this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
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The really wild thing about homelessness and cost of living in general is that the government is sitting on well over 1 billion acres of land for agricultural use and they could quite literally hand out a quarter acre to anyone who really just needs it and it wouldn't put a dent in anything.
I know, I know, there's quite a bit more to it than that, but holy shit, there is quite a misconception about the value of land and if you're rifling through a dumpster in order to not starve things probably look quite different
Well, there's quite a bit more to it than that. An acre of land a hundred miles from a population center is essentially useless to someone without the money to build a dwelling with utilities or to obtain food
It's essentially useless to most people with the money to do those things too.
Which part of protist’s statement implied any of what you said?
The point is that you went from 0-100 and implied that someone who clearly shows compassion towards the unhoused is calling for the bulldozing of tent camps, which is an extremely traumatic and sad thing that isn’t funny.
No one owes you shit.
Bruh, I work in homeless services. Egad man, get a grip
I "cherry picked a plot of land 100 miles from a population center" because that's where the vast majority of the federally-owned land is, out west in the middle of nowhere.
I said absolutely nothing about my opinions on what policies can be instituted to alleviate homelessness and associated issues, because my only point was that your idea is dumb. I work full time in homeless services and live and breathe bettering unhoused people's lives. I have no idea why you're directing anger at everyone here, at people who don't disagree in any way with your actual criticism of the problem of homelessness in the US, but you should probably explore it with a therapist.
You don't even need to go that far (though this is not an argument in favour of the government keeping a deathgrip on that land) - in the USA, like in pretty much every developed nation (and many others, I'm sure) there are more empty houses than there are homeless people in need of them.
What you neglect to take in to account is that homelessness is 100% a deliberate and essential part of capitalism. Homelessness is the threat of what will happen to you if you don't sell your labour for whatever the capitalists decide it's worth, and it must remain present and visible at all times to maintain that power.
Homelessness isn't being solved because those in power needed it, not because there is any shortage of anything at all (homes, food, money, community support - all exist in abundance and yet are controlled and manipulated to create artificial scarcity to maximise profits).
I won't disagree but it also blows my mind that I get downvoted for being uppity about how we don't do anything about it, with no explanation behind the downvotes. Am I being a callous asshole or something? I sincerely believe and feel as though we could use resources in a more amiable way
I also just want to add that being an anarchist, one of the most common responses we get from people who aren't to our ideas (that are almost all entirely outside of the box capitalism forces us to think within), is basically "that's not a perfect solution therefore it isn't worthy of any attention or consideration", as if the current system is perfect (E: or they've taken the time to properly understand our views in the first place).
I would class it as part appeal to tradition in defence of cognitive dissonance, part being so heavily indoctrinated they're incapable of even imagining a society that functions in any other way but the current (even though how we live now is an insignificant blip in the timeline of human history), so their instinct is to reject anything that threatens the (patently false) sense of security they get from what they know (which in this case, includes shit like dropping homeless people on an empty plot and expecting them to be grateful, which is why they mistakenly assumed that's what you meant).
I can't speak for the people who downvoted you (I didn't even see that thread since I had the first person to reply blocked, so I had to go in private browser to check it out), I don't think you're being callous, you made a valid point, and I'm sure you didn't mean we should just dump homeless people on empty plots of land and call it a day, but also provide all the other things that person pointed out would be needed. I think maybe some people just don't see providing the other necessities as an obvious, or even acceptable part of your suggestion, but that is a different matter for them to explain, since I can't.
Either way, try not to take downvotes to heart, they're just anonymous internet pixels, they don't actually matter (E: though I definitely understand how they can be discouraging and even confusing at times).
Complaining about downvotes? That's a downvote.
Adding nothing to the discussion? Believe it or not, downvote.
The government doing council housing would probably go really well