Storied Streets

Homeless people are just like everybody else. The vast majority don't have substance abuse or mental health problems; they're just people who can't make ends meet, most often because of low wages, expensive housing, and catastrophic medical care. The system of caring for the chronically homeless isn't working; we need to start with helping people get back into housing before they become chronically, long-term homeless. Our society dehumanizes the homeless, and that makes it easier to treat them poorly, even abuse them. Repeated failure to solve the problem results in "compassion fatigue" and leads to criminalizing homelessness, which doesn't solve the problem and is harmful to homeless people.

YouTube-type video clips show teens kicking a person lying on the ground, throwing bottles at him, and urinating on him. Other clips show setting a man's hair on fire, attacking and pinning a man sleeping on the streets for fun, and a few clips of fighting from the Bumfights video series. Witnesses mention they've seen homeless people being beaten with a baseball bat; set on fire; robbed; urinated on; and having food, drinks, and urine thrown on them. A man says he was beaten, stoned, spray-painted, and urinated on when he was homeless. A teen mentions stealing occasional snack foods while he was homeless so he wouldn't have to ask for money. A man mentions he thought that dying would be better than suffering more humiliation or having to face the next day.

Once or twice each: "f---ing," "s--t," "piss," "bulls--t."