It's an on-going issue; homelessness, and some states and cities do everything they can to "clean up" their cities of those pesky homeless people. They claim anything they can, be it drugs, theft, disease, you name, they claim homeless people cause it. And it always points back to one thing; merchants complaining to government that homeless people are driving away business.
Well, a Hawaii legislator has an idea on how to cut down theft by the homeless; clean up the streets of shopping carts! I wouldn't be surprised if he goes after grocery bags so the thieving homeless have no place to put their stolen goods!
And he says he's not ruled out taking shopping carts directly from homeless people who are using them. Why don't he take way their blankets too, as they might be hiding stolen goods under their blankets!
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/11/19/hawaii-legislator-smashes-shopping-carts-to-deal-with-homeless-issue/?intcmp=latestnewsHawaii legislator smashes shopping carts to deal with homeless issue
Published November 19, 2013
FoxNews.com
One Hawaii state legislator has a smashing idea for dealing with the state’s homeless population.
State Rep. Tom Brower, D-23, is walking around with a sledgehammer in his spare time so he can destroy abandoned shopping carts that may be used by the homeless in an effort to dissuade theft, Hawaii News Now reported.
“I got tired of telling people I’m trying to pass laws,” Brower told the outlet. “I want to do something practical that will really clean up the streets.”
Brower added that he returns good shopping carts to stores, and hasn’t yet taken a cart from a homeless person, though he hasn’t ruled out doing so in the future.
Critics are hammering Brower over the approach.
“There are some people who are not that stable and maybe drug-affected that could really react to him,” Connie Mitchell of the Institute for Human Services told the outlet.
Brower insists that his method isn’t intended to intimidate.
“I don’t want to be threatening to anybody,” he said. “I think it’s threatening to steal things and then walk around with them like it’s their own.”
As some here know, I spent nearly 3 years "homeless" on the streets of the Hawaiian islands, mostly in Waikiki, and the Puna District of the Big Island. During my time there, there was a constant battle between the homeless and authorities and business, especially the cart vendors at the "International Market Place". Admittedly, some homeless make it bad for all with their actions, but my experience found those like society in general, were the extreme exception. Most homeless do what they can to stay out of the way of society. The homeless people who are thieves and robbers, drunks, and drug addicts, they aren't a problem because of being homeless, it's a problem they are drunks and robbers.
Society wants to treat the homeless like they have some disease, so they push them aside and try to not deal with them. They toss some cash at a non-profit and tell them to deal with it, then pat themselves on the back for the "good deed" they think they did. Saw it all the time in my day.
In Hawaii, at least when I was there, the city and police weren't rabid about getting the homeless out of the tourist areas, but the effort was definitely made. Police seemed to be easy to moderate towards the homeless from what I saw, even first hand. They didn't hassle them too much, which me and the brethren there made sure we told who we could we really appreciated their effort to not be the bad guys. If a person made an effort to not be a problem, the police basically left you alone. Even at night, several of us would sleep in the Waikiki "Rose Garden", a small public park, but would be up and gone by sun up, so the police didn't mess with us, and let us sleep there. But we knew also that meant the police knew exactly where we were each night, so it was a trade off of sorts, as everybody eventually knew we were there and how to find us. It boils down to how you deal with others, if your really loving your neighbor.