Homeless person sleeping in my front door vestibule

[Anonymous]

I once attended a party and there was a young man passed out in my friends front lawn. The poor kid had a penis drawn on his face with permanent marker.

[Anonymous]

LCSW here who worked on a team that did home/community visits with the mentally ill and substance use population. I love housing first but the reality is that someone has to be their neighbors. So many of the clients in my program were resistant to social workers, medical, psychiatric, substance use ect. treatment that has been given to them over the years. Mental illness and substance use makes for (mostly) bad tenants and neighbors. These were some of the reasons people in my program got evicted from their housing first and permanent supportive housing apartments:

-selling drugs out of their unit
-prostitution
-armed robbery of neighbors
-screaming and yelling at hallucinations all night and day (not a reason to hospitalize someone, btw)
-screaming and yelling on the street at neighbors
-fights in their apartment
-feeding/harboring animals (literally feeding raccoons, mice, rats, squirrels in the apartment)
-property destruction: flooding the bathrooms, destroying carpets, cabinets, appliances, walls, common areas
-defecating and urinating in common areas
-letting trash pile up and rotting all over the apartment
-housing multiple people who aren’t on the lease who do any number of the above

Of course there were clients who appreciated and cared for their free housing but the vast majority faced a number of those problems. If you were paying market rate in an apartment building how long would you put up with that? If you were a landlord?

There has to be huge changes made to the system but as a MSW/LCSW myself who has dedicated my career to helping people like the one OP encountered, I would have done the same thing. I have been a victim of violence and witnessed violence from homeless people and they are not all bad by any stretch but trust me this area is saturated in resources and likely he has been helped before and is facing other problems that OP can’t (and shouldn’t!) try to fix.

[Anonymous]

Wasn't Elizabeth Smart's kidnapper also a homeless/drifter type who was hired by her father to do some work in the house b/c Smart's father was being compassionate?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You should have asked him yourself. Homeless people are not gang bangers out kill you. They are just homeless. Have some compassion.

What made them homeless?

Mental illness can be one cause.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just lock your doors and let the guy be. He just needed a place to sleep. I'm sure he'll leave in the morning.

I live in an apartment building in San Francisco, and if I get home late enough there's often a homeless person sleeping in front of the front door and I have to go around to the back alley entrance. There's no need to call the cops. Even if the guy has a weapon it's for protection.

Thanks to Reagan + every R. President since then, many mental patients were dumped out On the street. You are naive to ignore what could be dangerous not to mention a health code issue when the homeless use your place as a public urinal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I ended up calling the non emergency line and stressed that he was not harming anyone. The police came out, woke him up, nicely explained that he couldn’t sleep in front of someone’s door, and then left after he walked away.

This was a good response. I would have done the same. I mean, most likely he was harmless, but you never know-you have to protect your family first.

Good call OP.
Glad it all worked out!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just lock your doors and let the guy be. He just needed a place to sleep. I'm sure he'll leave in the morning.

I live in an apartment building in San Francisco, and if I get home late enough there's often a homeless person sleeping in front of the front door and I have to go around to the back alley entrance. There's no need to call the cops. Even if the guy has a weapon it's for protection.

+1 I’m the poster above and honestly this guy is right. He’s harming no one and just needs a protected place to sleep.

And in the morning that smell from him relieving himself will likely go away in a week or two. Maybe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just lock your doors and let the guy be. He just needed a place to sleep. I'm sure he'll leave in the morning.

I live in an apartment building in San Francisco, and if I get home late enough there's often a homeless person sleeping in front of the front door and I have to go around to the back alley entrance. There's no need to call the cops. Even if the guy has a weapon it's for protection.

Thanks to Reagan + every R. President since then, many mental patients were dumped out On the street. You are naive to ignore what could be dangerous not to mention a health code issue when the homeless use your place as a public urinal.

Agree, after Reagan we now see an increase in mentally ill homeless people on the streets; HOWEVER, none of the Democrats elected to office have tried to solve, help, or affectively address the issue either.

Let's share the blame.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just lock your doors and let the guy be. He just needed a place to sleep. I'm sure he'll leave in the morning.

I live in an apartment building in San Francisco, and if I get home late enough there's often a homeless person sleeping in front of the front door and I have to go around to the back alley entrance. There's no need to call the cops. Even if the guy has a weapon it's for protection.

Thanks to Reagan + every R. President since then, many mental patients were dumped out On the street. You are naive to ignore what could be dangerous not to mention a health code issue when the homeless use your place as a public urinal.

Agree, after Reagan we now see an increase in mentally ill homeless people on the streets; HOWEVER, none of the Democrats elected to office have tried to solve, help, or affectively address the issue either.

Let's share the blame.

+1 Pretty sure it was a combination of cost cutting AND "liberating" people from mandatory confinement in mental health hospitals. The idea was to replace the existing (and in many cases terrible) mental health hospitals with more community-based options. Which never got built / developed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation

Even if we did have all of these facilities, the bar for forced confinement is "danger to self or others", and the bar is pretty high.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fascinating how many “call the police” comments there are considering how many people want them defunded. The first thing to go are these non-emergency calls. Start practicing waking up homeless people now.

Given how the police often treat the homeless and mentally ill, good. Calling the police on a homeless person is rolling the dice on being an accessory to their murder.

A family member is an alcoholic but not homeless. At least twice a month a citizen calls Fairfax County non emergency police to attend to him because he has fallen in a public place and is incoherent or passed out. He is large and defiant and sometimes has minor injuries from the fall. The police rouse him and stay with him until they determine he is okay. They generally drive him the short distance to his condo The police always treat him with patience and kindness. Unless a homeless person is violent they will receive the same treatment. For those of you who think a social worker can do this fine but someone has to do it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You should have asked him yourself. Homeless people are not gang bangers out kill you. They are just homeless. Have some compassion.

What made them homeless?

seriously? Have you seen the rents in our area? Do you know how many homeless people there are in and around DC through no fault of their own?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just lock your doors and let the guy be. He just needed a place to sleep. I'm sure he'll leave in the morning.

I live in an apartment building in San Francisco, and if I get home late enough there's often a homeless person sleeping in front of the front door and I have to go around to the back alley entrance. There's no need to call the cops. Even if the guy has a weapon it's for protection.

Thanks to Reagan + every R. President since then, many mental patients were dumped out On the street. You are naive to ignore what could be dangerous not to mention a health code issue when the homeless use your place as a public urinal.

Reagan was following the strong recommendation of the ultra liberal American Psychiatric Association to de institutionalize the mentally ill. Community programs were put in place but as the social worker who posted above said, there are people who refuse help or can’t be fixed. They are better suited for institutionalization rather than making homeless shelters and government housing unsafe and unsavory. It is the age old problem that if people won’t cooperate in their treatment, they cannot be helped.