What’s even the fucking rationale behind confiscating their belongings? I know in the states the cops raid homeless and destroy their documents, and I just can’t think of a reason that’s not pure spite and because they have the power.
It’s just intimidation. We have a problem with hating poor people in Australia. Goes back to the dole bludger trope. When Robert Doyle was mayor of Melbourne he “cleaned up” the streets by removing homeless people from the CBD, because some rich cunt complained about the sight of it.
And it’s absolutely a political decision to have people sleeping rough. Back in Manchester we got a new mayor Andy Burnham (you might have heard about him running for leadership of the national Labour party) a few years ago, and he spent pretty much the first two years making sure there were shelters for the city’s homeless and programmes to help them. There were so many sleeping in the streets by then, as other towns would just give their homeless a train ticket to a big city to get rid of them. And people still complained about this prioritisation, even though most of them probably had to walk past a stack of piss-smelling sleeping bags to get into their office!
“Some residents, such as Penny Essing from Elwood, in Melbourne’s south-east, who has pushed for disbanding the camp, begged councillors to “restore safety in our streets, and protect the truly vulnerable and not enable rough sleeping”. Essing, like others, argued that allowing the encampments threatened people’s safety and wellbeing, while dominating public spaces.”
Protect the truly vulnerable eh? This east suburbs private school dickhead pearl clutcher knows nothing about the precarious life faced by people without generational wealth in the current housing situation. Totally fake empathy.
The great Aussie tradition of punching down folks.
Somewhat recent, there was a time we’d have put them up in Army barracks.
Sure, take what little they have left, that surely is going to solve the problem… something something “throw a molotov cocktail and I’ll just have a different problem”
