I can hardly believe what I've read. They're stooping this low:
GOP-Controlled SC Charges Fees, Requires Permits to Feed...Homeless
Being homeless in Columbia, South Carolina is so severe a crime that you can be jailed for it, so it’s no surprise that the city who hates the homeless is now making it impossible for good Samaritans to feed the homeless. The point is to make it uncomfortable for the homeless to be downtown so that the city can hold people in a “facility” on the outskirts of town. The homeless shelter only has room for one in six of the city’s homeless.
Judith Turnipseed, founder of a group called “Food Not Bombs” has been feeding Columbia’s homeless for 12 years. Turnipseed says that she will now have to pay $120 dollars to feed the homeless because of an old-and-previously-not-enforced law that says you must pay a fee to be able to gather in the city’s parks if the number of people is over 25
So not only do they want to punish people who try to do something as awful as feeding and/or housing the poor, they also want to use their "small government" to make it difficult to do so.
I mean, who'd do that, right?
Links:
The TragicListof Elderlyand HomelessPeopleFreezing
Millionaire CEO Says Struggling Americans Need to Suck it Up Because They Aren't as Poor as People in China