Anonymous wrote:I have a lot of personal experience with the neighborhood and the men’s shelter. I had a business at Union Kitchen so I was in the alley that serves as a de facto waiting room for the shelter during the day all the time.
The shelter and the homeless men who hang out there are really more of a nuisance than a safety issue. The nuisances are:
1) trash, because they’re hanging there all day and the city doesn’t provide any extra trash cans. Plus they bring old chairs to sit in.
2) heckling, especially if you’re a woman. It sucks and it’s not all the men by any stretch, but it’s enough to be annoying and uncomfortable.
The reason they hang out there is that the shelter kicks them out in the morning and there’s some sort of line that forms in the afternoon.
I do think there are legitimate safety and crime concerns but they come much more from young people in the surrounding neighborhoods than from the men at the shelter imo. The fact that this business owner keeps harping on the shelter makes me think he’s not being honest.
The heckling and catcalls from the men at the shelter drove customers away and prevented them from actually getting robbed and the sht kicked out of them by the real neighborhood troublemakers.