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Creator of Chatbot that Beat 160K Parking Fines Now Tackling Homelessness (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The chatbot lawyer that overturned hundreds and thousands of parking tickets is now tackling another problem: homelessness. London-born Stanford student Joshua Browder created DoNotPay initially to help people appeal against fines for unpaid parking tickets. Dubbed "the world's first robot lawyer", Browder later programmed it to deal with a wider range of legal issues, such as claiming for delayed flights and trains and payment protection insurance (PPI). Now, Browder, 19, wants his chatbot to provide free legal aid to people facing homelessness. He said: "I never could have imagined a parking ticket bot would appeal so much to people. Then I realised: this issue is bigger than a few parking tickets." In an interview with the Washington Post, the 19-year-old said he decided to expand the bot's capabilities after DoNotPay began receiving messages about evictions and repossessions. In February this year tenant evictions reached the highest on record.
The US Legal system has a few issues.
1. Most of the law makers are also lawyers. Just as I am a Computer Scientist and I think things can get better if you just fix the process, a trained Lawyer will think to just adding new laws or changing a law will fix all of the problems.
2. Many fines are a source of revenue for the government. While they may give an impassioned speech on how such laws are protecting people. While they are just filling the point of bringing in additional revenue.
3. Laws to help the poor are so complex that only the rich can take advantage of them. Lets put being PC aside for a bit. Often the reason why Poor people are poor is because their actions are not ideal. Such as taking drugs, getting into trouble, or just being lazy. So many of these laws are written for the mythical angle who just seemed to not be able to make it. And when social services are given to people don't seem to deserve it, it gets a lot of heat. So they put a lot of hooks in these laws to prevent abuse that it is nearly impossible for people to take advantage of them.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The solution to this is any one of the following:
1. only be a landlord in areas without those silly requirements
2. charge a rent high enough to cover such eventualities
You've basically explained exactly why rents in SF are so high. SImply not worth the hassle, try your luck in Denver or any Texas city....