Addiction requires some level of coercive intervention to address. No one wants to admit this point so we keep arguing about whether we want to leave addicts to die in the street or in a crowded crack den. Neither really solves the problem.
Mark followed a bunch of homeless people in Skid Row as well as providing assistance to them and documenting it all through interviews.
The problem is so much (soooo much) deeper and worse than the surface level virtuous hand waving of "Just give them food and shelter and the problem is fixed".
I have family member suffering from extreme mental illness. He is likely on the streets somewhere, we don't know where because we had no choice but to abandon him to save ourselves. United States makes it extremely difficult to force treatment for someone who can't be making these decisions on their own ever. He ended up in this cycle. Mental Health Episode, Drugs, Law Enforcement interactions trying to get drugs (Robbing people), some minor help, slightly better, stops medications because side effects, repeat.
Funding it is always crazy expensive and in United States with crappy social safety net, it's really hard to find funding and politically, people don't want to fund it because "I'm barely affording rent and you want to raise my taxes to pay for them? Hell no."
That is correct, yet at the same time: Society as a whole refuses to give these people even the kindness of a roof over their head.
They need better care, yes. But if people won't even agree that these people shouldn't freeze to death in winter (or overheat in summer), talk of funding better care is off the table.
Christ, Fox News had one of their guys outright suggest they be euthanized. The bar for discourse on homelessness is in hell right now.
> The homelessness response system added 60,143 shelter beds in 2024, but with over 600,000 people entering homelessness for the first time each year, this is deeply inadequate.
> In 61 percent of states and territories, growth in demand outpaced growth in available beds, meaning that they had less capacity to shelter people in 2024 than in 2023.