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Comment by meowtimemania | Hacker News Reader

I agree with you, I just feel like if I were working a minimum wage job busting my ass to pay rent to my landlord, I’d be deeply offended that you can be rewarded free housing essentially for being addicted to drugs.

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I think culturally we need to get our heads on straight. There’s no reason for someone who is capable of work to be feeling offended that a sick person gets something they can earn. I’m not angry disabled people can get income just for being disabled: being disabled sucks ass! Similarly I wouldn’t envy a homeless/addicted person: being homeless rots your brain and being addicted is like being enslaved. I’m a free man and I’m happy with that. Yes I must work for my housing but I guarantee my quality of life is better than someone whose addiction drive them out onto the streets.

You seem really intent in your comments on this post to conflate drug addiction and homelessness, which are overlapping but definitely separate issues.

Also, there are housing assistance programs for everyone who makes less than a certain amount of money, and I think everyone who advocates for more housing for the homeless would agree with more affordable housing in general. Mostly people who work in this space agree that housing costs are the primary driver of homelessness.

you would be working the same minimum wage job and busting the same ass to pay the same rent to the same landlord, regardless of whether someone else got housed for free. this is indeed a very real problem, but the problem is that people are forced into long hours at (insufficient) minimum wage jobs in order to get unaffordably priced housing. you should be resenting the people higher up the chain who have created these conditions, not the people lower down who might be getting something for free.

They would be paying more in taxes to fund the house that someone got for free.

again, the amount of their taxes that would go to providing free housing to people with nothing is so infinitesimal as to be unnoticeable, especially compared to the portion that goes into handouts to billionaires. and yet somehow it is the poor people who get resented.

and the ironic thing is that housing-first measures would likely end up saving taxpayers money, but the awful fear of someone undeserving getting something counts for more.

And yet, in spite of being offended by it, your life would actually be better for them getting free housing.

Why would you imagine that free housing would be something to envy over regular rentals? Minimal housing, possibly surrounded by other at-risk people working through serious issues seems like not something to envy.

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