So since you're neither evil nor mean-spirited you'll be opening a soup kitchen at your place?

I personally don't rate the "right to cheap and tasty fast food" very high on the big-picture scale.

Bravo! Bravo! Thank you for saying this! Whatever happened to social policies that accomplished multiple objectives?!

While you're talking about opening soup kitchens in homes, as some sort of analogy to doing it in public parks, just remember that the people closest to being "at home" in the public park are the homeless.

It's very easy and fun to criticize others and not stick out your own neck, isn't it?

Right, when you talk about "the homeless" just remember how they got "homeless" to begin with.

Who would choose a lifestyle of homelessness?

Actually, my answer is to set up a regular free meal truck at the Norristown Farm Park. ;) Maybe even leave a case of Jiffy Pop behind, so they'll start fires at night.:rolleyes: Duh right back at ya.

The answer? Well, I don't have the means to feed them all in my home, and I have too much compassion to kill them, so it would be somewhere between the two. Maybe provide facilities (oh no! collectivism!) where they can satisfy the base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If that's all they want, so be it. If they want more, they can find a job, but they won't need a job that would cause a $15 McBurger, because their basic needs would be met.

BTW, if homelessness isn't caused by un- and underemployment and untreated mental illness, what does cause it?

Maggie, why are you so against helping people? If it's the cost, it would be alot cheaper to help these folks than it has been to develop the Osprey. How about we use some of that cash?

I'd say that the local homeowners are the closest to being at home in the park. They effectively have a soup kitchen being set up in their backyard.

But that's the whole point, there are facilities provided, just like there are public parks provided. Except the public parks are being usurped for other purposes.

But if you feed them they lose the ability to survive in the wild without handouts. They become dependent on people to survive and when winter comes and the tourists go home, they will suffer horribly. Well, that's why You shouldn't feed the critters in the National Parks, anyway. Most of the people they kicked out, when they closed the PA State Hospitals, some years ago. These people need help but the courts have ruled you can't help them against their will. They can't be locked up unless they're dangerous to others....being a danger to themselves, doesn't count.

I've no first hand experience, but everything I've read says the shelters are generally hell holes. Your life and possessions are at risk every night you're there. We saw some of that in New Orleans where the people were tossed into the dome without supervision. Of course to make the shelters safe, you would have to run it like a jail or at least a strictly controlled dormitory. That would drive many of the homeless away, just as fast. Catch 22?

The same thing applies to any kind of structured employment, no matter what you pay. Certainly not all, but a large portion of the homeless, don't want a regular job....nothing with rules.

It's much easier to be compassionate when it's not your backyard, and doesn't create problems for you. But, if these homeless people were drawn, by the good samaritan, to the playground your kid uses, it's much tougher,...... much, much tougher. Even if you stand watch over your kid the whole time they play, you don't want Aqualung sitting on the next swing.

Aside ~Public Park, owned by the city. Public property, right?
All the public or just legal residents of that city and their guests? Who owns it, if the residents of the city paid for it? I can remember, as a kid, being shooed out of a park in a town where I wasn't a resident, for that very reason. Of course when you're a kid raised in a climate of respect for authority, legality isn't questioned. :D

Whereas the homeless effectively have one being set up in their home.

You're pretty lose with the word "help", there, Scooter.

You may believe a handout is "help", and you're welcome to hand out all of your stuff that you like if you really beleive it's helpful. But since at least the Johnson administration I've seen way too much welfare state accomplish exactly nothing (other than providing employment to the useless apparatchiks that run the programs), while robbing people of their initiative and self-respect.

You can claim it's "help". I'm not convinced. And you're certainly not entitled to despoil a public park to do it.

Exactly...you're prepared to spew glib allusions as to how a civilized society would already set the minimum wage so anyone making it could live comfortably...fed, shelted, medical care and some unnamed "amenities" provided (Cable TV? Cellphone service? Crack cocaine? What?)

But you don't even know how much that would be...there's no limit to your largess with employer's money in setting the price for unskilled labor.

And don't you run with the same crowd that tells us how our economy can't afford to do without the illegals who work for less than the prevailing wages?

Whom are you addressing?