Friday, July 26, 2019

Wanna Eject the Homeless? There's an App For That!

And much simpler than the method favored in San Francisco:
Bonhams Auctioneers Has Allegedly Installed Sprinklers To Douse Homeless Outside the Building
It seems they got the idea from the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Now, the auctioneers may think they are offering the homeless a cool, refreshing shower but boy the optics are bad....
From The Atlantic:

An App for Ejecting the Homeless
Amazon’s hometown has one of the nation’s worst homelessness problems. But instead of using its technology and its wealth to fix it, the city is making the problem worse.
Surrounded by the vibrant, emerald trees that give the city its nickname, Seattle’s Ravenna Woods seem like the perfect place for homeless people to build shelter without disrupting metropolitan life. If not for a large, homemade banner at the entrance of the encampment that read, “Do Homeless Lives Matter?” you might not even have noticed they were there. Earlier this year, I visited the Ravenna Woods encampment, both to protest its removal and to interview homeless people about their experiences there.*

But someone did notice eventually, initiating months of cat-and-mouse between the City of Seattle and the unsheltered community living here. Residents of the camp received a notice of removal from the city in December 2017, swiftly diminishing the community. The city would spend over $10 million on this and similar homeless sweeps in 2017 alone.

Encampments like the one in Ravenna Woods are reported to the city regularly. The City of Seattle even offers an app to make the process easier. The Find It, Fix It app was originally designed to allow community members to report potholes, dumping, signal issues, and other neighborhood problems. But the app has warped into a powerful instrument for high-tech community patrolling, enabling individuals to report abandoned vehicles and homeless encampments....MORE
We have quite a few posts on homelessness, it is such a brutal situation, on so many levels.
Before this gets too old here's a quote from Gavin Newsom:

"...growing homelessness in California a national disgrace."

Mr. Newsom is Governor of California.
Prior to that he was Mayor of San Francisco.
About which "Special rapporteur cites SF and Oakland along with worst slums in the world"
                         —"UN report calls Bay Area homeless crisis human rights violation"

I'm starting to think there might be a politician problem.
Here's hoping the forecasted Bubonic plague outbreak in Los Angeles doesn't come to pass.

Related:
Human Excrement On the Streets of San Francisco? There's an App For That !!

'SnapCrap' app