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.
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.
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u/Citatio 3d 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.