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A stranger secretly lived in my home

theguardian.com

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Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#191

Post by thrashh »

fighterpilot wrote: post #173
ungamedplayer wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people who make very poor financial and social decisions are homeless.

I think you mean to say that most people who are homeless make very poor financial and social decisions. The other way around is almost certainly false simply given how scarce homeless people are.

I’d say homeless people are people who have fallen through safety nets of their families and friends, if they even had family or friends.

People with poor financial decisions have roofs over their head and thousands in credit card debt.

Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#192

Post by thrashh »

powersnail wrote: post #140
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be but usually isn't. The value of a local, penalty-backed law is in it's ability to guide bulk behavior. These laws imply a bargain we make with our governments, that enforcement will be limited to the stated objective. Reducing traffic speeds by citing a few speeders - this upholds that bargain. Citing every possible speeder while those fines fatten the police budget is a gross perversion.

> Reducing traffic speeds by citing a few speeders - this upholds that bargain. Citing every possible speeder while those fines fatten the police budget is a gross perversion. I don't know. I feel that the citing every speeder is overall better than selectively catching a few speeders. First, it's fairer, leaving less space for selective enforcement based on arbitrary criterion. Second, based on my experience on US h…

I think a big part of the population believes 80-90mph is perfectly fine (of which I am a member) so everything is kind of working as intended. I don’t want the speed limit increased, and I don’t want the law to be religiously enforced. To me, we are in the perfect balance.

However, my world view is that all rules should be written to be broken in the right hands, with just enough pressure for someone who shouldn’t be breaking the rule to be discouraged from doing so. Nothing is perfect in life anyway, and you can never truly capture a complex world, so I think you might as well consider it in rulemaking.

That said, it does open the world to profiling, but that will already happen regardless. Racists will always find a way to be racist.

Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#193

Post by kelp »

trulyme wrote: post #44
noasaservice wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because I'm pretty sure that the people going through the trash would stop in an instant if they were offered a better alternative. Mostly, yes. Having been homeless myself for an extended period, I saw just how much mental illnesses impact so many people experiencing homelessness. In my completely unscientific lodgings with them, I'd say its probably around 30% of the people have some sort of debilitating mental i…

Or maybe just offer them some basic food for free, so they don't need to dig in trash cans for it? At least the western societies (I don't know and have no opinion on others) are producing enough food that there is no reason not to offer some basic nutrition to everyone.

No one is really looking for food in the trash cans in the Bay Area. They are looking for recyclables that they can turn in for cash. Or other things that have some value that they can turn in for cash.

In the Bay Area there are plenty of ways to get fed. Happy to be shown I'm wrong, but I don't think it's common to be lacking for food.

Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#194

Post by nsxwolf »

Jiro wrote: post #189
ModernMech wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lopsided nature of the numbers is not an accident. That half of all sexual assaults and rapes occur at the hands of intimate partners and family is reflective of the nature of these crimes -- usually they are perpetrated when the assailant has isolated his victim, many times starting from a place of trust. The point of noting that 90% figure is not so you can come up with some sort of Bayesian probability of your…

>The point of noting that 90% figure is not so you can come up with some sort of Bayesian probability of your getting assaulted based on population level statistics. It's quite common that people have a point when they are presenting statistics, but they have made this point in error. Statistics aren't something you're only supposed to use for the one conclusion someone wants you to draw from them. >Again, it's not j…

I’m trying to imagine a building or office manager using these stats as a defense against his or her failure to protect employees from a trespasser. “That assault happened but it was really unlikely so I should be in the clear”

You do not allow a situation like this to occur. If it does, there is a serious problem with your security. Period.

Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#195

Post by kelp »

lisper wrote: post #25
kelp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in one of the worse parts of San Francisco, for the past few years (west SOMA), I can say that people going through your trash is quite a nuisance. You'll put your trash out for pickup day, and a significant portion of the time, someone will come and go through it. And often as they are going through it, they will just throw random things on the ground. So our little side street kind of has a constant layer of…

> 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…

San Francisco is on track to spend about $1.1 Billion dollars on homelessness this year, and $600M next year.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-has-an-unpre...

So it's not for lack of spending. But 40 years ago, we decided to downzone the city because we don't like even mid-rise buildings, and then we got a massive jobs boom.

Combine a huge amount of wealth creation, with a very constrained housing supply, and you're going to have price shocks, which will push the most vulnerable out on the streets. That's what we see.

And I happen to live in the neighborhood that that used to be much more light industrial, and happens to have the most shelters and services for anyone experiencing homelessness. Generally the others parts of the city fight against any kind of shelters or services... so it all ends up here.

Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#196

Post by smsm42 »

cycomanic wrote: post #180
grapist420 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cool but it’s not the half of the federal budget you suggested

That's splitting hairs though isn't it?

No, 10% and 51% is a pretty substantial and material difference. Lying for the right cause is still lying.

Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#197

Post by jacquesm »

dTal wrote: post #182
jacquesm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you take into consideration how crappy the locks are on those old cars then maybe I had a very cheap security guard ;) He really was a nice old man and super embarrassed about the whole thing. The funniest bit about this is how I discovered he did this, one day I got up too early thinking I was late, rushed out and drove off without my usual morning routine and when I heard a voice behind me asking if he cou…

Maybe it's the pandemic heightening my senses, but it's strange to me that you wouldn't notice the smell. I can immediately tell if someone new has been in an unventilated room for, oh say a few hours afterward. There's no way I wouldn't notice someone sleeping in my car overnight, unless they went out of their way to air it out.

You clearly have never set foot in an elderly Citroen. They are so full of holes that when it rains outside it is only marginally better inside. Ok, you have a nice fiberglass roof over you. But the bottoms of the doors are rusted out, the front vents end up directly in the engine bay (because: paper tubing, which is eaten up by insects), the wind sills don't line up with the windows and the doors close poorly.

On the plus side: plenty of ventilation ;)

Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#198

Post by zenexer »

petre wrote: post #170
leppr wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He always was clean and used good clothes An alternative explanation could be that the women thought he was abusing the service to get free food even if he didn't need it, and thus put on some faces that he misinterpreted.

As if if someone has the means they would totally go out and eat with the homeless just to 'abuse the service' and get free food. Right.

Sadly, there’s no shortage of people who believe such abuse is rampant. I heard such a claim the other day from someone I generally regard as intelligent, and who I expect to know better.

Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#199

Post by dTal »

jacquesm wrote: post #197
dTal wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's the pandemic heightening my senses, but it's strange to me that you wouldn't notice the smell. I can immediately tell if someone new has been in an unventilated room for, oh say a few hours afterward. There's no way I wouldn't notice someone sleeping in my car overnight, unless they went out of their way to air it out.

You clearly have never set foot in an elderly Citroen. They are so full of holes that when it rains outside it is only marginally better inside. Ok, you have a nice fiberglass roof over you. But the bottoms of the doors are rusted out, the front vents end up directly in the engine bay (because: paper tubing, which is eaten up by insects), the wind sills don't line up with the windows and the doors close poorly. On th…

You are correct, I have not :) Thank you for the contextual flavor.
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