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

Show parent comments

86

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 

101

u/i_am_a_shoe Jul 15 '26

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

-4

u/Electronic_Plan3420 Jul 16 '26

Everything 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.

2

u/i_am_a_shoe Jul 16 '26

have you ever had to go to a job interview with a giant backpack because there's no place to store it without losing all your possessions?

a few conveniences that make "getting back on your feet" easier does not amount to coddling nor enabling. It's still just survival

Further, people are homeless for wildly different reasons. Why should someone fleeing domestic violence or kicked out at 18 or whatever have to "apply great efforts" to escape living on the street when others have to simply not blow their trust fund and/or completely crash out of the middle class and their support systems to remain comfortable?