Give them places to live and teach them to grow food which will help pay for the whole thing. It may not work for all of them but maybe it would help 35% or so of them? That’s a shitload more than we seem able to help now.
Give them places to live and teach them to grow food which will help pay for the whole thing.
The mentality that social programs are expected to justify their existence financially before their effectiveness can even be considered is one of the biggest reasons problems like homelessness are intractable.
UBI and public housing is more effective to prevent homelessness. Having said that, I’d love to see more and more cooperative based communities.
Back when I lived in Maryland the local Coca-Cola plant shut down, I was trying to buy it to convert the offices into apartments and then tear out the the concrete courtyard to turn it all into a community garden.
Coke wanted next to nothing for it if I was a business, but when they learned of my plans the price was vastly different. I was young and naive and probably could have started a company to buy it.
Its kind of tricky, the homeless are quite a diverse population from people just down on their luck to hard drug users with nothing to lose to violent assholes to people with mental health issues/impairments. There is’t a one size fits all problem. you can’t put such a mix of people together with the one commonality of them being homeless and expect everything to work out, they all have very different needs. Some people might make it out ok if you gave them a couple grand and temporary shelter to get them back on their feet, others might need long term care/support their whole lives and others might need institutionalization. I don’t know what the answer is.
The answer is starting with the couple thousand and temp shelter and then providing additional services as needed if that isn’t enough.
The answer to avoiding a lot of the homelessness in the first place is universal basic income, universal single payer healthcarr, and decriminalizing drugs use. That requires treating non-wealthy people like people so we won’t do it in the US, but we could mitigate a massive amount of honelessness by not driving people to the streets in the first place.
You mean like the residential mental hospital system in the US used to do before Regan destroyed it?
It had problems, like any institution, but overall it was providing EXACTLY what you are suggesting.
Crazy how “socialism” is often the solution for a better society… As if those two words shared some common root
Wait til the people who call prison convict labor “slavery” hear about this idea.
worth a try, but a lot are so mentally ill, they won’t even show up or just destroy some stuff and run away. those with schizophrenia who are constantly flailing around at invisible things are the scariest IMO. you can’t give those guys a shovel.
Perhaps helping them would improve the situation. Give them housing, voluntary treatment, and treat them like people, and you’ll find they’re just like you and me.
I’d probably go batshit crazy if I had to live out on the streets. No one should be subjected to it just because you view them as “scary”. Have a little humanity. They need help. Maybe a “shovel” won’t help, but a shelter, food, and community surely could.
