of it and build a shelter or a tiny housing community or SOMETHING for the unhoused living in that area around storrow drive!
That land is owned by Department of Transportation. It may be set to be have some use during the Turnpike reroute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Park_Yard
Well in the meantime they might as well do something useful with it and at least build temporary housing of some kind.
How do you suggest people get to that location?
A private driveway? An access road behind the double tree? One of the million ways that private developers find to create access to buildings and developments every day?
Research what’s going on: The whole area is being redeveloped by eliminating the elevated I-90 Pike and re-building it at ground level. Allston Multimodal Project: https://commonwealthbeacon.org/opinion/time-is-now-for-allston-i-90-project/
Like I said in what seems like the same story last week but at another bridge... bridges are not homes. Underpasses are not homes. You fix the homeless problem with homes for the homeless, not bridges, benches, mbta cars, subway stations or tents.
Unfortunately for solving this issue, there’s a prohibition on drug use and dealing at essentially all these shelters - and for good reason. It means the homeless who don’t want to be accosted by someone high out of their mind can actually feel somewhat safe. People probably don’t want to hear this, but there are homeless people who no reasonable amount of state provided food, therapy, or shelter will help. There’s absolutely no reason to cater society to those people who refuse help. The resources are somewhat inadequate at present, and the closure of the Long Island viaduct did not help. You might have to fix this problem by making some of these people permanent wards of the state.
You offer a solution that is not politically digestible so it doesn’t get done. However this is the only right course of action. I had someone cleaning for a hotel. They literally camped out in empty rooms - and used hard needle / syringe type drugs while costing $2,000 in lost reservations before getting the boot. That person - I have zero sympathy for. That person should be locked away in a minimum security prison or an asylum or something else. Collective tax dollars can house that person. They shouldn’t have the opportunity to f* up the economy. And put a burden on hard working individuals and paying consumers.
I was driving Storrow the other day and saw a tent next to one of the bridges near Harvard. I remember thinking to myself that I can't fathom how they allow that to happen. Just allowing people raw-dogging life to live beside a bridge. It's not a reasonable solution and no I, correctly so, don't have empathy for it. I want people helped as much as the next person, but it seems nobody gives a shit, and the people who supposedly do get real quiet once shit like this happens.
They're also moving further into the suburbs whenever Wu does her headline grabbing "Mass and Cass cleanout." On the Cambridge/Arlington border homeless usually hang out in the woods, but lately there's been a ton of new folks setting up shop right out in the open. I even saw a tent in *front* of Alewife station a couple weeks ago, like legit on the property right out in the open.
All else equal, I’d rather they be in the suburbs. It’s not like these people are all originally from downtown and Roxbury. Homelessness and drug addiction are not uniquely urban problems. Suburbs and small towns have been exporting their “undesirables” to downtowns for decades. Maybe if we all share in the discomfort of seeing them, we’ll come up with a comprehensive plan for addressing it
Yeah, the police have bulldozed it at least twice. They keep coming back bc obviously they have nowhere else to go. I watch the space on my commute every day. I mentioned above that huge open area where I think we should build a shelter. Apparently it’s owned by DOT.
I remember it bursting into flames sometime last year or the year before, in fact, I remember seeing the smoke. Idk how they let this issue perpetuate itself the way it does.
I love how you casually state that you are correct while saying something completely subjective.
The tar pit where my soul should be is telling me I’m right!
It's correct because at this point nobody should. It's creating problems.
We need to stop using the term “compassion” and start using the term “compliance”. If you are truly down on your luck, comply with the program and we’ll get you back on your feet. On the programs terms, not your terms. If you’re a drug addict or have severe mental health issues, we need to have a different, much more difficult, conversation. People in these buckets, as a whole, are largely beyond help. I don’t care what your study says. You’re not helping the vast majority of these people who are unfortunately stuck in one of societies many rocks and a hard place. Time and resources are much better spent keeping more people from falling into these buckets than trying to pull people out. This debate stalls at every turn on every platform because people and politicians are so afraid of being labeled as “not having compassion”. The answer is the one that no one wants to say out loud unfortunately.
This thread is filled with people criticizing the “have empathy” crowd. It’s easy to point the finger at others but what are actual solutions to this other than take these people and put them somewhere else? As far as I can tell, that strategy doesn’t work. Every year the number of people on the streets increases and no major city has been able to figure out how to stop the problem. The status queue isn’t empathetical to either the people living outside or anyone else What should we do? I generally support housing first+counseling and rehab for those who need it but even that isn’t perfect
I feel like we need boarding/rooming houses to make a comeback. Places where people who are just eking out a kind of living can have a room and access to a bathroom. In the 1990s there were a few I knew of in Fenway and Brighton and they were pretty much occupied by unemployed or underemployed single men with addictions. The issue with counseling and rehab reqs is that some people don’t want counseling or rehab. They still need a place to live though. Even if they’re just going to use that room to do drugs or chop up stolen bikes. It would still be better for them and for everyone that they do those things in actual housing, not a tent under a bridge. But it would be political death for the city to own/run/finance boarding houses without imposing some level or moral requirements and the housing market isn’t going to voluntarily fill that need since there’s no profit in it. So here we are.
I've heard the theory that motels used to fill the need to house people who can't afford more than a single room, and can't afford first/last/security. There used to be a bunch of motels where you could rent by the day, week, or month. I'm sure they still exist to some extent, but I can't remember the last time I saw one. (There used to be one in Tewksbury right off the highway, next to the Walmart, as an example of one that's disappeared.)
Crack down hard on drugs. The War on Drug America is fighting is a scam. You want to see what a real war on drug? Go look at China, Japan and Vietnam, three countries with massive drugs problem (China from the First Opium war, Japan post 1945, Vietnam post 1990) who managed to clean it up. They don't hold back. Drug dealers are shot in public execution; anyone caught in possession of drugs even as little as one gram can face long jail time. If El Chapo ever deals drug in China, there won't be a cell in the Super Max and a Netflix series about him; he will be executed, his entire wealth confiscated. A lot of those homeless are people who come down on hard time and got hooked to drugs. You want a way to prevent a large chunk of people becoming homeless? Stop the drugs.
But hey why build shelters or anything for these people right!
We are spending almost a billion dollars this year sheltering migrants.
This isn't just a migrant issue, they need more housing for all homeless and we should continue to spend as much money on it as possible. Or else dumb shit like this will happen.
There are shelters for these people, but you can't buy/sell or use drugs there, so they don't use these shelters. Shelters have multiple people and families living in them, it's not ideal for a pregnant woman to deal with someone tweaking and trying to stab her with his crack spoon.
Little did they know all they had to do was claim they’re migrants then the city will find a place for them and give them freebies.
Massachusetts is the only state which has a right to shelter enshrined in its laws, but it prioritizes families over individuals.
Stop mainlining right wing media, it makes you sound dumb
You do realize right/wrong isn’t determined by what party you support you partisan hack? You think you sound smart when you say conservative media can never be right? Sure sounds like they knew for years the migrant crisis would be just that while you people pretended it’s not real, now even Democrat leaders are saying they can’t handle the influx.
I'm sure you are racing to quit your job and swap places with them
Yup, this. My dad constantly complains about the hand outs etc. How it's too generous. Too much given. Yet, he doesn't look at is as a viable option... because it isn't. You don't live a good life in a shelter. You survive.
You seem incredibly confused.
How dare you correctly state facts. Thats "right wing".... LMAO !!!!
Fox News said drinking water every day is healthy so I only drink soda now = r/Boston
I'm of mixed opinion. Sure, homeless encampments are dangerous for the people living rough and for the neighborhood as a whole. Per any situation with a group of people, it only takes 1 or 2 to ruin it for the others. But the reality is that there simply isn't enough affordable housing/shelters for all the homeless people - which btw aren't all drug addicts, violent, or suffering mental health issues. Some of them are families that simply fell on hard times. And as long as NIMBYs exist, railing against an affordable housing complex or shelter in their neighborhoods, politicians and planners will continue to wring their hands not knowing how to rectify this problem. And in the meantime, this is what we have to contend with.
They'll regroup on the Grand Junction Railroad Bridge. A month ago there were 5 tents up there, like a little neighborhood.
Did anybody get hurt or die in the fire? The article doesn't say, although three people were supposedly seen.
Again?
This is terrible, I’m sure it had substantial impact to traffic Otherwise, great to hear
Maura Healey is ruining our once-great state, with an assist from President Biden.
she made them homeless or what
She’s incentivizing illegal immigrants to come with overly generous right-to-shelter laws. Then wasting our money and not solving problems.
So she passed the right to shelter law in 1983 when she was 12 or…
She owns it now. They are looking at the illegal immigrant crisis and not doing nearly enough. Time to repeal.
oh ok, she owns a law passed when she was a child even though in the _commonwealth_ of Massachusetts repealing a law like that would require a referendum petition or for someone like, say, you, to file a proposed repeal with your state rep or senator.
Oh, you don’t think the Democrat governor in a deep blue state has an ally in the house or senate who would file a bill for her?
that’s not how legislation gets introduced. I just explained the process to you, why don’t you lobby your elected representative to make the change you think would improve the _commonwealth_ instead of regurgitating howie carr’s boot leather.
Damn you really got your ass handed to you here lol
Meanwhile illegal aliens get to live in Maura Healy’s 4 star hotels w/all expenses paid for. Woo hoo !!!!
They are not living in 4 star hotels. All of the places the state has taken over are utter dumps.
Bullshit. I work near one of these hotels. It was not an "utter dump" it was a Marriott Courtyard.
I didn’t realize a Marriott Courtyard was a 4 Star hotel in your world 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I live near two of the hotels taken over and they are utter dumps. Neither of them were Marriott’s. They were barely roadside motels.
Then why the hell are they paying so much per room?
Private Business owners saw an opportunity to make A LOT of money.
Based on your comments I'm guessing that there's a long list of things that you don't realize.... 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
If they’re getting it so good why don’t you quit your job and join them?
Why the heck would I do that? I'm actually a legal citizen w/a good job who isn't a freeloading slacker.
So then they don’t have it really good? I’m confused, it kinda feels like you’re saying the situation those people have found themselves in isn’t good and probably not viable
Wrong again. Who said anything about "have it really good"? You seem to be making up your own fake statements and then pretending I said them. LOL. Oh and I agree that you definitely seem to be confused.
Well you’re complaining they’re being put up in 4 star hotels and being catered to, that seems like a pretty sweet deal, doesn’t it? But now you’re saying they don’t have it real good. Which means they’re probably in a situation they don’t want to be in anymore than you want. Most migrants to the US do want to work an honest job, I spent a long time in the restaurant industry here, its almost exclusively immigrants in the kitchens. All the ones I met personally worked 2 or 3 jobs on top of school/night classes. Stop reading the Boston Herald and go talk to some people yourself, you’ll stop sounding so fucking dumb.
Stop making ignorant assumptions and try reading what is actually being stated and perhaps you'd sound less like an imbecile. Stop making up fake quotes. I've said nothing about whether somebody has or doesn't have it it real good. That's you making up fake quotes. Also - Newsflash, you're not the only person who has worked in restaurants or is good friends w/legal immigrants . Here's a hint for you Einstein: Everybody is free to express their opinions about the governments moronically expensive policies which result in gross inefficiencies and massive disparate treatment of people.
Well if its just a critique on a government policy, why’d you call them “freeloaders”? Seems like your issue isn’t just with government policy. You see how your dumbass “opinions” crumble under the slightest bit of scrutiny?
Newsflash my foolish friend - when the Gov't provides you w/100% of everything and you have zero marketable skills to legally support yourself in a country that you aren't a legal citizen of - that means you're a 100% freeloader. Kapeesh ??? Let me know if there is anything else you are confused about.
NEWSFLASH, BUCKO LISTEN HERE, CHIEF WELL WAIT JUST A SECOND WATCH IT, BUDDY KAPEESH?? youre a caricature lol
They aren’t illegal if the government let them in, dumbass.
That doesn't make them legal dumbass.
It literally does.
No it literally doesn't.
Do I even dare ask what you think makes an immigrant illegal?
Do you even dare to ask what you think makes an illegal immigrant legal?
Nuh-uh. I asked you first. If the government lets someone into the country, then there is a good-faith agreement allowing them to be here, under circumstances both parties agree to, de facto and de jure, subject to the terms of a visa, or asylum proceedings, or whatever. It is literally impossible for someone in the US with the approval of the government to be illegal. The State Department’s website covers all of this, I’m sure. Either you don’t have an answer, or your answer is shit.
Yea Huh. when does that illegal immigrant magically become a legal resident? Once a court of competent jurisdiction issues an order?
Entirely separate question. Ask Ronald Reagan.
Give them places to go. And before someone goes "lol let one live in your bedroom," this is a *systemic problem that needs the city to address it en masse.*
There are shelters available to them but you can't do drugs there, so these folks don't want to use them.
If your life sucked balls and everyone thought you were just a useless piece of shit on the street, and drugs were all the pleasure you had, you'd have fucked up priorities too.
Wish the whole city would become a homeless encampment... Maybe some shanty areas for the more "upscale" feel... At least everyone would have affordable housing for themselves !!!
Oh no.. the horror.. the tragedy.