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I disagree, not all renters are like this. Many renters take pride in their home and yards. It really comes down to the individual not renting vs owning.
You're right and it's not a slam against renters, but the crime rate is lower in communities with a large number of owner occupied homes, there are numerous studies on it and when I worked in law enforcement it was readily observable.
Oh please, many homeless are lost causes from their own choices and many even choose to continue to live like that. The ones who ended up there through no fault of their own are the ones that try to do something about it. The others? Not so much.
That is very true, a lot of them choose this, and that's the reason I will not give them money.
There are a number of sites that show statistics on cities with high homeless population, and there are differences in each one, probably because of how those stats were compiled. The one below lists the top 10 cities with the most homeless population, although Phoenix is not on the list, I wouldn't be too surprised if it were in the top 15 or 20.
I lived in Phoenix 15 years. Some homelessness there, but don't remember it that much when I drove around. Here and there. San Diego more pronounced when I visited there.
"Thirteen percent of all homeless people in the United States live in New York City. The city has a large number of homeless, but only about 4% of them live on the street, according to HUD. Homeless people in New York are legally entitled to shelter, but because of a lack of shelter space, the city has been spending millions of dollars every year to house the homeless in hotels, the New York Times reported."
Only 4% live on the streets...imagine how much more livable cities like Los Angeles would be if only 4% of the homeless lived on the streets. No one cares if you give the homeless money or not, it doesn't matter if you think they want to be homeless and it doesn't matter why they are homeless. What matters is that we acknowledge that the homeless are not going away so the choice of local government is either to house them or tell residents to get used to stepping over sleeping bags on their way to work.
It's telling how homeless people are being spoken of as if they're vermin rather humans who are facing immense challenges few of us could even imagine. Is money and luck what determines human status?
I've lived in a very nice medium sized city in this country. High education levels and high average incomes. Huge social safety net for the homeless - enough so that the homeless deliberately moved to that city because the benefits were so good (I heard them talking one day). Huge pill and alcohol issues. I saw the homeless standing in small groups just inside the door of a public building trading pills. I had to go into that building and went through another door. The homeless had their own campground set up on the edge of the town and are regularly handed camping gear to get by but spent most of their day sitting in the in-town parks and sleeping on the benches. The drunks are referred to as "chronic inebriates". The regular vehicle break-ins are referred to as "pilferings". The feces and occasional sex acts that are witnessed in store doorways are brushed aside. One day I was walking from meeting to meeting in town and the same homeless person asked me three times over the course of a few hours if I had any money to give him. The city turns a blind eye for long periods of time, uses euphemisms to try to minimize the impact, and then throws money at the problem when the pressure mounts to do "something" about them.
Your observation has some merit. I don't think of the homeless as "vermin" but it's hard to feel sorry for them. Plenty of us have faced immense challenges in our lives. Plenty of us. We all have our stories. We've all had our heartaches, tragedies, disappointments. Not all of us have forced our challenges onto the communities around us.
We haven't made our public spaces into violent, dangerous, filthy, sh^tholes. We haven't forced the community to spend tax dollars trying to alleviate the consequences of our decisions. We don't make our communities feel endangered. We don't lower property taxes of hard working home owners.
When life kicks us in the ass we work through it. We fight to regain our lives. We contribute to our homes, our families, our communities, our country. Because that's what responsible adults do. I'm not heartless. I know that there is mental illness, addiction issues, and that not everyone has the strength to be able to pull themselves out of bad situations. I will gladly help anyone who wants to help themselves. Any way I can.
But you can't help anyone who doesn't want to help themselves, and many of these individuals have no desire to live any other way. And I'll be damned if I will feel sorry for anyone who consciously chooses to live this way while imposing their nasty-ass, disgusting decisions on decent, hard working people who are just quietly trying to live their lives.
The map in the link shows homeless are dispersed quite a bit in the area with significant concentrations in Mesa and Chandler - both R run cities although I think that distinction is bullcrap on the part of the OP.
Yet you also are the first to whine and complain about them building camps on the streets interesting
Where did I "whine and complain" about the homeless "building camps on the streets"? If I mentioned something to that effect I was only stating the truth, not complaining.
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