Homeless tents creeping into the nice/residential part of DC

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:i'm hearing a lot of voices on social media that don't seem to understand that these people ARE offered shelter and/or housing and solutions but they reject them in favor of not living under restrictions. In particular, the people who were living on 17th St in Dupont were active drug users who were not ready to get clean. I don't know what kind of treatment options DC has to offer, but EVERYONE was trying to get them housed and they preferred setting up their camp and getting vemo'ed money from passersby and crapping in the alley by the elementary school. People in DC DO NOT have to be on the streets and everyone is acting like these are healthy people who couldn't make rent and now they are destroying their tents. That is not the correct narrative. The tents I've witnessed are a public health threat.

Sounds like you’re not cut out for true city living, then. Still plenty of clean and tidy Mayberrys out there to choose from.

NP here. Actually, it sounds like your idea of "true city living" is stuck in the 1950-1995 period of decline and disinvestment that we have been working to recover from for the last quarter century. Cities are meant to be glorious. They don't have to suck and they don't suck by definition, only by default when dysfunction drives people who have options away. Why on earth do you support this return to the bad old days?

Read your history. Cities have always been dirty and overcrowded.

Crowded, yes. That's only a problem when services are inadequate and people are allowed to be selfish.They're only dirty when civil society breaks down and the populace tolerates people who create filth and an ineffective system for removing filth.

The problem here is not that there are a lot of people, but that DC tolerates (sometimes celebrates) antisocial behavior and is insufficiently prepared to keep things clean. It doesn't have to be that way. Cities can also be palaces of culture and education with grand architecture and vibrant businesses.

I am trying to think of an example of a city that fits your utopian ideal and am really having a hard time thinking of one.

+1 -- That's because this "utopian ideal" only exists within the confines of the PP's mind. He/she/they are clueless.

Nobody is asking for utopia, and you are setting up a straw man. All people want is the DC of 10 years ago, when homicides were less than half, car thefts were low, you could walk around "hip" areas without worrying about violent crime or being mugged. That's not utopia, it's just a decent city that is arresting bad people and maintaining police presence where needed, and, oh yeah, PROSECUTING and following through on arrests. I guess a lot of city dwellers want to watch their city burn. I don't care I live in McLean but have fun with all that!

It’s an incredible turnaround. PP describes a utopian model of a city and then turns around and accuses the people remarking upon that as “setting up a straw man”.

Check out the cities in Europe or Japan. The homeless there receive assistance and treatment but are not allowed to just do drugs and trash public spaces.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:i'm hearing a lot of voices on social media that don't seem to understand that these people ARE offered shelter and/or housing and solutions but they reject them in favor of not living under restrictions. In particular, the people who were living on 17th St in Dupont were active drug users who were not ready to get clean. I don't know what kind of treatment options DC has to offer, but EVERYONE was trying to get them housed and they preferred setting up their camp and getting vemo'ed money from passersby and crapping in the alley by the elementary school. People in DC DO NOT have to be on the streets and everyone is acting like these are healthy people who couldn't make rent and now they are destroying their tents. That is not the correct narrative. The tents I've witnessed are a public health threat.

Sounds like you’re not cut out for true city living, then. Still plenty of clean and tidy Mayberrys out there to choose from.

NP here. Actually, it sounds like your idea of "true city living" is stuck in the 1950-1995 period of decline and disinvestment that we have been working to recover from for the last quarter century. Cities are meant to be glorious. They don't have to suck and they don't suck by definition, only by default when dysfunction drives people who have options away. Why on earth do you support this return to the bad old days?

Read your history. Cities have always been dirty and overcrowded.

Crowded, yes. That's only a problem when services are inadequate and people are allowed to be selfish.They're only dirty when civil society breaks down and the populace tolerates people who create filth and an ineffective system for removing filth.

The problem here is not that there are a lot of people, but that DC tolerates (sometimes celebrates) antisocial behavior and is insufficiently prepared to keep things clean. It doesn't have to be that way. Cities can also be palaces of culture and education with grand architecture and vibrant businesses.

I am trying to think of an example of a city that fits your utopian ideal and am really having a hard time thinking of one.

+1 -- That's because this "utopian ideal" only exists within the confines of the PP's mind. He/she/they are clueless.

Nobody is asking for utopia, and you are setting up a straw man. All people want is the DC of 10 years ago, when homicides were less than half, car thefts were low, you could walk around "hip" areas without worrying about violent crime or being mugged. That's not utopia, it's just a decent city that is arresting bad people and maintaining police presence where needed, and, oh yeah, PROSECUTING and following through on arrests. I guess a lot of city dwellers want to watch their city burn. I don't care I live in McLean but have fun with all that!

It’s an incredible turnaround. PP describes a utopian model of a city and then turns around and accuses the people remarking upon that as “setting up a straw man”.

Check out the cities in Europe or Japan. The homeless there receive assistance and treatment but are not allowed to just do drugs and trash public spaces.

You should tell this to all the DC homeless advocacy groups who think that the ability of the homeless to do whatever they want wherever they want should be sacrosanct.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:i'm hearing a lot of voices on social media that don't seem to understand that these people ARE offered shelter and/or housing and solutions but they reject them in favor of not living under restrictions. In particular, the people who were living on 17th St in Dupont were active drug users who were not ready to get clean. I don't know what kind of treatment options DC has to offer, but EVERYONE was trying to get them housed and they preferred setting up their camp and getting vemo'ed money from passersby and crapping in the alley by the elementary school. People in DC DO NOT have to be on the streets and everyone is acting like these are healthy people who couldn't make rent and now they are destroying their tents. That is not the correct narrative. The tents I've witnessed are a public health threat.

Sounds like you’re not cut out for true city living, then. Still plenty of clean and tidy Mayberrys out there to choose from.

NP here. Actually, it sounds like your idea of "true city living" is stuck in the 1950-1995 period of decline and disinvestment that we have been working to recover from for the last quarter century. Cities are meant to be glorious. They don't have to suck and they don't suck by definition, only by default when dysfunction drives people who have options away. Why on earth do you support this return to the bad old days?

Read your history. Cities have always been dirty and overcrowded.

Crowded, yes. That's only a problem when services are inadequate and people are allowed to be selfish.They're only dirty when civil society breaks down and the populace tolerates people who create filth and an ineffective system for removing filth.

The problem here is not that there are a lot of people, but that DC tolerates (sometimes celebrates) antisocial behavior and is insufficiently prepared to keep things clean. It doesn't have to be that way. Cities can also be palaces of culture and education with grand architecture and vibrant businesses.

I am trying to think of an example of a city that fits your utopian ideal and am really having a hard time thinking of one.

+1 -- That's because this "utopian ideal" only exists within the confines of the PP's mind. He/she/they are clueless.

Nobody is asking for utopia, and you are setting up a straw man. All people want is the DC of 10 years ago, when homicides were less than half, car thefts were low, you could walk around "hip" areas without worrying about violent crime or being mugged. That's not utopia, it's just a decent city that is arresting bad people and maintaining police presence where needed, and, oh yeah, PROSECUTING and following through on arrests. I guess a lot of city dwellers want to watch their city burn. I don't care I live in McLean but have fun with all that!

It’s an incredible turnaround. PP describes a utopian model of a city and then turns around and accuses the people remarking upon that as “setting up a straw man”.

Different PPs. But I agree that some European and Asian cities do generally better. I don't have personal experience of Asian cities, but Singapore is famously no-nonsense about quality of life infractions. I have lived in Central London, though, where the air is dirty but the pavement is relatively clean, trash doesn't blow through the streets or clog the gutters, and in wealthy areas, the windows and front steps get washed regularly. At least during my residence from 2000 to 2006, there were a lot of "rough sleepers" in commercial districts, but they didn't pitch tents and spread their garbage around with impunity. They certainly weren't allowed to take over public spaces in prosperous communities like DC has permitted here.

London also has something DC never really achieved even in the best of times: a thousand varied cultural happenings every day throughout the city. Obviously DC is much smaller, but recently there's also this enthusiastic rejection from our politicians of anything that threatens to get too nice. We can't have nice things here.

I traveled widely in Europe while I lived in London and saw a range of cleanliness/homelessness/crime/cultural life scenarios. But yes, in general there is a higher premium placed on quality of life, architecture, and culture in most European cities, which have not been abandoned by people who have choices the way DC was in the 2nd half of the 20th century and, I worry, will be again as DC embraces its worst-behaving inhabitants at the expense of its productive citizens.

This isn't an argument against compassion or care, but allowing mentally ill drug users to make public places unusable is not actual compassion or care. It's entirely ineffective virtue signaling.

[Anonymous]

I saw the encampments under the highway by the Kennedy Center some time ago but had not been downtown for some time. Yesterday we drive by Franklin Square and it was heartbreaking to see so many tents and disheveled people on every bench. There was even a guy with a cardboard sign yelling at a family going into a restaurant at the corner. (I heard Seattle panhandlers long ago got aggressive like this.)

Then we turned north on Connecticut and I saw two or three adjacent tents on the sidewalk between K and L. On Connecticut Avenue!

Surely advocates for the homeless do not want our nation's capital, even or especially in a pandemic, to become this.

[Anonymous]

It’s a vicious cycle. We lived in DC for a decade and I’ve worked downtown for over two decades, but I’ll keep holding out to work from home remotely until there’s assurance that Bowser and the MPD are going to clean the city up. I’ve been to Union Station a few times and the surrounding area is just sordid. I know the powers that be may not have an incentive to clean things up until the businesses start putting pressure on them, but they really ought to be taking the lead here. They are so full of their own rhetoric that they have no idea how much damage they are doing to the city’s short and medium-term prospects. I feel sorry for people who bought in recent years thinking the city would always keep improving. That’s anything but the case right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I saw the encampments under the highway by the Kennedy Center some time ago but had not been downtown for some time. Yesterday we drive by Franklin Square and it was heartbreaking to see so many tents and disheveled people on every bench. There was even a guy with a cardboard sign yelling at a family going into a restaurant at the corner. (I heard Seattle panhandlers long ago got aggressive like this.)

Then we turned north on Connecticut and I saw two or three adjacent tents on the sidewalk between K and L. On Connecticut Avenue!

Surely advocates for the homeless do not want our nation's capital, even or especially in a pandemic, to become this.

Of course they do. They don’t care about the city. You can’t see that?

[Anonymous]

Actually they don’t care about the homeless either. These”advocates” care about one thing- their contracts to manage “programs,”. Follow the money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s a vicious cycle. We lived in DC for a decade and I’ve worked downtown for over two decades, but I’ll keep holding out to work from home remotely until there’s assurance that Bowser and the MPD are going to clean the city up. I’ve been to Union Station a few times and the surrounding area is just sordid. I know the powers that be may not have an incentive to clean things up until the businesses start putting pressure on them, but they really ought to be taking the lead here. They are so full of their own rhetoric that they have no idea how much damage they are doing to the city’s short and medium-term prospects. I feel sorry for people who bought in recent years thinking the city would always keep improving. That’s anything but the case right now.

It’s incredible to me how little pride the mayor and council have it the city that they can allow it to become like this. I guess so long as the tents and encampments are not near their own homes then they don’t care?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a vicious cycle. We lived in DC for a decade and I’ve worked downtown for over two decades, but I’ll keep holding out to work from home remotely until there’s assurance that Bowser and the MPD are going to clean the city up. I’ve been to Union Station a few times and the surrounding area is just sordid. I know the powers that be may not have an incentive to clean things up until the businesses start putting pressure on them, but they really ought to be taking the lead here. They are so full of their own rhetoric that they have no idea how much damage they are doing to the city’s short and medium-term prospects. I feel sorry for people who bought in recent years thinking the city would always keep improving. That’s anything but the case right now.

It’s incredible to me how little pride the mayor and council have it the city that they can allow it to become like this. I guess so long as the tents and encampments are not near their own homes then they don’t care?

But, these are PEOPLE! You don’t just “clean up” - like they are human garbage or something.

You PPs sound like heartless MAGA-morons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a vicious cycle. We lived in DC for a decade and I’ve worked downtown for over two decades, but I’ll keep holding out to work from home remotely until there’s assurance that Bowser and the MPD are going to clean the city up. I’ve been to Union Station a few times and the surrounding area is just sordid. I know the powers that be may not have an incentive to clean things up until the businesses start putting pressure on them, but they really ought to be taking the lead here. They are so full of their own rhetoric that they have no idea how much damage they are doing to the city’s short and medium-term prospects. I feel sorry for people who bought in recent years thinking the city would always keep improving. That’s anything but the case right now.

It’s incredible to me how little pride the mayor and council have it the city that they can allow it to become like this. I guess so long as the tents and encampments are not near their own homes then they don’t care?

But, these are PEOPLE! You don’t just “clean up” - like they are human garbage or something.

You PPs sound like heartless MAGA-morons.

Yes, you clean up. They are people and they need to live by the rules society sets, to include not camping out on public property. The interests of the city as a whole simply matter much more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a vicious cycle. We lived in DC for a decade and I’ve worked downtown for over two decades, but I’ll keep holding out to work from home remotely until there’s assurance that Bowser and the MPD are going to clean the city up. I’ve been to Union Station a few times and the surrounding area is just sordid. I know the powers that be may not have an incentive to clean things up until the businesses start putting pressure on them, but they really ought to be taking the lead here. They are so full of their own rhetoric that they have no idea how much damage they are doing to the city’s short and medium-term prospects. I feel sorry for people who bought in recent years thinking the city would always keep improving. That’s anything but the case right now.

It’s incredible to me how little pride the mayor and council have it the city that they can allow it to become like this. I guess so long as the tents and encampments are not near their own homes then they don’t care?

But, these are PEOPLE! You don’t just “clean up” - like they are human garbage or something.

You PPs sound like heartless MAGA-morons.

Are you blind? There are areas of the city filled with garbage that includes human feces. It’s unsanitary and needs to be cleaned up for the sake of public health.

It would also be good to help cleanup some of the people for hygiene purposes as well, because if you cared about them you want want them clean and healthy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a vicious cycle. We lived in DC for a decade and I’ve worked downtown for over two decades, but I’ll keep holding out to work from home remotely until there’s assurance that Bowser and the MPD are going to clean the city up. I’ve been to Union Station a few times and the surrounding area is just sordid. I know the powers that be may not have an incentive to clean things up until the businesses start putting pressure on them, but they really ought to be taking the lead here. They are so full of their own rhetoric that they have no idea how much damage they are doing to the city’s short and medium-term prospects. I feel sorry for people who bought in recent years thinking the city would always keep improving. That’s anything but the case right now.

It’s incredible to me how little pride the mayor and council have it the city that they can allow it to become like this. I guess so long as the tents and encampments are not near their own homes then they don’t care?

But, these are PEOPLE! You don’t just “clean up” - like they are human garbage or something.

You PPs sound like heartless MAGA-morons.

Why do you weak sisters always accuse people of being what you secretly are. The fact that your first reaction is to use the term "human garbage" reveals what you really think of the homeless You are just hiding your distaste for them under a veneer of empathy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a vicious cycle. We lived in DC for a decade and I’ve worked downtown for over two decades, but I’ll keep holding out to work from home remotely until there’s assurance that Bowser and the MPD are going to clean the city up. I’ve been to Union Station a few times and the surrounding area is just sordid. I know the powers that be may not have an incentive to clean things up until the businesses start putting pressure on them, but they really ought to be taking the lead here. They are so full of their own rhetoric that they have no idea how much damage they are doing to the city’s short and medium-term prospects. I feel sorry for people who bought in recent years thinking the city would always keep improving. That’s anything but the case right now.

It’s incredible to me how little pride the mayor and council have it the city that they can allow it to become like this. I guess so long as the tents and encampments are not near their own homes then they don’t care?

But, these are PEOPLE! You don’t just “clean up” - like they are human garbage or something.

You PPs sound like heartless MAGA-morons.

Yes, you clean up. They are people and they need to live by the rules society sets, to include not camping out on public property. The interests of the city as a whole simply matter much more.

We set the rules, and those deprived of homes are following the rules we set by utilizing public spaces to simply exist.

They are not bothering anyone; why do you hate them so?

[Anonymous]

They are not following the rules. The rules do not allow camping in public space. The city offers other spaces for existing, and none of us gets to live wherever we want.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a vicious cycle. We lived in DC for a decade and I’ve worked downtown for over two decades, but I’ll keep holding out to work from home remotely until there’s assurance that Bowser and the MPD are going to clean the city up. I’ve been to Union Station a few times and the surrounding area is just sordid. I know the powers that be may not have an incentive to clean things up until the businesses start putting pressure on them, but they really ought to be taking the lead here. They are so full of their own rhetoric that they have no idea how much damage they are doing to the city’s short and medium-term prospects. I feel sorry for people who bought in recent years thinking the city would always keep improving. That’s anything but the case right now.

It’s incredible to me how little pride the mayor and council have it the city that they can allow it to become like this. I guess so long as the tents and encampments are not near their own homes then they don’t care?

But, these are PEOPLE! You don’t just “clean up” - like they are human garbage or something.

You PPs sound like heartless MAGA-morons.

Yes, you clean up. They are people and they need to live by the rules society sets, to include not camping out on public property. The interests of the city as a whole simply matter much more.

We set the rules, and those deprived of homes are following the rules we set by utilizing public spaces to simply exist.

They are not bothering anyone; why do you hate them so?

Will you be okay if they use your front lawn as their toilet and do drugs in front of your children?