This is from the city where it’s illegal to be homeless. One man even collected over $100,000 in fines for being homeless.
Yeah, that’ll help.
Man that sounded wild to me, so I dug around a bit and it’s fucking true. Although the amount is closer to $110,000 it’s still insane.
Hey, we heard you can’t afford a house, so we’re charging you fines in the amount of what it would have cost to buy a house…we’re so cool! We solved homelessness! Because now if you want to be homeless, it actually costs more to NOT buy a house. So you may as well just buy a house!
We did it guys! We ended the concept of homelessness! High five!
I mean why don’t the homeless just buy a house? Are they stupid?
Have they tried just being rich and buying their own building to sleep in front of?
Maybe it’s their broke mentality that’s the issue bro stay on the grind 🔥 💯
Something something bootstraps and avocado toast?
we’re charging you fines in the amount of what it would have cost to buy a house
Oh how I wish I could buy a house for that kind of money. You should go look at what housing costs in Canadian cities.
The prices are ludicrous and the salaries are a lot less than our US counter part.
It’s funny because during the Covid, at the start of the latest housing bubble, we saw so many people saying “it’s easy, just move to a place where it’s affordable just like I did”. People have done that, and now even in bumfuck nowhere it’s expensive and people are now complaining that their bumfuck nowhere has become too expensive for them.
Shit’s fucked yo.
If you can produce $110k in fines you can probably also pull off a downpayment and at least a few years of payments. If you can’t buy a house that’s still several years of renting.
$169k https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/27687505/158-douglas-avenue-fredericton
Although the being sold “AS IS, WHERE IS” is a bit concerning. Flood risk maybe?
It’s in Fredericton. It’s so tiny, I don’t know if I can even call that place a city.
Fairly common for older houses.
I’ll be selling mine “as is where is” in a few months. Nothing wrong with it, just don’t want the liability. Buyers will have an inspection and then make a decision on whether or not to buy it from that report.
Bought for $80k, put a ton of work into it, and will be selling for ~$250k, stair stepping into what we really want. (Also, USA, not Canada)
Yeah, it was from awhile ago. I couldn’t remember if it was one or two hundred thousand. I’ve corrected my comment to be more accurate. Here’s an article on it.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-homeless-man-100k-fines-1.3473707
Aaaah, I love living in a capitalist hellscape
What happens if the man does not pay? Will they put him in jail?
Canada does not have debtor’s jail. Nothing will really happen except that more fines will keep racking up. No collection agency is going to take on a homeless person’s debt, so eventually those debts will just disappear, assuming he makes no effort to pay them off.
In the meantime, if he tries to escape homelessness, it’s a lot harder nowadays to find an apartment with a landlord that doesn’t check your credit, and 100k+ in unpaid debts looks really bad.
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In the ultimate act of irony… Maybe they’ll put him in a house.
It’s not “being homeless” that is illegal, though. It’s drinking in public, begging or sleeping in the metro. And it sure is tough not staying in the metro during winter. There are some organisms that can provide shelter, but not enough for everyone, and it usually cost a couple dollars, which not everyone have everyday. And it’s a real problem on both sides, as the metro was not meant to become a shelter for the homeless, and people have been complaining more and more they feel unsafe there.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” - Anatole France
Sure “being homeless” isn’t the crime itself but you’re being naive if you don’t think the laws make homelessness illegal. What are they supposed to do? Go find a piece of land no one has claim to and freeze to death?
And what are we supposed to do? Legalize all drugs and being drunk in public just to avoid having to fine them, and install beds everywhere in the Underground City (and in this post’s case, in emergency stairwells at the Complexe Desjardins) with no regard for their regular use?
Sure, let’s work on proposing more accessible legal alternatives. Just take note that these laws weren’t created to punish the homeless, but to have a clean and safe public space - which have been degrading for some time now.We could just house them. That seems to work.
They would be less easy to exploit! And to whom would we feel superior? And what would be the punishment for not obeying our
lordsbosses?!Feel free to host one of them in your home.
That sound pretty much like the “If you’re poor, just buy a house” people.
I think you don’t know much about Montréal. There are solutions already in place to help homeless people who want to go out of the street, but the housing crisis is pretty new and it will take years to solve. It wasn’t so bad a few years ago.It’s actually nothing like that at all. What you’re describing is putting a societal problem on the shoulders of individuals. What I’m suggesting is that society should actually fix the problems it has created.
Every place that has taken a “housing first” approach has seen success out of it. But people insist on making the problem more complicated than it is, because we’ve built an entire society on the false idea that poor people somehow deserve to be poor and anything done to help them is somehow unjust.
You might not be aware of that, but there is what we call a “housing crisis” right now. There is not enough place to house everyone, and there are not enough construction sites to fix the problem rapidly considering the recent increase in population. It will take years to adjust. You can’t just make a bunch of apartments appear out of nowhere. Doesn’t matter the policy you apply to distribute them.
And about social housing, yeah, everybody likes that. It’s more a matter of government inefficiency rather than a lack of will from the population.
And what are we supposed to do? Legalize all drugs
La Maison du Père costs 1 dollar a night, and they’ll let you in if you explain that you can’t pay the $1.
Some just don’t like shelters. They don’t like the rules, other people, or fear getting their stuff stolen.
Which orgasms provide shelter?
Organisms, and probably that kind of beast that Luke Skywalker cuts open and uses for a sleeping bag to survive the cold.
“And I thought they smelled bad on the outside…”
As someone else said, there is La Maison du Père that provide (almost) free shelter.
Otherwise, there are provincial, municipal and private orgasms that help as they can with some services for reinsertion. Like the “L’Itinéraire” magazine.
The SPVM (police department) are also there to help during interventions with people with mental illness, in crisis, or to give references for some government’s services. During great cold they are often outside to distribute goods and coffee. They don’t just give fines.The Tauntaun beast
Here they made being homeless illegal so they can force people into shelters/mental help/rehab/etc.
Much better than letting them shoot up heroin in parks all day.
What a fucked up country.
I mean every country has it’s problems but jeysus wept.
Unhoused? Has homeless as a word been banned?
Not sure about Canada, but in the US:
Homeless = no permanent residence, which also includes couch surfing, parents and children who just fled an abusive family member and are temporarily ltaying with friends or relatives, and people who are living in their car. All people without a home.
Unhoused = homeless people that don’t have a roof over their heads. Might include living in a car.
They are synonyms. Please don’t make things up.
Edit: to all the knee-jerk downvoting. This is literally a quote from an article the user himself supplied as proof that there is a difference.
Unhoused is probably the most popular alternative to the word “homeless.” It’s undoubtedly the one I see most often recommended by advocates. But it doesn’t have a meaningful difference in connotation from the more common term, “homeless.”
It’s literally just a pc synonym of homeless.
They are not. I work with data collections on students and have had to explain the difference to people who don’t understand that a kid who is kicked out of their home and is staying with friends is homeless even if they are not out on the street for federal reporting.
Homelessness defined in law: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/11302#
A more thorough explanation that contrasts the terms: https://invisiblepeople.tv/homeless-houseless-unhoused-or-unsheltered-which-term-is-right/
And what’s the definition of unhoused according to law? You aren’t wrong in what you just said but its missing the point, unhoused literally means the same thing. The goverment only uses the term homeless if I’m not mistaken.
Unhoused is probably the most popular alternative to the word “homeless.” It’s undoubtedly the one I see most often recommended by advocates. But it doesn’t have a meaningful difference in connotation from the more common term, “homeless.”
That’s a quote from the link you just gave.
And what’s the definition of unhoused according to law?
Amazingly enough, most words aren’t defined in law!
Do you think Cornell defining homeless but not unhoused might be a hint that they are synonyms?
Not to mention you brought up the legal definition of homeless without offering anything to compare it to and help your point. That is the sole reason I brought it up.
You gave me a definition of homelessness, which doesn’t counter what I said in the least and then gave me a article that sides with me (and then ignored it completely when I pointed it out) so I’m a bit puzzled.
But I guess sarcasm is easier then admitting you are wrong.
Do you think Cornell defining homeless but not unhoused might be a hint that they are synonyms?
That is quoted US statute, made available in an easy to access format through Cornell, not Cornell defining anything.
You gave me a definition of homelessness, which doesn’t counter what I said in the least
I gave you an article that discusses the terminology and how it is used for context that differing terminology is no inherently all different names for the same thing. It doesn’t define anything, it just makes it clear that there can be differing terminology that means different things and that the whole thing is a complicated topic. That is why I linked the article, not to prove definitions that don’t exist because the terminology varies in usage and consideration of importance.
But I guess sarcasm is easier then admitting you are wrong.
Any statement of how words are used will be wrong somewhere, except for things like the quoted law that is true in the context of written law in that country/region/whatever. There is always local or regional differences in usage.
So I am right about how we use it in our context to explain the concept of homelessness in the legal context even if some other people think it is a synonym, but thing other terminology has an important distinction. That is what I said, and if you can’t understand there isn’t a black and white defined terminology for all the variation then you aren’t getting my point.
I think the idea is to put the responsibility for housing onto society/authority as opposed to the victim.
Doesn’t homeless imply its society’s fault too?
Perhaps to some people, but to me it does sound like a homeless person just happens to be without.
Whereas an unhoused person has been let down by whoever is responsible for ensuring people are housed.
I dont see how. If anything, its just a matter of time until you see houseless as being their fault. Because the baggage is something you (and society in general) is adding. Its not implicit in the word itself.
I’ve been using it a couple of years now and I’m not victim blaming yet.
But I guess “a matter of time” is pretty open ended.
I tell you what though, it’s a personal choice, so you keep saying homeless if you like.
Welcome to the euphemism treadmill
In the US they mean different things, as homeless includes people living in other people’s homes. That can include people whose house just burnt down and are living with friends or family because they lost their permanent residence (home). Unhoused is about where they are staying.
People on the street are homeless and unhoused.
And you really think people use and understand these terms like that?
You may be correct in the academic sense, but completely wrong in all other senses.
Are you suggesting that the incorrect terms should be used to cater to those of you that don’t know there is a difference? Even if you were unaware that there is actually a difference, was the intent and meaning of the headline lost in confusion, or did you understand exactly what they meant?
The “correct” term is the one the target audience understands to mean what is happening.
The “difference”, again, is academic. They are de facto used interchangeably. Did the author know the difference? No idea. Could anyone tell, which group the people in question belong to? Probably not.
So what exactly are you trying to achieve here?
So what did you think unhoused meant? Did any meaning get lost?
That’s the thing: You can’t know that.
We don’t know what was meant, we don’t know what happened.
So the autistic insistence on nitpicky details adds zero clarity to anything. It’s inherently unknowable.
He isn’t correct in an academic sense. They are synonyms. Unhoused is being used because homeless has negative connotation to it.
Language has power. You’ll notice successful effort on the right to get pundits to refer to Oil as Energy. Oil has negative implications, energy has positive. Homeless has negative implications for the person, unhoused has negative implications for the government.
There’s also the difference in how the word is used more as an adjective than a noun. In the same way calling someone a disabled is a lot more dehumanizing than saying they are a person with a disability.
What about the people who work there? Are they trying to make them quit then become homeless and leave the mall too?
According to the article, it plays in the emergency exit stairwells, a place that if you’re using it you should be trying to leave as quickly as possible.
If I was escaping a fire, and the stairwell had baby shark playing, I’d walk back into the fire.
I really don’t want to die with Baby Shark being the last song I hear
Descending the stairwell to escape a fire during the “Run Away” verse could be funny
No they are supposedly insane already.
Icecream van
We can solve homelessness once and for all by making every part of civilization just suck as much as possible. If literally no part of our society is capable of supporting safety and life, then all the homeless people will just move along
Homelessness? Oh, you mean unhousedness! Many of them are also unreadful and non-jobulated.
What’s the point of your comment?
Not to speak for them, but likely that the meteoric rise of the word “unhoused” as used in the title of this post is a ridiculous trend. Homeless people need shelter, not a new and supposedly less offensive word to describe them. Not to mention “unhoused” does not even sound even remotely nicer than “homeless.”
What’s with the wording of this title? “Unhoused people” instead of “Homeless”/“Homeless people”
It’s like the difference between calling someone wittless and uneducated.
One implies that’s just how the person is, the other implies a failing of society/family.
I like the word unhoused, it implies they should just be housed if they are homeless. Everyone should be housed, even if they don’t own a home
A home is an abstract thing, a house is a quantifiable object.
Also it kind of implies that society should provide a house for them.
Homeless and “actually sleeps on the streets” are different things.
If you are crashing on someone’s couch then you are housed but still homeless. It’s a bit of a dilution of the usual meaning of homeless but it also emphasises that housing is very precarious for the homeless.
It’s another one of those whack a mole words people are pushing. Once everyone gives in and we start using unhoused, it will suddenly switch to uninhabited because it’s racists to houses or something!
It’s annoying as hell, because instead of fixing the issues we’re mastrubating about words and alienating people that we need to fix the issue.
I heard a really good explanation of this on NPR. Homeless is a label put on a person, similar to saying a person is a redhead. The implication of saying that someone is homeless is that it defines who they are, that it cannot be easily changed.
Unhoused is more descriptive of the situation that a person is in. This is a condition that can be changed, it isn’t who the person is.
As I revisit this and think it through though, it seems like another way of pushing the goal. There are absolutely negative connotations with the word homeless, but the same venom will eventually attach to unhoused as well.
My highschool did this with classical music to make us fuck off after school was over. Jokes on them in into that shit
Everyone likes at least some classical music, most people are far too cool to admit it though.
Growing up I absolutely did not like classical music. Turns out it was the recording (bad micing of the orchestra) and mastering (the old "super quiet, super quiet, super quiet, briefly louder, super quirt thing). For mastering you could claim you’re being true to the original performance (lots of dynamic range), but when you’re listening to a live performance that’s all you’re doing and there’s no background noise.
Turns out I do like classical music, I just really didn’t like the way it was recorded and mastered back when I would be exposed to it as a kid.
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Lmao they thought you were being spicy🤣
Doesn’t this violate the Geneva convention ?
How so?
It’s a joke. The implication is that the repeated playing of Baby Shark could be considered torture, other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment and punishment.
Homeless people aren’t POWs though, doesn’t it only apply to POWs?
yeah it’s completely legal to torture people so long as you don’t call them your prisoners
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Dude, I’m not saying this is a cool and good thing to do lol, fuck them for doing this, for real. It’s that the Geneva convention has to do with stuff relating to war and a lot of the things people say violate it often don’t. Like people will say that tear gas is a Geneva convention violation but it actually says tear gas is allowable for controlling prison riots.
I just wish people would point to actually relevant documents when criticizing people for their misdeeds if they’re bringing up documents. The truth is we shouldn’t need some document to criticize this action. It’s inherently disgusting. It distracts from the point when people bring up irrelevant things like the Geneva convention.
It’s just a joke you dingus. Don’t take everything so literally
Bullying now, very cool, very original. 😎👍
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Homeless people aren’t POWs
The War on Poverty has been waged relentlessly and mercilessly for decades
I’m not supporting the displacement of homeless people lol, I’m just saying we shouldn’t bring up the Geneva convention as if it’s relevant when talking about the displacement of homeless people.
This is an unnecessarily pedantic take over something that was obviously a joke.
Yeah, I’m so fucking sorry that I tried to explain myself so I don’t sound like an anti homeless conservative.
At least its music, though this does confirm that Baby Shark is something they’d have played at Gitmo if it’d been around 2 decades ago.
I have been to many places where things like these are everywhere:
Imagine this but diesel powered, a bit chonkier, and they just emit this high pitched scream (there are other versions called ‘mosquito alarms’), and has extremely bright, blue strobing lights that will induce seizures in anyone susceptible.
JFC, the cruelty really is the point…
I always feel an urge to sabotage those things when I see them, were only they not covered in literal cameras
IR LEDs + Disposable, thick framed novelty glasses
Clothes you can toss or donate
Ingress and Egress method about 1/2 mile away from target, different locations and methods for each.
Ability to sprint for 10 minutes
Above average situational awareness
Do not bring your phone
Don’t return to the area for 3 months
I mean yeah I reckon I could if I really wanted to but that’s a lot of effort to temporarily disrupt surveillance of a random walmart parking lot
Oh if baby shark had been around two decades ago…
They have one of those outside the Home Depot in DC playing classical music to pacify all the day laborers hanging around hoping to pick up work.
Just in case people do not fully grasp the amounts of "doo"s in this song:
Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Baby shark!
Mommy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Mommy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Mommy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Mommy shark!
Daddy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Daddy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Daddy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Daddy shark!
Grandma shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Grandma shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Grandma shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Grandma shark!
Grandpa shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Grandpa shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Grandpa shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Grandpa shark!
Let’s go hunt, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Let’s go hunt, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Let’s go hunt, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Let’s go hunt!
Run away, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Run away, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Run away, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Run away!
Safe at last, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Safe at last, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Safe at last, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Safe at last!
It’s the end, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
It’s the end, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
It’s the end, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
It’s the end!
I love that song doo doo doo doo doo doo.
The last two verses on repeat are I think my new sound track to the end of times
That’s a lot of doo doo
I mean, this will keep me away too, and I’m “housed” and even occasionally legitimately go to malls with money to spend on things. You play even one loop of that song and I’m Swayze.
I am willing to bet most people going wouldn’t even notice because it is only being played in emergency stairwells. Glad it made the news, this shit is infuriating. However, I believe most people agree with it, even if they won’t admit to it.
Dirty dancing.
Road House
The article says the music is played to keep the emergency stairwells empty. If you haven’t lived around unhoused before, they can take up a lot of space with their belongings and can be pretty unresponsive.
Exactly the kind of thing you don’t want in an emergency stairwell.
Honestly if the owners of a building CAN’T keep the emergency stairwell clear then the building should be shut down for everyone for safety reasons.
Yeah, if this were a problem with teens they would likely threaten to trespass them.
Jokes on them. The homeless loitering are veterans that lost their hearing in the wars we’ve been fighting since 2001.
In Montreal?
40,000 Canadian troops were in the US war in Afghanistan from 2001-2014
Interesting case of military tatics in a civilian settings. First Decide is blasted at the Vatican embassy, then born in the USA is looped at Guantanamo Bay, now this
- Fuck these greedy, utterly insensitive, bastards.
- Malls are generally owned by large corps in the business of owning malls. Anyone know offhand who owns this one so I can avoid their other properties?
- How many “housing first,” programs could we run using a year of the company’s profit?
- I love the baby shark song. It would take months for me to get sick of it.
Some of the remixes are real bangers. Like the one where they do the Finger Family song and mix in the baby shark song chef’s kiss 😘🤌
Fuck the people who work there, amirite?
Yes, that is the basis of the economic system.
Ah that’s a joke… Ah hahaha. puts away rubber socks
Feel like that’s just the message of the “Baby Shark” song. A big “Fuck You” to anyone unlucky enough to hear it
You mean those who work in the emergency exit stairwells?
