Probably. People don't like to see the homeless around their nice little neighborhoods so they come up with all sorts of weird laws to harass them with.
I visited Los Angeles a couple of years back, one of the first places we went was a McDonalds. Some guy was dozing sat at a table (with a coffee in front of him). A cop came up to him and told him he'd be reprimanded if he caught him napping like that again.
In all my life living in the UK I've honestly never witnessed something like that. It may seem minor, but seeing an armed cop come up to someone and reprimand them for dozing off? I have no idea why a waiter couldn't have dealt with that. It's not like the McDonalds was even full or anything.
On top of this, the advertising boards saying stuff like "No homeless shelter in our community, keep it safe!" was just completely lacking in compassion.
I think a lot of people out there just don't see homeless people as deserving of empathy. At least, that's the impression I get.
I also find it profoundly ironic that America is supposedly the "land of the free", but you can get arrested/in trouble for:
- Drinking in public (even in parks or at the beach)
- Sleeping in public (apparently)
- Jaywalking
- Eating on public transport
I just don't understand all these weird and arbitrary rules they have out there.
> I just don't understand all these weird and arbitrary rules they have out there.
But you live in the nation that invented the ASBO.
> - Drinking in public (even in parks or at the beach) - Sleeping in public (apparently) - Jaywalking - Eating on public transport
These are local laws, not federal, so not universal across the US. And in all of the places around the US that I have lived, these sorts of laws are rarely enforced (at least not as a primary offense).
The "land of the free, home of the brave" quote came from a lawyer moonlighting as a poet watching actual brave people fighting in a war. It was catchy enough to become the national anthem 120 years later (after being used in the military for 30 years or so prior), but don't confuse that opportunistic indoctrination with reality.
It has nothing to do with anything, nothing to do with any legal reality, nothing to do with the constitution, the structure of the government, the declaration of independence from the UK, life in practice within the US, or any comparison to any other developed nation at the time it was written (1812) or now (2021). American exceptionalism relies on completely ignoring countries with Human Development Index or rights that are at parity or better, and relies on hyperbolic comparisons to the worst countries in the world.
Hope that helps you understand your experiences here! Without context, the cognitive dissonance (confusion from competing ideas and observations) can be very confusing!
The UK is far from immune to this type of behavior.
"The Vagrancy Act was passed in the summer of 1824, which means it is now just shy of its 200th birthday. And if it held any relevance then, it certainly doesn’t now.
At its core, The Vagrancy Act is a way to punish people “in any deserted or unoccupied building, or in the open air, or under a tent, or in any cart or waggon, not having any visible means of subsistence”. Essentially, it criminalises homelessness. For homeless people, both begging and rough sleeping are things out of their control, and the Act does little to get to the root of why people are homeless in the first place."
