Icy blast cleans the streets of the homeless in Poland..

Another harsh winter spell, and another spate of deaths amongst the homeless community

Is this a tragedy, or nature's way of removing life's failures from the world?

Do the homeless lack someone to stand up for them in the media, compared to other groups?

can we have a link, please.

The two are inseparable, sometimes.

Here you go: bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16786877

that's so nasty. Even your thread title refers to the homeless as dirt.
Homelessness can happen to anyone, whether through mismanagement, addictions, or pure bad luck.
One day you could be sleeping on a park bench yourself.

How many people are just 1 or 2 paydays away from the streets.

people should be respected no matter if their on the streets or not.

When homelessness comes, it comes suddenly. Now Dworzec Centralny's been tarted up, I wonder where people will go at night to keep warm.

As the prophet instructed us "All it takes is the right girl, the right bar and the right friends."

Although of course one can and should do something about the friends and the bar one chooses.

I'm trying to give the OP the benefit of the doubt, and assume he was just being inartful in the way he presented the question. He DID ask if this was a tragedy, and if this particular group lacked representation, which suggests the OP at least entertains the possibility of such things, himself. I hate to be knee-jerk generalistic, but I think the majority of deaths related to the elements comes from drunks passing out oblivious to conditions.

and you are right

Absolutely, thats bang on.


I know of people in Poland that have not been paid wages for two months due to the parent company withholding funds in order to profit from the interest. I find it hard to believe but it is happening.

There's something in that. It doesn't help that a rough sleeper is also likely to be very underfed, have low blood sugar, and a very weak constitution. The life expectancy of a homeless person is sadly very low.


This is true. There are also all sorts of other little scams that Poles perpetrate on each other.

No one should be looked at as a failure. The guy on the street could be a very bright guy, but certain things happened to him. It could happen to any of use. In Ireland I know that they used to have a bus that went around Dublin every night looking for homeless people to bring to a hostle. The weather is good in Dublin compared to Poland, but last year we did have a number of deaths because of weather.

If I see a homeless person, I normally talk to them for 20 minis or so, buy some food and try to make them feel like they can get back on track.

I remember a story back in the winter of 98-99 (which was pretty bad) about a homeless guy who stumbled outside after a night of sleeping in the area of a block where the rubbish bins are kept, noticed the bottle of vodka-like substance which he'd been drinking the night before and promptly necked it without realising that drinking liquids which are minus 20 C is not a good idea, not unless you do actually want to die.

The winter before that I remember one morning when it was about the same temperature on my way to work: I saw a drunk guy stumbling around at the tram stop who had obviously just piissed himself (no it wasn't one of my co-workers). I really would not like to have been him when he sobered up.

You make a good point, indeed my questions were phrased to create debate.

Namely, we can all wring our hands behind a shiny laptop computer in a warm apartment with a glass of chardonnay, but implicitly you and nearly everyone else agree with the 'street cleaning' metaphor as we simply ignore the problem or don't even allow it to enter our minds. That has to be true- it would only take a few hundred people across the country who cared to eradicate homelessness for good.

But the reality is,we are fast becoming like any other capitalist country- happily trampling over the poor, to hell with anyone else, in our desperate chase for an extra dollar.

One of my best friends ended up in a rough spot back IN 95, i was never aware he slept on the streets till a family member of mine saw him in a subway under boxes at 6:00 am. His parents were filthy rich.

He is no longer with us unfortunately.

It is basically natural selection... as cruel as it sounds, it's simply true...

Let us see what your family think when it happens to you.

It is not natural selection.

Underground pipes, staircases, basements...


The problem is that not all homeless want to go to shelters because drinking alcohol is not allowed there. We cannot help here, so stop accusing people of having no hearts.

That sounds naive. Do you think a homeless alcoholic, in temperatures of minus 20C thinks about alcohol? They do not. They shiver and suffer until they find somewhere to sleep, or they die. The instinct for life-preservation overrides the craving for booze in these conditions.


Wasn't it Kenneth Clark, the UK Thatcherite ex-minister who referred to the homeless as "Oh, yes, those people one steps over when one leaves the opera"?


As you know, of course not.


Ain't that the fkucin truth?


What you know about natural selection could be written on the back of a postage stamp that already has the Encyclopaedia Britanica on it.

they take the subway to the end of the line in Kabaty. There is a dump of a former building that they sleep in now. They have fires going and they cook and drink and sleep around it. It is next to Kabaty forest close to Tesco.

It is really sad. They are clearly alcoholics and quite probably mentally ill. I see them walking a lot from the metro to the building with their stuff.

What they did last year was nice - they opened basically tents that were heated, where you could go and drink yourself into oblivion - but they didn't care if you were drunk or not. They should have them all winter - there's no need to kill people because they have an addiction.

A few days ago I've seen a reportage about homeless building a ship. I mean a real ship. The initiator of that idea was a homeless mgr inż. ...who involved into a row with his wife xx years ago, went out home and has never returned (or something alike).


People addicted to alcohol - yes, they drink even in freezing cold (don't you know that vodka warms up?)
Media coverage tells exactly about such cases.


It's as easy as calling the police or the city guards. They take them to warm shelters. But they cannot force anybody to go with them.

thing is it actually doesn't, it reduces the body temperature whilst fooling the drinker that he/she is warming up.
It is very dangerous to drink spirits outdoors in such weather.
Anyway good thread, maybe the OP is right, we are all guilty of ignoring the problem.

That's right.


How to help them then?

The tents I mentioned above are a great idea - they have somewhere warm to go, where they can be as wrecked as they want - sure, the conditions will suck inside, but they'll at least be warm. Of course - every ******* NIMBY will howl about the idea of a tent near them.

There's a fantastic place in Poznan close to the centre that could be used - but noooo. That requires thinking.

But what an average person can do? Nothing.

In a block I used to live in there used to be the occasional guy sleeping at the top of the stairwell. I personally never minded, given that it was -20, but other residents usually had them removed.


The tents and perhaps opening up the basement of a few public buildings.


Very litle. Younger, cleaner homeless guys sometimes pay 10zl to spend the night in an internet cafe - it's worth giving them a bit of change.

It must take you an awful long time to walk around any city.

Push for the tents to be erected in good locations. That's what the average person should and can do - I already wrote a letter to the guy who I voted for on the Rada Miasta to do such a thing.

The problem is that most good locations for such tents have NIMBY's living nearby who cannot possibly imagine that there might be some poor, alcohol-ruined people having their lives saved in such tents.