Wow… Both other people who commented here are fucking heartless.
The man was just trying to help the homeless people and keep his neighborhood safe
The relative said Housman was trying to settle an argument between two homeless campers on Clinton when one of the campers stabbed him in the throat.
While many residents were nervous and wary of the homeless campers, Housman had a different approach: to make the neighborhood safer, he appointed himself “sheriff” and began to screen homeless campers and then provide them with support once they gained his approval.
During our interview, another neighbor pulled up, claiming that Housman provided electricity to the homeless campers.
Ya’ll are dicks. Read the article. He was a good dude and epitomized the exact shit you espouse. You don’t want cops involved… you want the community to police itself and do good. This guy was doing just that. Doing way more to help these people than you do.
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Should he be expected to provide electricity to a meth lab?
How many homeless people do have math labs in your area?
Someone’s got to crunch those numbers.
Well if it’s just a few, I suppose I can provide them with electricity, no questions asked.
He should have opened a soup kitchen if he wanted to help. He can’t appoint himself sheriff (and it’s a bad idea anyway considering how police were basically created to keep the poors in their place, which would make homeless people naturally distrustful of them), and more importantly the idea that they have to “gain approval” to be worth helping is a red flag. I’m not saying it’s okay that he died. But he put himself in harms way and I cannot say I’m surprised.
It’s always easy to talk about this shit when it’s not your street that’s sieged by countless people, some of them aggressive, some of them with severe mental illness and a danger to society and themselves. You say the homeless were “naturally distrustful” and yet through reading the article, the reaction among them was “he’s hitting Kenny, what the fuck?” and to get them off him ASAP. You know jack shit about the person or the situation yet you immediately judge them through a lens of your own imagination of the situation.
It’s been my street. Literally I grew up in Germantown PA, and have lived in Seattle long enough to have had a whole ass homeless encampment living outside my apartment building and going through our dumpsters. Breaking into the building in order to have somewhere warm and dry to sleep. You don’t get to pretend I don’t know what I’m talking about just because you’re mad that I don’t have sympathy for a man who literally put himself in harms way using untried methods to make himself judge and jury over vulnerable people.
I’ve walked past people in the goddamn hallway with needles in their arms. I’ve literally had to interact with people who are high out of their minds, their speech completely unintelligible because they can’t get meds they need and they’re using street drugs to self medicate. Homeless people are vulnerable people with a whole host of problems including having the live outdoors. Making them “pass tests to gain the approval” of a man with literally no authority over anyone just because he caged the wording to say he wanted to “help” doesn’t change the fact that he did something dangerous and he paid for it with his life.
I don’t have sympathy for a man who literally put himself in harms way using untried methods to make himself judge and jury over vulnerable people.
he did something dangerous and he paid for it with his life.
He tried to help keep his community safe by treating poor, disadvantaged folks like human beings.
Hey but you had to walk past addicts, so we all know you had it worse, and clearly have the moral high ground 🙄
You’re missing the part where it was only the ones that met his approval that he was willing to help. I don’t agree with it when actual aid nonprofits do the same and I don’t agree with it when some random does it either. If you want to help the homeless you take the good with the bad. Drugged out people need food and water too. If they’re a danger to themselves or others that doesn’t fall under the jurisdiction of one random guy.
Ok, so you’re not allowed to try to help people unless you help everyone. And if you’re just a regular person doing what you can, you’re actually in the wrong and deserve to be stabbed whilst trying to break up a fight. Gotcha. Great point, dude.
Did I say that? Where did I say that he deserved anything. Your whole argument is predicated on my having said something that I very explicitly did not say. If you’re upset that I don’t feel sorry for him, I’m gonna direct you to the loads of people out there living on the street who I do actually feel sorry for because that is a failing of our society. This guy though? I don’t have any bad feeling towards him. I’m just not surprised.
If anyone wants to help there are dozens of organizations out there with the benefit of checks and balances to make sure people get a fair shot at help and they need volunteers and paid workers all the time. Instead, this man chose to be a homeless camp’s HOA. You have a good day though.
you are mistaken. a self-appointed gatekeeper getting in the middle of a violent argument between desperate people doesnt make a good guy. the context you highlight provided makes him look more like a clueless, self aggrandizing busy body than anything else.
And his name was, Housman?
You can’t convince me the universe doesn’t have a morbid sense of humor.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !nominativedeterminism@feddit.uk
for anyone who comes and does not click on the article note that sheriff is in quotes. He actually is not as bad as it may sound from the titel. Basically he was fine with and understood the homelessness and even helped but only if they were basically respectful and not otherwise breaking the law. I sorta undersand where he was coming from but not necessarily the smartest thing to do. Its somewhat akin to confronting gangmembers. Gonna paste a quote here:
"They just see a motorhome. They think, oh no, homeless, crime, drugs, etc. They don’t see Tim, who I think works, I’m not sure, but he won’t steal from them or anything else. They don’t see, I don’t know Jim very well; old man Steve, living on Social Security, needs a place to stay,”
Locals reacted to the original story of “Imma screen these people and keep the bad ones out” with “That doesn’t seem wise… good luck with that!”
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