I am basically saying that if you target a group for collective punishment, despite some members being innocent of the offence for which you are punishing them, then you are immoral and unethical to a degree exemplified by the worst societies in human history.
This approach bothers me. You frame the expectation of safe and clean communal use of communal property as being a punishment to those who do not maintain that cleanliness, and who increase risk to the public by the way in which they abuse those communal properties.
You frame the desire to collectively punish a group of people, based on an identity that is neither unlawful nor immoral, as "the expectation of safe and clean communal use of communal property", so frankly I suggest that if "framing" is problematic for you, you might attend to your beam, rather than my mote.
Hassling innocent people, purely because they are members of a villified minority, is utterly despicable.
Excusing that harrasment, by claiming a desire for cleanliness, is straight out of the ethnic cleansing playbook.
Obvious vile bigotry is obvious.
You continue to object but do not propose any other option to make people safe.
Even if it were just a matter of cleanliness it would be legitimate--littering is illegal.
However, it's a matter of safety. People do not feel safe around homeless encampments.
The option to keep people safe is and has always been to place the burden on small communities to house their smaller homeless populations.
The only way to address the problem is to minimize the number of homeless that end up being forced into such camps.
The reality is that homeless people's rights to exist is real, and the minority demands of those who feel "unsafe" over their existence does not actually sit atop any sort of "right".
If you wish to be unhappy over what you perceive as a threat to your safety, be angry at all the small towns and municipalities that sent them along "to the city".
You can blame the foster programs that send a kid along with nothing but a single bus ticket when they turn 18.
You can blame the small town parents who put their kids out the day they graduate high school.
You can blame the cities who turn out such encampments, stealing or destroying people's stuff, making them even more desperate and dirty and sad.
You can respond to this feeling of blame with the demands for spaces and policies that guarantee housing (especially in small towns) for newly graduated teens, or teens who have lost the support of their parents.
You can respond to this feeling of blame with demands for programs that will allow such people to seek employment with virtual addresses on any given street, and access showers where they can get themselves clean regularly.
You can respond to this blame with demands for spaces where the weight of the encampment can be counter balanced by immediate presence of social services, and purpose-built places for homeless encampments to precipitate in a more planned way, so that the issue can be handled "ergonomically" rather than tents just popping up in the hidden parts of various parks.
There are all sorts of ways to respond to this issue, but none of them effectively involve "making them someone else's problem". They all involve recognizing the reality of a problem here, now, that must be handled with kindness.
The fact is, behaviorally, there's very little difference between the average "homeless drunkard" and my mother in law, and every one of those differences is marked with a $. All you have to do is take away the money she didn't earn for herself anyway, and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. At that point, she would just be yet another racist drunk with too much time on her hands. I just spent a weekend forced to share a house with her, as she spent every evening ranting about black people whenever she got her hands on more than a single glass of wine.
