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The Disappearance of the Public Bench

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Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#191

Post by JuniperMesos »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #97
Taek wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We didn't eliminate benches in public spaces because we wanted to reduce the presence of the nice, respectful, and polite homeless. We eliminated benches to reduce the presence of the problematic homeless, which has a much higher rate of drug abuse and mental illness.

>We eliminated benches to reduce the presence of the problematic homeless, which has a much higher rate of drug abuse and mental illness. We eliminated benches to reduce the rate at which the problematic homeless cross paths with the complainers. The DPW as an organization doesn't give a shit about how many commuter's asses a bench serves from 6am to 8pm. It just knows that every day when Karen sees a homeless man sl…

I assure you that problematic homeless people sleep on benches in public spaces at times during the day when normal people using the public transit system normally would like to use them (also sometimes people, reasonably enough, want to take public transit late at night or in the early morning). That's why the authorities remove the benches.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#192

Post by JuniperMesos »

jancsika wrote: post #135
Taek wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in San Francisco, I had a homeless man with one eye (the empty eye socket actively oozing) come up to me unprovoked (quite literally unprovoked, I was just on a walk and not interacting with anybody at all), get within 2 centimeters of my face, and scream at the top of his lungs "I WILL MURDER YOU". He then walked away and nothing else of note happened (aside from me spending the rest of the evening with m…

> He then walked away and nothing else of note happened (aside from me spending the rest of the evening with my pulse at 140). Did you call the police after this person made a threat on your life?

What would the police do about it, arrest the homeless person? Would the local criminal justice system have the capacity to charge and convict them if the cops did so? Many of the cities where visible homelessness is a problem also have shortages of cops that cause them to triage what sorts of incidents they send an officer to respond to?

I probably would not have called the police after this person if this happened to me, because I expect they would do nothing about it.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#193

Post by JuniperMesos »

mlsu wrote: post #149
JoshTriplett wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a strange false dichotomy. Either we do absolutely nothing to help people, or we involuntarily incarcerate them? The actually progressive option is to provide meaningful public support programs , and also make housing affordable (by building enough housing). The US mostly doesn't do either of those, but it should.

At least in California, there are a lot of public support programs. I mean, a looooot of public support programs. A LOT. Like, to the point where the state is spending tens of thousands of dollars for each homeless person, and probably north of $100k per person per year for a subset. Talk to a firefighter or paramedic in a CA city sometime. They will tell you, there's "regulars" that they have to deal with every sing…

One of the benefits of institutionalizing the problematic homeless (either via incarceration or involuntarily mental health treatment, there's not a whole lot of difference between those two things from the perspective of the person subject to them anyway), is that it would allow the state to relax certain laws about simply being unsheltered without otherwise causing problems for people. Someone who is living silently and cleanly in their car is not a problem for me - I know more than one relatively well-paid, reasonably-intelligent person who is basically living that kind of lifestyle voluntarily - and I would prefer it if they weren't even getting a 15 minute knock from the cops once a month.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#194

Post by JuniperMesos »

OutOfHere wrote: post #120

Having no public restrooms within a 15 minute walk is worse than having no public benches. Cities shouldn't be allowed to exist without either of them. Also, ground-level restaurants and supermarkets should not be allowed to reject non-customers from using them. Bulk urine is a good source of urea/ammonia which has commercial value, especially considering the global fertilizer shortage.

> Also, ground-level restaurants and supermarkets should not be allowed to reject non-customers from using them.

The single biggest reason why there are no public restrooms within a 15 minute walk in many American cities is because the visibly homeless fuck them up, through crazy vandalism, deliberately dirtying them with their bodily fluids, doing drugs in them, etc. Businesses being legally compelled to let non-customers use their bathrooms would exacerbate this problem.

> Bulk urine is a good source of urea/ammonia which has commercial value, especially considering the global fertilizer shortage.

It's not cost effective to set up systems to capture the ammonia from the urine of people using public restrooms in urban areas, or else people would be doing that. There are municipal sewage treatment plants that sell some of the byproducts from treating human wastewater as fertilizers, because that is cost-effective at their scale and level of centralization.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#195

Post by NotGMan »

TheBlight wrote: post #3

I also like clean safe unobstructed sidewalks and parks but along with benches, we've made a decision. We've decided that putting the mentally ill in a facility and arresting people for public drug use is not something we're comfortable with at the expense of those other things. I don't personally ageee with this decision but it is apparently the consensus.

This.

Even an extremely small population of homeless/junkies is enough to "taint" benches.

The same with parks.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#196

Post by burnt-resistor »

techteach00 wrote: post #8

Yup. Public trash cans too.

You can tell which countries have and haven't experienced urban bombing terrorism by the style of public refuse receptacles. Before: concrete, rock, metal, and wood; after: minimal material hoops supporting transparent bags.

Also, public drinking fountains I think are better signals of community commonwealth infrastructure than benches because they take more planning, infrastructure, investment, and maintenance to deliver.

Another problem is the privatization of formerly public spaces, often with an essentially mandatory retail consumption component that didn't exist previously. People aren't as free to simply exist in spaces without buying shit than 50 years ago.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#197

Post by burnt-resistor »

chadgpt2 wrote: post #161
scoofy wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we need a war on drugs? I don’t think so. We just need a war on people making services unpleasant. Asking someone to leave a subway platform because they are not using the public transportation system for transportation is not a war on drugs. It’s just making people exit a subway station.

It is a problem if, no matter where someone is, they are always asked to leave that place. At that point you cannot special-plead the subway system.

I would sometimes sleep in my car in a completely empty parking garage, bothering no one, and then some dickhead cop or security guard would beat on my window to demand I not sleep and leave immediately.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#198

Post by OutOfHere »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #194
OutOfHere wrote: post #120

Having no public restrooms within a 15 minute walk is worse than having no public benches. Cities shouldn't be allowed to exist without either of them. Also, ground-level restaurants and supermarkets should not be allowed to reject non-customers from using them. Bulk urine is a good source of urea/ammonia which has commercial value, especially considering the global fertilizer shortage.

> Also, ground-level restaurants and supermarkets should not be allowed to reject non-customers from using them. The single biggest reason why there are no public restrooms within a 15 minute walk in many American cities is because the visibly homeless fuck them up, through crazy vandalism, deliberately dirtying them with their bodily fluids, doing drugs in them, etc. Businesses being legally compelled to let non-cus…

The mulch fertilizer from sewage is an impure toxic mess contaminated with PFAS that permanently destroys farmland. It should be banned and never be used. It has already destroyed a significant chunk of American farmland.

It is wholly different from urine diversion and ammonia recovery. The two concepts have little in common. It shouldn't require a municipal facility if the residual liquid can be drained into the sewage. It is meant to be a commercial endeavor.

Once the urine is contaminated and diluted with regular wastewater, it's already too late to extract urea/ammonia from it.

Even this concept is predicated on being able to extract ammonia with sufficient purity without PFAS, pharmaceuticals, and other residue.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#199

Post by oldsecondhand »

OutOfHere wrote: post #120

Having no public restrooms within a 15 minute walk is worse than having no public benches. Cities shouldn't be allowed to exist without either of them. Also, ground-level restaurants and supermarkets should not be allowed to reject non-customers from using them. Bulk urine is a good source of urea/ammonia which has commercial value, especially considering the global fertilizer shortage.

Every public toilet eventually becomes and ad-hoc homeless shelter.

Re: The Disappearance of the Public Bench

#200

Post by jedimastert »

AmazingEveryDay wrote: post #45
jedimastert wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know oddly enough, if you just put someone up in a real place to live for like a year, that's enough for the majority of people to get back on their feet.

I'd like to believe that! Can you link to any research to back up your claim?

There's a local charity I donate to that does this, they've got I think 10 or 15 apartments they put people up in for 3 months, and offer them various forms of placement assistance while they're there. In the last annual report they had I believe a 95% success rate with people they checked in with a year later.

Unfortunately this is pretty selective evidence, but I know for a fact they don't exclude people on the basis of having mental illness or addiction problems, I've worked with them personally.

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