
Why Is Amazon's Generosity to a Seattle Homeless Shelter Such a Pain? - wallflower
https://slate.com/technology/2018/05/amazon-gives-seattles-marys-place-free-food-and-real-estate-and-is-a-total-pain.html
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always_good
Wow, so the shelter is basically complaining that it's a PITA to unpack and
transport free shit.

When you read about companies that just chuck out food instead of donating it,
you can kind of see why.

> In addition to the downtown location, Mary’s Place operates six other
> shelters in Seattle, serving individuals and families with 680 beds each
> night. But Amazon didn’t deliver the food to the other Mary’s Place
> locations, nor did the shelter consistently set aside additional resources
> to distribute the donations each night, according to four sources.

Amazon is the bad guy because they only donated to 1 of the 6 shelters.

> But Amazon is the fifth-most-valuable company in the world, with one of the
> richest men on the planet at its helm, leaving little doubt that the company
> could be doing much more to ensure that its local philanthropy isn’t making
> life tougher for people on the front lines.

Bizarre hit piece.

~~~
cryptoz
> > But Amazon is the fifth-most-valuable company in the world, with one of
> the richest men on the planet at its helm, leaving little doubt that the
> company could be doing much more to ensure that its local philanthropy isn’t
> making life tougher for people on the front lines.

> Bizarre hit piece.

Do you really disagree with that paragraph though? It is not an opinion
paragraph, it is just a series of statements of facts. Doesn't seem like a
"hit piece" at all to me.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _it is just a series of statements of facts._

It is a selection of facts intended to present an act of philanthropy as a PR
liability. Systemically, it is why most restaurant groups throw food out
instead of donating it. The latter should be the default move. But if donating
invites more criticism than disposing, guess which one is incentivized.

~~~
cryptoz
I don't agree with your analysis or analogy at all. Donating can be dangerous
and it is important to recognize that and address it. It is on both the
citizens of a place to vote for politicians who will make laws that makes it
easier for restaurants to donate. A corporate giant like Amazon should take
donations serioualy and carefully.

I don't understand at all how this is anything remotely like a hit piece. Have
some compassion for the homeless who everyone here, Amazon and the newspaper,
are trying to help.

Could Amazon do more, as the quoted paragraph suggests? _Yes_.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _It is on both the citizens of a place to vote for politicians who will make
> laws that makes it easier for restaurants to donate. A corporate giant like
> Amazon should take donations serioualy and carefully._

Non sequitur. Nobody is discussing legal risks. Just PR ones. If I own a
restaurant, and donating produces negative press, problems I would not have
had to deal with had I defaulted to not donating, I'm going to be incentivized
against donating. This piece isn't designed to help, and it doesn't help.

~~~
cryptoz
> Non sequitur. Nobody is discussing legal risks. Simply PR ones.

What? This _is_ a legal concern! You brought it up and it is a major legal
concern across nearly all of America!

> This piece isn't designed to help, and it doesn't help.

You are wrong. More people are aware of problems they weren't aware of before.
That is usefuuand that is helpful.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _You brought it up and it is a major legal concern across nearly all of
> America_

What is the legal concern I brought up?

~~~
cryptoz
Restaurants donating extra food to the homeless is strictly illegal across
much of the USA.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
When did I bring this up?

In any case, this point is irrelevant. Businesses donating food isn't illegal
in Seattle. Here we have a business donating food in Seattle. There is no
legal concern. But they'll wake up to a PR itch on Tuesday. That problem would
not have happened if they hadn't tried to help. The disincentivisation
remains.

------
djrogers
I’ve worked at shelters and commissaries, and this is pretty much the norm.
I’ve met some amazing people who would spend their time working through stuff
like this joyfully, because they remembered their goals instead of turning
into entitled complainers. Yeah, it sucks at times but the alternative is a
lot worse.

If you manage to wade through the article to the end, they even point this
out, illustrating it with a different charity who appears to either do a
better job or have a better mindset and experience about food collection.
Sounds to me like Mary’s Place should spend some time learning from their
peers rather than lashing out like this.

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protomyth
_They described a dynamic in which a nonprofit that benefits tremendously from
its connection with its wealthy neighbor tolerated major logistical nuisances
to the detriment of its staff and clients. And they described a relationship
that seemed to prioritize optics over a thoughtful approach to philanthropic
giving—resulting, in other words, in the kind of pains that an entity as
wealthy as Amazon could easily afford to fix._

Suck it up. That is exactly the relationship most non profits have with
government and NGO grants. You adapt and keep the mission in mind. Is it
frustrating? Hell yes, but at the end of the day you have people to help. I
admit to visiting a bar after every government site visit and some of
directives failed the logic test so badly I screamed at the sky, but you
persevere or get out.

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strken
I don't think it's a hit piece, so much as it's [https://blog.jaibot.com/the-
copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...](https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-
interpretation-of-ethics/)

~~~
amha
That blog post is really, really worth reading.

"The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or
interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very
least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem
worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem
falls on you as soon as you observe it. ... I don’t subscribe to this school
of thought, but it seems pretty popular."

~~~
tomtimtall
Interestingly there is part of this principle intergrained in the tupilak
culture surrounding homeless in the city of Copenhagen. most people do not
donate money to homeless beggars because they would like these people to have
a better life. But shouldn’t they be giving them some money then you ask?
Nope, because giving them money just makes it possible for them to stay
homeless, if they run out of money and run out of food, they are forced to
seek out the shelters which have social workers that can get hem into the
system and help them get back on their feet. Most people on Tage street today
fall into two categories: Drug users who avoid the system because they find it
easier to keep using drugs outside of the support system, and (I kid you not)
homeless people transported to Copenhagen from Eastern European countries by
gangs who skim their beggings.

Neither of those groups are helped by you taking on only an infiticimal part
of he problem and giving the poor person a dollar. So if you want to actually
help them you either give money to shelters, help support initiatives like the
homeless paper, or volounteer.

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avoutthere
Clearly Amazon should stop giving to Mary’s Place.

~~~
kerng
Maybe they should be genuinely concerned about the homeless situation in their
neighborhood and help address it, rather then creating feel good videos to
show how awesome they are. I doubt even their employees think the current
status quo where they live is acceptable.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Corporations aren't going to solve the problem. It's the government's
responsibility, but you'd probably need a federal program, not a local one, to
ensure that generous cities aren't overwhelmed by homeless people moving there
from less generous cities.

Of course, short of the Democrats controlling both houses of Congress and the
presidency, that seems rather unlikely to happen (and even then it's far from
guaranteed). Certainly the GOP doesn't seem very concerned about this issue.

Now, what could _help_ is relaxing zoning enough to build more housing, thus
making housing itself cheaper. With cheaper housing, something like Salt Lake
City's Housing First program would become more feasible.

But that would probably require ending Seattle's USA-standard segregationist
zoning to allow more density in more of the city, and doing that is fraught
with peril, politically. People are used to the government enforcing a certain
lifestyle in their neighborhoods, and don't like the idea of the market
letting in more people, especially people considered 'undesirables'.

~~~
JasonFruit
Why do you say it's the government's problem? I'd be interested to hear what
underlies that assertion.

~~~
TulliusCicero
The free market has no incentive to solve the problem. Charity is nice but has
limits in terms of scale. The government is the only entity that could
feasibly implement a housing guarantee or something close to that.

~~~
whb07
Charity is a free market component. A person willingly chooses to donate
time/money/effort to a specific group they like directly. If the government
were to do it it would be person -> taxes -> different levels of government ->
gov program. As you can imagine resources are burned up through the levels and
because every party is so far removed from each other they don’t act with
proper ownership. Nor do they care.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Charity may well be more efficient, but without the powers of taxation and
regulation, it can't hit the scale that the government can.

If charity could solve the problem, it already would've.

~~~
zo1
Let me quote you from one of your other responses: _" My help comes in the
form of taxes I pay. I'm willing to pay more if it means people get housed."_

If you're willing to pay more above the taxes and do so, you're already part
of the solution and you're already performing charity without the need of
government.

If you convince enough other people to do the same, then you're good to go and
you'll have enough funding to solve the problem. Unfortunately, as with
everything government, you actually want/need to use it as a big stick for
more taxes or for tighter regulations when people don't behave the way they're
"supposed to".

~~~
TulliusCicero
> If you're willing to pay more above the taxes and do so, you're already part
> of the solution and you're already performing charity without the need of
> government.

No. I'm willing to pay a large amount to go towards public housing as taxes,
but not as charity. The distinction here is that it coming in the form of
taxes ensures that everyone (or at least everyone able) is also paying their
fair share, and that we'll have enough for a substantive impact.

I don't have much interest in putting in extra while homo economicus types get
the same benefits of living in a society with fewer people homeless while not
contributing.

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kerng
Seems like what you would expect from Amazon, that's how the handle their
business partners. Their way, or the highway. This has little to do with
philantropy, it's just a calculated attempt to look good.

------
tomtimtall
It’s Wierd that a lot of the complints are phrased “weren’t told”. It makes it
sound suspeciusly like the shelter people didn’t even ask and are now
complayning that Amazon did not work proactively to invalidate their wrongfull
assumptions. Like “I can’t believe they didn’t tell us before we got there
that there would be 40 crates today!? Yesterday was only 5!?” If we where
talking regular retail the first thing I would ask the person would be “Well
did you ask them or just assume, if the latter then it’s your fault not
theirs”. The same goes for refrigerator space. If the shelter only has space
for 30 crates, well then did they tell that to amazon? Or did they just tell
them “we’ll take however much you’ve got!” Assuming that they would never get
more than 30 crates? Then naturally amazon is expecting them to clear the 40
crates even if they means he shelter suddenly has to throw out 10, because
that’s the deal they struck.

I mean a lot of their complaints really come off as them being horrible at
logistics and communication and whining that Amazon isn’t fixing this for
them, but they honestly can’t do that. Just like they can’t fire the bad
employees or volunteers or purchase more refrigerators that they can’t even
know they need.

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andrepd
Hah, "generous". A thoughtless approach, completely out of tune with the real
needs of the institution, causing big disruption, but _of course_ nevertheless
closely filmed, beautifully produced in a feelgood video, and diligently
advertised.

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jrnichols
it almost comes across as if they want to be operating as a subsidiary of
Amazon instead of receiving donations.

I wonder how many donations/etc they get from other places and how it's
handled.

Logistics with donations and NGOs has long been a headache, though. This isn't
a new thing.

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tzahola
[http://archive.li/oiALQ](http://archive.li/oiALQ)

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holografix
Wow getting a “Agree or piss off” GDPR message. Pretty sure that’s not ok.

~~~
ceejayoz
Why is that not OK (on a legal level, not a moral one) for a US corporation to
do?

~~~
notimetorelax
In the world of global trade many countries abide by US regulations, e.g.
European banks go great lengths to abide by US tax law. GDPR is but one
example where this works in the reverse.

There are ways for US companies to be exempt from it, and what slate does is
not one of them.

Edit: Digging a bit deeper, Graham Holdings, owner of Slate, have European
presence. So they might care to be compliant.

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throwaway98109
I'm an Amazon SDE, fairly new to the city. Hence I'm part of the problem,
according to the narrative of those on the anti-Amazon side of all this.

What is the single best thing I can do to help this problem? Volunteering my
time to help a shelter? Paying money to the support it? Influencing my company
to change? What are some ways that I can help solve these problems at scale?

