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> Having lived in a place where I lived within that very proximity to people who were homeless and in recovery, I know what to expect from it. Yeah I’m a fucking NIMBY. I don’t want it here. I moved out of the city to be further away from that shit, and I want to continue feeling safe and comfortable walking my 2 and 7 year old to school.

That isn't quite the usual idea of "Not In My BackYard". The observation there was that people opposed the development of beneficial things near themselves.

You're opposing the development of a detrimental thing near yourself. Sure, it's worse when it's closer to you, but an ephemeral housing lot for vagrants makes everyone worse off no matter where it gets built.

Unless you're saying you'd support it if it was built a few blocks over?



> makes everyone worse off no matter where it gets built

No? It's not like the vagrants will disappear if you don't build an housing lot. They'll just exist not in your backyard and continue to be an overall issue. That's the definition of NIMBY


> It's not like the vagrants will disappear if you don't build an housing lot.

That's exactly what it's like. An issue that didn't exist in the past doesn't need to exist in the future, either. If you set up institutions specifically to make hanging out and harassing people in the neighborhood a viable lifestyle, you'll cause more people to engage in that lifestyle.


> An issue that didn't exist in the past doesn't need to exist in the future

Do you genuinely think homelessness is something of a new phenomenon?


We know it is; read literature from earlier periods and you'll find that phenomena related to homelessness present very differently. You can find no end of American hobo stories.

And hobos themselves, or as they were called elsewhere "tramps", are something that came into being because social institutions were developed to create them.


Beggars and the homeless have always existed in any relatively large settlement.

I'm fairly sure that if you got transported back to ancient mesopotamia you'd find homeless people


There would be beggars. It's less obvious that there would be homeless, assuming you exclude the Amorites, but it's possible.

But their numbers would be low. The number of homeless and beggars you get is a function of how much support exists for a homeless / beggar lifestyle. Establishing institutions to help them creates them in large numbers.




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