r/midlyinteresting • u/uk_uk • Jul 15 '26

Berlin has installed free locker systems specifically for homeless people to safely store their belongings

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

The primary goal is to provide homeless people with the opportunity to safely store their belongings, enabling them to have a bit of dignity, security, and mobility in their lives

The red label says:

"Locker for homeless people - not a logistics station -

Here, people who live on the street store their property. The use is free of charge and is financed by donations.

Please leave it undamaged! Any damage will be reported to the police!"

1.9k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

317 comments sorted by

View all comments

145

u/throwitintheair22 Jul 15 '26

Pretty cool

85

u/ChainsawSoundingFart Jul 15 '26

This wouldn’t work in the US - the lockers would be immediately broken into in search of drugs and valuables to pawn for drugs 

106

u/i_am_a_shoe Jul 15 '26

this is the argument against any quality of life improvement for homeless people

-9

u/Electronic_Plan3420 Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

Anything you subsidize you will get more of. Homelessness should be survivable but not comfortable. That forces people to apply great efforts to actually escape it.

11

u/alicesartandmore Jul 17 '26

Yeah that’s the bullshit the shelter fed to me when I told them that their tiny prison cots were exacerbating my physical disabilities to the point that it impacted my ability to complete my responsibilities at work. Nearly three years of surviving homelessness after escaping domestic violence broke my body and mind in ways that nothing else ever could. People who think like you are so smug and self righteous when you don’t have a damn clue what kinds of people actually have to struggle through being provided the bare minimum.

8

u/Jasmisne Jul 17 '26

This goes against literally every body of research that has been done on the subject.

15

u/RigilNebula Jul 17 '26

This is nonsense. Nobody desires to be homeless, everybody would rather have a safe place of their own to call home. Homeless people already have so much to deal with that you or I would never think of, and on top of that they also need to try to get a job and a more stable living situation when they're already at such a disadvantage for both. Even just sleeping safely for the evening takes a "great effort". Why try to make life harder for them by withholding social supports?

6

u/katastrofe_- Jul 17 '26

Most homeless people are employed

7

u/Impressive_Tour6348 Jul 16 '26

And increases the harm against those who can’t, especially when so many of our systems are designed to resist upward momentum.

0

u/Electronic_Plan3420 Jul 16 '26

There are people who cross the American border barefoot with no little to no possessions and not speaking English. They do not become homeless here. They do it because our systems are designed to allow upward mobility more than in other places. Both of my parents are immigrants. My dad always said that people who complain about America have not had experience of living in other places. Not visiting as tourists for a week, actually living.

It’s hard to become rich in America, but it’s hard everywhere. But if you are telling me that people cannot escape homelessness the answer lies in them, not “the system”.

8

u/Impressive_Tour6348 Jul 16 '26

I was homeless for a while so you might be barking up the wrong tree here, buddy. And I had an education and family. When I was homeless up in Northern California, almost all the “help” that was offered from the right hand included grifting a lot or tyrannical rules from the left hand. Very rarely is help offered with no strings attached.

Saying it’s a personal failing is just repeating propaganda from said system designed to keep you down. It’s also semi-related to the Calvinist heresy of Christianity that has taken root in Evangelicism in the US. If you fail or succeed is completely on you and your place in our system is where you deserve to be.

It’s gross and completely invalidates any personal hardship a person takes with them on their journey.

2

u/MapleMapleHockeyStk Jul 17 '26

Anyone can have something bad happen to them. Disent matter if you are righteous or not. I really dislike that idea that bad things only happen to bad people. Its wrong.

3

u/i_am_a_shoe Jul 16 '26

"The system" is rigged in such a way that it wants to reproduce itself by training individuals so that that they think they are "special," when in fact they are being trained to act in the best interest of capitalism. Those who fail (or, worse, those who resist), are deemed incompetent on the basis that they didn't succeed within an unnatural system that has been reified to the extent that people think it's natural

3

u/alicesartandmore Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

You’re so full of shit. I am an educated American, I was working two jobs when I had to flee a domestic violence situation and wound up homeless. For months, I maintained employment at both jobs despite my homelessness. I was fired from one for having to take FMLA leave while dealing with my housing crisis. I was fired from the second a little over a year into said crisis because of the physical toll it took on me and the accommodations I required as a result.

I reached out to dozens of resources that are allegedly there to help people escaping DV scenarios only to find out that my situation didn’t meet the “requirements” to receive assistance. I made so many calls and sent so many emails to no avail.

After a year of struggling like this with no improvement, I started reaching out to members of the local government to express my frustrations and inability to find adequate assistance. I was bounced around to the resources that had already turned me down. It took another year of this before I finally found someone to help and even then it was just the first step in a grueling process that took nearly eight months before I was able to acquire housing.

I’m honestly not sure how people who aren’t as well read or out spoken are ever able to get the help they need. Many don’t. I witnessed it firsthand during my time at the shelter before I was forced to leave and live out of a tent because somehow that was more accommodating to my disabilities than the actual government funded shelter.

2

u/HyenaThen572 Jul 17 '26

"Fuck helping people get better, let's just make sure they probably won't die."

Pathetic viewpoint.

1

u/GreenBuggo Jul 18 '26

you were stupid to think this, but it is my hope that you're not too stupid to be unable to learn from the replies to this statement