Florida criminalized homelessness, but then came hurricanes Helene and Milton: Around the country, anti-camping policies are complicating disaster recovery
Florida criminalized homelessness. Then came hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/ptaw8
Man who tf goes around enforcing these laws after a disaster. Imagine some wack ass old white guy ticketing people outside of the FEMA medical station for loitering.
I can see you haven't interacted with many police in these areas. I wouldn't be surprised in the least by any of that behavior. The cops only protect and serve property, not people.
I never once expressed disbelief.
Margaret Killjoy did a 2 part podcast about relief efforts in Asheville, and she mentioned that one FEMA worker she spoke to told her one of the biggest hurdles to actually getting people help was the fact that a lot of local rescue and aid efforts are first and foremost run by police and the military (and other local first responders, but in the US police generally outnumber these by a hideous ratio).
The worker mentioned that the frustrations mostly come because community and mutual aid are inherently horizontal - you tell me you need food, I have food, I share food, no strings. Police and military are taught to desire hierarchy and structure and order, they want "these people need aid first and then these people and then these" rather than "EVERYONE needs aid, and if we offer it freely people generally won't take advantage", which is usually the case actually. I can definitely see police going "well I know all these people just don't have homes anymore, but if we stop enforcing this law society will break down entirely".
Nah, it’ll be some 28 year old wannabe Punisher wearing Oakleys whose weekend activities include watching football and abusing his girlfriend.
If you feel the urge to argue for collective punishment just shut the fuck up. Saying 'you reap what you sow' in this case is regressive and cruel. Fascists enacted this law undemocratically and many people, human beings that you should have empathy for, are effectively held captive by the GOP which has heavily gerrymandered Florida and engaged in voter suppression and disenfranchisement. Think critically for a second and direct your criticism at the right people.
Literally the post above this one in my feed.
This is exactly the problem with running on "fuck you, got mine". Side A bans homelessness. Side A ends up homeless somehow. Side B, because they aren't running on hate, has sympathy for the circumstances Side A (and B) have found themselves in and helps. Side A faces no consequences ever (hyperbole). Side A doubles down on banning homelessness.
I'm not trying to argue against what you're saying but fuck does this system suck.
Nope. Just nope. You don't get the "fascists did it" thing when urban camping bans are being passed all over the country in red and blue cities, counties, and states.
Homelessness isn't a conservative wedge issue. It's the one class both parties have deemed it okay to abuse and systemically imprison or kill. And now that we have two large examples of people being made homeless through no fault of their own, you want to disavow it and say it's just the far right?
Fuck no. You take that shame and you sit in it and next time you make it an issue to not support council members, mayors, and state officials who support criminalizing the homeless.
Cities, counties, and states are not monolithic entities. There is always a mix of competing interests. This means even in Seattle there are a lot of conservatives. These conservatives own a lot of capital.
Trust me bro, it is most definitely a wedge issue for conservatives. I have been to tons of city and county meetings. It is not liberals calling to imprison the homeless. Guess who wins out. Fucking capital everytime.
You ever had the chance to live in a rural area and hear what they think of homeless people?
The right has been literally demonizing the homeless for thirty or more years now.
They made homelessness a fucking partisan issue. You know about the bleeding heart liberals wasting money on drunks and drug addicts. Their messaging has always been clear, not in my back yard.
The Democratic party is also no were near monolithic either. For sure there are some who blame homelessness on character defects or lack of ambition but the majority do not.
Conservatives are a loud minority voice who have capital to back them up. It is amazing how the government bends over anytime "economic" interests come to play.
This issue is really complex and owes a lot to a social contract we broke when we deinstitutionalized mental hospitals in the 50's and 60's.
I'm not saying it's just the far right. The blues you're referring to are still right wing authoritarians.
Empathy is for individuals. If someone came to me, maga hat, and truck covered in trump Humber stickers, and said him and his daughter had been displaced by the hurricane and needed help, I would give them a room, food and whatever else I could to help and ask for nothing in return. He has not hurt me (directly) and I have no bad blood with him personally so long as he's not being outright racist or anything around me.
But when we're talking about MAGA as a general group, they have hurt me, they are racist and homophobic and trnasphobic and misogynistic and I will happily revel in the Schadenfreude.
If see a nazi sitting at a table and 10 people are at the table talking to them, you have a table with 11 nazis.
There is no tolerance for intolerance.
Naw, I wouldn't trust a trumper to be in my house or around me. But I'm a queer so I get more vitriol from Republicans.
But we're not talking about MAGA as a group, we're talking about people, without any regard for their political affiliation: Natural disasters aren't checking people's voter registration.
Only about 39% of active Florida voters are registered Republican (sure, some are NPA and vote Republican), but there's at least 29% of us who are registered Democrat and voting in every local and federal election, but here we are anyway.
maga hat
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” ~Maya Angelou
You're going to open up your house to someone who will hurt you again, like how they hurt you with their vote and public support of fascism.
Yup. I will, however, feel less empathy for the people who did vote for these policies
If you feel the urge to argue for collective punishment just shut the fuck up.
I started writing up this lengthy comment about how this article isn't even about people displaced by the storms so much as those who were already homeless before, and how only ~39% of Florida voters are registered Republican, and even then we're talking about whole families and single mothers here, and about government corruption and voter disenfranchisement, but... You said it all, and much more succinctly. Thank you!
Thank you, I'd encourage you to continue your comment if you're still interested. I'm certainly not the best writer and it's always great to see more genuinely compassionate and progressive takes
I have empathy for people who have empathy themselves. Many of voters in Florida elected these morons, they’re not held hostage except to their own inability to critically think. The elected officials gerrymandered, put judges in place that don’t strike the gerrymandering down, and then the rest of us have to show empathy toward them? Yeah, no.
Sure, for those who are intelligent and didn’t vote for these assholes, I feel bad for them and wish them well.
But clearly much of Florida’s population asked for this — so to those people, you reap what you sow.
I was primarily saying to have empathy for the non-assholes who are also effected by everything the assholes do, but while we're at it, you should reserve some empathy for morons. Enough to think about and understand why they are the way they are, but not sympathize with their bigotry and hatred. The inability to think critically is cultivated. Through underfunding schools, through emotional and physical abuse, through brainwashing from childhood in fundamentalism, through lifelong propagandization and the manufacturing of consent, among many other factors.
Thank you
are effectively held captive by the GOP
Lol. Maybe 8-10 years ago I could've bought this. But no. These people actively choose hate, and they will continue doing so even at their own detriment.
Politicians make laws on the basis of "I'll never be in that situation". But then a son or daughter comes out as LGBTQ+ and all of a sudden laws need to change. A daughter has been raped and all of a sudden laws need to change. They don't make laws to help us. They make laws to control us and sweep away things they don't like.
A daughter has been raped and all of a sudden laws need to change.
Nah, they can afford to fly their daughters out.
Classic "leopards eating face".
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Leopards_Eating_People%27s_Faces_Party
And what about that politician whose VHS rental history got leaked to the whole world?
That’s a shame. Thoughts and prayers.
Sounds like a lot of people in Florida are about to become homeless too.... I dunno, I say they completely, 100% enforce the laws right now. You didn't fight against this bullshit because it "doesn't affect me"? Well now it can affect you. Ticket everyone. Waste everyone's time. It was so important to do this, then fucking do it. Be the fucking clowns you are. Ticket people who lost their home, who are camping in their front yard. What, they're having a bad time right now and we should be generous? That's homeless people all the time.
Suspending the law because it's a weather emergency is bullshit. It's being suspended because it might affect voters. Just trying to cover their own ass when they need it and shafting anyone else when it's convenient.
While the law includes exceptions during emergencies like major storms, those protections end when the hurricane order is no longer in place.
The article never explains the title.
I mean, I think it does. A hurricane order expires shortly after the storm is over. It can take months for new shelter to be provided for those that lose their homes. Some people might prefer just to live out of their RV or a tent or whatever to save money while new living arrangements are figured out.
Ya because people can just pick up the shattered pieces of their lives on the governments timeline. They'll remove the hurricane order way too soon resulting in additional people being imprisoned or removed from their "homes" and their land will be sold off to a golf course or oil company.
You know what this reminds me of? There was some cheap ass webcomic in the very early 2000s that had an Amish protagonist. I only remember a single comic where the main character is watching TV and has some pundit say that poor and homeless should be shot. Then our Amish hero sets the pundit's house on fire rendering him homeless.
The pundit declares himself poor without his house and is promptly shot by his own followers because they made good his beliefs on shooting the poor and homeless. It was actually kinda funny.
But that being said, it amazes me just how often people forget the lessons of the past. The great depression seriously changed America's views on poverty being an entirely individual failing for many, many decades. Even into the Nixon administration he had to remind everyone that he was a New Dealer and wasn't going to roll back any of that shit. They had to wait until baby boomers, who did not grow up in the depression and were the ungrateful beneficiaries of the numerous programs in its wake, were the main voting block before beginning to roll that shit back.
It's also kinda incredible just how the libertarian and conservative propaganda apparatus really nullified most criticism of this shit. While that was always case even back in the 1930s, it was never to this extent.
Remains me of when Spawn put the Leader of the KKK in Black face and they lynched him.
It's so fucking depressing to think about how goddamn popular FDR was. Basically a fucking socialist.
Boomers really have destroyed this planet. In several ways.
Perhaps http://meninhats.com?
Nope. That comic is actually decently drawn, also the format is too short for that kind of story.
Under the new Florida law, any citizen or business can sue beginning in January if they feel the anti-camping ban is not being properly enforced.
This is pants on head stupid. We could probably count on actual police and DAs understanding the situation and not enforcing this law in extraordinary circumstances. We can't count on every HOA board member doing the same. Even if a judge grants an immediate motion to dismiss, it's still a complete waste of everyone's time and money. That's the best case scenario.
ITT a whole lot of people talking shit while their local governments are doing the exact same thing. This is a map from 2015. It's only gotten worse since then.
If what's happening in Florida disgusts you then check your own laws first.
It’s not a political thing, it’s an urban vs. rural thing. Cities tend to have more robust services for the homeless, so naturally homeless people wind up gravitating there.
They’ll find a way to suspend the law so it doesn’t affect victims of the hurricanes and then reinstitute them again later.
"Banned sitting in public"??
I didn't see that one but I wouldn't be surprised. They keep coming up with inane stuff that only applies to those people.
"Loitering"
California: "First time?"
https://theintercept.com/2021/05/07/california-fires-chico-housing-real-estate/
Sure it's Floriduh, but suspend the law for a year already.
The apocalypse makes fools of us all.
This is why I don't really like to punish people or hold grudges, what comes around tends to go around.
That's some Just World fallacy bullshit right there.
Naw, I'm not saying the world is just, I'm saying it sucks and we shouldn't make it suck more by being vindictive as all Hell.
Bwahahahahaha. Man, you just gotta enjoy the irony.
I say, enforce the law! You can't be homeless here! Get out! Go to Texas! They love homeless people there! Hey you want a home because you lost a home? So you're homeless? Get out! ....super easy, super simple. President Trump only likes people who don't loose their homes.
Maybe running a political party off of hate wasn't such a good idea.
Yeeep. Boy howdy, White Democrats^TM like to avoid feeling uncomfortable. That's where they draw their progressive line.
I'm not saying that the democratic party is good on this front. I'm saying that the republican party, the ruling party of Florida is built on hate, and it's biting them in the ass.
oops!
It's only a bad idea if you give a shit about the populace.
It’s isn’t ever a problem or bad idea (until it come back to happen to them)