Comments on: Rhode Island bans discrimination against homeless persons

By: Amy Alkon

Amy Alkon — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 13:15:59 +0000

Use public sidewalks as a toilet? Where is the line drawn? There’s a homeless guy who sleeps in the bushes on my street (on the public land side). My neighbors and I have no problem with him and don’t report him because he doesn’t cause problems — we don’t find poo anywhere, to put it plainly — and he’s quiet and doesn’t turn the place into a trash dump.

By: Taxpayer

Taxpayer — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 00:05:33 +0000

To expand on John’s comment, access was never denied, but the police (and the rest of us) often take offense to some of the activities that the homeless tend to perform on our public land…

By: Jay Markowitz

Jay Markowitz — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 22:56:24 +0000

Here in CA, the ‘homeless’ guy near my apartment also enjoys making sweet, sweet love to the jacaranda tree and philisophical debates with empty spaghetti-o cans. No, wait, he makes sweet love to the cans and debates the tree…

We have tried to get him help, he adamantly refuses.

Of course, let’s make him a protected class! It’s all our fault for discriminating against him, not for conflating those with serious mental issues into the category of those with serious monetary issues and referring to them all as ‘homeless’ because it sounds nice.

By: John Fembup

John Fembup — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 22:20:09 +0000

“guarantee homeless people the right to use public sidewalks, parks and transportation as well as public buildings, like anyone else”

Like anyone else?

Looks like I picked a bad summer to start urinating in the street.

By: ras

ras — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 21:31:53 +0000

Only tangentially related to this topic, via discrimination law in general, but interesting: When the Hiring Boss Is an Algorithm Sample:

The data recommend a person who lives near the job, has reliable transportation and uses one or more social networks, but not more than four. He or she tends not to be overly inquisitive or empathetic, but is creative. 'Some of the assumptions we had weren't valid,' says Connie Harvey, Xerox's chief operating officer of commercial services. However, data-based hiring can expose companies to legal risk. Practices that even unintentionally filter out older or minority applicants can be illegal under federal equal opportunity laws.

By: Christoffer Eldrich

Christoffer Eldrich — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 20:31:04 +0000

@mojo, Thank you for saving the majority of the readers of this blog to ask that obvious yet nasty question.

By: mojo

mojo — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 17:00:51 +0000

How about on the basis of smell?