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A California town is paying its homeless to clean their encampment sites

Cool. I suspect that the homeless don't necessarily want to live with all that garbage either and appreciate a way to deal with it. Seems like an inexpensive win-win.
 
Here in Salinas people complain about how full of trash Chinatown (our skid row) is, then object to the city providing trash receptacles or dumpsters.

.
 
The literal mountains of garbage I've seen at various homeless encampments suggests otherwise.

The program in the article sounds like a great use of funds and if the result is clean encampments, that's even better!
 
Abacinator said:
The literal mountains of garbage I've seen at various homeless encampments suggests otherwise.

The program in the article sounds like a great use of funds and if the result is clean encampments, that's even better!
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And surely much cheaper than hiring a company to do it, or having city workers do it. That is, if it is actually effective.
 
Abacinator said:
The literal mountains of garbage I've seen at various homeless encampments suggests otherwise.

The program in the article sounds like a great use of funds and if the result is clean encampments, that's even better!
Click to expand...

It is stunning how in just one week, as we ride the local trails, an area can go from immaculate to absolutely trashed.

Sadly, I'm not expecting a response from the major who is a personal friend of my daughter and her husband and who I've met at parties.

Like most politicians they seem to prefer to pay lip service to the problem given half a chance.

City workers would love the idea of course as would Citizens.
 
Not a bad idea. But allowing homeless encampments in the first place is the reason why. They need to be given a place better.
 
MysterYvil said:
Here in Salinas people complain about how full of trash Chinatown (our skid row) is, then object to the city providing trash receptacles or dumpsters.

.
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Both of our camps in Cupertino had full size dumpsters on-prem

Still mountains of trash everywhere.

They just evicted the one and downsized the other.

EDIT: I like their model though.
 
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While this sounds interesting, and I'm curious to see how it goes, I'm dubious of creating financial reliance on a problem you're trying to eradicate.

In other words, this may decrease trash in some encampments but will likely lead to more trash generation (albeit in trash cans) and potentially additional trash in otherwise clean areas.

This makes me think of the rat problem during the industrial revolution in London (or NYC, I can't remember). They paid people to kill rats and when the rat problem began to disappear, people started importing rat carcasses to continue to get paid.
 
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Sounds good in theory. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.
They’re going to pay them in cash, without having bank accounts?
Unionized city employees don’t see this as threading on their turf?
 
According to the article they're paying them in gift cards that can be spent at local groceries on anything except alcohol and tobacco products.
 
GAJ said:
I forwarded the article to the mayor of Santa Rosa.

Why is this not a "thing" already I'm not sure.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/10/us/c...ing-homeless-to-pick-up-trash-trnd/index.html
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Well, one of the political problems here is that if you start making regular visits to the site to run the program, you have to accept the encampment as something stable in that location.

This tends to create friction with the associated voting block in that area, depending on how your City is run, that can be a problem. In a small City where the Mayor is GodKing, it is easy to do. In larger Cities that have area City Supervisors or a Town Council, all those persons are potential rivals in the next Mayoral election and committing to a stable homeless camp in their region can spark a bloodfeud with voters who want the camp rousted and displaced anywhere else.

Shaggy said:
So they’ll spend it all on scratchers then?
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Don't lottery items have to be Cash Only? I know you can't use a credit card to buy Lotto tickets, but maybe you have to treat a gift card as cash?
 
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Shaggy said:
So they’ll spend it all on scratchers then?
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No. They'll trade em for booze.

It sounds like it might be worth a try. I'm a bit skeptical that people who, by en large can't hold a job, would actually by effective on a ongoing basis.
 
bojangle said:
No. They'll trade em for booze.

It sounds like it might be worth a try. I'm a bit skeptical that people who, by en large can't hold a job, would actually by effective on a ongoing basis.
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Not to mention the endorsement that people can live wherever they want and the crime that follows their lifestyle.
 
[political content removed by mod]
Anyway, just my humble opinion.

Edit by mod: Your humble opinion needs to contain less politics when it's not in the Poli-forum. Thank you.
 
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