There always was and will be, homeless, vagrants, bums, drifters, con-men, destitutes, poor, nuts, rugged individualists and wackos.
It's really hard to sort out individuals and their unique circumstances when you're in the unenviable position of making policy/rules to cover the non-mainstream crowd.
We (notice: we, meaning the general consensus from which you may opt out), want a safety net to catch the people who are in need. But we don't want the net to become a comfy hammock.
We don't want to be played for a sucker by people using the safety net as an entitlement, just another resource to supplement their income, or a reason not to try help themselves.
We perceived so much abuse of the welfare system, at least anecdotally, we're skeptical of everyone claiming to need help.
Logically, the best place to make individual assessments is on the local level, one on one, if you will. So they tried that, and found giving that money and power to some people, created petty power brokers that abused the system and the people it was supposed to help.
Then the pendulum swung back to making hard and fast rules at the state or federal level. That doesn't work either....every case is different and any time there are strict rules, there's a back-alley lawyer figuring out how to play the rules for their benefit.... beat the system. Of course, these cheats are the ones that make the papers, rather than the ones that are truly helped.
Brianna and Wolf described a group/behavior pattern that will always be a problem. There's another problem group, that they'll never see (professionally), because it avoids
any contact with
any institutions if it can.
In a democracy, you can't help people unless they want to be helped.
The trick is to provide help to those that want and need it, without being conned..... or enabling failure.
No. I don't have a solution.... just trying to clarify the problem.
Food in the park or food at the shelter?
There will always be some individualists that will go hungry and some that will never go hungry, either way.
It appears Vegas is being petty with a specific rule to thwart one samaritan, but this woman is throwing a monkey wrench in their program. Whether their program is sound or has a hidden agenda is beside the point. It's
their plan to handle
their problem and she doesn't have the right to screw it up. If she wants to change it, there are avenues for change, but if she wants to buck the system she has to be willing to pay a price, as all protesters have done.
