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Neighborhood 'sheriff' who tried to screen homeless campers stabbed to death by camper

Neighborhood 'sheriff' who tried to screen homeless campers stabbed to death

https://katu.com/news/local/neighborhood-sheriff-kenny-housman-who-tried-to-screen-homeless-campers-stabbed-to-death-southeast-136th-avenue-and-clinton-street

Less than a year ago, KATU interview a man living on Clinton Street who was trying to stabilize the homeless camping situation in his neighborhood.

Neighborhood 'sheriff' who tried to screen homeless campers stabbed to death

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17700329

24 comments

Saik0Shinigami

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Wow... Both other people who commented here are fucking heartless.

The man was just trying to help the homeless people and keep his neighborhood safe

The relative said Housman was trying to settle an argument between two homeless campers on Clinton when one of the campers stabbed him in the throat.

While many residents were nervous and wary of the homeless campers, Housman had a different approach: to make the neighborhood safer, he appointed himself "sheriff" and began to screen homeless campers and then provide them with support once they gained his approval.

During our interview, another neighbor pulled up, claiming that Housman provided electricity to the homeless campers.

Ya'll are dicks. Read the article. He was a good dude and epitomized the exact shit you espouse. You don't want cops involved... you want the community to police itself and do good. This guy was doing just that. Doing way more to help these people than you do.

rand_alpha19

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once they gained his approval

Yeah... no. People who have no other choice but to camp shouldn't be "screened" by random people. Sucks he died, but he was playing a pretty stupid game with people just trying to survive. Reading his quotes from this article, you can definitely see he was the type of person to refuse to help people he doesn't like, and that's not at all how you're supposed to deal with people in vulnerable situations.

explodicle

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Should he be expected to provide electricity to a meth lab?

vxx

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How many homeless people do have math labs in your area?

Guntrigger

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Someone's got to crunch those numbers.

explodicle

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Well if it's just a few, I suppose I can provide them with electricity, no questions asked.

DragonTypeWyvern

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Interesting way of saying "Self appointed sheriff on a power trip with no actual authority who tried to tell other people what they were allowed to do fucked around and found out."

Was he better than his neighbors? Sounds like it. He was trying to help in his own way... By keeping anyone that looked too poor out.

Twentytwodividedby7

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Clearly you've never worked with the homeless...it's not the "look of poverty" as you alluded, it's really more about active drug use or untreated mental health disorders.

Some people certainly fall on hard times, but many have serious mental health disorders that for a variety of reasons they are not managing. We often require an address and lots of paperwork to provide government benefits in the US, so it isn't hard for people to fall out of the system.

Once that happens, it's really hard to find your way back. There are certainly not enough programs to help people reintegrate with society. At the same time, a homeless encampment in a neighborhood is not a reasonable solution either.

I volunteered nearly every week feeding the food and housing insecure in Philly for nearly 3 years pre-covid (I moved shortly before Covid). It was a great experience and I got to know many people that I might have otherwise walked past, and it really underscored the value of social services and lack of help available.

It also taught me that people need to be in a place to accept help. The ones that were not in that place are the ones you worry about - they have nothing to lose. Most that came to the church to be served lunch (usually 100-200) were to an extent willing to receive help. Some had bad days or would relapse into drug use, but they were generally trying to do better.

But there were other, much darker, places in the city that people unwilling or unable to accept help went. Places like Kensington in North Philly. That was a huge problem for years...it was a huge open air drug market that basically occupied that area. Finally, I think just this year, police cleared the encampments there.

It's not a great solution, but it also wasn't tenable. My point is that you should understand that not all housing insecure populations are just good people that bad things happened to. Those not in a place to get help or actively using drugs can be dangerous. I certainly would not let my son near that group, nor would I gleefully accept an encampment near my house

atrielienz

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He should have opened a soup kitchen if he wanted to help. He can't appoint himself sheriff (and it's a bad idea anyway considering how police were basically created to keep the poors in their place, which would make homeless people naturally distrustful of them), and more importantly the idea that they have to "gain approval" to be worth helping is a red flag. I'm not saying it's okay that he died. But he put himself in harms way and I cannot say I'm surprised.

Maalus

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It's always easy to talk about this shit when it's not your street that's sieged by countless people, some of them aggressive, some of them with severe mental illness and a danger to society and themselves. You say the homeless were "naturally distrustful" and yet through reading the article, the reaction among them was "he's hitting Kenny, what the fuck?" and to get them off him ASAP. You know jack shit about the person or the situation yet you immediately judge them through a lens of your own imagination of the situation.

atrielienz

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It's been my street. Literally I grew up in Germantown PA, and have lived in Seattle long enough to have had a whole ass homeless encampment living outside my apartment building and going through our dumpsters. Breaking into the building in order to have somewhere warm and dry to sleep. You don't get to pretend I don't know what I'm talking about just because you're mad that I don't have sympathy for a man who literally put himself in harms way using untried methods to make himself judge and jury over vulnerable people.

I've walked past people in the goddamn hallway with needles in their arms. I've literally had to interact with people who are high out of their minds, their speech completely unintelligible because they can't get meds they need and they're using street drugs to self medicate. Homeless people are vulnerable people with a whole host of problems including having the live outdoors. Making them "pass tests to gain the approval" of a man with literally no authority over anyone just because he caged the wording to say he wanted to "help" doesn't change the fact that he did something dangerous and he paid for it with his life.

jpreston2005

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I don’t have sympathy for a man who literally put himself in harms way using untried methods to make himself judge and jury over vulnerable people.

he did something dangerous and he paid for it with his life.

He tried to help keep his community safe by treating poor, disadvantaged folks like human beings.

Hey but you had to walk past addicts, so we all know you had it worse, and clearly have the moral high ground 🙄

atrielienz

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You're missing the part where it was only the ones that met his approval that he was willing to help. I don't agree with it when actual aid nonprofits do the same and I don't agree with it when some random does it either. If you want to help the homeless you take the good with the bad. Drugged out people need food and water too. If they're a danger to themselves or others that doesn't fall under the jurisdiction of one random guy.

jpreston2005

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Ok, so you're not allowed to try to help people unless you help everyone. And if you're just a regular person doing what you can, you're actually in the wrong and deserve to be stabbed whilst trying to break up a fight. Gotcha. Great point, dude.

atrielienz

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Did I say that? Where did I say that he deserved anything. Your whole argument is predicated on my having said something that I very explicitly did not say. If you're upset that I don't feel sorry for him, I'm gonna direct you to the loads of people out there living on the street who I do actually feel sorry for because that is a failing of our society. This guy though? I don't have any bad feeling towards him. I'm just not surprised.

If anyone wants to help there are dozens of organizations out there with the benefit of checks and balances to make sure people get a fair shot at help and they need volunteers and paid workers all the time. Instead, this man chose to be a homeless camp's HOA. You have a good day though.

DarkNightoftheSoul

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you are mistaken. a self-appointed gatekeeper getting in the middle of a violent argument between desperate people doesnt make a good guy. the context you highlight provided makes him look more like a clueless, self aggrandizing busy body than anything else.

Wirlocke

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And his name was, Housman?

You can't convince me the universe doesn't have a morbid sense of humor.

lemming741

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism

https://feddit.uk/c/nominativedeterminism

CommunityLinkFixer

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Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !nominativedeterminism@feddit.uk

HubertManne

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for anyone who comes and does not click on the article note that sheriff is in quotes. He actually is not as bad as it may sound from the titel. Basically he was fine with and understood the homelessness and even helped but only if they were basically respectful and not otherwise breaking the law. I sorta undersand where he was coming from but not necessarily the smartest thing to do. Its somewhat akin to confronting gangmembers. Gonna paste a quote here:

"They just see a motorhome. They think, oh no, homeless, crime, drugs, etc. They don't see Tim, who I think works, I'm not sure, but he won't steal from them or anything else. They don't see, I don't know Jim very well; old man Steve, living on Social Security, needs a place to stay,”

jordanlund

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Locals reacted to the original story of "Imma screen these people and keep the bad ones out" with "That doesn't seem wise... good luck with that!"

noxy

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i don't pray, so....

thoughts

Tronn4

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Neither do Republicans! Welcome aboard! /s

jordanlund

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Republicans are the opposite, they pray and don't think! :)

finley

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