And what would you like done with the homeless? Have them scooped up
and dispatched to some burnt out industrial district so they can't
make the yuppies nervous when they go for strolls in the park?


Two words:

HOMELESS SHELTER

OK so we lock them away in 'shelters' from which they are not free to
leave. That's f***ing brilliant.


I have yet to see a homeless shelter in which the homeless are "locked away"
and are "not free to leave." Do these exist in your country? They don't in
mine.

My point was the OPs apparent hypocrisy in being outraged about kayaking
being banned as 'potentially dangerous' and in the same breath condemning
the homeless as 'potentially threatening'. The fact is, a park is a much
nicer place to be than a homeless shelter. Have you ever seen the inside
of one? My reading of his arguments (which really needn't have involved
the homeless at all, as they were irrelevant to his kayaking problem) was
a sort of juvenille, "If I can't play here then why should they?"


The public in general *does* feel uncomfortable with homeless people,
warranted or not. A park may be a much nicer place than a shelter to a
homeless person, but a park is *not* a nicer place for the public when it
becomes a collecting point for the homeless. You obviously have some sort
of thing for the homeless, and that's good. But I think if you're going to
intellectually honest, you're going to have to realize that the public at
large in general does not approve of having their parks turned into
impromptu homeless shelters.

So... you've missed the point. People typically feel somewhat threatened by
the homeless, yet they have free rein of the place. People do *not*
typically feel threatened by sea kayakers, yet they're prohibited. This
makes no sense. It's not an issue of "play."

It's easy to
see how the most common complaints one might have about the homeless (IE
they're dirt poor, are probably crazy and are homeless because they can't
manage a real lifestyle, they're an inconvenience and a hazard to the rest
of us) could easily be applied to a cyclist by a motorist.

Huh? That's silly hyperbole. Unless, of course, you truly believe that
bicyclists are dirt poor, crazy, and can't manage a real lifestyle.

And if we can
say nothing else for homelessness, we can be sure it has less
environmental impact than owning a home, even a home with no SUVs.

What does this have to do with the whole thing? Within the context of this
thread, where does the environmental impact of homelessness come into play?