Thank you.
I live on the outskirts of a small town in the KY mountains. 12K population and they are experiencing homeless/vagrancy issues in the last couple of years. Mainly it stems from the opioids epidemic when their families eventually kick them out after coming to the end of their rope in dealing with the theft, drama and emotional and physical abuse.
The current local government has ignored the issue outright. I mean they do nothing to fight the vagrancy, people sleeping under bridges, on top of local businesses and in the alleyways. Used needles along the streets and in playgrounds. They sleep in the city parking lot in front of city hall and the police station. The police are getting reports a couple times a week of people hearing noises under their homes at night and they come out and find where the homeless opened access doors and crawled under houses out of the cold. I know of one local businessman who has caught two in his business prowling. One took off running upon seeing a Glock 19 in hand topping the stairs and the other just froze. He was escorted out with the warning, next time you won’t walk out.
A new mayor is about to take office and the residents of the town have had enough and are furious and demanding action while you have a very small but vocal minority of bleeding hearts wailing we need a homeless shelter, we need a soup kitchen, we need need exchange program, we need to send them to rehab. You can’t get it through their heads if you give them food, housing and needles they will never leave and more will come and that rehab is a waste of resources until the junkie has hit bottom and really wants help.
Jailing them is not possible because of over crowding and there isn’t funds for a new jail. I don’t know how this is going to shake out but I do expect these peaceful citizens who are paying the bills,following the law, tolerating the filth, the needles, the thefts and vandalism are about at the end of their patience with these junkies and I look for them to finally pop a cap on them. To quote one, we want our town back, we ain’t going to take this crap much longer!