How many homeless people make a habit of going into businesses, and defecating on the walls? Throw a number out there. One? Two? Maybe four? Do you think that's an epidemic worthy of making blanket laws for homelessness?

How many people come in asking for money? Quite a few, but we call them vendors. Truly, scum of the earth. Maybe some of them are homeless, but I can't tell.

Have I ever picked up trash? Why yes I have! You seem to think that only homeless people are inconsiderate of their surroundings. I assure you, people with places to live are usually pretty douchey about things as well.

I haven't witnessed ANYONE writing in their own feces - and I'm not sure it would be limited to just being homeless as a consideration. The frustrating part would be having to use my own feces to correct their spelling or punctuation.

Have I witnessed someone scrounging for food? No. And if you're more upset that a hungry person didn't politely put garbage away, rather than the fact that they've resorted to sifting through the garbage to look for something to eat, you're outraged at the wrong thing.

If I answered yes to any of those questions - then that still doesn't make criminalizing homeless people a good use of laws. It sounds like these people need help.

The city of St. Pete DID criminalize panhandling, and they DID criminalize sleeping in parks overnight - which is pretty much what you're forced to do when you're homeless. It's like... for some reason, not having a home, means you sleep someplace else. Hunh. Weird, right?

There are plenty of demeaning labor for everyone to do! Yes! Let's put them to work doing the jobs you would never do! Let's assign them a station in life, regardless of skillset, intellectual capacity, or vocational experience, and just lump them into a manual labor position because it's a quick and easy fix for a problem you have no desire to deal with, especially when it comes to searching out the root issues. Yay! Sound bite policies work!

I won't tell you how to do your job, but if you're spending three hours a day having to treat the symptom, and never address the problem, then you of all people would appreciate the need for systematic reform, not just window dressing. Otherwise, the problem doesn't go away, it just moves elsewhere.

So yes, it's a shitty law, and you're jaded by the end result.