> I spend a lot of time in cities and know others who do too. None feel menaced by people who are unhoused - why would that be menacing? - or high. High people generally don't know you are there, and are easily avoided. I've had zero problems; I don't know of anyone else who has.
"Nothing ever happens" says person nothing happened to. Meanwhile, these are just some examples that made the news:
* https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67386865 "A suspect has been arrested two days after former US Senator Martha McSally reported being sexually assaulted while on a run in Iowa [...] The suspect, who is thought to be homeless,"
* https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41484206 "A "manipulative" homeless man who turned on a family who befriended him has admitted the "frenzied" murder of the mother and her 13-year-old son."
* https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/life-sentence-for-... "A severely mentally ill man was sentenced to life in prison on Friday for beheading a Hollywood screenwriter [...] a homeless former Marine described by his lawyer as "very, very mentally ill", pleaded guilty [...] in a crime without motive."
Fortunately I haven't witnessed any murders or rapes, but the most shocking for me was that I've visited Vancouver twice in my life, and on both visits, lone women walking down the street in broad daylight were chased after and opportunisticly molested by drunk vagrants hanging around on Robson Street. Broad daylight. They had absolutely no shame. And other than the molested women fighting them off and running away, nobody did or said anything.
Everyone has a right to walk about in public unmolested, and I would want the police to arrest those men and prosecute them for sexual assault.
You're delusional or misinformed if you think this doesn't happen. Of course it happens.
On the other hand, you can be molested or assaulted by drunk and beligerent homed people. And, more importantly, homeless people are much more at risk of assault or rape by the homed, than the homed are of being assaulted and raped by the homeless. For all the articles I linked above, they are dwarfed by news reports of homeless people being shot, beaten, stabbed, set on fire or raped.
So, overall, homeless people as a whole are neither saints nor devils. They are who they are, and each individual has a different situation. We should feel a lot of empathy for them, and want to help them into a less precarious position... but we also want to do it because we're mindful of the danger to the public that untreated mental illness poses.
I think you are taking 'nothing' (if I used that word) too literally. Of course crimes happen. People win the lottery too. That doesn't make it a trend or a crisis. All those news stories add up to five individual crimes spread onto two continents.
> you can be molested or assaulted by drunk and beligerent homed people. And, more importantly, homeless people are much more at risk
I don't know enough to say "much" more, but I think those are good points. There's nothing special about being homeless, in terms of crime, except you are much more exposed to it.
> on both visits, lone women walking down the street in broad daylight were chased after and opportunisticly molested by drunk vagrants hanging around on Robson Street. Broad daylight.
How do I spend so much time in cities and never see anything like that? I'm sure some of these stories people tell are true, but wow.
Linking to incidents in cities in the US, and the 51st and 52nd state, aren't representative of cities across the world.
Maybe """ "Nothing ever happens" says person nothing happened to.""" is honestly telling the truth that they don't concieve of anything happening to them because they live outside of this insane bubble we're in that it's just accepted for cities to just have a violent homeless population that "we can't do anything about". Maybe we're the idiots in this situation.
"Nothing ever happens" says person nothing happened to. Meanwhile, these are just some examples that made the news:
* https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67386865 "A suspect has been arrested two days after former US Senator Martha McSally reported being sexually assaulted while on a run in Iowa [...] The suspect, who is thought to be homeless,"
* https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-65569357 "Derby homeless man raped women who offered to help him"
* https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41484206 "A "manipulative" homeless man who turned on a family who befriended him has admitted the "frenzied" murder of the mother and her 13-year-old son."
* https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/life-sentence-for-... "A severely mentally ill man was sentenced to life in prison on Friday for beheading a Hollywood screenwriter [...] a homeless former Marine described by his lawyer as "very, very mentally ill", pleaded guilty [...] in a crime without motive."
* https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/long-beach-woman-sex... "Long Beach woman sexually assaulted by homeless man in broad daylight"
Fortunately I haven't witnessed any murders or rapes, but the most shocking for me was that I've visited Vancouver twice in my life, and on both visits, lone women walking down the street in broad daylight were chased after and opportunisticly molested by drunk vagrants hanging around on Robson Street. Broad daylight. They had absolutely no shame. And other than the molested women fighting them off and running away, nobody did or said anything.
Everyone has a right to walk about in public unmolested, and I would want the police to arrest those men and prosecute them for sexual assault.
You're delusional or misinformed if you think this doesn't happen. Of course it happens.
On the other hand, you can be molested or assaulted by drunk and beligerent homed people. And, more importantly, homeless people are much more at risk of assault or rape by the homed, than the homed are of being assaulted and raped by the homeless. For all the articles I linked above, they are dwarfed by news reports of homeless people being shot, beaten, stabbed, set on fire or raped.
So, overall, homeless people as a whole are neither saints nor devils. They are who they are, and each individual has a different situation. We should feel a lot of empathy for them, and want to help them into a less precarious position... but we also want to do it because we're mindful of the danger to the public that untreated mental illness poses.