The COVID pandemic resulted in a profound change — temporarily at least — in the way that homeless citizens were treated world-wide. Was it because communities were overwhelmed by a concern for their less fortunate neighbours? Or was it because the homeless represented a vector for delivering the disease into fine upstanding homes and needed to be isolated from contact with the housed and righteous? Some of both, perhaps?
The winding down of COVID prevention measures, has seen homeless people returning to the streets, in many, if not most, jurisdictions. There’s also rhetoric to suggest that public attitudes about the homeless have hardened — a feeling that callous and ungenerous treatment of the most vulnerable in society reflects a new and darkening mood.
More likely it doesn’t reflect a hardening of community hearts. Instead, it is nothing but a same-old same-old attitude that may have prevailed for centuries. Solving the problem of homelessness requires uprooting attitudes that are ingrained in society. As the United Kingdom is finding, it’s easier said than done.
Read more about the enduring scope of this problem and the intransigent attitudes towards change in The Guardian: Thousands of homeless people arrested under archaic Vagrancy Act
While America has its own legal history of ‘criminal sleeping,’ it’s possible that that country may not need to re-employ any heavy hand of the law. That is, if a recent trial antidote for the problem proves successful.
Horsewhipping? Tar and Feathering? Heavens, no! Much worse — classical music! Not perhaps the ideal solution for quiet neighbourhoods, but nonetheless a hot new technique for discouraging rough sleeping in public places.
Read more in the New York Post: LA blasts classical music to drive homeless people from subway station
