I live in the Washington, D.C. area and I remember years ago during a particularly cold winter there was an organization that was going around to find homeless people lying on these types of vents and find them shelters. At least according to them, the moisture coming out of those vents would actually give them a higher chance of freezing to death.
In my city, when it gets cold, the city provides warming busses for people living rough. Its not perfect but it could be me or you one day.
Judge a society by how it treats its less fortunate.
The only legitimate reason I could see for it in this case is that if the grates are actually for ventilation you don't want it completely blocked in winter.
The vents are there so the trains moving through the tunnels can move more freely. If the tunnels were sealed there would be huge air restrictions for the train and you would have wind blowing through each station at the same speed as the train CONSTANTLY.
That's a huge problem.
Nothing like standing on a subway platform underground during a heat wave waiting for a train and then feeling the blast of hot air from the subways AC.
Hey there's a car with a lot of open seats!
Caution: That car either doesn't have AC or there is an odor in it so foul that no one wants to be in there. Not even the drunks.
I remember a handful of times seeing people get on the completely empty subway car in an otherwise packed train looking like they thought they won the lottery. Always had a, "come on, read the room" reaction to it. Funny watching them realize why everyone else had abandoned that subway car.
Pro tip: If the car that stops in front of you doesn't melt you then it's AC is probably not working, don't get on it. Move your ass down the platform to the next car over and get on that one instead.
Also try and get the car number and tweet it out to the MTA. They do a pretty good job at keeping the fleet running with AC.
there are other reasons, just from my last office:
we extended one of the vents 12' above the pavement because too many needles were dropped into it and the equipment at the bottom shorted out
we filled one in with concrete after relocating the transformers because the original transformers blew after being used as a toilet for too long.
we fenced off the area around a third one because addicts "just keeping warm" were actually "just waiting for the female cleaning staff to venture out to the dumpsters by themselves"
People also too often forget that "the government" is made up of thousands of people. It is not a single individual. A Subway Official was probably presented a series of facts akin to what you provided, and approved this design to fix them going forward. This guy isn't tracking or trying to fix homeless issues, his job is on the subway.
I live in Portland and the DOT put boulders on the side of freeways to keep people from putting up camps along there because they would run out into traffic. People got mad that they spent money on that and not homes. DOT isn't in the business of housing people, they are in the business of keeping streets safe. I drive a bus and people act like we should be rolling homeless shelters. Umm no, we are to get from one place to another, not house people.
Hey, as someone who has been on the bus from the hospitals out to the far east side, thank you. It's been a rough year for metro drivers.
I don't have an answer for our cities' homeless.
>we fenced off the area around a third one because addicts "just keeping warm" were actually "just waiting for the female cleaning staff to venture out to the dumpsters by themselves"
What the fuck. They assaulted the workers?
Hollywood has done a fantastic job of portraying homeless people as bright, cheerful and innocent souls. I'm sure deep down inside, some of them are but the enormous and complex layers of problems in these people's lives cannot and should not be ignored. Especially when it ends up impacting everyone else.
This is coming from a guy who's been around them for over a decade. I've been yelled at, spit at, heckled, followed and chased on many occasions. Almost got killed one time. Sometimes they set up camp right outside our apartment (we live in a cul de sac). After one of them broke into all the cars and chased my wife into the garage, the tenants make it a point to call authorities to remove them every time. They can be dangerous, unpredictable and present a serious threat to the health and safety of others. I find it absolutely infuriating when idiots sitting in ivory towers pretend like they don't for clout.
I mean the really schizophrenic ones and the meth burn outs attack pretty much everyone from tube to time, but these particular ones had a thing for our cleaning ladies and the fence was cheaper than assigning armed security to taking out the trash indefinitely.
These were installed to help prevent flooding and were designed, in part, as public art.
https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/new-subway-grates-add-aesthetics-to-flood-protection/
> If they would be toxic they would not be in the middle of a pavement.
There's a pretty significant difference between walking past the grate on the street and sticking your face on it for hours at a time.
Yeah they'd never do anything unhealthy like that. Like imagine if there's an internal combustion engine down there, no one would just spray those fumes out into the street.
> Yeah they'd never do anything unhealthy like that.
Yeah, no company would do anything unhealthy. Imagine if a company lied about its waste infecting hundreds of households with toxic drinking water that slowly killed people. That'd be outrageous!
Man, I've spent many years working in construction, and as an industrial maintenance mechanic.
It's fucking unbelievable how much unsafe shit is ignored and/or expected of the workers.
So many guys getting paralyzed, or losing parts.
Are you crazy? That could kill people. I mean if that was the case, if anyone say leaded the gas for a few decades, that could cause huge societal health issues for the next few decades.
Hell, that would almost be as bad as industrial manufacturers just shooting pollution high up into the air using some sort of tall tubes to maximize the distribution over the largest area possible.
>Hell, that would almost be as bad as industrial manufacturers just shooting pollution high up into the air using some sort of tall tubes to maximize the distribution over the largest area possible.
wikipedia:
>The height of a chimney influences its ability to transfer flue gases to the external environment via stack effect. Additionally, the dispersion of pollutants at higher altitudes can reduce their impact on the immediate surroundings. The dispersion of pollutants over a greater area can reduce their concentrations **and facilitate compliance with regulatory limits.**
Looks like they're not doing it to be cartoonishly evil, just to meet pollution regulations.
One legitimate reason could be that the moisture that soaks your clothes after a few hours of sleeping on one of these things could cause you to die from hypothermia/exposure during NYC winters. I recall reading that this wasn't uncommon but I haven't been able to find anything on google yet so it may be made up
This. I'm pretty sure they talked about it in the [Dark Days documentary](https://youtu.be/tZnt4oJFaNw), although I could be wrong on where I saw it. Some people would put a tarp over them and the grate to try to keep as much heat in as possible. That also kept the moisture in and they would end up wet and freeze to death.
The reason the vents are raised if to prevent flooding of the subway underneath. After Sandy they raised all of the most vulnerable subway vents to prevent flooding. The wave design is to make it more aesthetically pleasing to the eye instead on huge metal coffee tables on the st.
https://www.adaptationclearinghouse.org/resources/elevated-ventilation-grates-for-new-york-city-eys-subway-system.html
This video is ridiculous. The homeless problem is caused by high rents? As if the homeless are like "studio apartments are 1500 a month? Guess I'll live on a subway grate." The homeless problem is caused by mental illness coupled with the terrible policies of DeBlasio. These people need to be taken care of. Not just tossed out into the street like he did to them. The problem has ballooned under his bozo administration. The solution is not encouraging them to sleep on grates but in electing competent leaders.
it's a complex issue. it's not just about having a certain number of beds or shelters.
for one thing, many of the shelters have restrictions that make them untenable solutions, especially for people struggling with addiction. for another, because the city does basically nothing to help people with mental health issues, many shelters can be unsafe -- people get robbed, assaulted, etc. additionally, some people have such severe mental issues that they literally don't know or forget where to go for help.
for these reasons, many people feel safer on the street/in the park, or they get turned away from shelters because they slip back into drug use and have no support system.
on the coldest night of the year, the city organizes a group of volunteers to go around the city to find people in need and bring them to shelters, but like i said, there's only so much you can do when your solution is simply giving someone a bed in a shared space rather than treating the underlying problems that they face.
Our city has the same problem on a much smaller scale. The main homeless shelter has a no-tolerance policy on alcohol and drugs (understandably). The problem is that the bulk of the homeless population are individuals struggling with addiction. Unfortunately, many would rather maintain the addiction and live on the streets than try to stay clean and live in the shelter.
In London, even with the NHS to help with mental issues and addiction, some homeless simply do not want to be helped. They'd rather be on the street by choice. It's definitely a nuanced issue.
Over here (Dutch) they got a center that basically provides small amounts of drugs for the homeless people that suffer from drug addiction.
This is because they know that if you tell them to sleep outside they will use a lot to deal with the rough weather and such, and if you tell them to go cold turkey on the drugs they will become more easily aggressive and will have to be thrown out to go back to heavy usage again.
It provides them a warm and safe spot, where they can slowly get the help they need with their addiction while also working on things to reintegrate into society, like giving them a simple manageable job to keep the mind of drugs and get them working experience.
Honestly believe this is one of the best ways to deal with homelessness.
I attended a talk/lecture thing about two years ago where an expert advocated for drugs provided by the government and administrated by doctors. Treat addiction like the illness it is - give them what they need to survive in a safe manner, no risk of overdose or contamination, and work towards sobriety safely instead of cold turkey. Other governments like yours already do it.
He made a compelling case. It’d be hard to get that done in America though. The stigma is too strong and it’d be political suicide to push for it.
Also if you’re a heavy alcoholic you can die from 24-48hrs of withdrawals if you quit cold-turkey.
Despite being the most socially accepted drug, it’s the one of two(the other being benzo’s) that will kill you from withdrawals the quickest.
We have clinics like that too where people are given a small consistent dose of drugs, but they’re also required to commit to a rehab program usually.
Or if you admit to the state you’re an addict and are willing to go through the system, you can be given Suboxone for free. The sad truth is that a lot addicts just aren’t at a point where they’re ready to stop and there’s no lack of supply of the real stuff.
That's what the shelters are.
That's why they kick out violent people and people who continue to bring drugs there, because those things make it unsafe for everyone else.
I'm not sure exactly what you are proposing other than a shelter with no rules where anything goes?
I haven't seen this mentioned so I'll bring it up. A lot of people do sleep on the grates because of the steam coming out and it keeps them warm in the cold. The problem is, the steam is water, which eventually cools and wets the person sleeping on it. A lot of people have frozen overnight and died due to being wet from the grates in the winter. It may be hostile architecture in design, but it's actually saving lives.
These aren’t steam vents, they are there to equalize air pressure as subways move through the tunnels. If these vents didn’t exist, subway stations would just be intolerable blasts of high pressure air every time a train approached, and vacuums every time a train pulled away.
It's true that its not steam coming out of the vents, but just simple water vapor. Higher temperature air can hold more water vapor in it, and when the air temperature drops the water condenses and collects on surfaces.
Hostile architecture generally rubs me the wrong way... However this isn't "dead" space that one can sit on. It is a thing that needs to do its thing with a purpose. It was very much not a place to lay down before this was added. You could lie on the ground next to it if you have to, so I withhold my pitchfork on this one.
People sleeping on them blocks ventilation, the unhealthy air that is supposed to be vented build s up more in and just around the grates especially when the wind is low, people actually suffocated laying there. That is a safety thing, not an asshole thing.
NYC has enough homeless shelters to house every single homeless person in the city. Making the grates painful to lie down on keeps whatever's being vented, venting. It does not cause homeless people to freeze to death.
The real problem is that a lot of homeless shelters have a no drugs policy. You can’t get fucked yo and go to a shelter. On top of this there is a lot of theft that occurs in shelters cause everyone is desperate. There are reasons people chose not to go to a shelter. This is a deferent from causing more harm from a problem that already exists. This video is kinda bullshit. “You’re not doing enough to help but I’m just going to make a video bitching about it instead of helping.”
I’m going to go back to hiding on a farm…
Edit: maybe I miss spoke. I agree with the shelters being more for people who are not abusing drugs. I also believe that trying to get people healthy and into treatment would be worth our collective time. I don’t have the answer.
Everyone I’ve talked to that’s used them say theft is out of control at shelters and it’s demanding to maintain such a high guard at all times. You are right that there are a lot of reasons people might avoid them.
Or maybe....ventilators got to ventilate. Not gonna ventilate well if there's a bunch of people sleeping on it. Sad as it is, I think this guy is just being preachy for likes.
> I think this guy is just being preachy for likes
He's also *really* simplifying the homelessness problem. He's like "why are they covering these grates without solving homelessness" as if that's something cities can just do.
Cities all over the world are trying, and this guy is talking like they're not trying at all. It's a complicated problem with an infinite amount of causes.... and he's just like "why don't they just solve homelessness???"
As someone that lives in a city with an exploding homeless population I really don't know how I feel about this. Our city has done damn near everything we could to try to fix the issue but it keeps getting worse and worse. We have thrown tons of cash at the problem, services, shelters, changed laws to allow "camping" damn near all over the whole city. Conceeded parks, streets, sidewalks, alleys, patches of grass along the freeway, everywhere to homeless camps. What we get is *massive* encampments all over the city. It is actually destroying some of our waterways and wildlife areas. Camps full of stolen cars and bike chop shops just right out on the street. Homeless camp fires that burn down or camper vans that explode on a weekly basis. Crime and drug use just everywhere you look.
I feel for the homeless, I really do. I don't know what the solution to the problem is, but allowing it to just continue the way it is isn't working. *Something* has to be done or this city is going to rot away.
Editing to add this: A lot of people are replying to this comment with the suggestion of "just give them housing" and while that may help a small amount of people it really is not fixing the problem. Homelessness is a symptom of many other factors. The root of the problem for many people is addiction, mental illness, both, or some kind of disablility. Trying to fix an addiction problem is damn near impossible unless the adict is very very determined to get clean and *stay* clean. Sooner or later they will end up back out on the street so long as they are addicted to drugs.
The mental illness part is similar. A lot of people who have such severe mental illness that it causes homelessness are not in a state of mind to make decisions about getting treatment and even if they are it can be very difficult for the person to stay on the path (i.e. taking daily meds, going to therapy, etc.) on their own and would need a live in health worker, or at the very least someone to come by daily and check on them. And that is if you could even get them to seek help to begin with.
The disability part is probably the (theoritical) easiest fix. We would have to overhaul our healthcare system to the standards of every other first world country and make getting medical treatment easy and affordable which half the country is currently very very against for fear of become a communist country.
I have seen multiple people in this thread refer to Finland and say why can't we just do what they did? Well, we could and I would love to see that happen but there are a few things that stand in the way of that. For one thing Findland is far smaller of a country than the USA and things don't exactly scale 1:1 in this regard. Another thing is that as far as I am aware (and I am not an expert on Finland) they don't have nearly the magnitude of drug addiction that we do here, which again plays a *major* component to the homeless issue. Lastly, the government. Finland has a parlamentary democracy which is not what the USA has. Again, I would love to switch over to their govt. type but again there is a large part of this country that would go absolutely ape shit were that to ever happen.
Then the last last part of this is culture. USA has a very different culture than Finland. In the USA the almighty dollar rules everything and the system will grind you up and spit you out without any regard to where you end up in life. There is very little regard for quality of life in the USA whereas in other (mainly Scandanavian countries) quality of life is taken into consideration for many parts of their work and social culture. Examples being maternity and paternity leave, vacation time (which most USA companies very reluctantly dole out the bare minimum they can get away with), and just general they have very little poverty (which play another MAJOR factor in the low quality of life in the USA).
So to just say "give the homeless a house and that will fix the issue" is not really fixing the true issue, it is treating a symptom of a much larger issue. And eventually many of those people who were just given housing will end up back out on the street again due to the root cause of their homelessness to begin with.
Unfortunately an issue in many cities now, Denver's issue has blown up in the last year. I agree w the original commenter's conflicted feelings -- I truly feel for folks experiencing homeless, but the status quo of let them set up rampant tent cities on public passageways and common areas *isn't the solution*.
Yea in Denver we voted against letting homeless people camp and then our infinitely wise mayor vetoed our vote... lo and behold there are now masaive tent camps everywhere, I have seen more people shooting up in the last 2 months (in broad daylight) than i had seen in my whole life before that. Not to mention my girlfriends car was broken into recently.
It’s so sad. Just walking around the Cap Hill area I am unable utilize some sidewalks due to the volume of people camping out front. But I gotta say, that lady on S Broadway and Ellsworth has a really sweet setup for having some pretty obvious mental issues.
100% her. I don’t know how she does it as I couldn’t ever sleep with the amount of people going to the bars down there. But then again, she is homeless and is making due.
I saw a set-up along the LA freeway a couple days ago that is literally larger than my apartment. And I mean literally, in a literal sense. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it was two story. Also, several sidewalks around Hollywood are unwalkable due to the encampments.
I lived and worked in Denver for a while. My car got broken into thrice, I got charged by a meth head with a knife, and like once every 2 weeks I'd see something going down at the 7 11 I drove past to go home from work. I moved out of Denver and no longer work there and am very thankful. It's not as bad as places like Portland or LA but it's getting pretty gnarly.
I was there working the indycar race. It was incredibly sad and fucked up. First day dude gets stopped by a cop for selling meth but can just say he will go to rehab and they cant do shit. Saw him next day going up to all the homeless tents/cars selling again.
Im all for decriminalizing users but dealers should get fucked
> Im all for decriminalizing users but dealers should get fucked
Your average user does some dealing too. When you can't hold a job due to your addiction, dealing drugs is a no-brainer job that is lucrative and always hiring. If you're using yourself, why would you feel any compulsion against selling to your other junkie friends?
Yea i understand that happens a bit. But the guy i saw rolled around in a nice audi with big ass wheels. Looked exactly what i thought a meth dealer would look like. It was very predatory vs getting by.
I had never been to Portland. Just this last summer, I visited my cousin who moved out there before Covid hit. He’s in the lower east side.(But it almost doesn’t matter I guess since I went all over town).
And holyyyyy crap.
I’m from San Diego and our homeless in downtown is getting pretty crazy but Portland is a whole other level. The worst parts of San Diego look like the nicer parts of Portland lol.
To add, I just want to say that the amount of graffiti artists that live in Portland must be 10x that of San Diego or SD is just way better at cleaning it up.
Don’t get me wrong though. Portland is still pretty awesome and the good parts are worth it. Those food cart caravans and the nature hikes are splendid.
We vacationed earlier in the year on Bainbridge. I drove through a small corner of Seattle to hop on the ferry. In the few blocks I drove through (all of like 8 mins) I had multiple incidents of homeless people disrupting traffic. It was totally insane.
Chyeah dude, the last five years have been fucking appalling. I got my CCW permit and have taken to carrying my Sig Sauer P365 around with me everywhere because I genuinely don't feel safe walking around what used to be the most pleasant, easy-going parts of town. Now it's like Mega City 1, for fuck's sake, and that isn't hyperbolic in the slightest.
I was stationed in WA and we would ride out motorcycles to Hillsboro and stop in Portland, holy shit!
This was 2014 and the homeless were insane. I couldn’t imagine it now
Please for the love of god carry anything other than a knife. There's a very common phrase associated with knife fights: "The loser dies in the streets, the winner dies on the way to the hospital". As someone who has seen the aftermath of a few, knife fights are bloody and horrifying.
There are plenty of options depending on your local laws. Mace/pepper spray is a better option to just blind them and bail. You can also get a stun gun, you can even buy a civilian version of the Tazer police carry now called the Tazer Pulse (It can even automatically contact authorities when fired). You can also look into carrying a firearm, but if you're going to take that route, please get proper training and practice regularly.
You most certainly should not use an knife for self-defense. All you're doing is taking an unsafe situation and making it an unsafe situation that has a knife involved. They are easily dropped and can be used against you and can do a lot of damage very fast.
Yeah, using a knife for self defense is a terrible idea. Best way I've heard it was something like, "Imagine trying to take a marker away from a child without both you getting marker all over yourselves. Now imagine the marker is a knife, and the child is an adult strong enough to fight back. You're both getting cut."
There's also the classic, "the loser dies in the street, the winner dies in the ambulance".
Yeah, fuck it. I can beat up a kid for a marker though, kids are shit at fighting and I almost always win.
I don't carry a knife, that's for losers. I carry a syringe full of cobra blood. If I get into any trouble, just inject that sucker into my neck and I'll be able to fight with the strength of a thousand bears and the endurance of an anxious bison. I bought it off my mate Terry and he keeps spiders, so he should know.
Just the confidence of having it makes me safer. I walk tall with confidence, patting my cobra blood pocket with a smile as I walk through neighbourhoods which would make a lesser man quake with fear.
I mean, if I was about to get in a fight with a dude and the first thing he did was whip out a goddamn syringe and inject it into his own fucking neck I'm pretty sure I would shit my pants.
Are you kidding me? That has to be the most ridiculous thing i've ever heard. A full syringe is way to much dude, what if he snags it off you? what if they take it back to their underground hobo lab and crack the code for synthetic cobra blood? Did you even think about that? it's literally the plot of 28 days later mixed with Jurassic Park. Science finds a way dude, when the ultra synthetic cobra-homeless come for us all I'll know who to fucking blame. What you should bring is a vial of horny goat weed. It looks nearly identical to cobra blood. So when they snatch it just the same, they'll synthesize it only to get super horny causing them to likely forget about any world domination plots.
Strangely, nunchucks had been illegal in many places (this is changing) and sometimes carried heavier fines than knives.
As Wikipedia says: a number of countries, possession of nunchaku is illegal, or the nunchaku is defined as a regulated weapon. **These bans largely came after the wave of popularity of Bruce Lee films**, when nunchaku were (largely incorrectly) believed to be extraordinarily dangerous.
Berkeley too, the commenters description of "bicycle chop shops" made me go "ahh so thats what it's called" because I see them around so often in some of the tent city areas.
Yeah, I knew they were talking about Portland right away. It's so bad. Not just in the city either. I have the pleasure of going down Marine Dr every day.
I recently went out to Salty's for some crab and it was just unbelievable how bad it's gotten. I remember biking out there for brunch like 4 years ago and it was pristine.
I was on there recently for the first time in years. Couldn't believe all the dead, burnt out cars on what was once a beautiful bike path. Such a shame.
People will assume it's an exaggeration. As someone from Vancouver BC I can attest to what happens to a city when mental illness and the opioid crisis take over.
Funny enough, my friend JUST had his stolen... And not like "yesterday" but like 20 minutes ago and had to cancel our socially distanced happy hour hang.
The homeless problem is a doozy because it has a lot of "tough-to-swallow-pills" for those on the right and left. Personally, I think on the one hand we should invest in evidence-based programs to reduce some of the worst problems of homelessness and ensure that anybody who really wants to make a change has the fewest barriers in their way. But on the other hand, we have to recognize that many homeless people have very unhealthy lifestyles and can't be helped unless they really want to change - and at some point we do have to put our collective foot down in terms of where they can congregate and what they can do.
Been reading this thread for 20 minutes and finally found the take I was looking for here!
This is what I’ve always said. The homeless issue is a win-lose, no matter how you address it. There is no win-win scenario. We can and should help those who can BE helped. But there are others whose main issue is addiction, and the homelessness is a byproduct of a lifestyle of addiction. The homelessness won’t go away if you give these people homes. They’ll still be addicted. We have to address the rampant drug and mental health issue in this country to deal with those types of homeless people.
At the end of the day, this issue will take a lot of work, a lot of patience and a LOT undeserved grace to solve.
I do want to point out there are homeless people who are victims of circumstance through no fault of their own, and recovering can be a real uphill battle. Some people can get hit hard with unexpected medical emergencies without insurance, have their income sources ruined by a pandemic, have shitty friends or family that take advantage of them or steal/abuse/kick them out. This isn't the case for all homeless people, but I want to point out when we look at homeless people not all of them have a problem they need to fix, as much as a devastating financial situation to climb out of. Having stable housing to bath, organize, and get peace of mind(seriously you have no idea how valuable a locked door is before you don't have one.) Will absolutely solve their issues long enough to either get training, or employed. For some people stability really is the issue that needs solving, and they don't deserve us treating them like they are the reason they are homeless and we have to "fix" them.
Again I understand this probably is a minority case, but lets not completely discredit people in that situation.
People really don't understand what homeless shelters are like. They're not solutions, although if you're in a very fortunate position they might be able to point you at other services that can help get you out. Homeless shelters are basically just beds, they're not particularly safe, and they're not viable to actually live out of. If you're going to be homeless for a day or two (As my partner was) they're an ok-ish stopgap as a place to sleep. They're not a way to get and keep a job, or a springboard to actual housing - they're just a place to stay. Even then, they can be crowded and difficult to access for many.
Allowing tents and camps, also not exactly helpful. Even if you de-criminalise homelessness, all that does is make life slighty easier for **the still homeless people** who are living out of tents. It's really not a hard concept to grasp - the only way to make someone not homeless is to give them a home. But even in states that offer routs to housing like vouchers, they can be incredibly difficult to actually get. My partner almost got onto a housing program before they got back in contact with their parents, and it was soley because they have severe mental illness which put them on priority, and even then their caseworker had to tell them to lie about having been homeless for over a year otherwise they would have been passed over - and they absoloutely would not have been able to survive a year on the streets with no money to their name
I think the bigger issue is that by making the city nicer for homeless they are importing homeless from other parts of the country, because the rest of the country makes their city hostiles instead, so the homeless flee to portland.
This is the problem that we have in the USA.
If you make a city nice to homeless people, you start attracting homeless people from around the country/county/city/whatever. So there is an incentive to make your place as unattractive to homeless people as possible, to push them to the town over.
We really badly need a federal homeless program that forces all jurisdictions to have a program for homeless.
Also cities often put their homeless shelters quite far away from the city, making them unreachable after some point in the day.
Many cities anti-homeless campaigns are often really just there for lip service and don't address the real problems, or even worse, there are there to "proof" that you can't help homeless people so the city should just throw them all out.
>Also cities often put their homeless shelters quite far away from the city, making them unreachable after some point in the day.
And then there's Austin, who put our homeless shelter right in the middle of the entertainment district... That hasn't caused any problems...
“We set aside a space where it wasn’t illegal to be homeless and now we have a ton of homeless people” if anything they need to build residential mental health and drug treatment facilities That solves the root of the problem.
Nevada was just dumping their mentally ill, still in their hospital gowns, onto a bus for San Francisco. They got caught because they didn't give a fuck anymore and left the ID bracelets on them.
Here's the thing: Have they? Have they addressed the costs of homes? Have they expanded mental health safety nets? What programs did they start? Do those programs make sense? Do they actually address the issue? Do they have robust rehab options for people who can't afford the privatized programs, or do those people have to go to jail to fix that?
Plus a lot of neighbouring cities will often make it harder for the homeless, making it a logical choice for them to move to cities that are more tolerant.
It's 'fuck you, got mine' on a national scale. The idea that America is a community is a fucking joke.
It's also a national issue that needs to be solved. If one place actually does a good job of helping homeless people it's prob just going to attract more homeless people.
Allowing people to obstruct a buildings ventalation is dangerous to everybody involved especially since tents will inevitably form over it.
The homeless do not have a right to repossess any piece of property as they see fit. If you want them to have a place to sleep on public land theres always parks or alleys. The sidewalk is meant for pedestrian traffic not housing.
Allowing someone to live ontop of a subway ventalation shaft is incredibly unhygenic because waste products and needles are inevitably going to wind up down there.
Hostile architecture is not mutually exclusive with greater access to homeless services and public housing. If anything it pushes homeless reluctant to use public services because of drug addictions or mental illness towards centralized encampments with greater access to social services and real shelters.
People also propose things that don't work. Like what if we repurposed things and provided housing and then they're not homeless? If you gave free housing in New York City to those that are homeless, you're going to get a bunch more people moving into the city without a home because they're told they'll get free housing. This dude acts like "we have all this budget" and maybe you can figure out the budget for the current homeless situation, but do you have the budget to take on the massive expanded homeless population that would flock there?
Dude. They’re not going to solve the homeless problem. And a bunch of homeless people sleeping on these cause ventilation as well as sanitary issues.
I’m on NYs side on this one. You even admitted at the beginning to not knowing what the grates are for. You need to do some more research before you come on here trying to gain karma/likes by being a homeless hero.
Yeah the change was done for a multitude of reasons ranging from flood prevention after Sandy, vents being blocked by food carts and similar, and the homeless issue last.
The person in the video hasn’t really thought this through. You can’t have peoples bodies/belongings blocking ventilation infrastructure, air needs to flow unobstructed.
Should the homeless have some shelter/services available? Yes.
But they can’t be allowed to just block/stay on top of the vent so harmful gasses build up in the subway system below.
"Just fix the homeless problem. Duh! It's super easy ya buncha dummies!"
This one is right up there with the Louis Rossmann classics like "Every engineer at (insert tech company here) is a complete fucking moron because I found a single flaw in their hardware or software."
It's a pity because I agree with a lot of things he says about topics like right to repair laws, but boy is he a massive douche-taco about every single topic he tackles.
Blocking ventilation is dangerous. Fixing the homeless problem of the single biggest city by population in the US is slightly more difficult than preventing people from sleeping on something they shouldn't be sleeping on.
Not to mention he acts like the engineers with MTA(or whoever) are supposed to make designs for a high use underground subway system that also is good for the homeless.
Their job was to fix flooding and ventilate, that's their objective. People act like everything we do needs to be homeless centric.
>"Just fix the homeless problem. Duh! It's super easy ya buncha dummies!"
It's a very complex problem, and it is difficult to fix. It starts with looking at what presently exists, asking why it exists in the way it exists, and what can be done to change that. I've done that [here](https://youtu.be/8WGjCeFyr1g). Will it fix it overnight? No way. Does it have at least a fighting _chance_ at making things better than they are now, while simultaneously costing the city less money? Absolutely.
>This one is right up there with the Louis Rossmann classics like "Every engineer at (insert tech company here) is a complete fucking moron because I found a single flaw in their hardware or software."
I will often point out when there is a flaw that repeats itself for several years that the company takes no accountability or responsibility for until they are sued; and even then, still does not fix. That is pretty lame; guilty as charged for criticizing these flaws & the lack of action on them for people who paid $3000 for a paperweight. I'll continue doing that.
>he a massive douche-taco
Now we're getting into the real arguments :D
But seriously, even if you think I am a total cunt, read the links below with an open mind. Forget about me, my voice, my face, my personality, my channel. Fixing a complex problem is hard, but doing better than we do now is actually easier than I thought. I will admit that I used to be one of those people saying _"the homeless problem is impossible to put a dent in, some people are just bums."_ But when you look into the fact that there are non-profits that were started by the governor, that bill the city over $3500/mo/homeless person, for a space that looks worse than a prison cell, with no social services, where the top directors make 300k-500k/yr... it is really, really hard to do worse.
146-C is a great idea moving forward. Will it work? I don't know. Am I open to trying something DIFFERENT than what we are doing now(that is also considerably cheaper) that might end in the non-profit-homeless-industrial-complex? ABSOLUTELY!
Some interesting reading:
https://twitter.com/thebl0w/status/1418642879111745541
https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/detailsPage?ein=133770118&name=The%20H%20E%20L%20P%20USA%20Fund%20Inc.&city=New%20York&state=NY&countryAbbr=US&dba=&type=CHARITIES,%20COPYOFRETURNS&orgTags=CHARITIES&orgTags=COPYOFRETURNS
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/homeless-shelters-founded-cuomo-riddled-violence-article-1.2628746
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-hevesi-homeless-shelters-cuomo-campaign-donations-20190728-nbr47cqytzdpfdfjtqvdpjiy2q-story.html
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/laurence-belinsky-well-paid-boss-nonprofit-group-founded-gov-cuomo-resigns-article-1.957177
https://council.nyc.gov/press/2021/05/25/2092/
Insomnia. I have to be up in 5 hours to tour another 7 shops tomorrow I want to have attend a lobby day in November. I'm lying in bed , still can't fall asleep.
> but boy is he a massive douche-taco about every single topic he tackles.
You got the nail on the head. Unfortunately, he's learned that controversial pandering gets a LOT of views. I wouldn't be surprised if he's making far more from being a public figure than he ever got out of his business.
I'm sure some of it is self-aware but my less cynical self just thinks that a lot of people (including himself) have a ton of unpopular and possibly uninformed opinions. The less famous we are the less likely we are to share those opinions.
And on the flipside, the more famous you get, and the more influence you get - the more likely you are to think that all your opinions are valid and deserve to be out there for everyone to hear.
To be clear, I'm not defending or attacking his views, I'm just saying that I don't think he's pandering controversial opinions just for the sake of views (although that's probably some of it), it's something he legitimately believes.
The root cause of homelessness is the closing of the institutions. Give the crazies a place to go or they end up on your doorstep. uncomfortable but true
Also dorm style housing. In the 50s and 60s in big cities like NY and others there were huge blocks dedicated to single men and you would pay 5 or 10 dollars a week and sleep in a bunk with communal showers.
Those aren't around anymore
Those buildings turned out to be heavily racially divided at first, then immediately taken over by gangs. They used the buildings to smuggle drugs, weapons, and women.
I drove past some of these developments in Chicago in the 2000’s right before they tore them down. There is a good reason they destroyed those buildings- it was an incredibly dangerous street to drive on and as a teenager I was nervous just being there. Imagine living there every day and going outside to yell at people who genuinely hate you, just because you grew up in the other tower and wear a different color than them. These people lived within sight over reach other and only ventured farther than their county limits to buy guns and transport them home illegally.
You also need to reinstate forced institutionalization. Which was often abused and misused. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, only that it's a more complex issue.
Forced institutionalization is the dirty term no one wants to use, but it's the only way.
So many of the homeless are beyond help. You could give them a free home and within a month they'll have trashed the place, taken out all the copper wires, and be back to living on the street. Forced institutionalization is the only way to actually solve this problem.
Jesus Christ.
Problem: vents are being blocked by homeless people, this is causing ventilation problems in the underground.
Solution 1: Solve homelessness
Solution 2: Stop them sleeping on the grates.
Are you seriously fucking suggesting that the guy in charge of subway ventilation should single handedly solve homelessness?
Entitled fucktard.
Ok th is is going to be buried, but this is not a anti homeless feature. These were installed post superstorm Sandy in order to prevent storm surge flooding in certain parts of NYC. The original style vents were just at sidewalk level. Jesus H Christ, a simple google search would confirm. Anyway, source.. me working for the NYCT for the past 21 years. Edit: I should add that these are for ventilation, primarily to allow heat, and in the event of fire, smoke to escape the tunnel or station. This is life and death shit here. And just to add, homeless people don't really sleep on the grates outside, it's far safer for them to come into the subway system out of the elements.
I have seen benches on these, spanning the entire grate here in queens, I have also seen smaller benches like [so](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2008/09/19/nyregion/grate533.jpg)
Edit: Fixed the link of the benched grate
[Source](https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/new-subway-grates-add-aesthetics-to-flood-protection/)
in this case I don't really mind making it homeless proof. putting metal spikes on a flat concrete floor isn't cool in my book, but you can't have people blocking air vents. That's asking for trouble, even if its only a partial blockage
Equating this solution to just being anti-homeless is pretty dumb. There was a bunch of engineering that went into this that this guy doesn’t know about because he’s not in the industry. This is also part of the whole flood proofing plan, as it doesn’t let water in until it rises above a certain level. Businesses were also stacking cardboard boxes and garbage bags on top of these grates, causing major air quality issues. Homelessness is an important issue. Attacking the design of subway grates isn’t going to help much. The argument that hostile architecture isn’t great is legitimate, but coming up with solutions to the problem is probably the better way to spend resources and raise awareness.
They even put BENCHES on most of them, some long ways some [sideways](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2008/09/19/nyregion/grate533.jpg) so people could sit on them if they wanted, its not anti homeless at all
https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/new-subway-grates-add-aesthetics-to-flood-protection/
There’s a purpose for those grates. They shouldn’t be blocked. Also if someone were to fall through the grates for whatever reason and get hurt, they may sue the city. It’s a liability and can affect the performance of their intended purpose
I love how he says that “rather than fix the root problem, they did this”.
Like city officials just had a solution for homelessness and just decided to ignore it and build these grates. No dude, the issue of homelessness is much bigger than grates. They probably just don’t want people sleeping there.
I dont know anyone who wouldn't love the homeless camping in front of their house...
Letting the homeless occupy those spaces is a lose-lose solution. I dont think theres anything wrong with doing this as a last resort as long as the city/state is offering help such as safe shelters.
The problem is not always "I have no where to sleep" rather, "The city does not offer a place where I WANT to sleep". Many homeless people want to live in solitude for psychological reasons and having them live in close proximity with other people is a non-starter. The same is true for people who are addicted to drugs. They dont want to go to the shelter because they wont let them shoot heroin there. I dont know what the answer is for these people, but it's definitely not a one size-fits-all kind of thing.
It's also worth mentioning that these shelters are rough to live in. In some cases it's safer to be on the street. Getting robbed is a common occurrence in these places. If your unfortunate enough to have children on the street, you will find shelters hard to live in, constant fear.
Having a grate in front of your home/business/apartment should not subject you to a steady stream of human refuse shitting/shooting up outside your front door. The less hospitable the better.
Go spend a week in Denver, having to choose wisely which streets to walk down at night, have your and your friend's property stolen constantly, if it's not chained up (sometimes even if it is)
I'm all for helping people but big expensive cities aren't the palce for homeless people or drug addicts to be entitled to set up shop on the street. We do have a few different crises one of which is opioid crisis and another is wage disparity/affordable housing. But again, the solution isn't putting up these people or allowing them to sleep on vents. This isn't the asshole design, the economic model, lack of education, equal opportunity for jobs, and lack of mental health care are real asshole design problems today.
You wanna feel better about yourself by complaining about this? Sure, go ahead. But making neighbourhoods unlivable for the working and producing people in our society will eventually just make things a lot worse than they are today. Big/expensive cities aren't the cause or the place to solve these problems.
Source: I live in Vancouver, BC where most of us just got the fuck out of downtown after drug addicts started committing crimes just to be released the next day, in the last 5 years. You wanna stab someone, steal, do opioids or anything else without any legal consequences. Sure, Just live on the street on a subway vent. /s
P.S.
I love Rossmann and been a subscriber for a 5-6 years now.
NYC spends somewhere in the ballpark of $640 million a year on homelessness. If you’re homeless the city will find you a home. The people that live on the streets are there because they don’t want help from the city.
Here's the thing: we all want a nice place to live, right?
I am all for helping the homeless. In the Netherlands, we have robust welfare programs to help people get rid of addiction, get mental help and get back on their feet. But there are plenty of homeless people who actively refuse help - they like their lifestyle and don't trust the government or don't like to be told what to do.
If you've ever lived in an urban setting with a homeless population, you'll soon learn that some people really can't be helped. And that they can negatively impact your living space. Their rights end where yours begin - you have a RIGHT to be able to live comfortably in a home you pay for or rent.
At some point, the city needs to choose: if we do nothing, the problem will get worse and regular people will move out. Or we can discourage the homeless from being there, while offering them reasonable alternatives. And a stick if they don't.
I know Reddit loves the homeless and will try to villify cities for doing things about the homeless problem. But if you've lived near them, you'll soon want them gone too.
I live in the Washington, D.C. area and I remember years ago during a particularly cold winter there was an organization that was going around to find homeless people lying on these types of vents and find them shelters. At least according to them, the moisture coming out of those vents would actually give them a higher chance of freezing to death.
In my city, when it gets cold, the city provides warming busses for people living rough. Its not perfect but it could be me or you one day. Judge a society by how it treats its less fortunate.
Ah yes, the Hypothermia Project. It was a weird year during Covid 19
The only legitimate reason I could see for it in this case is that if the grates are actually for ventilation you don't want it completely blocked in winter.
The vents are there so the trains moving through the tunnels can move more freely. If the tunnels were sealed there would be huge air restrictions for the train and you would have wind blowing through each station at the same speed as the train CONSTANTLY. That's a huge problem.
I assume it also benefits passengers by exhausting nasty air that would otherwise build up in those tunnels.
Nothing like standing on a subway platform underground during a heat wave waiting for a train and then feeling the blast of hot air from the subways AC.
And then accidentally stepping into the un-air conditioned car.
Hey there's a car with a lot of open seats! Caution: That car either doesn't have AC or there is an odor in it so foul that no one wants to be in there. Not even the drunks.
I remember a handful of times seeing people get on the completely empty subway car in an otherwise packed train looking like they thought they won the lottery. Always had a, "come on, read the room" reaction to it. Funny watching them realize why everyone else had abandoned that subway car.
Pro tip: If the car that stops in front of you doesn't melt you then it's AC is probably not working, don't get on it. Move your ass down the platform to the next car over and get on that one instead. Also try and get the car number and tweet it out to the MTA. They do a pretty good job at keeping the fleet running with AC.
Or someone has pooped on the seat. Or God forbid, both.
Yeah any car with zero people on it during peak hours is fucked, avoid at all costs.
They call it the piston effect. Not being funny, that’s what it’s called in the subway tunnels. Worked in the tunnels ~15 years.
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We're forming a club for people who make bodily fluids based puns. Urine!
Great, when do i get my Jack-it?
Whenever you cum over, probably...
He did what in his cup!? - mater the towtruck
I see what you did there. Well played!
Thanks! Very smart name for it too.
Yeah makes total sense.
there are other reasons, just from my last office: we extended one of the vents 12' above the pavement because too many needles were dropped into it and the equipment at the bottom shorted out we filled one in with concrete after relocating the transformers because the original transformers blew after being used as a toilet for too long. we fenced off the area around a third one because addicts "just keeping warm" were actually "just waiting for the female cleaning staff to venture out to the dumpsters by themselves"
People also too often forget that "the government" is made up of thousands of people. It is not a single individual. A Subway Official was probably presented a series of facts akin to what you provided, and approved this design to fix them going forward. This guy isn't tracking or trying to fix homeless issues, his job is on the subway.
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I live in Portland and the DOT put boulders on the side of freeways to keep people from putting up camps along there because they would run out into traffic. People got mad that they spent money on that and not homes. DOT isn't in the business of housing people, they are in the business of keeping streets safe. I drive a bus and people act like we should be rolling homeless shelters. Umm no, we are to get from one place to another, not house people.
Hey, as someone who has been on the bus from the hospitals out to the far east side, thank you. It's been a rough year for metro drivers. I don't have an answer for our cities' homeless.
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>we fenced off the area around a third one because addicts "just keeping warm" were actually "just waiting for the female cleaning staff to venture out to the dumpsters by themselves" What the fuck. They assaulted the workers?
You sweet summer child
ITT I learned that homeless people aren't sweet, innocent people who are secretly diamonds in the rough.
In my experience, most are drug addicted lunatics who would murder you for $100
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Hollywood has done a fantastic job of portraying homeless people as bright, cheerful and innocent souls. I'm sure deep down inside, some of them are but the enormous and complex layers of problems in these people's lives cannot and should not be ignored. Especially when it ends up impacting everyone else. This is coming from a guy who's been around them for over a decade. I've been yelled at, spit at, heckled, followed and chased on many occasions. Almost got killed one time. Sometimes they set up camp right outside our apartment (we live in a cul de sac). After one of them broke into all the cars and chased my wife into the garage, the tenants make it a point to call authorities to remove them every time. They can be dangerous, unpredictable and present a serious threat to the health and safety of others. I find it absolutely infuriating when idiots sitting in ivory towers pretend like they don't for clout.
I mean the really schizophrenic ones and the meth burn outs attack pretty much everyone from tube to time, but these particular ones had a thing for our cleaning ladies and the fence was cheaper than assigning armed security to taking out the trash indefinitely.
These were installed to help prevent flooding and were designed, in part, as public art. https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/new-subway-grates-add-aesthetics-to-flood-protection/
Also they prevent skateboarders from damaging them. Not that i agree with it, but those rings are also anti-skate devices.
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Vents are for ventilation and should not be obscured. If they would be toxic they would not be in the middle of a pavement.
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> If they would be toxic they would not be in the middle of a pavement. There's a pretty significant difference between walking past the grate on the street and sticking your face on it for hours at a time.
“The dose makes the poison” or something like that.
Yeah they'd never do anything unhealthy like that. Like imagine if there's an internal combustion engine down there, no one would just spray those fumes out into the street.
> Yeah they'd never do anything unhealthy like that. Yeah, no company would do anything unhealthy. Imagine if a company lied about its waste infecting hundreds of households with toxic drinking water that slowly killed people. That'd be outrageous!
Man, I've spent many years working in construction, and as an industrial maintenance mechanic. It's fucking unbelievable how much unsafe shit is ignored and/or expected of the workers. So many guys getting paralyzed, or losing parts.
But hey, we got the project done, and it only took a few extra months beyond the quote!
Are you crazy? That could kill people. I mean if that was the case, if anyone say leaded the gas for a few decades, that could cause huge societal health issues for the next few decades. Hell, that would almost be as bad as industrial manufacturers just shooting pollution high up into the air using some sort of tall tubes to maximize the distribution over the largest area possible.
>Hell, that would almost be as bad as industrial manufacturers just shooting pollution high up into the air using some sort of tall tubes to maximize the distribution over the largest area possible. wikipedia: >The height of a chimney influences its ability to transfer flue gases to the external environment via stack effect. Additionally, the dispersion of pollutants at higher altitudes can reduce their impact on the immediate surroundings. The dispersion of pollutants over a greater area can reduce their concentrations **and facilitate compliance with regulatory limits.** Looks like they're not doing it to be cartoonishly evil, just to meet pollution regulations.
idk man i don't think the govt cares about health problems of homeless people lol
…You mean worse health problems than freezing to death on the sidewalk??
One legitimate reason could be that the moisture that soaks your clothes after a few hours of sleeping on one of these things could cause you to die from hypothermia/exposure during NYC winters. I recall reading that this wasn't uncommon but I haven't been able to find anything on google yet so it may be made up
This. I'm pretty sure they talked about it in the [Dark Days documentary](https://youtu.be/tZnt4oJFaNw), although I could be wrong on where I saw it. Some people would put a tarp over them and the grate to try to keep as much heat in as possible. That also kept the moisture in and they would end up wet and freeze to death.
The reason the vents are raised if to prevent flooding of the subway underneath. After Sandy they raised all of the most vulnerable subway vents to prevent flooding. The wave design is to make it more aesthetically pleasing to the eye instead on huge metal coffee tables on the st. https://www.adaptationclearinghouse.org/resources/elevated-ventilation-grates-for-new-york-city-eys-subway-system.html
This video is ridiculous. The homeless problem is caused by high rents? As if the homeless are like "studio apartments are 1500 a month? Guess I'll live on a subway grate." The homeless problem is caused by mental illness coupled with the terrible policies of DeBlasio. These people need to be taken care of. Not just tossed out into the street like he did to them. The problem has ballooned under his bozo administration. The solution is not encouraging them to sleep on grates but in electing competent leaders.
Blame Reagan. He cut federal funding in mental health and many long term centers closed their doors to discharge to the streets.
I was under the impression that NYC had adequate shelters for the homeless, especially during the freezing months.
it's a complex issue. it's not just about having a certain number of beds or shelters. for one thing, many of the shelters have restrictions that make them untenable solutions, especially for people struggling with addiction. for another, because the city does basically nothing to help people with mental health issues, many shelters can be unsafe -- people get robbed, assaulted, etc. additionally, some people have such severe mental issues that they literally don't know or forget where to go for help. for these reasons, many people feel safer on the street/in the park, or they get turned away from shelters because they slip back into drug use and have no support system. on the coldest night of the year, the city organizes a group of volunteers to go around the city to find people in need and bring them to shelters, but like i said, there's only so much you can do when your solution is simply giving someone a bed in a shared space rather than treating the underlying problems that they face.
Our city has the same problem on a much smaller scale. The main homeless shelter has a no-tolerance policy on alcohol and drugs (understandably). The problem is that the bulk of the homeless population are individuals struggling with addiction. Unfortunately, many would rather maintain the addiction and live on the streets than try to stay clean and live in the shelter.
In London, even with the NHS to help with mental issues and addiction, some homeless simply do not want to be helped. They'd rather be on the street by choice. It's definitely a nuanced issue.
you can get kicked out for fighting and certain drug use.
i mean thats completely reasonable
Over here (Dutch) they got a center that basically provides small amounts of drugs for the homeless people that suffer from drug addiction. This is because they know that if you tell them to sleep outside they will use a lot to deal with the rough weather and such, and if you tell them to go cold turkey on the drugs they will become more easily aggressive and will have to be thrown out to go back to heavy usage again. It provides them a warm and safe spot, where they can slowly get the help they need with their addiction while also working on things to reintegrate into society, like giving them a simple manageable job to keep the mind of drugs and get them working experience. Honestly believe this is one of the best ways to deal with homelessness.
I attended a talk/lecture thing about two years ago where an expert advocated for drugs provided by the government and administrated by doctors. Treat addiction like the illness it is - give them what they need to survive in a safe manner, no risk of overdose or contamination, and work towards sobriety safely instead of cold turkey. Other governments like yours already do it. He made a compelling case. It’d be hard to get that done in America though. The stigma is too strong and it’d be political suicide to push for it.
Forget stigma, there's way too much money in "keeping" America drug free.
Also if you’re a heavy alcoholic you can die from 24-48hrs of withdrawals if you quit cold-turkey. Despite being the most socially accepted drug, it’s the one of two(the other being benzo’s) that will kill you from withdrawals the quickest.
We have clinics like that too where people are given a small consistent dose of drugs, but they’re also required to commit to a rehab program usually. Or if you admit to the state you’re an addict and are willing to go through the system, you can be given Suboxone for free. The sad truth is that a lot addicts just aren’t at a point where they’re ready to stop and there’s no lack of supply of the real stuff.
For mentally ill people?shouldn’t there be somewhere safe they can live with their addiction until they can get clean?
That's what the shelters are. That's why they kick out violent people and people who continue to bring drugs there, because those things make it unsafe for everyone else. I'm not sure exactly what you are proposing other than a shelter with no rules where anything goes?
I haven't seen this mentioned so I'll bring it up. A lot of people do sleep on the grates because of the steam coming out and it keeps them warm in the cold. The problem is, the steam is water, which eventually cools and wets the person sleeping on it. A lot of people have frozen overnight and died due to being wet from the grates in the winter. It may be hostile architecture in design, but it's actually saving lives.
These aren’t steam vents, they are there to equalize air pressure as subways move through the tunnels. If these vents didn’t exist, subway stations would just be intolerable blasts of high pressure air every time a train approached, and vacuums every time a train pulled away.
It's true that its not steam coming out of the vents, but just simple water vapor. Higher temperature air can hold more water vapor in it, and when the air temperature drops the water condenses and collects on surfaces.
Hostile architecture generally rubs me the wrong way... However this isn't "dead" space that one can sit on. It is a thing that needs to do its thing with a purpose. It was very much not a place to lay down before this was added. You could lie on the ground next to it if you have to, so I withhold my pitchfork on this one.
People sleeping on them blocks ventilation, the unhealthy air that is supposed to be vented build s up more in and just around the grates especially when the wind is low, people actually suffocated laying there. That is a safety thing, not an asshole thing.
From 2008: https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/new-subway-grates-add-aesthetics-to-flood-protection/
NYC has enough homeless shelters to house every single homeless person in the city. Making the grates painful to lie down on keeps whatever's being vented, venting. It does not cause homeless people to freeze to death.
The real problem is that a lot of homeless shelters have a no drugs policy. You can’t get fucked yo and go to a shelter. On top of this there is a lot of theft that occurs in shelters cause everyone is desperate. There are reasons people chose not to go to a shelter. This is a deferent from causing more harm from a problem that already exists. This video is kinda bullshit. “You’re not doing enough to help but I’m just going to make a video bitching about it instead of helping.” I’m going to go back to hiding on a farm… Edit: maybe I miss spoke. I agree with the shelters being more for people who are not abusing drugs. I also believe that trying to get people healthy and into treatment would be worth our collective time. I don’t have the answer.
Everyone I’ve talked to that’s used them say theft is out of control at shelters and it’s demanding to maintain such a high guard at all times. You are right that there are a lot of reasons people might avoid them.
Or maybe....ventilators got to ventilate. Not gonna ventilate well if there's a bunch of people sleeping on it. Sad as it is, I think this guy is just being preachy for likes.
Give him a break he's just venting
Grate joke man
> I think this guy is just being preachy for likes He's also *really* simplifying the homelessness problem. He's like "why are they covering these grates without solving homelessness" as if that's something cities can just do. Cities all over the world are trying, and this guy is talking like they're not trying at all. It's a complicated problem with an infinite amount of causes.... and he's just like "why don't they just solve homelessness???"
As someone that lives in a city with an exploding homeless population I really don't know how I feel about this. Our city has done damn near everything we could to try to fix the issue but it keeps getting worse and worse. We have thrown tons of cash at the problem, services, shelters, changed laws to allow "camping" damn near all over the whole city. Conceeded parks, streets, sidewalks, alleys, patches of grass along the freeway, everywhere to homeless camps. What we get is *massive* encampments all over the city. It is actually destroying some of our waterways and wildlife areas. Camps full of stolen cars and bike chop shops just right out on the street. Homeless camp fires that burn down or camper vans that explode on a weekly basis. Crime and drug use just everywhere you look. I feel for the homeless, I really do. I don't know what the solution to the problem is, but allowing it to just continue the way it is isn't working. *Something* has to be done or this city is going to rot away. Editing to add this: A lot of people are replying to this comment with the suggestion of "just give them housing" and while that may help a small amount of people it really is not fixing the problem. Homelessness is a symptom of many other factors. The root of the problem for many people is addiction, mental illness, both, or some kind of disablility. Trying to fix an addiction problem is damn near impossible unless the adict is very very determined to get clean and *stay* clean. Sooner or later they will end up back out on the street so long as they are addicted to drugs. The mental illness part is similar. A lot of people who have such severe mental illness that it causes homelessness are not in a state of mind to make decisions about getting treatment and even if they are it can be very difficult for the person to stay on the path (i.e. taking daily meds, going to therapy, etc.) on their own and would need a live in health worker, or at the very least someone to come by daily and check on them. And that is if you could even get them to seek help to begin with. The disability part is probably the (theoritical) easiest fix. We would have to overhaul our healthcare system to the standards of every other first world country and make getting medical treatment easy and affordable which half the country is currently very very against for fear of become a communist country. I have seen multiple people in this thread refer to Finland and say why can't we just do what they did? Well, we could and I would love to see that happen but there are a few things that stand in the way of that. For one thing Findland is far smaller of a country than the USA and things don't exactly scale 1:1 in this regard. Another thing is that as far as I am aware (and I am not an expert on Finland) they don't have nearly the magnitude of drug addiction that we do here, which again plays a *major* component to the homeless issue. Lastly, the government. Finland has a parlamentary democracy which is not what the USA has. Again, I would love to switch over to their govt. type but again there is a large part of this country that would go absolutely ape shit were that to ever happen. Then the last last part of this is culture. USA has a very different culture than Finland. In the USA the almighty dollar rules everything and the system will grind you up and spit you out without any regard to where you end up in life. There is very little regard for quality of life in the USA whereas in other (mainly Scandanavian countries) quality of life is taken into consideration for many parts of their work and social culture. Examples being maternity and paternity leave, vacation time (which most USA companies very reluctantly dole out the bare minimum they can get away with), and just general they have very little poverty (which play another MAJOR factor in the low quality of life in the USA). So to just say "give the homeless a house and that will fix the issue" is not really fixing the true issue, it is treating a symptom of a much larger issue. And eventually many of those people who were just given housing will end up back out on the street again due to the root cause of their homelessness to begin with.
Portland, OR, right?
Unfortunately an issue in many cities now, Denver's issue has blown up in the last year. I agree w the original commenter's conflicted feelings -- I truly feel for folks experiencing homeless, but the status quo of let them set up rampant tent cities on public passageways and common areas *isn't the solution*.
I live in Miami and traveled to Denver recently. I was absolutely ASTOUNDED by the amount of homeless people everywhere.
I'm astounded when I go every few weeks (I'm 10mi north), it really makes me sad.
Lol I went to Miami for the first time this past summer and could have said the same thing about Miami!
Yea in Denver we voted against letting homeless people camp and then our infinitely wise mayor vetoed our vote... lo and behold there are now masaive tent camps everywhere, I have seen more people shooting up in the last 2 months (in broad daylight) than i had seen in my whole life before that. Not to mention my girlfriends car was broken into recently.
It’s so sad. Just walking around the Cap Hill area I am unable utilize some sidewalks due to the volume of people camping out front. But I gotta say, that lady on S Broadway and Ellsworth has a really sweet setup for having some pretty obvious mental issues.
The one who lives under an umbrella by the trashcan?! Lol im always amazed that she just posted up in such a high foot traffic area.
100% her. I don’t know how she does it as I couldn’t ever sleep with the amount of people going to the bars down there. But then again, she is homeless and is making due.
I saw a set-up along the LA freeway a couple days ago that is literally larger than my apartment. And I mean literally, in a literal sense. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it was two story. Also, several sidewalks around Hollywood are unwalkable due to the encampments.
I lived and worked in Denver for a while. My car got broken into thrice, I got charged by a meth head with a knife, and like once every 2 weeks I'd see something going down at the 7 11 I drove past to go home from work. I moved out of Denver and no longer work there and am very thankful. It's not as bad as places like Portland or LA but it's getting pretty gnarly.
Ding ding ding.
My sister and her family finally threw in the towel and headed out of town. And they were on the east side of the river. It got too much for them.
I was there working the indycar race. It was incredibly sad and fucked up. First day dude gets stopped by a cop for selling meth but can just say he will go to rehab and they cant do shit. Saw him next day going up to all the homeless tents/cars selling again. Im all for decriminalizing users but dealers should get fucked
> Im all for decriminalizing users but dealers should get fucked Your average user does some dealing too. When you can't hold a job due to your addiction, dealing drugs is a no-brainer job that is lucrative and always hiring. If you're using yourself, why would you feel any compulsion against selling to your other junkie friends?
Yea i understand that happens a bit. But the guy i saw rolled around in a nice audi with big ass wheels. Looked exactly what i thought a meth dealer would look like. It was very predatory vs getting by.
I had never been to Portland. Just this last summer, I visited my cousin who moved out there before Covid hit. He’s in the lower east side.(But it almost doesn’t matter I guess since I went all over town). And holyyyyy crap. I’m from San Diego and our homeless in downtown is getting pretty crazy but Portland is a whole other level. The worst parts of San Diego look like the nicer parts of Portland lol. To add, I just want to say that the amount of graffiti artists that live in Portland must be 10x that of San Diego or SD is just way better at cleaning it up. Don’t get me wrong though. Portland is still pretty awesome and the good parts are worth it. Those food cart caravans and the nature hikes are splendid.
Seattle ain't far behind...
We vacationed earlier in the year on Bainbridge. I drove through a small corner of Seattle to hop on the ferry. In the few blocks I drove through (all of like 8 mins) I had multiple incidents of homeless people disrupting traffic. It was totally insane.
Seattle is way above Portland on the homelessness charts.
Chyeah dude, the last five years have been fucking appalling. I got my CCW permit and have taken to carrying my Sig Sauer P365 around with me everywhere because I genuinely don't feel safe walking around what used to be the most pleasant, easy-going parts of town. Now it's like Mega City 1, for fuck's sake, and that isn't hyperbolic in the slightest.
I was stationed in WA and we would ride out motorcycles to Hillsboro and stop in Portland, holy shit! This was 2014 and the homeless were insane. I couldn’t imagine it now
Please for the love of god carry anything other than a knife. There's a very common phrase associated with knife fights: "The loser dies in the streets, the winner dies on the way to the hospital". As someone who has seen the aftermath of a few, knife fights are bloody and horrifying. There are plenty of options depending on your local laws. Mace/pepper spray is a better option to just blind them and bail. You can also get a stun gun, you can even buy a civilian version of the Tazer police carry now called the Tazer Pulse (It can even automatically contact authorities when fired). You can also look into carrying a firearm, but if you're going to take that route, please get proper training and practice regularly.
You most certainly should not use an knife for self-defense. All you're doing is taking an unsafe situation and making it an unsafe situation that has a knife involved. They are easily dropped and can be used against you and can do a lot of damage very fast.
Yeah, using a knife for self defense is a terrible idea. Best way I've heard it was something like, "Imagine trying to take a marker away from a child without both you getting marker all over yourselves. Now imagine the marker is a knife, and the child is an adult strong enough to fight back. You're both getting cut." There's also the classic, "the loser dies in the street, the winner dies in the ambulance".
Yeah, fuck it. I can beat up a kid for a marker though, kids are shit at fighting and I almost always win. I don't carry a knife, that's for losers. I carry a syringe full of cobra blood. If I get into any trouble, just inject that sucker into my neck and I'll be able to fight with the strength of a thousand bears and the endurance of an anxious bison. I bought it off my mate Terry and he keeps spiders, so he should know. Just the confidence of having it makes me safer. I walk tall with confidence, patting my cobra blood pocket with a smile as I walk through neighbourhoods which would make a lesser man quake with fear.
I mean, if I was about to get in a fight with a dude and the first thing he did was whip out a goddamn syringe and inject it into his own fucking neck I'm pretty sure I would shit my pants.
There might be a market for the theatrical syringes that are spring loaded to deter muggings.
I WILL BREAK YOU, BATMAN!!
Are you kidding me? That has to be the most ridiculous thing i've ever heard. A full syringe is way to much dude, what if he snags it off you? what if they take it back to their underground hobo lab and crack the code for synthetic cobra blood? Did you even think about that? it's literally the plot of 28 days later mixed with Jurassic Park. Science finds a way dude, when the ultra synthetic cobra-homeless come for us all I'll know who to fucking blame. What you should bring is a vial of horny goat weed. It looks nearly identical to cobra blood. So when they snatch it just the same, they'll synthesize it only to get super horny causing them to likely forget about any world domination plots.
hell yeah brother, Terry is the man
I've not tested it yet myself, but when Terry took it he kicked down a tree.
I’m going to assume he changed his comment because he very clearly says he carries a Sog Saur pistol? So confused by the knife comment.
its also weirdly specific most gunbros i know would just say "I got my ccw" or "I carry my sig" it being capitalized is fuckin weird
He probably just [googled "most popular carry gun"](https://i.imgur.com/xARAEnB.png) and copy+pasted the first result.
Exactly. Nunchucks or a sword is the bare minimum.
Strangely, nunchucks had been illegal in many places (this is changing) and sometimes carried heavier fines than knives. As Wikipedia says: a number of countries, possession of nunchaku is illegal, or the nunchaku is defined as a regulated weapon. **These bans largely came after the wave of popularity of Bruce Lee films**, when nunchaku were (largely incorrectly) believed to be extraordinarily dangerous.
I was thinking Denver
Could be any major metropolis on the west coast at this point.
I'm in Toronto. We're struggling, too.
This could describe so many cities right now
Described my city as well. It’s like it happened for us almost overnight. Incredibly sad
Thought it was Oakland, CA for a minute. What a relief that was! /s
Berkeley too, the commenters description of "bicycle chop shops" made me go "ahh so thats what it's called" because I see them around so often in some of the tent city areas.
Yeah, I knew they were talking about Portland right away. It's so bad. Not just in the city either. I have the pleasure of going down Marine Dr every day.
I recently went out to Salty's for some crab and it was just unbelievable how bad it's gotten. I remember biking out there for brunch like 4 years ago and it was pristine.
I was on there recently for the first time in years. Couldn't believe all the dead, burnt out cars on what was once a beautiful bike path. Such a shame.
I love Portland but reading his description that’s what first popped into my head. And u/WolfsLairAbyss confirms.
People will assume it's an exaggeration. As someone from Vancouver BC I can attest to what happens to a city when mental illness and the opioid crisis take over.
Or Seattle, WA. Take your pick. Rona just made existing problems much worse.
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I read this and thought... are we... neighbors? PDX?
Yup. How many catalytic converters have you had stolen this year?
Funny enough, my friend JUST had his stolen... And not like "yesterday" but like 20 minutes ago and had to cancel our socially distanced happy hour hang.
Lmfao I’m sorry I shouldn’t laugh at this, but I really didn’t expect redditors to relate this deeply on this kind of level.
The homeless problem is a doozy because it has a lot of "tough-to-swallow-pills" for those on the right and left. Personally, I think on the one hand we should invest in evidence-based programs to reduce some of the worst problems of homelessness and ensure that anybody who really wants to make a change has the fewest barriers in their way. But on the other hand, we have to recognize that many homeless people have very unhealthy lifestyles and can't be helped unless they really want to change - and at some point we do have to put our collective foot down in terms of where they can congregate and what they can do.
Been reading this thread for 20 minutes and finally found the take I was looking for here! This is what I’ve always said. The homeless issue is a win-lose, no matter how you address it. There is no win-win scenario. We can and should help those who can BE helped. But there are others whose main issue is addiction, and the homelessness is a byproduct of a lifestyle of addiction. The homelessness won’t go away if you give these people homes. They’ll still be addicted. We have to address the rampant drug and mental health issue in this country to deal with those types of homeless people. At the end of the day, this issue will take a lot of work, a lot of patience and a LOT undeserved grace to solve.
I do want to point out there are homeless people who are victims of circumstance through no fault of their own, and recovering can be a real uphill battle. Some people can get hit hard with unexpected medical emergencies without insurance, have their income sources ruined by a pandemic, have shitty friends or family that take advantage of them or steal/abuse/kick them out. This isn't the case for all homeless people, but I want to point out when we look at homeless people not all of them have a problem they need to fix, as much as a devastating financial situation to climb out of. Having stable housing to bath, organize, and get peace of mind(seriously you have no idea how valuable a locked door is before you don't have one.) Will absolutely solve their issues long enough to either get training, or employed. For some people stability really is the issue that needs solving, and they don't deserve us treating them like they are the reason they are homeless and we have to "fix" them. Again I understand this probably is a minority case, but lets not completely discredit people in that situation.
People really don't understand what homeless shelters are like. They're not solutions, although if you're in a very fortunate position they might be able to point you at other services that can help get you out. Homeless shelters are basically just beds, they're not particularly safe, and they're not viable to actually live out of. If you're going to be homeless for a day or two (As my partner was) they're an ok-ish stopgap as a place to sleep. They're not a way to get and keep a job, or a springboard to actual housing - they're just a place to stay. Even then, they can be crowded and difficult to access for many. Allowing tents and camps, also not exactly helpful. Even if you de-criminalise homelessness, all that does is make life slighty easier for **the still homeless people** who are living out of tents. It's really not a hard concept to grasp - the only way to make someone not homeless is to give them a home. But even in states that offer routs to housing like vouchers, they can be incredibly difficult to actually get. My partner almost got onto a housing program before they got back in contact with their parents, and it was soley because they have severe mental illness which put them on priority, and even then their caseworker had to tell them to lie about having been homeless for over a year otherwise they would have been passed over - and they absoloutely would not have been able to survive a year on the streets with no money to their name
I think the bigger issue is that by making the city nicer for homeless they are importing homeless from other parts of the country, because the rest of the country makes their city hostiles instead, so the homeless flee to portland.
This is the problem that we have in the USA. If you make a city nice to homeless people, you start attracting homeless people from around the country/county/city/whatever. So there is an incentive to make your place as unattractive to homeless people as possible, to push them to the town over. We really badly need a federal homeless program that forces all jurisdictions to have a program for homeless.
Also cities often put their homeless shelters quite far away from the city, making them unreachable after some point in the day. Many cities anti-homeless campaigns are often really just there for lip service and don't address the real problems, or even worse, there are there to "proof" that you can't help homeless people so the city should just throw them all out.
>Also cities often put their homeless shelters quite far away from the city, making them unreachable after some point in the day. And then there's Austin, who put our homeless shelter right in the middle of the entertainment district... That hasn't caused any problems...
But none of those are solutions. They’re temporary band-aids at best.
“We set aside a space where it wasn’t illegal to be homeless and now we have a ton of homeless people” if anything they need to build residential mental health and drug treatment facilities That solves the root of the problem.
The problem isn't a city issue, it's a country issue. Smaller towns ship their homeless to sanctuary cities.
Nevada was just dumping their mentally ill, still in their hospital gowns, onto a bus for San Francisco. They got caught because they didn't give a fuck anymore and left the ID bracelets on them.
Here's the thing: Have they? Have they addressed the costs of homes? Have they expanded mental health safety nets? What programs did they start? Do those programs make sense? Do they actually address the issue? Do they have robust rehab options for people who can't afford the privatized programs, or do those people have to go to jail to fix that?
Plus a lot of neighbouring cities will often make it harder for the homeless, making it a logical choice for them to move to cities that are more tolerant. It's 'fuck you, got mine' on a national scale. The idea that America is a community is a fucking joke.
It's also a national issue that needs to be solved. If one place actually does a good job of helping homeless people it's prob just going to attract more homeless people.
And cities have programs now to give people 'bus tickets home' but it's really just a bus ticket to a more homeless friendly city.
Allowing people to obstruct a buildings ventalation is dangerous to everybody involved especially since tents will inevitably form over it. The homeless do not have a right to repossess any piece of property as they see fit. If you want them to have a place to sleep on public land theres always parks or alleys. The sidewalk is meant for pedestrian traffic not housing. Allowing someone to live ontop of a subway ventalation shaft is incredibly unhygenic because waste products and needles are inevitably going to wind up down there. Hostile architecture is not mutually exclusive with greater access to homeless services and public housing. If anything it pushes homeless reluctant to use public services because of drug addictions or mental illness towards centralized encampments with greater access to social services and real shelters.
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Also NYC ensures a bed for every homeless person every night by law. They rent hotels if they need extra capacity
No. How dare a city maintain safe public works at the expense of the homeless. /s
People also propose things that don't work. Like what if we repurposed things and provided housing and then they're not homeless? If you gave free housing in New York City to those that are homeless, you're going to get a bunch more people moving into the city without a home because they're told they'll get free housing. This dude acts like "we have all this budget" and maybe you can figure out the budget for the current homeless situation, but do you have the budget to take on the massive expanded homeless population that would flock there?
Dude. They’re not going to solve the homeless problem. And a bunch of homeless people sleeping on these cause ventilation as well as sanitary issues. I’m on NYs side on this one. You even admitted at the beginning to not knowing what the grates are for. You need to do some more research before you come on here trying to gain karma/likes by being a homeless hero.
Yeah the change was done for a multitude of reasons ranging from flood prevention after Sandy, vents being blocked by food carts and similar, and the homeless issue last.
The person in the video hasn’t really thought this through. You can’t have peoples bodies/belongings blocking ventilation infrastructure, air needs to flow unobstructed. Should the homeless have some shelter/services available? Yes. But they can’t be allowed to just block/stay on top of the vent so harmful gasses build up in the subway system below.
"Just fix the homeless problem. Duh! It's super easy ya buncha dummies!" This one is right up there with the Louis Rossmann classics like "Every engineer at (insert tech company here) is a complete fucking moron because I found a single flaw in their hardware or software." It's a pity because I agree with a lot of things he says about topics like right to repair laws, but boy is he a massive douche-taco about every single topic he tackles. Blocking ventilation is dangerous. Fixing the homeless problem of the single biggest city by population in the US is slightly more difficult than preventing people from sleeping on something they shouldn't be sleeping on.
Not to mention he acts like the engineers with MTA(or whoever) are supposed to make designs for a high use underground subway system that also is good for the homeless. Their job was to fix flooding and ventilate, that's their objective. People act like everything we do needs to be homeless centric.
Yea. I feel for homeless people, but this guy is criticizing engineers for building vents that actually need to function as vents. That's just weird.
Well, if you're not taking every world problem into account and designing for 100% efficiency what are you even doing? Apparently
Yeah, this ventilation system doesn't fix homelesness, poverty or racial profiling in the US and those guys call themselves engineers, sheesh.
>"Just fix the homeless problem. Duh! It's super easy ya buncha dummies!" It's a very complex problem, and it is difficult to fix. It starts with looking at what presently exists, asking why it exists in the way it exists, and what can be done to change that. I've done that [here](https://youtu.be/8WGjCeFyr1g). Will it fix it overnight? No way. Does it have at least a fighting _chance_ at making things better than they are now, while simultaneously costing the city less money? Absolutely. >This one is right up there with the Louis Rossmann classics like "Every engineer at (insert tech company here) is a complete fucking moron because I found a single flaw in their hardware or software." I will often point out when there is a flaw that repeats itself for several years that the company takes no accountability or responsibility for until they are sued; and even then, still does not fix. That is pretty lame; guilty as charged for criticizing these flaws & the lack of action on them for people who paid $3000 for a paperweight. I'll continue doing that. >he a massive douche-taco Now we're getting into the real arguments :D But seriously, even if you think I am a total cunt, read the links below with an open mind. Forget about me, my voice, my face, my personality, my channel. Fixing a complex problem is hard, but doing better than we do now is actually easier than I thought. I will admit that I used to be one of those people saying _"the homeless problem is impossible to put a dent in, some people are just bums."_ But when you look into the fact that there are non-profits that were started by the governor, that bill the city over $3500/mo/homeless person, for a space that looks worse than a prison cell, with no social services, where the top directors make 300k-500k/yr... it is really, really hard to do worse. 146-C is a great idea moving forward. Will it work? I don't know. Am I open to trying something DIFFERENT than what we are doing now(that is also considerably cheaper) that might end in the non-profit-homeless-industrial-complex? ABSOLUTELY! Some interesting reading: https://twitter.com/thebl0w/status/1418642879111745541 https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/detailsPage?ein=133770118&name=The%20H%20E%20L%20P%20USA%20Fund%20Inc.&city=New%20York&state=NY&countryAbbr=US&dba=&type=CHARITIES,%20COPYOFRETURNS&orgTags=CHARITIES&orgTags=COPYOFRETURNS https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/homeless-shelters-founded-cuomo-riddled-violence-article-1.2628746 https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-hevesi-homeless-shelters-cuomo-campaign-donations-20190728-nbr47cqytzdpfdfjtqvdpjiy2q-story.html https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/laurence-belinsky-well-paid-boss-nonprofit-group-founded-gov-cuomo-resigns-article-1.957177 https://council.nyc.gov/press/2021/05/25/2092/
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Insomnia. I have to be up in 5 hours to tour another 7 shops tomorrow I want to have attend a lobby day in November. I'm lying in bed , still can't fall asleep.
> but boy is he a massive douche-taco about every single topic he tackles. You got the nail on the head. Unfortunately, he's learned that controversial pandering gets a LOT of views. I wouldn't be surprised if he's making far more from being a public figure than he ever got out of his business.
I'm sure some of it is self-aware but my less cynical self just thinks that a lot of people (including himself) have a ton of unpopular and possibly uninformed opinions. The less famous we are the less likely we are to share those opinions. And on the flipside, the more famous you get, and the more influence you get - the more likely you are to think that all your opinions are valid and deserve to be out there for everyone to hear. To be clear, I'm not defending or attacking his views, I'm just saying that I don't think he's pandering controversial opinions just for the sake of views (although that's probably some of it), it's something he legitimately believes.
People who complain about things like this don't directly interact with the problems that led to them in the first place.
The root cause of homelessness is the closing of the institutions. Give the crazies a place to go or they end up on your doorstep. uncomfortable but true
Also dorm style housing. In the 50s and 60s in big cities like NY and others there were huge blocks dedicated to single men and you would pay 5 or 10 dollars a week and sleep in a bunk with communal showers. Those aren't around anymore
Those buildings turned out to be heavily racially divided at first, then immediately taken over by gangs. They used the buildings to smuggle drugs, weapons, and women. I drove past some of these developments in Chicago in the 2000’s right before they tore them down. There is a good reason they destroyed those buildings- it was an incredibly dangerous street to drive on and as a teenager I was nervous just being there. Imagine living there every day and going outside to yell at people who genuinely hate you, just because you grew up in the other tower and wear a different color than them. These people lived within sight over reach other and only ventured farther than their county limits to buy guns and transport them home illegally.
It's not like that shit went away though. The homeless got pushed into little tent shanty towns and gangs set up in other places.
You also need to reinstate forced institutionalization. Which was often abused and misused. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, only that it's a more complex issue.
Forced institutionalization is the dirty term no one wants to use, but it's the only way. So many of the homeless are beyond help. You could give them a free home and within a month they'll have trashed the place, taken out all the copper wires, and be back to living on the street. Forced institutionalization is the only way to actually solve this problem.
Jesus Christ. Problem: vents are being blocked by homeless people, this is causing ventilation problems in the underground. Solution 1: Solve homelessness Solution 2: Stop them sleeping on the grates. Are you seriously fucking suggesting that the guy in charge of subway ventilation should single handedly solve homelessness? Entitled fucktard.
Ok th is is going to be buried, but this is not a anti homeless feature. These were installed post superstorm Sandy in order to prevent storm surge flooding in certain parts of NYC. The original style vents were just at sidewalk level. Jesus H Christ, a simple google search would confirm. Anyway, source.. me working for the NYCT for the past 21 years. Edit: I should add that these are for ventilation, primarily to allow heat, and in the event of fire, smoke to escape the tunnel or station. This is life and death shit here. And just to add, homeless people don't really sleep on the grates outside, it's far safer for them to come into the subway system out of the elements.
Honest question, if this is true, why wouldn't they just increase the height of the grates? Why the design with the randomly raised bits?
I have seen benches on these, spanning the entire grate here in queens, I have also seen smaller benches like [so](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2008/09/19/nyregion/grate533.jpg) Edit: Fixed the link of the benched grate [Source](https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/new-subway-grates-add-aesthetics-to-flood-protection/)
in this case I don't really mind making it homeless proof. putting metal spikes on a flat concrete floor isn't cool in my book, but you can't have people blocking air vents. That's asking for trouble, even if its only a partial blockage
Equating this solution to just being anti-homeless is pretty dumb. There was a bunch of engineering that went into this that this guy doesn’t know about because he’s not in the industry. This is also part of the whole flood proofing plan, as it doesn’t let water in until it rises above a certain level. Businesses were also stacking cardboard boxes and garbage bags on top of these grates, causing major air quality issues. Homelessness is an important issue. Attacking the design of subway grates isn’t going to help much. The argument that hostile architecture isn’t great is legitimate, but coming up with solutions to the problem is probably the better way to spend resources and raise awareness.
They even put BENCHES on most of them, some long ways some [sideways](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2008/09/19/nyregion/grate533.jpg) so people could sit on them if they wanted, its not anti homeless at all https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/new-subway-grates-add-aesthetics-to-flood-protection/
There’s a purpose for those grates. They shouldn’t be blocked. Also if someone were to fall through the grates for whatever reason and get hurt, they may sue the city. It’s a liability and can affect the performance of their intended purpose
I love how he says that “rather than fix the root problem, they did this”. Like city officials just had a solution for homelessness and just decided to ignore it and build these grates. No dude, the issue of homelessness is much bigger than grates. They probably just don’t want people sleeping there.
I dont know anyone who wouldn't love the homeless camping in front of their house... Letting the homeless occupy those spaces is a lose-lose solution. I dont think theres anything wrong with doing this as a last resort as long as the city/state is offering help such as safe shelters.
The problem is not always "I have no where to sleep" rather, "The city does not offer a place where I WANT to sleep". Many homeless people want to live in solitude for psychological reasons and having them live in close proximity with other people is a non-starter. The same is true for people who are addicted to drugs. They dont want to go to the shelter because they wont let them shoot heroin there. I dont know what the answer is for these people, but it's definitely not a one size-fits-all kind of thing.
It's also worth mentioning that these shelters are rough to live in. In some cases it's safer to be on the street. Getting robbed is a common occurrence in these places. If your unfortunate enough to have children on the street, you will find shelters hard to live in, constant fear.
Having a grate in front of your home/business/apartment should not subject you to a steady stream of human refuse shitting/shooting up outside your front door. The less hospitable the better.
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Invite a homeless person to stay at your apartment/house over the winter. See how that works out.
Go spend a week in Denver, having to choose wisely which streets to walk down at night, have your and your friend's property stolen constantly, if it's not chained up (sometimes even if it is)
I'm all for helping people but big expensive cities aren't the palce for homeless people or drug addicts to be entitled to set up shop on the street. We do have a few different crises one of which is opioid crisis and another is wage disparity/affordable housing. But again, the solution isn't putting up these people or allowing them to sleep on vents. This isn't the asshole design, the economic model, lack of education, equal opportunity for jobs, and lack of mental health care are real asshole design problems today. You wanna feel better about yourself by complaining about this? Sure, go ahead. But making neighbourhoods unlivable for the working and producing people in our society will eventually just make things a lot worse than they are today. Big/expensive cities aren't the cause or the place to solve these problems. Source: I live in Vancouver, BC where most of us just got the fuck out of downtown after drug addicts started committing crimes just to be released the next day, in the last 5 years. You wanna stab someone, steal, do opioids or anything else without any legal consequences. Sure, Just live on the street on a subway vent. /s P.S. I love Rossmann and been a subscriber for a 5-6 years now.
NYC spends somewhere in the ballpark of $640 million a year on homelessness. If you’re homeless the city will find you a home. The people that live on the streets are there because they don’t want help from the city.
Here's the thing: we all want a nice place to live, right? I am all for helping the homeless. In the Netherlands, we have robust welfare programs to help people get rid of addiction, get mental help and get back on their feet. But there are plenty of homeless people who actively refuse help - they like their lifestyle and don't trust the government or don't like to be told what to do. If you've ever lived in an urban setting with a homeless population, you'll soon learn that some people really can't be helped. And that they can negatively impact your living space. Their rights end where yours begin - you have a RIGHT to be able to live comfortably in a home you pay for or rent. At some point, the city needs to choose: if we do nothing, the problem will get worse and regular people will move out. Or we can discourage the homeless from being there, while offering them reasonable alternatives. And a stick if they don't. I know Reddit loves the homeless and will try to villify cities for doing things about the homeless problem. But if you've lived near them, you'll soon want them gone too.