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posted by Fnord666 on Monday October 09 2017, @07:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the crappy-situation dept.

The Guardian brings us a disturbing story from Anaheim California:

Somewhere in the southern California city of Anaheim, less than five miles from Disneyland, three porta-potties – two pink, one gray – are locked in a city storage facility. It's not where they're supposed to be.

They were meant for a dusty homeless encampment that sprawls along the west bank of the Santa Ana river, and is home to hundreds of men, women and children in tents and other makeshift shelters.

But the toilets are sitting unused after being confiscated by the city, and the residents have nowhere to relieve themselves except in the bushes, or in buckets, or in the cramped privacy of their own tents. Activists are up in arms over the primitive conditions in which camp inhabitants are living, and which, in their view, the local government appears to have sanctioned.

"This is a public health crisis for the homeless community," said Mohammed Aly, a homeless advocate and lawyer who helped install the toilets. Not least it was a case, he said, of providing people with simple human dignity.

[...] The closest public toilet to the Anaheim camp is over a mile upriver from where many riverbed residents live. So when the porta-potties arrived in May, after being purchased and delivered by local activist groups, they were a welcome alternative to walking half an hour or more to use the bathroom, or taking the more popular route of relieving oneself in a bucket and dumping the refuse in the riverbed.

But just 72 hours after the toilets were installed, there was bad news: the council of wealthy Orange County insisted the porta-potties be removed from their land, saying their presence was unauthorized.

Aly subsequently moved them about 300 yards, out of the county's jurisdiction, and onto city land. That lasted a week, until the city, too, ordered them removed, citing local ordinances regulating the installation of porta-potties. When Aly and other activists didn't remove the toilets themselves, the city government confiscated them, and took them into storage.

[...] Aly said he's not giving up on the toilets. And if he can't work something out with the city or county governments to get them back in place, he knows what he's going to do.

"Our next step is to proceed anyways," he said. "To leave the portable restrooms on a trailer, park the trailer adjacent to the riverbed, and move it around every 72 hours."

If the city of Anaheim doesn't want the homeless to use toilets, perhaps city council members could offer their bathrooms instead.


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  • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday October 09 2017, @01:02PM (7 children)

    by jmorris (4844) on Monday October 09 2017, @01:02PM (#579254)

    Citizen? Of what? Certainly not of Anaheim or Orange County. They don't own or rent property there, they do not pay taxes, there is an old out fashion word for what they are: squatters.

    And yes they need to be 'encouraged' to go elsewhere, somewhere they might actually contribute enough to the local society to earn a place to live. High property values make it difficult for the less valuable workers to earn enough to pay the high cost of living that goes with pricey areas of the country. But guess what, nobody has an inherent 'right' to live there, they so not have the 'right' to be provided "low income housing", they do not have the 'right' to become squatters and befoul the area.

    In fact, I'd argue that zero government subsidized "low income housing" should exist in the top ten percent of housing markets. If nothing else it would put a cap on the out of control prices. Think about it. Seriously, before unleashing the spittle flecked rage, stop and consider what would actually happen if we did it.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @03:53PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @03:53PM (#579290)

    Citizenship is no longer something that needs to be earned, these are the results of freely giving people something.

    I'm thoroughly convinced that by the time I get grey I will be truly convinced the only way to deal with the Bolshevik mindset is to kill on sight.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @05:30PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @05:30PM (#579327)

      Ah the good old AC fascist pig. You won't like the consequences of your murderous stupidity.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @08:08PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @08:08PM (#579390)

        fascist

        The Bolsheviks are sometimes (with some accuracy) called "Red Fascists".

        In their early, formative days, they were Marxist, professing support for distributed collective ownership and worker empowerment.
        As soon as the October Revolution was over, however, they began to crush the soviets (worker councils, citizen councils, etc.).

        Once they gained power (having already fully marginalized the Mensheviks), the Bolsheviks weren't commune-ists, they were top-down Authoritarians.

        GP got it right.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 4, Touché) by bob_super on Monday October 09 2017, @09:10PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Monday October 09 2017, @09:10PM (#579428)

    > there is an old out fashion word for what they are: squatters

    It came back in fashion as soon as they removed their toilets.

  • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday October 09 2017, @10:38PM (2 children)

    by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Monday October 09 2017, @10:38PM (#579474) Homepage Journal

    Citizen? Of what? Certainly not of Anaheim or Orange County. They don't own or rent property there, they do not pay taxes, there is an old out fashion word for what they are: squatters.

    As usual jmorris, you're flat wrong [usconstitution.net]:

    The 14th Amendment defines citizenship this way: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." But even this does not get specific enough. As usual, the Constitution provides the framework for the law, but it is the law that fills in the gaps. The Constitution authorizes the Congress to do create clarifying legislation in Section 5 of the 14th Amendment; the Constitution, in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4, also allows the Congress to create law regarding naturalization, which includes citizenship.

    Currently, Title 8 of the U.S. Code fills in the gaps left by the Constitution. Section 1401 defines the following as people who are "citizens of the United States at birth:"

            Anyone born inside the United States *
            Any Indian or Eskimo born in the United States, provided being a citizen of the U.S. does not impair the person's status as a citizen of the tribe
            Any one born outside the United States, both of whose parents are citizens of the U.S., as long as one parent has lived in the U.S.
            Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year and the other parent is a U.S. national
            Any one born in a U.S. possession, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year
            Any one found in the U.S. under the age of five, whose parentage cannot be determined, as long as proof of non-citizenship is not provided by age 21
            Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is an alien and as long as the other parent is a citizen of the U.S. who lived in the U.S. for at least five years (with military and diplomatic service included in this time)
            A final, historical condition: a person born before 5/24/1934 of an alien father and a U.S. citizen mother who has lived in the U.S.

    Please show me where it says that, to be a citizen, one must "own or rent property there, [...or] pay taxes"?

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
    • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday October 10 2017, @12:10AM (1 child)

      by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday October 10 2017, @12:10AM (#579514)

      The part that says United States Constitution and the cites to the U.S. Code? Notice it says nothing about the city, county or State? Nothing you quote says a city has to allow squatters to illegally seize their land, defile it and demand services from the city and its taxpayers. Under normal conditions cities don't haev immigration controls, anyone who buys or rents a place to live is allowed to come on in, work and pay taxes and be a citizen of the city. No law says that must always be so, that they must cede land to any random squatter who wanders in. In a sane world they would be quietly driven out right after the "homeless activists" were noisily driven out by an angry mob. Alas, we still live in Clown World. But Kaboom! comes, tolerance for the insane will decline in a good cleansing economic crisis.

      • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday October 10 2017, @12:23AM

        by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Tuesday October 10 2017, @12:23AM (#579517) Homepage Journal

        Words have specific meanings, jmorris. "citizen" has a generally accepted meaning which, in the US at least, has zero to do with residency, employment or tax revenue, despite what you think or say.

        The word you *may* be thinking of is "resident."

        Given that your blather is generally pretty incoherent, it might behoove you to try and be more precise with your language, assuming that's not too intellectually taxing.

        --
        No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr