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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Starbucks is not a defacto homeless shelter. [/quote]

Well, not anymore, thanks to this change in policy.

One reason I support moves like this from Starbucks, and would also support moves to restrict how the homeless sometimes use libraries is that I think in the last few years since Covid, we've adopted dysfunctional attitudes towards social problems like homelessness. We are still acting in some days like we are in the pandemic, and we are making triage decisions to just get through a temporary hard time. Turning libraries into ad hoc shelters is a crisis decision. So is expecting a private business like Starbucks to allow homeless and otherwise indigent people to park there all day long because that's just how bad our homelessness problem has gotten. Schools and hospitals are also offering a lot of services to the homeless right now, even as it can also limit resources for others. The tent cities are also one of the most visible examples of a crisis approach to homelessness, though thankfully tolerance for those appears to have run out in the last year and we are seeing far more efforts to take them down and prevent them from being established.

We aren't in the pandemic anymore. Our homelessness crisis is ongoing and is due to a number of economic and social factors. What we need is to come up with actual solutions that will address both the underlying causes of homelessness and provide longer term solutions that don't rely on filling all our public spaces with the homeless. I also think we need to enforce the cultural expectation that people are expected to be housed. There are homeless people who are actively seeking housing or shelter, but there are also increasingly people who have embraced homelessness as a lifestyle (in part due to how easy we've made it in recent years to just live in a tent in a park and spend your days bumming around libraries and coffee shops). There has always been a certain portion of the homeless population who just want to live on the street and resist efforts to help them find housing. It is essentially a pathology -- people who become so divorced from social norms that they prefer homelessness as a lifestyle because it allows them to avoid submitting to anyone's expectations. This group has grown in recent years and reflects a broader trend toward anti-social behavior. We need to shift the tide and stop condoning the *choice* to live on the street because it's easier than trying to participate in civilization.[/quote]

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