Student Leaders at Yale Say it’s ‘Violence’ to Clean up Homeless Encampment
“The fact that FOCUS members were told to participate in this violence speaks to the gap between the ideals we hold and the work we actually do”
When did homelessness become so acceptable to so many people on the left?
The College Fix reports:
It is ‘violence’ to clean up homeless encampment, Yale student leaders say
Yale students and New Haven city workers committed “violence” against homeless people who had set up an encampment alongside the city’s West River, according to student leaders.
Students with the FOCUS orientation program at Yale were instructed on August 24 to “throw away clothing and tents belonging to people living in a homeless encampment,” by a New Haven Department of Parks and Trees employee, according to the Yale Daily News.
“This sort of violence — ‘cleaning up after the cops’ and theft of unhoused people’s homes and belongings — is antithetical to the values of FOCUS,” Giuliana Duron, Sean Pergola and Fi Schroth-Douma, student leaders in the pre-orientation program, told the campus newspaper.
“The fact that FOCUS members were told to participate in this violence speaks to the gap between the ideals we hold and the work we actually do,” they wrote. “One thing is clear: FOCUS needs to change.”
FOCUS responded with apologies and further action. “Following the incident, FOCUS canceled their collaboration with the site — which was meant to last until Aug. 26 — and gathered the program’s leaders for a conversation,” the campus newspaper reported. “In their immediate response to the incident, FOCUS program leaders consulted with a harm reduction organization to make a list of material resources that might benefit people living at the West River.”
Others have raised concerns about homelessness in the city.
Librarian Maureen Sullivan spoke to a group of cops on August 24 to “raise a concern she has about used needles, fecal matter, and people regularly sleeping outside of the Wilson branch library in the Hill,” according to a report in the New Haven Independent.
“The city has a serious problem with unhoused people,” Sullivan told a police officer at a coffee with cops event. “You find fecal matter, used needles.”
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Comments
These people really have no understanding of “violence.” I hate to ill-wish anyone, but it might be in the best interests of future generations if they learned first-hand. But for that to happen…..I pity us all…..
You mean that “turn into a conservative” mugging? Seems like the left needs it as a reset button.
Or a turn on button for their brains…
Nothing politcal. Just some real world experience.
I’m with the Yalies on this one. Throwing away homeless people’s belongings?? Is there some place where they are allowed to set up? They’re not next to the Yale campus. What are these privileged kids doing going miles from campus to throw away belongings of people down on their luck (or mental health) who have nowhere safe to put them.
What is this FOCUS orientation program anyway?
It’s an orientation program for incoming Yale freshmen called Focus on New Haven. The students were helping the Parks Dept clear out abandoned items from a former encampment site that had already been cleared out. No one was living there.
Homeless population solutions:
1) offer drug/alcohol treatment for 6 months or more
2) put mentally ill people into a mental health facility
3) offer free bus ticket to out of state vetted & verified relatives/friends that can get them away from their drug suppliers
4) put repeat criminals (shoplifting, vandalism, trespassers, etc) in jail
I grew up on a farm. Every farm kid knows by the age of 3 that if you don’t want rats, you stop feeding them. All of the blue cities have concentrated homeless problems because they never learned this, and they actually think the solution is more food, at taxpayer expense. Portland is now floating the idea of renovating abandonned downtown office space into “affordable” housing. By affordable, they mean taxpayer funded, but I guess the word taxpayer is somehow off-putting.
When I lived in Oregon, the government-owned motor vehicles had license plates stamped with “Publicly Owned” or something like that.
I wrote my representative, and asked that it be changed to “Taxpayer Funded”. I did not get a reply.