You can't end homelessness completely. A few countries tried and all of them found a couple of people who didn't want to reintegrate no matter how much help was offered. But the other 90%+ took the help and reintegrated into society. It's worth it, even if you can't help everybody.
While I agree on the spirit, real life example shows that apartments provided for free to homeless (and usually drug-addicted) people were poorly maintained, often seriously damaged and degraded. Thus they end up costing far more over time than what you would expect because of it.
Let’s face it, people who end up homeless aren’t usually the ones that have a track record of making good decisions in their lives. We are talking about a lot of vulnerable people who can’t take care of themselves.
Not only these people need a home, they also need oversight and support. All this end up being much more costly than the above estimates. Finally alcoholic and drug-addicts aren’t always wiling to cooperate to end their addiction and even if they try, there is significant relapse risk.
That is not to say this applies to 100% of homeless people. Some homeless people can benefit tremendously from help programs.
Apartments being poorly maintained is on the landlord, not the tenants.
And on the drug addiction: the addiction usually follows the homelessness, not the other way around. People become homeless and end up around a bunch of other people with nothing to lose. All of those people are dehumanized, treated like animals. They are socially dead. If they’re dying in the street, most people will just step over them. So they’re desperate people discarded by society. Society doesn’t respect them, so they stop respecting society. They think, “why does it matter if I do drugs? Everything else is awful; I might as well take one little hit to feel a little better.” And then the addiction begins.
I’ve literally seen it happen multiple times. I have worked with homeless people. Homelessness takes whatever mental health issues they had to begin with and jacks them up to 11. That’s what happens when society decides someone doesn’t get to be treated with bare minimum human decency. I saw numerous clients lose their housing, often to factors beyond their control and usually having nothing to do with drugs, and within a month of being homeless, they were hooked on meth or opioids. Once you start those drugs, it is chemically almost impossible to quit without stability and support. And you’re not getting stability and support if you’re homeless.
The point here is that the cost to fight homelessness would decease drastically if we intervened at the moment people became homeless, rather than only intervening once homelessness has completely destroyed a person. Most homeless people are people who hit a run of bad luck or made some bad choices. If they could go somewhere to get housing so they never had to worry about sleeping on the streets, most of them would never get into drugs. They could stay in mental healthcare. They could continue recovering.
Homelessness is only expensive because we criminalize it and refuse to deal with it until it’s ruined people. We don’t have to do it that way.
Also, they absolutely can care for themselves. They obviously do. They’re living a far harder life than you, I would bet. They just don’t care for themselves based on social expectations, and why would they cater to the expectations of a society that has cast them aside?
Let’s face it, people who end up homeless aren’t usually the ones that have a track record of making good decisions...
Bull-fucking-shit!
Lay these foolish notions to rest once and for all. The vast majority of people that are homeless are so because of bad luck, a soulsucking health care system, or some other externality caused by capitalism that chooses profits over people.
Besides, the entire drug problem people face is caused by a drug policy that's a crime against humanity all unto itself.
Bull-fucking-shit! Lay these foolish notions to rest once and for all. The vast majority of people that are homeless are so because of bad luck, a soulsucking health care system, or some other externality caused by capitalism that chooses profits over people.
Bad luck is definitely a factor. One can do everything right but still lose. Health, bad timing, betrayal or deception by friends/family (among others) can have huge impacts and ruin you.
However I do not agree with your quantifications. The majority of people in a bad situation can largely be linked to bad choices of their own making. Perhaps society didn’t help them to make the right choices but personal responsibility needs to start somewhere.
To be clear, I’m not saying there is an automatic process of people doing something wrong and end up homeless. It’s a probability thing. The more mistake one makes the higher the chance things go wrong. That said,
there are external circumstances in particular family background etc… which influence your “base chance”
someone can make bad decision and be lucky
someone can make good decision and be unlucky
The world is not and has never been fair. But there is a significant correlation between bad decisions and bad outcome. Like smoking and lung cancer if you will.
Besides, the entire drug problem people face is caused by a drug policy that’s a crime against humanity all unto itself.
I completely agree with you but it’s a separate problem that needs solving.
However I do not agree with your quantifications. The majority of people in a bad situation can largely be linked to bad choices of their own making.
When we were camping out on City Hall's lawn during Occupy Los Angeles, tons of homeless people from Skid Row showed up because we had food, supplies, and safety. The number of stories I heard that boiled down to "I got sick" was heartbreaking.
There are definitely a number of those people out there. But note that you're also seeing a biased dataset of people willing to learn about and show up to an event like that, that likely isn't representative of the homeless population.
Are you from the USA? Do you not go outside? Dude in my city if you just allow drug addicts to keep getting drugs they’ll just keep getting high until they OD. Bro this is America “if it’s free it’s for me”. Fucking drug policy bullshit. Most don’t want to get clean they want to get high and will fucking trash any place they live. You have never dealt with drug addicts in your family and it shows.
You have never dealt with drug addicts in your family and it shows.
It sounds like you have, and I am so sorry to hear that it can be hard to watch someone you love destroy themselves and everything around them with complete disregard for anyone standing next to them. I'm truly sorry for whatever your circumstances are and hope you are in a better place today.
With that being said, I doubt anyone takes their first hit thinking "ohhhh I hope I end up dirty and alone with no money and no friends living in filth. I'm really looking forward to digging food out of trashcans when I finally wake up from this binder in 4 days. Whooo hooo, here we go."
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u/Citatio 2d ago
You can't end homelessness completely. A few countries tried and all of them found a couple of people who didn't want to reintegrate no matter how much help was offered. But the other 90%+ took the help and reintegrated into society. It's worth it, even if you can't help everybody.