this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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But just letting people have housing if they want would already massively help so many people.
The argument that because not all of them want a house so we shouldn't do it, is literally just the perfect being the enemy of good.
it's not that simple, the biggest argument is that the core of the problem that made someone homeless is still there.
if you made someone obese fit with swish-and-flick of a magic wand, they would end up fat again in a couple of years, because being fit is much more than just having muscles instead of fat.
I'm not saying that every homeless is in the same situation of course, but you have to fix the problem that let them spiral down before trying to fix the problem by just throwing money at it.
Edit: fixed the link, blame mobile
Housing first works vastly better than any other homelessness strategy we've implemented. Turns out, if you don't have a safe place to rest and just live, you have a far harder time getting all the other issues resolved. Housing is the first step, not the end goal.
Hopefully I fixed the link, if not quick Google scholar search for housing first, first link
link is broken
Oof. Downside of Mobile I suppose. Let me see if I can fix it
I never said we shouldn't do it. I said that some unhoused don't want to be housed so the solution isn't that simple.
To add another layer of complexity, if all the most visible of the homeless - the crazy, the drug addicts, etc - were to vanish overnight, we would immediately stop caring about the remaining "good homeless" because they don't impact our daily lives.
I think I'm missing something. How would offerring housing result in the visible homeless disappearing and not the invisible/"good" homeless? The housing is being offered to both, right?
I'm giving a hypothetical scenario that's not directly related to the concept of offering housing.
My point was that we need solutions for both the visible and invisible homeless, though the current drive for solutions is almost entirely because of the visible homeless.
And I was saying that to illustrate the complexity of the situation.
Oh okay, thanks. Yeah, it sucks to think about, but homelessness in general would probably be talked about a whole lot less if not for people's own discomfort with seeing it---and there are probably both good and bad reasons for that. I think there are situations where a homeless person makes people uncomfortable because of their own behavior, and there are others where people are uncomfortable with homeless people just because they think they make the neighborhood unattractive or whatever. Those are both obviously very different, but they both fit into the category of visible homeless people and 'reasons the general public cares about homelessness'; that is, like you said, self interest.
I agree that there'd be a whole lot less conversation about it if the only homeless people were those living in shelters, couch-hopping, or otherwise removed from the public eye, even if it were still just as common and people were generally aware of it. Take out the personal stake, and people just would care as much.
Which is upsetting to me because the amount of genuine problems caused by homeless people (overall; I'm not implying that all or most homeless people actively cause problems) is virtually nothing when compared to the problems that homeless people themselves deal with. People care about the homeless, but not, for the most part, because they care about the homeless.
Ugh, this sucks. Sorry for the wall of text. Tl;dr, I'm not disagreeing with you at all, just thinking out loud (with way too many words, sorry again).
I agree with everything, especially "ugh, this sucks".
This is a non-issue. The solution IS that simple, actually. Give anyone who does want a home a home. If the others don't want a home well that's on them. Kinda throwing out the baby with the bathwater saying it's not so easy because it won't solve every problem for everyone.
I feel like you are actively ignoring the fact that it's not a visible solution. My problem isn't so much the homeless person who seeks shelter and utilizes services offered as intended. I think they are the non-issue homeless you keep mentioning.
These programs need immense public buy-in because they establish housing for at risk people in their neighborhoods. The homeless I deal with most often aren't taking peoples mail and things out of cars to achieve a housing goal. They also aren't trying to scam cash out of the EBT cards for food and housing. The problem is that addicts will trade away anything you give them to meet their goals, even at the cost of housing and sustenance.
We can say "prioritize treatment," but it's already offered free in my area. We also just had another bus load of people dropped off in my city from Texas again.... like giving people homes in an already densely populated area is a bit of a pipe dream while the area is also one of the most expensive in the nation.
I'll agree that it requires immense public buy in, that's part of why I'm as passionate and emphatic about it as I am. For sure it's going to require some changing minds.
When I said non-issue, I'm talking from the perspective of societal problems. A person who wants housing and does not have it is an issue regardless of how. A person who does not want housing and does not have housing is a non-issue. They're living in a way I don't necessarily think is best, but they're living how they want.
As far as bussing goes, that's just a shit practice by a shit group. Not really relevant to the broader discussion of solving homelessness. That NIMBY attitude is definitely part of the public buy in that needs to be addressed.
Well, the guy that doesn't want housing and doesn't have it but denies others the intended use of public spaces because they've converted them into their camp is actually an issue.
We have parks that people barely use because sections get overrun by homeless and our biking and running trails are filled with campgrounds where people are attacked or screamed at when people attempt to use them for their intended purpose. It's hard to convince my city to build public spaces because of how existing spaces get used by the homeless.
As it stands, people in that position will be allowed to just keep committing crimes because they get protected from the law via being judgementproof.
Until we can stem the tide from bussing folks in, creating a free housing solution will not be sustainable as people keep arriving to partake in free housing with a relatively high minimum wage. If I was getting federal minimum wage somewhere and found out I could get free housing and $22/hour working at Panda Express, that's a huge quality of life improvement.