Who am I going to throw quarters at? Who's going to help me find drugs? Who am I going to blame all my problems on?!?! These are the tough questions you need to start asking before you start your homelessness genocide folks..
Isn't that what Los Angeles is currently doing? Anyway solving problem of homeless that just got unlucky and ended up on the street is the easy part. You provide support which they will use it to get back on their feet.
The hard part is that they are not the only people that are homeless. The more difficult ones are addicts, who first need to be cleaned and not all of them wants to. And the most difficult ones are mentally ill. Those should be committed to a mental institution, unfortunately during Reagan they must agree for this to happen and they obviously won't.
Don't know how Finland does it exactly. But here in Germany the rent would be paid directly by the city to the landlord. The addict would not have any real way to get to the money, because he is not involved in this process. But there aren't enough appartments, so despite that we also have homlesness here (not at a USA level though).
You mean "cost" as in the cost of the collective people. Such is not given a fuck about by anyone with enough to not be a communist. That and such wealth would give zero fucks if it weren't for the fact that this level of wealth can, instead of forcing people, simply buy anything to be done that is delirious, disgusting and more that even I don't want to talk about here.
At the end of the day it become the choice of every individual who doesn't want to die to sell their kid to Bill Gates who will do you know what.
I just meant that in terms of tax payer money offering homeless people cheap free housing is not more expensive than not doing that and having all these other costs go up to combat the symptoms nothing more.
When Milwaukee implemented a housing-first homeless policy, they actually saved money.
Turns out that, by almost completely eliminating homelessness, you can save a lot of money on the legal system, policing, healthcare, and other costs associated with homelessness.
Housing-first homeless policy is the obvious solution: it's humane, it's effective, and it saves us money.
Note that the "homeless" people in Finland are mainly people who refuse to accept support from the social welfare, this is because they prefer to get drunk instead of spending it on food and rent. The social welfare eventually suggests a different system for such people: pay the rent for them and give a special card that can be used for anything except alcohol and cigarette. If the people keep refusing that other option, then they went homeless on their own accord and keep spending the welfare on alcohol and living on the streets. Such people are very rare in Finland in reality however, but they do exist.
Channel 5 has been making great documentaries on YouTube about this. No preconditions isn’t true. No drugs, need Id. Housing programs exist aswell as shelters (no Id required) but you can’t be on drugs. They exist in canada heavily. It’s not the full solution.
Vancouver, and I imagine most of Canada's major cities are experiencing a massive homelessness crisis, I dont know of these housing programs you speak of. There certainly isnt enough provided housing to go around
I live next to Hastings and Main, the fuck are you talking about saying Canada has dealt with homelessness? We have a ho... Oh, wait, I misread your statement, its the US being slapped, which means you're acknowledging Canada has a homelessness crisis as well...
While I agree that the mental health is vital, I disagree that it's of equal importance. Housing first has a winning track record, and bundling services can deter people from using either.
Someone might be just one restful night's sleep away from deciding that counseling isn't a trap.
It's worth noting that this is true for the vast majority of homeless, but the most visible contingent of homeless have severe mental issues that preclude a "housing first" approach.
Yeah, also when you throw in drug addiction. Housing-first really runs into issues with people who have destructive tendencies due to addiction or illness.
The track record of Housing First already includes people with drug addictions - it's been tested in real-world conditions versus existing strategies. This might sound counterintuitive, but "strings attached" only makes it worse.
Having no housing precludes keeping a proper medication schedule, record keeping, and a whole list of other things.
There's very little about mental illness that permanently frustrates sleeping indoors. Transitional housing, housing with shared bathing and kitchen facilities already exist.
That's not how the world works. Something needs to come first. You can't push medical treatment on people, the uptake is much worse than making available free housing.
Both are needed to be available, true. Work needs to be done so they don't depend on each other.
It's the only way to keep these people off the street, I dunno what else you want me to say. If you give them housing but no supportive services, they'll just trash it and then leave back to the streets. You can say that's not how the world works, but we'll need it to work that way for this small subsection of homeless people.
I think the issue is the term "mental treatment". Do you want social workers to come by once in a while? Of course: Have a talk, ask whether everything about the apartment is in order -- not an inspection, more the "if the drain doesn't work and you don't know what to do call us" kind of thing. But that's not therapy, it's at most psycho-sociological counselling. Therapy in most cases won't even work because there's the bulk of people's core issues is shitty life syndrome and there's no pill against capitalism.
Psychotic schizos (acutely or otherwise) should already be in an institution and on haloperidol and for the rest of us (yes you've stumbled across one on the spectrum) the same applies as for normies. There's no pills against the spectrum, either and yes we're kinda prone to shitty life syndrome on account of shitty society seeping through our barely existent self boundaries. Housing provides space and calm to work through the shit and please make doubly sure that social worker isn't conducting an inspection.
You can't push medical treatment on people, the uptake is much worse than making available free housing.
And that's IMO part of the problem, combined with some pretty bad history regarding domestic use of asylums etc.
You can't give somebody who's had a mental break a house/apartment/etc in the general population no-syringes-attached and maybe a once-a-week drop-in and expect things to go ok. That just results in places getting attacked with drug-fueled parties etc, and it's not particularly great for the neighbors.
There is group housing, but again if you stick an unrepentant addict who has mental issues in with people who are trying hard to recover, that'll negatively influence their living situation and mental health situation of those around them.
So... first-start housing needs to be in a controlled or semi-controlled environment that can allow people to recover when they're not in a good enough mental state to make sound health/life choices. You can't be no-strings-attached without it impacting those around them and their own ability to recover, and you just end up with a shit hole (literally in many cases) full of junkies, dealers, and people screaming at walls.
As those who are willing to improve things do so, and gain the faculties to make that decision, the housing situation and independence can change as well, but the care, housing, and healing need to go hand-in-hand with some basic ground rules for the good of all.
We have a similar program in my city, but unfortunately the scale of the problem is just too big at this point, and too wrapped up in a parallel mental health crisis to be solved by housing alone. A lot of these people basically need something closer to assisted living or a halfway to get back into any kind of normal routine. The US needed these programs 40 years ago.
Yes I’ll never understand this weird mentality that thinks the moment whomever they vote in all their promises will be fulfilled immediately like a fast meal though a McDonald’s drive through.
