9 years ago
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“We got geeks”: Inside Google’s ugly war against the homeless in LA
In Los Angeles, Google has a brilliantly simple plan to combat homelessness: Hire private security to harass and push the homeless out sight, and then make sure that the smelly bastards and their tents and carts never come back.
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I know there's probably more than one side to this story, but fuck, seeing people pushing the homeless away makes me mad. I have been homeless (technically still am) and it is fucking hard. Property value and aesthetic shouldn't trump human decency.
If you can't pass as a person with a home to go to, it's like the having a giant brand stamped on your forehead. And trying to get into a shelter for any reasonable length of time to do something with your life is laughable. I was kicked out of one for after two months (I was expected to job search and somehow maintain a job with no official address and no professional clothing). And if you were the homeless outside the shelter, prepare to have your stuff tossed out by police ( yup, happened in my neck of the woods because they didn't want homeless people messing up the look of the city).
If homeless people get aggressive, and they do, it's out of self-defense 99% of the time. It's not like we can run to the cops or into houses/apartments with locks for safety. You have to stand your ground where you are; it's pretty much the only stable thing that you got.
All that to say, fuck people who mess with homeless people. That shit is hard enough without dicks to deal with.