What can be done about homeless people, those poor, sick, jobless souls who just can’t seem to get their acts together and whose suffering makes the streets and sidewalks so uncomfortable for the rest of us?
Homelessness has many causes, starting with the lack of affordable apartments, decent jobs, education, mental-health care and addiction treatment.
But tackling those problems is complicated and expensive and makes politicians’ heads hurt. There is a far simpler and cheaper answer, familiar to anyone who has ever confronted the situation posed by the presence of dust, a broom and a rug.
It is to criminalize homelessness, because while homeless people are conundrums, criminals are not. There are systems for dealing with them. Forbid their unwanted presence, their unwelcome behaviors, their unsightly possessions, and you can drive them out of view — into jails or a neighboring county.
[For more of this story, written by Lawrence Downes, go to http://takingnote.blogs.nytime..._type=blogs&_r=0]
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