Lately I have been seeing a lot of remarks on social media about homeless issues, and too many times they have been negative. I wanted to discuss this one example, that recently caught my eye. I follow a page on Facebook called “Redlands Buzz 2.0” this is a public group where people can post about the on goings around Redlands and has 18,000 members following the page. The last few days I have been noticing multiple posts about homeless people on this page in particular, many people concerned about what their city is coming too, not realizing that this is an ongoing issue for many years.

This post in particular caught my eye, partially because I attend school right off this off-ramp. The post is calling for people of Redlands to call in to get the “trash” cleaned up. While they may have been only referring to the physical trash being left behind by these homeless people, I got a different vibe from this post. To me it seemed as though they were referring to these PEOPLE as trash, and that is definitely something that the city of Redlands can not stand. The reason I took it this way was how it was said and the comments following the post. But, I could just not believe that so many people had an issue about the people and the place that they go to sleep at night.

One comment said “RPD should do frequent raids on the camps to get the transients on their way.” My reaction to this is, where do these people expect them to go to next? Homeless are constantly moved from camp to camp, being kicked out of places to stay and where they have their belongings. Most people who become homeless stay in the cities that they are from, which is something not many people know, but at one point that person was someones neighbor and now they are expecting them to just leave town and move elsewhere.

Another comment said “I don’t want to solve these people’s lifelong ability to make incredibly poor decisions. I just want them out of my community. I want to be able to take my 6 year old daughter out into the town without being accosted by these leeches on society. They should round them all up and drop them off at Jerry Brown’s front door. Maybe when they’re all hanging out at his house we will repeal the laws he signed into law making it easier for the to live off of the taxpayers.” This comment just goes to show some of the beliefs of the people in this city.

For me, it is frustrating to see how many people agree with this post and how many people this post reaches. This page is a pretty popular page, and while they have the power to help educate on homeless issues, they are only harming it by posting so many negatives about homeless people.