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Mean, mean, Burgh.


Well, well, well. This is interesting.

Pittsburgh is number 20 on the “20 meanest cities for homeless people.”

I assumed this must mean that people in the Burgh regularly taunt, beat, and otherwise disturb homeless people here. But honestly, I can’t ever remember reading anything like that in the papers that I read so religiously.

Therefore, I’m guessing the reason they find the Burgh so “mean” is because of this.





5 Comments

  1. Rob
    January 13, 2006 12:45 pm

    It’s far more than that. Pittsburgh used to conduct unannounced sweeps of areas homeless people live and throwing out their belongings. They had agreed to keep their belongings for a while, but instead tossed them. When forced by the ACLU, they did keep belongings for a while, but then they made it almost impossible to get to them — until the ACLU once again intervened.

    Pittsburghers, by the way, do beat up regularly on the homeless. So do the other homeless.

    Of all the homeless people I knew personally when I was a paramedic, none of them are still alive.



  2. pittgirl
    January 13, 2006 12:52 pm

    On a hunch, I went to the report. If you read here, you’ll see the reason they chose us as #20:

    http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/meanestcities.html



  3. bobb0
    January 13, 2006 1:40 pm

    At first, I thought it was good that Pittsburgh has a lot of laws against homeless panhandling.

    But then I realized that making a law does not help anyone in the situation.

    Homeless will still heckle and they will not receive sufficient assistance.

    Rather than a law, Pittsburgh needs to put more money into assisting the homeless…or better yet, bringing jobs to the city to keep people from being homeless.



  4. Anonymous
    January 13, 2006 1:59 pm

    Well the Lou beat the Burgh by one place. It always amazes me that our so-called leaders would fine a homeless person, and/or put them in jail.. Let see, no job means no money, or am I missing something.

    Chef Mike
    St.Louis



  5. yinzernation
    January 13, 2006 9:15 pm

    We’re #18 in the latest coaches poll.