Do daily commutes by bus in a major west coast city. You'll quickly find this is no made up problem.

burkaman 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It must not have anything to do with free fares, then, so it seems like an irrelevant thing to bring up here. There are no major west coast cities with free buses.

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shkkmo 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Homeless already often get access to free or cheap passes, often that allow unlimited rides.

Insisting that we charge everyone a bus fare because we think otherwise it might make it eaier to homeless people to use the bus is not only uninformed, but also heartless.

If you have problems with homeless people on buses, then figure out why those people aren't in a better shelter and solve that problem.

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PaulHoule 3 hours ago | parent [-]

It’s not easy to shelter people.

In Ithaca we recently built this place

https://mastodon.social/@UP8/115398619308992584

which is all low income housing on top of a conference center with maybe 1/4 of the units for people who had been unhoused. I think most of the people there are not criminally minded and keep to themselves but there are a few people there who are starting fires, dealing drugs, and causing damage. (Note a few windows in that image are busted out) Many homeless people have dogs that are important to them and wouldn’t be housed if they couldn’t bring their dogs, but… last year they had an outbreak of parovirus because dogs were having puppies and the puppies weren’t getting shots. A friend of mine got bit by a dog across the street from that place and thought it belonged to someone who lived there.

Some of it is people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder can be almost impossible to live with if they aren’t getting treatment and I’m worried that deinstitutionalization will have a even more profoundly negative legacy seen 50 years from now than it already does. Not least, a 20 year old today spent many years of their life in a classroom where a ‘special’ kid sucked all the air out of the room and will probably be highly receptive to the notion that if we ‘get rid’ of 5% of people we can live in a utopia. If being in public means being in a space dominated by someone screaming at the demons they hallucinated then people will move to the suburbs instead of the downtown, they will not support public transit, they will order a private taxi for their burrito instead of eating out. They’ll retreat to Facebook.

	▲	gsf_emergency_6 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Alternate institutions that turn the 5% into productive members (but not necessarily CEOs) would probably get Lasch's stamp of approval

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defrost 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Particular to the US in many ways.

Not an issue for cheap / free public transport in many other countries mentioned.

Perhaps the manner in which the US deals with the distribution of income and basic human needs could use a few tweaks.

	▲	baggy_trough 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Alternately, the US is simply much more tolerant of dysfunction and antisocial behavior.