Yeah,,, I think that the fruit trees planted in parks are not going to come in use for the poor but the rich, greedy ones. But instead we can try distributing fruits or whatever you want to them in the roadsides...

Ya'll know that a couple of people will get the idea to collect all these fruit and sell them for profit right?

I am right there with you, but that is the least of the problems with the idea.

Public fruit trees in parks is not a bad supplement to a help-the-homeless program, but it does have some serious pitfalls.

I was homeless for a short time in San Francisco, and I hung out with homeless guys in the beach area in San Diego.

Homeless folks are generally in one of the following groups-

-- Untreated mentally ill

-- Addicts

-- Poor planners who hit a bit of bad luck

Addicts and the mentally ill constitute at least 75% of homeless people, and have problems that are VERY expensive to fix, and that are almost impossible to do successfully.

These are the folks who would pick almost all the fruit before it is ripe & edible, or would create liability issues when climbing higher in the trees than is safe, etc... There would be falls, injuries, fights, stashes of fruit rotting somewhere, etc.

In order to make it work, there would have to be tons of fruit trees EVERYWHERE in the city (parks, parkway medians, public building landscaping, etc.) in order to decentralize the homeless folks using them. Cleaning up windfalls of ripe fruit would require an army of city personnel, otherwise the fruit would constantly ferment and rot on the ground, and make the entire city smell like vinegar.

Why I'm against: Because it's a half ass way of helping the homeless.

The homeless are the last of the truly poor in our society, and you are right that half-assed help won't help. The unlucky poor planners who become homeless are usually only on the streets for a limited period of time, and they are the ones most likely to benefit from the smallest investment in any sort of program. Addicts and nutjobs need very extensive and expensive help.

I actually saw examples, as well as being an example myself, of people who went from being homeless to having an address, and being employed and independent. Things that I know helped me and the folks I knew:

They have cold showers at the beach in San Diego, and that enabled a lot of the guys to avoid that "deep homelessness" that characterizes street people. They were not dirty, smelly or unkempt, so they were not marginalized to the same degree. This enabled us to get work, which helped in reintegrating into "normal society" and pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps.

This was before cell phones. Now there is the ability to distribute cheap ($10) flip-phones with no data-just telephone-so homeless folks can actually get calls from employers/potential employers.

I figure that a program can be very successful in helping the unlucky, poor-planner homeless IF AND ONLY IF it includes:

-- Open air cold showers

-- Public restrooms disbursed around town (that are designed to be impossible to sleep in)

-- Cheap cell phones provided to them and charging stations

-- Viable public transit

-- Dispersed public employment stations for job searches and resume printing

The beauty in some of this is that it does not require an all encompassing government program just for the homeless. Obviously the transit, showers, and restrooms would be public works, but they would benefit more people than just the homeless. All cities should have these things as foundational infrastructure.

Other aspects of the program are within the bailiwick of private organizations, which can provide some cell phones to some folks, to the extent of their budgets. A church for example could have a bottom end group cell phone plan that they just keep adding people to as they need and can afford.