Homelessness...

I was looking at the Yahoo News RSS Feeds and I just happened to notice an article about a controversial law dealing with homeless people in Orlando FL. Apparently it deals with prohibiting people from feeding large groups of people in the parks. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether you think this is wrong or not, personally I'm all for feeding homeless people, but can understand the desire to not have this happen in parks where people want to relax. However, in the top of the article I found the following

"It's now illegal to feed the homeless in Orlando, Florida," Jay Leno, host of NBC's "Tonight Show," told a studio audience last summer in Burbank, Calif., during his opening monologue. "Have you seen the fat people walking around Disney World? We should make it illegal to feed THEM."

But when the Orlando Sentinel posted Leno's wisecrack on its Web site, local bloggers weren't laughing.

"Feeding the homeless only encourages more homelessness," one resident, with the moniker "Justin Credible," wrote. He then summed up his argument in an equation. "Less Homeless Less Problems Better Place to Live."

Feeding homeless people some how encourages people to live on the streets? Seriously, how? "Gee, if I just live on the streets and deal with whatever mother nature throws my way I'll get free food, awesome!" Dude, come on... No one really *wants* to be homeless, and I seriously doubt that free food every now and again isn't going to be sweetening the deal a whole bunch.

I guess from where I sit, it seems to me that perhaps a better thing for Orlando to do would be to first increase it's capacity to shelter and care for homeless people, then perhaps try and develop programs to get people to be self sufficient again. I know it's quite easy for me to be saying this sitting here in my apartment in NC, but it really does seem to me that very few programs that exist to help the destitute are really designed to help them take care of them selves, more just to ease the suffering a little bit for a short period of time. I don't know, I suppose those are just my thoughts. Have a fine day everyone :)