California
Related: About this forumAggressive Homeless On San Jose State University Campus Scaring Students
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/03/02/aggressive-homeless-on-san-jose-state-university-campus-scaring-students/Trent Nunz is a fourth year business student who says the problem is so bad that students “can’t walk out of any individual building without seeing at least a couple homeless, anytime of the day. Anytime.”
Madonna Ebrahimof says it’s not just the volume of homeless people living on campus, but that they have become intimidating and aggressive over campus seating areas....
One student thinks it’s all because of the city’s recent shut down of a large homeless encampment last December.
Well, then, maybe SJSU could help us solve the homeless problem. Just a thought.
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randys1
(16,286 posts)throw out.
Oops, I was just channeling Ronald Reagan and the entire repub party for a minute, sorry about that
pennylane100
(3,425 posts)My idea was that we provide three levels of help for them. We must understand that there are some homeless people that will never change their lifestyle, either because of mental illness or drug and/or alcohol problems and prefer to sleep on the streets rather than in a shelter. We should provide them with a large space where they can camp out, and provide lockers so they can keep their possessions safe and toilets. If this is what they want, we should provide it. Also, treatment should be available to help them with their medical and psychiatric needs.
The second level of help would be a more structured environment. They would have to have to agree to certain rules to stay there.
The rules should always be kept to a minimum and in place only to protect the residents. They would have a small area of their own with a bed and they can decide how to maintain it. It would be hard to monitor drug and alcohol use so if it is not causing any problems then it makes no sense to ban it. Bathrooms and lockers would also be available as well as help with drug and or alcohol abuse and the opportunity to move into the third level of help if they are willing to try it.
The third level would be for those who want to make a serious effort to end their life on the streets. In return for agreeing to live in a more structured shelter, they would be provided with classes on how to find a job, how to apply for benefits and the opportunity to move into a permanent home. They would receive all the help necessary for them get a home, a job and help for both medical and psychological problems.
While this does sound a little "pie in he sky" solution, we have to look at how much it costs a city to deal with its homeless population and I think it would be money well spent. While it is true that we cannot save all the people, we must do what we can for them and I think it will be worthwhile if we can make their lives better and enrich the community as a whole.
daredtowork
(3,732 posts)Last edited Thu Mar 5, 2015, 02:49 AM - Edit history (1)
From this article it sounds like just having to *see* homeless people triggers some sort of guilt or pressure of responsibility or just unpleasant aesthetic feelings that are being projected as the aggression of the homeless person.
Watch out for the sexist variant of this ploy: the wife/daughter/elderly mom feels "unsafe" around homeless people. Until the homeless people do anything threatening, that "feeling" is a manifestation of the complainer's own stereotypes and prejudices. The best advice for them is to work weekends in a soup kitchen until they start to see the indigent poor as fellow human beings.
The bench issue should be a red flag and a civics lesson for the students. Cities deliberately remove benches on the streets. Where are the homeless people to go? This is a "right to rest" issue, but it is also hurting the elderly and the disabled as self-styled City Leaders attempt to encourage homeless people to go elsewhere. In this case they migrated to the public space of a State college campus.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)
daredtowork
(3,732 posts)
Mohammad_689
(1 post)I have attended SJSU and I was one of the people who was also interviewed. This has nothing to do with being “triggered” or not wanting to see homeless people. We are in fact so used to seeing homeless people especially in Downtown San Jose, San Francisco and LA. We have plenty of homeless people that not only we don’t get “triggered” but we are desensitized and ignore seeing them defecting in the streets of San Francisco or doing drugs (for some of them, not all homeless). At SJSU we always share our food and help them out. But what you need to realize we were talking about aggressive homeless people as the title of this article says aggressive homeless. My friends have been punched in the face by those aggressive homeless. The bench that you keep mentioning, the homeless woman walked up to us and forced us to get up or else she would kill us. Some homeless people unfortunately have mental problems and those were the ones that were getting violent with us. You were not there at the campus late at night where even I got attacked. My heart goes out to the homeless community and SJSU students have always helped the homeless and got involved in soup kitchen including me and the people being interviewed since we all studied political science and that was part of the program offered and we volunteered. Please don’t always view people as sensitive souls who don’t want to see negativity. If we did, we wouldn't attend SJSU and would go somewhere with 0 homeless population. First of all, that is a school that we pay for. Although public, no human being, homeless or rich has the right to demand money, as us to get up from our seat, or beat us up for money. We were getting attacked left and right for money. I witnessed a dog getting beat up by the owner at the library and I was so scared for the dog and kept having nightmares about it. No one stepped in, when i called the cops, nothing happened. Everyone was scared to do anything. I could not study for a week because of keep seeing that poor dog getting attacked. We wanted to bring attention to SJSU not because we didn’t wanna see the homeless sitting on the bench but we wanted to put a stop of some homeless people who had mental issues keep harassing us. They beat up at least 5 people I knew in the evening, stole money and food, went into the campuses to wash themselves and told that girl, if she doesn’t get up from her favorite bench, she was going to get killed but the article doesn’t write all that.
You need to realize that the title mentioned aggressive homeless, not just a poor guy laying there asking for money by holding a cardboard box. Don’t call us what you did until you come there. Thank God that after that news article, they added more security and many students were thankful and felt safer. Again, we don’t have problem with homeless people we have problem with those who have mental problems and attack us late at night.
