But if you give houses to the homeless, they will no longer be homeless and who am I going to look down on now?
this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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And what else will I complain about when I go downtown? I want to be able to complain about how we need to clean the riffraff of the streets, but it gives me no joy if we're actually getting them off the streets! I need something to fucking whinge about!
Most people who complain about downtowns never go there anyways.
Exactly. I fucking live downtown and I have more to complain about businesses that operate down here than the damn homeless.
The only "thugs" I ever see downtown is the posse of ten cops it takes to shoo one homeless person out of a park.
COP = Criminals On Patrol
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Well if the homeless are off the streets, then the turtles and rats can come back out of the sewers. Go rant at Splinter
The bourgeoisie requires a risk of destitution to prevent the proletariat from rising up.
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There is already an order of magnitude more unused housing than unhoused people- the problem is that the market is involved and that requires winners and losers.
That's why you have people dying of exposure in the richest country in the history of the world. God damn america.
G-give....away? N-n-no money for me?? But money me, now. Money now. Money! House = money! Empty house, no money is ok, full house no money NOT OK!
CoMmUnIsM!!!
-Landleeches
Not only that - they’re dying in the street immediately adjacent to vacant luxury condos.
Throw in unaddressed mental health and drug crises.
Are the homeless people where the empty homes are? That's the concern I have. There are really cheap empty houses throughout the country, but the homeless are congregate in large groups in some of the most expensive states/cities in the country. I dont think there are that many empty homes in San Francisco that are available for rent/purchase that are just being left empty for months at a time.
Where are people sourcing that information from?
It's off the aggregate numbers. I'm sure that there's a lot of useless suburban sprawl pumping the numbers up. The "most efficient system" is an abject failure when it comes to housing people unless the only metric you care about is revenue generation for shithead inheritors.
"but who will pay for it?1!?1?!1?"
The government
"But then my taxes are going to do some good! That can't be!!!"
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Housing first is a proven strategy in dealing with homelessness. The fact that every state has not adopted these policies to help eliminate the homeless population shows this is more a cultural issue than a lack of housing.
According to the Census there are a lot more empty houses than homeless people. Let that sink in and you start to realize all is not what it seems.
Until someone is safe and has their basic needs met it is impossible to work on issues such as mental health and addiction.
The solution exists but it is going to take a lot of our time, money, and most importantly a cultural shift away from blaming people to accomplish it.
If we could fix our homelessness then we would show that we truly care about our citizens rather than just paying a lip service to our most vulnerable people.
According to the Census there are a lot more empty houses than homeless people. Let that sink in and you start to realize all is not what it seems.
This particular statistic needs to be handled carefully. There are problems with both its definition and its nature. Empty housing has a fairly broad definition that includes housing that is unfinished, in the middle of repairs, or unfit for habitation.
The nature of housing with relationship to homelessness depends a lot on where the homeless people are and where the housing is. Empty housing in towns and cities that are depopulating is unlikely to be all that useful. Simply taking people from cities with high levels of homelessness, ripping them out of their communities, and plopping them down into communities that other people are leaving is not a favor.
Also, you shouldn't just warehouse unhoused people in whatever housing is available. Many of them have mental illnesses that need good access to mental health services, transit, and jobs. Just because they're under a roof doesn't mean the job is done. The housing should be tailored to the various populations that it will be serving.
I encourage you to lookup up Housing First if you have not already. While it may be misleading to say there are 16 million vacant home to half a million homeless people (32 homes for every homeless person), for the reasons you mentioned, it is entirely possible house these people.
No one who knows about this issue is thinking about warehousing people. Like you said they need a stable place to live, access to services, transportation, and work when they are ready.
I'm familiar with Housing First. I mostly just didn't want to see a misleading use of statistics left unchallenged. Statistics around housing are difficult to grasp, so I often see them used in a misleading way, usually unknowingly.
Take one statistic, the rental vacancy rate in my city, Portland. It has lately been around 4%. Given the number of homeless people in the city, that feels like a travesty. But when you start to do calculations, that turns out to be an average of 2 weeks every four years. If you have tenants moving out after four years, that's barely enough time to do a few repairs, let the paint dry, and finding new tenants. What seemed like a loose market turns out to be a very tight market.
Housing + mental healthcare. Without mental healthcare you’d just be proving these NIMBYs right.
(sees username)
Housing + universal healthcare
Don't forget the Homeless Jesus statues that take up and entire bench so no one can sleep on them.
Those are usually placed with other benches nearby. Plus it's an art piece calling attention to the issue, I wouldn't classify it as hostile architecture.
The one here in Dallas is not near any other benches and in an area known for people panhandling at the intersections. While it might not have been placed maliciously, it certainly has unintended consequences.
I also have so little faith in anyone who holds any political office in Texas, I could 100% believe they would do it as hostile architecture, while pretending to actually be Christians.
Ah, another “He Gets Us” moment.
“Jesus was homeless for a time (supposedly), so it’s fine for them to be homeless!” ☺️
I understand this building in downtown Vancouver probably had issues with people sleeping here, but placing a bunch of concrete filled pylons is fucked up.
Sledgehammer time. Looks like fun.
Smashing it to pieces is good practice
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Homeless exist to remind the rest of the serfs that they better go back to the coal mine or they'll end up just like them.
Wow. This format is actually put to good use here.
Spend some taxpayer money on renovating abandoned shopping malls into housing for the homeless
Not exactly doable since living spaces legally must have egress windows, and shopping malls... Don't really have many outer walls for that compared to the amount of space internally they have
I mean houses cost money, and we know the government don't like spending in the first place, they just worried about public image not the root of the problem
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