When I was cycling between Lisbon wnd Istanbul I made sure to either sleep far from view or to be as obnoxiously visible as possible (calling the local municipality, cleaning around campsite, knocking doors of farms nearby) precisely to avoid scaring people. I was lucky enough to do my homelessness as a choice, I can only imagine how many persons do this in city environments ourbof need of a shelter.
A stranger secretly lived in my home
71–80 of 199 posts
Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sadly that person could be charged with a crime instead of being recognized as a person in need. We should be viewing these situations as a cry for help instead of a criminal activity. This is what I hoped the "Defund the Police" movement was targeting. Sadly that phrase had good intentions but pretty bad optics.
> We should be viewing these situations as a cry for help instead of a criminal activity. You're right. When we uphold a law for the law's sake, we've lost our way.
Agreed - the "three strikes" and mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines have had judges forced to issue sentences which they, and their communities, felt were absurdly high.
Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home
#73‘The Secret Apartment’ is the story of a Vietnam vet who claims to have lived in Veterans Stadium for years
https://www.inquirer.com/news/the-secret-apartment-vet-stadi...
Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home
#74A couple years ago one of the devs I work with came in to the office very early for some reason and discovered a man sleeping in one of the conference rooms. After the fact we discovered that an emergency exit door wasn’t locking properly. He didn’t take anything even though he could have easily made off with tens of thousands of dollars of electronics. He just needed somewhere to sleep.
We had an AC tech ask us if we knew someone was living on our roof. Turns out an coworker's GF kicked him out of his house* and he was living up there. Tent, free wifi, showers next to the bike room, full kitchen and big 80 inch TVs down in the conference rooms. He was livin' the life. He said he usually took down the tent and hid everything every morning but just got complacent. *Yes. His house. She told the cops sh…
> Yes. His house. She told the cops she felt in danger. Cops told him he had to stay somewhere else and go through the eviction process. Mad world.
The pendulum needed to swing toward protecting women by default. As these things happen, it may have swung to a point where nuance needs to be applied.
Your example seems fairly complex. I couldn't opine on it w/o knowing the details of the complaint.
I can offer a different example. My ex's mental illness sometimes required me to take a stronger hand in her life, than would be benign otherwise. One time, she was in a delusional state. She stole my van and left the area. I wasn't able to report it stolen because she was my wife. The police were protecting her from the possibility that I was lying and using the police to harass her.
A stranger found her in the middle of the night, hundreds of miles away, in a remote area wrapped only in a towel - obviously not herself. I directed the guy to call the police because he could do that. Local cops delivered her to a facility where she was stabilized.
What I would change is that I would have had tightly limited status as her caregiver. I'd want my wife and I to be regularly evaluated by a female mental health professional, who had training to detect manipulative spouses. In cases where my wife might be in distress, police would defer to me. Meanwhile the details would be immediately forwarded to the MH pro overseeing my spouse, who'd have authority to intervene, if she saw an issue.
Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home
#75This read like it could have been a chapter out of a Stephen King novel, until the stranger saved the puppy: > I got a puppy. While she was being toilet-trained, I kept her in the bathroom. One day, when I was out, the apartment flooded. I came home to find the puppy in the sink. She was tiny. I didn’t know how she could have got up there unless someone had put her there to save her.
I visited SanFran a couple of years ago, and this reminded me of a homeless guy, in his late 60s I imagine, that I saw at a fast food chain. So I was I think at in-and-out, and a homeless guy was going through the garbage bin to find food. When I came over to dump my stuff in the bin, he was immediately considerate and stepped aside so I could dump the covers and napkins, whilst making sibilant sounds and keeping his…
I would assume that you would have to very mentally stable to resist all that humiliation without going nuts.
I have a friend that wasn't homeless, but all unemployment money was used on rent required to keep his shared custody (without an apartment to house the kids, you cannot have custody). He always was clean and used good clothes, but he made the line with homeless people to get free food daily. Otherwise he wouldn't have money to eat.
He said that the worst part of all was the look from voluntary women that were working on the food delivery organization. Each woman reacts differently to men. But he says that this is completely different. The look is like if he wasn't even a man - it's like they are feeding a lesser species. He says that he have never experienced the same reaction from women in other contexts, and that it hurts. It steals away all feeling of manliness. Luckily he got out of that situation many years ago.
Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home
#76How did this comment make to the top of HN? The quality is deteriorating...
This works with votes and flags, the more votes a post or comment of people visiting HN the higher it gets, inverse to flags and some other factors but you will find more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html About quality I guess is subjective but I would say there are two options here: - use the voting system to accommodate it to your quality standards - don't visit the page
Yes I guess not the place for "hacker" news anymore...
Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
This works with votes and flags, the more votes a post or comment of people visiting HN the higher it gets, inverse to flags and some other factors but you will find more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html About quality I guess is subjective but I would say there are two options here: - use the voting system to accommodate it to your quality standards - don't visit the page
Also weekends have had a quite long tradition of having more general interest subjects posted.
Not noticed it but as I said we always have the option to look elsewhere for "hacker" news
Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
This works with votes and flags, the more votes a post or comment of people visiting HN the higher it gets, inverse to flags and some other factors but you will find more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html About quality I guess is subjective but I would say there are two options here: - use the voting system to accommodate it to your quality standards - don't visit the page
Also weekends have had a quite long tradition of having more general interest subjects posted.
Agreed. I like that it feels like days off.
Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home
#79How did this comment make to the top of HN? The quality is deteriorating...
This works with votes and flags, the more votes a post or comment of people visiting HN the higher it gets, inverse to flags and some other factors but you will find more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html About quality I guess is subjective but I would say there are two options here: - use the voting system to accommodate it to your quality standards - don't visit the page
> - use the voting system to accommodate it to your quality standards
The downvoting seems increasingly bizarre. I have a post on this page downvoted; I said the post above was reasonable.
The reasonable post was correcting me; it brought up a point I had missed.
Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> people going through your trash is quite a nuisance. Sure, but who is ultimately responsible for this, the people going through the trash, or the people who have structured our society in such a way that there are people who think their best option in life is to scavenge other people's trash? Because I'm pretty sure that the people going through the trash would stop in an instant if they were offered a better alter…
I live close to Los Angeles so here’s my take. Even where I live an hour away there is a sizable homeless population. Most people who enter homelessness leave it within a couple of weeks. That’s because these are people like you and me who due to unlucky bad circumstances are out on the street. They want to get back on their feet so they take advantage of social services, don’t have drug addictions or mental illnesse…
> Most people who enter homelessness leave it within a couple of weeks.
I'm a bit skeptical of the "Most" claim but it's based on anecdotal evidence from recent years of interacting with our sizable homeless community. I haven't seen any stats.
> They want to get back on their feet so they take advantage of social services
While the first part is undeniably true, the latter depends on the availability or existence of social services. Southern US states are openly hostile toward folks with long term vulnerabilities. Where services exist, politicians here proudly trim them back where they can.
>and maybe have broader support structure through friends and family.
My mom rescued me from homelessness when I was a teenager. The odds of escaping homelessness without help are ~0.