[ExI] what would you do?

[spike at rainier66.com]

…> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
…
Subject: Re: [ExI] what would you do?

 

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

 

Ja, Adrian that is part of the problem really.  Down along Penitencia Creek is the somewhere else that the growing homeless people have been taken to.  While they didn’t attempt to rob or murder anyone, they were mostly out of sight, in a tree line.  They had running water at the park, they could bath and shit in the creek, so that became the somewhere else.  

 

However… where I live (in an actual home) is downstream of that park where the creek is a lot closer to sea level.  Consequence, the current down here is a lot slower, particularly when the tide is high at which time it might even creep backwards from the bay slightly.

 

I used to take cub scouts out there once a year to clean up litter and debris which flowed down during the winter rains and had hung up in the foliage along the banks, but I noticed homeless people had taken up residence along there (this was a decade ago) so I decided it had become too risky to take kids out there.  

 

At the time I recognized another danger to the people living homeless along that lower Pen Creek: cholera.  People upstream use that creek as their toilet, in ways which are clearly visible in the lower stretches close to the bay.  I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the occasional corpse drifts by along with the litter, needles and human waste.  But the people down here don’t have a nearby clean water source, like those who live in the higher no-rent districts along the creek in San Jose.  So… they bathe in, and possibly even occasionally drink out of that creek.

 

So now I am back in the same dilemma I was before: I see a possible risk (cholera) but I don’t know what to do, if anything.  Living homeless is inherently risky, and the risk of cholera is probably negligible compared to the other risks.  Any of one’s neighbors who wants stuff can just slay and take, push the possibly-still-breathing victim into the creek to flow gently out to sea, completely without consequences.  It is easy to imagine plenty of hapless fentanyl-devourers have met their untimely end at the hands of their immediate neighbors.

 

Oy such a grim topic for a Saturday morning, my apologies.  I didn’t intend to post such a downer, but this morning’s news has shaken me to the core.

 

spike

 

 

 

 

 

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