[ExI] what would you do?

[Adrian Tymes]

How long until they bulldoze this encampment too, displacing the homeless
to go somewhere else?

It's far from the ideal solution, but it is how they've been handling it.

How I would handle it would be to construct a large - designed to scale to
at least a million capacity - shelter, designed for long term
sustainability in the face of likely minimal ongoing funding once complete,
with built-in security (almost certainly including an on-site police
station) and other fixes to the commonly cited reasons why the homeless
don't go to shelters as it is.  Once it is demonstrated that there exists a
viable alternative, place them in there - and any (there are debates as to
whether this would be most or only a few) who prove mentally incompatible
with living in a shelter (who don't otherwise have a viable long-term
living solution: nomads in RVs are fine, squatters in parks are not) thus
prove themselves candidates for mental hospitals (which should also have
sufficient capacity).

Making such a structure functional will be tricky.  Perhaps the most
difficult portion will be to resist demands to cut corners and just put up
a people warehouse so the backers can call it "done" but that will quickly
degrade once in use.  But in theory it's possible.

On Sat, Oct 7, 2023 at 9:26 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
>
>
> A coupla months ago, I posted in this forum an ethical dilemma.  A nice
> park down in San Jose has a number of walking trails and other nice
> features.  It is a jewel in the crown of that community.  Our scouts would
> often meet there in the summer if they needed a lot of space for outdoor
> activities and such.  Up at the north side, there is a nice community
> center, over on the west side an elementary school, on the east side is a
> middle school.
>
>
>
> But all along the south side, the trail goes along Penitencia Creek where
> homeless people have been taking up residenceless, with more showing up in
> the last few years, way more in the past year.  They kept to themselves and
> the city of San Jose did nothing.
>
>
>
> Last summer one of the scouts in my troop decided to do a community
> service project consisting of upgrading and restoring a weathered old
> display case and a map of the park trails, including the perimeter trail,
> which goes along that south side parallel to the creek.  The scout did not
> design the park map, but was only refurbishing the existing one and adding
> features in accordance with the specifications of the benefactor.  The new
> map did not make note of the homeless who had taken up residenceless down
> there.  I feared that visitors who saw that map up by the community center
> would not realize there was a good reason to not go down along that creek.
>
>
>
> I didn’t voice my concern at the time, the project was completed, the
> scout achieved eagle rank and is now at college.
>
>
>
> This morning I learned that a homeless guy snuck up behind a pedestrian on
> that trail and stabbed him.  It wasn’t even a robbery, just a random
> attack.  The victim is expected to survive, but they didn’t catch the perp
> and have no useful description of him or her.
>
>
>
> I posted in this forum a few months ago that I recognized this risk, but I
> did nothing, and now the danger I foresaw has happened.
>
>
>
> OK what do we do now?  By refurbishing that map, our own scouts have
> unknowingly externalized risk onto innocent people.  I have half a mind to
> request from the park authorities that the refurbished map be taken down
> forthwith, or that the portion of the trail along the creek be painted red
> or some kind of warning signs be erected, or what would you do?  Ideas
> please?  Billw, whadda we do now coach?  MB?  Adrian?  Wisdom please,
> somebody.  I feel the need to do something, for this could well have
> resulted in a fatality rather than a mere few hundred thousand bucks in
> medical bills and a few weeks stay in the hospital.
>
>
>
> spike
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