this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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Houses are only a small piece of the puzzle.
People are homeless for many different reasons. Mental health and drug addiction are two big ones. Then there are the handicapped, those that can't hold down a job. Those that lost everything they had. And even those that just want to be homeless.
People look at the homeless population though their own biases. Their framing is that people want a house.
We could try and give a house to every one of these people and they wouldn't all take it. Some would destroy it and return to being homeless, either maliciously or as.a byproduct of their mental illness.
We should house the ones we can, feed the ones we can, and treat the health of the ones we can. Those that want rehab should get it, but I don't think every drug addict out there wants to be cured. We should provide showers and clean clothes.
We need to remove the stigma from the homeless.
We need to make it easier for businesses to hire the homeless.
And we could do all that, and more. And we'd still have homeless. We will always have homeless. There is no holistic solution that will magically house everyone.
It's really easy for businesses to hire the homeless. They just don't want to. What we need to do is give them incentives to hire them.
Also, if we're going to house people we need to just do it. Just give them shelter period. No strings attached. At least for a while until other programs can get them on their feet. I've watched people try to navigate the system to get a real roof over their heads the "right way" and it feels like it's just set up for them to inevitably fail. They have to jump through hoops, sometimes in really dehumanizing ways, and can lose it all again far too easily. The half assed nonsense we've mostly got going now is just fodder for small minded people to point at and say "see, they don't even want help!"
Yea. Those that want it, give it to them. Making it contingent on being clean from drugs or whatever doesn't work.
There never will be a one size fits all trick to lifting someone out of being homeless. If someone wants to be lifted up, we should do whatever we can do help them.
I'm just saying that there will never be a complete solve to homelessness. But we can solve homelessness for those that WANT to not be homeless.
I don't think any realistic discussion about homelessness should be concerned with the minority of a minority of people who actively choose to be homeless. They're already happy enough as they are, or are simply too far removed from society that, as long as they're not causing actual problems, there IS no problem. Talking about people choosing to be homeless is almost a smoke screen to distract from actually talking about the problem.
The people who don't want houses aren't the issue. They can choose not to have one, fine. That's on them. Housing first has been very successful in certain European countries and cities. A safe place to live is the FIRST step to solving all of those issues, not the pot at the end of the life improvement rainbow.
Just getting people who DO want to offer the street dramatically improves mental health issues, substance abuse issues, lessens their strain on healthcare systems, lowers crime rate... it's the obvious first step.
Shelter is the biggest part of the problem. Everything else is just a smokescreen or a social service that would indeed be needed after they are housed.