Help For the Street People

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2025. A new year. A chance for new beginnings. Can this be the year that we finally get serious about doing something about the people living on the streets, in the subways, in doorways, parks, and on bus benches? Enough already. These people weren't born on the sidewalk.

They were born to mothers who, for the most part, loved their little babies and wanted the best for them. They were born innocent human beings who had their whole lives before them. Their future held endless possibilities for a good, healthy, normal life.

Now here they are, wallowing in their own filth and endangering the health and wellbeing of the entire community.

This is America, the richest nation on earth, not some disease ridden back alley in an unpronounceable city in an unpronounceable third world country. Hell, there are third world countries that don't have the street people problem that we have been living with all these years.

By the way you'll notice that I don't call these people "homeless." I don't use that word because the term implies that all they need to be normal, productive citizens is a place to live. That is a stupid liberal misconception. These people don't need affordable housing, they need mental institutions and rehab facilities. They need doctors and proper medical care.

Let's start with the facts. The vast majority of street people suffer from mental illness or major substance abuse problems. By definition these are mentally disabled people. They are unable to make logical decisions for themselves just as people with severe dementia and Alzheimer's cannot make reasonable choices for their own wellbeing. Because of that, the choices must be made for them, for their own good. That means gathering them up and institutionalizing them in places where they can be treated and cared for. Yes, whether they like it or not.

Our insane (no pun intended) laws regarding civil rights for those living on the streets need to be changed. A crazy person has no right to infringe on the liberties of other citizens and expose disease and filth into the community. These "progressive" laws are in fact regressive and take society back to the Middle Ages where pestilence and plague killed millions.

By keeping the insane and drug addled on the streets we aren't doing anybody any favors. The dirt, feces, and garbage that street people create attract rats and other vermin and parasites, which spreads disease. The time to act is long past and if nothing is done we will soon be experiencing a resurgence of disease in our society that hasn't been seen for centuries.

This is a list of the most common diseases spread by rats to humans: Leptospirosis, Hantavirus, Tularemia, Bubonic plague (black death), Toxoplasmosis, Salmonellosis, Rat bite fever, Typhus, Internal parasites, External parasites.

There is no reason on earth to have crazy, sick, addicted, and many times dangerous people living on our streets. Common sense tells us that for the good of all concerned we need to do the right thing once and for all. That means getting these street people into hospitals, asylums, institutions, rehab, whatever you want to call it.

These people need medical treatment, which means institutionalized care. For many it may require years of closely watched supervision and hospitalization. Just giving them pills and sending them on their merry way is not the answer. We've tried that, it doesn't work. Mentally unstable people cannot be relied on to take their meds on a regular basis.

I'm sure there are many young people today who think that having people living on the streets of America is normal. Well, I'm old enough to remember when it wasn't normal. Having thousands of insane and addicted people on our streets, in our parks, in our libraries, in bus and subway stations and especially around our children should never be considered normal, let alone acceptable.

We must get street people off the streets and into isolated, controlled treatment centers. And if we must do it by force, then let's do it by force.

That's how we solve the "homeless" problem.

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