i think this is partly true, but the moral status of homeless people is more complicated and more interesting than that
on a first pass, one can imagine (at least) four separate modes for morally evaluating the homeless as a class
the first mode is secular. homeless people are people, in a material sense, with no notable moral valence independent of their other characteristics.
that said, their other characteristics tend to be repellent or annoying, so they're an irritant like criminals or teenagers
the second is characteristically christian and associated with dignity culture.
homeless people bear the imago dei. they are not intrinsic moral superiors but their plight is a shame to us because it denudes them of the dignity that should be theirs by right of their humanity.
a third mode is to see the homeless as specially sacred, a class beyond ourselves
we are not obliged to clothe them in dignity; our duty is to facilitate and extend their holy degeneration. filth and madness and drugs are sacramental
the last mode that i am imagining and perhaps what OP is pointing at is an inversion of the holy conception of the homeless as an intrinsically and specially vile class; the homeless not as angels but as vermin
the civic model of homelessness in, for example, san francisco has for some time embraced the model of holy degeneration
akin to cows of india, they are more than human. they are not to be impeded, and they are to be maintained in filth at public expense as an act of piety
you will not be surprised to learn that my own preferred model of the moral status of homeless people is a superposition of the first two modes
we ought to care for them. but also many are _awful_, not just poor. and we have to reckon with that, practically
the homeless-as-vermin model is repugnant to me, and i think it becomes more likely *when shooting up and jacking off in the street is treated as a positive sacred act for the homeless*
it's easier to flip the sign of sacredness than it is to remove it
but i also reject the notion that refusing to embrace the model of sanctified degeneracy is necessarily an embrace of dehumanization
the junkie-as-angel model is _fucked up_ and itself dehumanizing both for the homeless and for the worshipper of the homeless
this explains a lot about what's going on, for those of you paying attention
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