<p>So, razorsharp, the homeless should have matching wheeled luggage to carry their stuff? </p>
<p>Why do they use shopping carts? Because they might have a few personal possessions and nowhere to put them. Or they need the cart to gather bottles, to make a few cents, in order to almost survive. It’s easier to push them in carts than lug them in garbage bags, which will fall apart. They are homeless, for goodness sake. They are living hand to mouth. They are human beings. A little compassion for those who have nothing.</p>
<p>Homelessness is a problem everywhere in the U.S.</p>
<p>People abandon shopping carts behind my workplace almost daily. We phone a nearby Publix grocery regularly to come pick up their carts but they are super slow getting them, if they ever come to get them. The store managers don’t have pickup trucks and can’t get the carts in their cars to take them back to grocery store. Those carts must cost several hundred dollars each. Customers pay for the lost carts at the register when buying their groceries.</p>
<p>Your argument amounts to saying because they are homeless they get to steal. Well, if that is the case, why limit them to stealing shopping carts. How about tolerating them when they steal cars? They can put more of their “stuff” in your car than they can in a shopping cart.</p>
<p>There is a reason I am not homeless and I don’t steal shopping carts – I value work and honesty.</p>
<p>Anyone who destroys the property of others without their permission is committing a crime, in my view. I understand and agree that homeless folks are a huge issue nationwide and sadly in my state as well. I really don’t think that taking a sledgehammer to shopping carts is part of any solution that will be positive and can have serious BAD consequences.</p>
<p>Various methods have been used by different merchants where I shop to try to curb shopping cart theft. Locking wheels on carts, paying a deposit that you only get back when you put the cart back where it belongs, using smaller carts (though that decreases the incentive of customers to buy more and fill the cart), lightweight plastic carts that are like laundry baskets with wheels and tall handle, and other things.</p>
<p>Attacking the symptoms and causing the homeless fear of injury if the sledgehammer slips is NOT any good lasting solution. Supposedly he returns carts where the store is identifiable (4) but has destroyed 5 times that number (20).</p>
<p>Update: he finally stopped doing this, saying he accomplished what he wanted to-- drawing attention to the problem of homelessness. Sadly, neither he nor anyone else in govt has posited many solutions. </p>