I think a lot of productive hardworking people's money has been spent on propaganda whose sole intention is to ensure that people equate homeless people to "mentally ill drug addicts" rather than, say, "private equity real estate buyup refugees"
People without a stable living condition experience severe stress and mental illness as a result. People without necessities to live turn to drugs to alleviate the pain and suffering they experience.
This study is one example of how giving money to people to alleviate their conditions can improve their lives and enable them to further engage in self improvement.
The folks without those two problems just aren’t the ones in your face every day.
Like you, I have lived in areas experiencing a lot of homelessness. I've stepped over sleeping people and drug needles because there was no other way to get to work or where I needed to go. On the other hand, I think that combining this with the statistical facts gives us a picture of the true size of the problem. The mentally ill and addicts are the visible part of an iceberg of Americans slowly being priced out of affordable housing and access to healthcare.
[1] https://news.uchicago.edu/story/employment-alone-isnt-enough...
You are arguing you would rather treat them worse. Cruelty for the sake of it... because anything else would be 'undeserving burdens' on the 'honest working class folk'. If helping one group hurts another (in your mind), of course that's how you would think. Powers that be conditioned you to think (falsely) it's a zero sum game.
People that have mental health issues need help they are not getting on the streets, there just isn't enough to go around.
Addiction is a weird one for me. people call it a disease, your brain undergoes physical changes. disease is a loosy-goosy word I've come to learn (psychological disorders count as diseases apparently?). Addiction doesn't have to start with 'a choice (on the user's part)', but commonly does - which is why I comprehend that some people blame the user for their addiction.
But the core reason people turn to stuff on the streets is: the streets suck. Get people off the streets... suddenly their outlook improves. Funny that!
And yes, the reduced crime/asset rate probably is worth $X coming from taxes spend on this. That's an easy calculation - human live /comfort should be priced fairly high.
No, but Hacker News will not show the reply button to a comment made extremely recently, to discourage quick back-and-forths.
Looking at the timestamps I suspect that's what you're seeing.
I'm waiting for a direct action org organized by a friend to receive 501c3 status, so it'll have to be after that. But I am curious to see where these people who are sane are on the streets. The objective is to identify those who can be self-sustaining in time. For the moment, I want to see if that is feasible.
From my experience here in San Francisco, many people have more money and resources than I have had at various times in my life. $500 would have sustained me in North Carolina a long time. I will see what decisions they make and see how feasible this operation is.
How about GTFO of here with your presumptive bullshit.
* homeless because of their severe drug addiction * homeless because they can’t afford rent
Each group needs different solutions.
What evil organization is paying on the backend to make sure homeless people do not receive money?
Argue in good faith. People are skeptical that their money should go to people that have not earned it. That is the reality of the argument. It isn’t a conspiracy that many people equate homeless to drug addiction, it’s fact. It is also fact that homelessness isn’t always the guy sleeping in the street, but the single mom sleeping on a friend’s couch for as long as possible.
This is just another “it’s really easy to spend other people’s money” issue.
Scapegoating the poor as depraved criminals is a time-honored way of muddying the waters about economic issues that need resolving, and while doing so openly has fallen out of fashion, most people alive today have consumed enough fearmongering and misinformation about drugs that tying drug usage to issues of poverty is an easy way to launder that kind of messaging, and so that kind of messaging is pervasive. So pervasive that you don't even believe that it comes from anywhere, just that it's the obvious truth. In reality, there are tons of high-functioning drug addicts, and the high-functioning part has far more to do with affluence than what drugs they use, just like homelessness, in turn, has more to do with the housing market than it does with drugs. This would seem obvious to me, but what is "obvious" is not a function of some objective universal reality, and only really comments on the subjective context of any given person claiming "obviousness", including both what they've experienced, and what they've been told
When the incentives are strong enough, no conspiracy is necessary, especially when the tricks being used are old and battle-tested ones.
Also, as far as spending other people's money goes, I'd much rather governments be spending mine on mitigating the housing crisis and its downstream effects on individuals than funding law enforcement to harass and make life difficult for society's most downtrodden. Police receive outsized budgets to "clean up" homeless encampments and endlessly violate people's privacy, autonomy, and often bodily integrity in the name of an endless draconian crackdown on the contraband that you would have me suppose is responsible for the existence of the homeless. Even an inefficient approach like funneling some of that money directly to individuals stuck in poverty traps seems a lot more likely to actually make a dent in the problem, rather than constantly exacerbating it. I bet it would be cheaper, too