When free buss passes were issued in Bucharest, Romania, to people over 65 years old there was a major problem with some of these people taking the bus across town for most of the day during winter and turn off the heating at home. Others were crossing the town for several hours a day because they were bored at home. It was reported in local newspapers and even national TV. One does not need to be really homeless to figure out it is convenient to occupy a bus or a train.
Public transport has been free for people over 66 in Ireland for as long as I remember, without a plague of old people living on the train. That seems more like a local problem.
Old people would do that in my town too and they had to pay for the ticket. I don't see anything wrong with it.
Loneliness among the elderly is a problem that needs to be addressed though.
> It was reported in local newspapers and even national TV.
But did you also experience it IRL? Usually the things that are newsworthy are not the common standard that everyone is actually experiencing in day-to-day life.
Correct, my statistical experiment with a sample of 1 is more relevant than several, independent journalists doing investigations. I will better myself.
I did see that with my own eyes, I was just telling this is not mandatory for me to believe it, I heard it from too many sources, some quite reliable. I can know things that I did not personally encounter, it is a human characteristic.
There's a difference between (1) a statistical survey, (2) "the news found it somewhere and needed clickbait to stay in business", and (3) regular people are reporting seeing it. Of course, properly collected statistics is best, but short of that, I'd be more inclined to believe it's widespread if ordinary people are reporting it's around them. It's the news' job to go around and look for a story, so they're likely to find it somewhere. Neither is proper proof, only statistical survey would be, but a combination of 2 and 3 is close enough for me and you've already said it was on the news, thus my question.
Berlin is not an example of a well run city by western European standards, despite the well paid tech sector and being a capital city of Europe's strongest economy.
It helps that they have less civil rights in Europe. Or less civil liberties. In America the state is very restricted in how it can deal with the homeless.
I'm not sure exactly what sort of "dealing with" you're imaginging, but the lack of homeless folk on our public transport isn't because they've been locked up, it's because they're (for the most part) sleeping in a building. For reference: https://www.gov.scot/publications/homelessness-scotland-upda...
Only 1% of Scotland's homeless were intentionally homeless, and 4% reported sleeping rough the previous night -- a total of 690 across Scotland. Which is still 690 too many.
And yes, it's not free of charge to the public purse, but it's significantly cheaper than not providing support and then needing to deal with the consequences.
While it'll obviously vary by country, in general the state "deals with" homelessness by offering free or subsidised housing (preferable) and/or temporary and emergency accommodation. Not sure what's particularly anti-civil-liberties about that.
The U.S., specially certain states, has what other countries would call extreme limits on its ability to deal with mentally ill vagrants. An inability to involuntarily institutionalize them, or even throw out the stuff they abandon on the sidewalk. It isn’t from lack of money spent on these people.
So you see them riding the BART in San Francisco, making a nuisance of themselves, while also, the city spends a ton of money and has homeless shelters.
Also, the basic ability of police to hassle people is less.
Trying to use a ticketing system as a solution to the inconvenience of having to see people without homes is a particularly awful take.
Solve the problem of homelessness by making homes and putting the homeless people in them, don't use a public transportation ticketing system as a means of driving them out of sight.
