Plan to strip blankets from Alice homeless

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The council last night voted unanimously to put a raft of controversial by-laws out for public consultation.

The proposed changes include $130 fines for beggars and a crackdown on camping in the dry Todd River bed.

Many Indigenous people live rough in Alice Springs, where the temperature often drops down to about zero degrees Celsius on winter nights.

They often stash their blankets somewhere during the day

abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/28/2638406.htm?section=australia

Is this a pathetic travesty or what? They will take their blankets away and FINE them for being homeless. How are they gonna pay their fines? Beg for it? Christ instructed us to help the needy. You never know how or why someone winds up homeless. It could be you!!!

Matthew 25
35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you made me welcome,
36 lacking clothes and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to see me."
37 Then the upright will say to him in reply, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?
38 When did we see you a stranger and make you welcome, lacking clothes and clothe you?
39 When did we find you sick or in prison and go to see you?”
40 And the King will answer, “In truth I tell you, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me.”
 
If the town doesn’t want begging they should simply pass a law against it, taking any money from anyone who begs. That might do the trick without having to take blankets away from these people.

It’d also be better to start an initiative to provide public housing for the homeless in the industrial part of town where they would be less apt to beg from the elderly, visitors and families.

It’s certainly not right to take anyone’s only means of warmth away from them. It seems like a bad solution to a situation that could only get worse if enacted.
 
I have worked with the homeless population and it is terrible the abuses which are showered on them.

Don’t get me wrong- homeless folks begging can get a bit old but we as Christians must remember, care, and pray for the homeless and destitute.
 
Exodus has much to say about the poor.This is in connection with the poor and loans but I think it can be seen as pertinent’Exodus22:24-26" If you lend money to My people, to the poor among you, do not act toward them as a creditor;exact no interest from them.If you take your neighbor’s garment in pledge, YOU MUST RETURN IT TO HIM BEFORE THE SUN SETS;It Is his only clothing, the sole covering for his skin.IN WHAT ELSE SHALL HE SLEEP? THEREFORE .IF HE CRIES OUT TO ME,I WILL PAY HEED, FOR I AM COMPASSIONATE"./U]
Anyway you cut it’s wrong.
 
I think this law is pretty harsh and I must say, cynical. Aboriginal people are often the ones who are homeless in Australia (and they tend to suffer the worst poverty and health outcomes) and laws like this just perpetuate the very old patterns of structural injustice against such people. I can understand the need to try and maintain order by preventing widespread street begging, but slapping crippling fines and confiscating the very basics from the worst off for basically being poor is the essence of injustice.
 
Sounds like the “town fathers” have an agenda of Dickensian work-houses and debtors’ prisons. When the poor can’t pay the fine they will end up in jail. When they can’t afford the “rent and board”, the sentence will be extended.

Therefore, to be homeless is to be sent to prison for life.
 
Harri_Laaksonen said:
Sounds like the “town fathers” have an agenda of Dickensian work-houses and debtors’ prisons. When the poor can’t pay the fine they will end up in jail. When they can’t afford the “rent and board”, the sentence will be extended.

Therefore, to be homeless is to be sent to prison for life.
Click to expand...
Maybe there the homeless will be given a blanket and three meals a day, perhaps that is why some of them end up there afterall.
 
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