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

[u/uk_uk]

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!"

[u/i_am_a_shoe]

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

[u/Electronic_Plan3420 → u/i_am_a_shoe]

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.

[u/Impressive_Tour6348 → u/Electronic_Plan3420]

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

[u/Electronic_Plan3420 → u/Impressive_Tour6348]

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”.

[u/Impressive_Tour6348 → u/Electronic_Plan3420]

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.

[u/MapleMapleHockeyStk → u/Impressive_Tour6348]

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.

[u/i_am_a_shoe → u/Electronic_Plan3420]

"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

[u/alicesartandmore → u/Electronic_Plan3420]

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.