Reply to Someone has started sleeping on the sidewalk next to our house

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Homeless out on the street (chronic)?  Or homeless who are couch surfing (periodic)?  Because by far most of the intractably homeless are addicts and/or have severe mental health issues.  Their behavior is so bad that relatives and friends can no longer house them.  And many don't want housing.   What they are doing now works for them.  It just doesn't work for the people around them, like business owners or residents.

And they are the ones that are difficult to deal with.   Police know how to connect people to services and they do.  But you can't force someone to live somewhere.  The only way to remedy the immediate quality of life situation that's bothering others (someone defecating on the sidewalk in front of a business, someone doing the same in garden apartment hallways, etc.) is to arrest them for trespassing.  Most police and prosecutors around here have decided to not deal with trespassing, for a variety of reasons, so the person either isn't moved away, or if police do arrest him, he's right back there in a matter of hours.  If society wants to decriminalize or at least minimize arresting people for low-level offenses like this, the quality of life for everyone else will decline.   I'm not saying we should be arresting willy nilly.   I'm just saying it's a conundrum.  And one with no great answer.  The same 50 chronic homeless people in Silver Spring cause most of the quality of life issues for others.  And there's very little anyone can do about it.  [/quote]
That’s pretty racist to put the blame for all the quality of life issues in Silver Spring on a handful of homeless Black people. [/quote]

I have lived in downtown SS for 16 years and rarely encounter homeless people. Only when I am in the library, on Georgia Ave near the service center, or outside of the Safeway in Thayer or CVS on Wayne. If they are hanging elsewhere, they are clean and quiet so they look no different than the other poor people in the area. I am not naive. I grew up in Baltimore City and lived in gritty cities in the US and abroad most of my twenties. [/quote]

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