Interesting idea. Do you know of any case where it has worked? From the way the article was written I was sort of expecting to hear a case study. Speculation r

Interesting idea. Do you know of any case where it has worked? From the way the article was written I was sort of expecting to hear a case study. Speculation roundup: There are two economic values of a homeless person, actually any person, but I digress. P is the cost, to the state, of keeping that person alive and medically stable, which includes police and health services, as well as shelter costs, soup kitchens, etc. V is the value generated by the homeless person through their labor, which varies much more than some people expect. Many homeless people have jobs. But for many homeless people it's zero. Ways of decreasing P include a number of creative policies designed recently as well as "short-term" tolerance of outdoor living. Ways of increasing V by contrast are generally limited to: * standard inpatient mental health "treatment", has a slim chance of success and a large chance of backfiring and setting V to zero for a long time, also sends P through the roof * outpatient medication, has a similarly tiny chance of success but a smaller chance of backfiring and is much cheaper * prison labor, effective but brings to mind immediately The Road to Serfdom and other dystopian fictions (heh) * ??? Creative ways of increasing V ought to depend on economic fundamentals, i.e. finding out what a homeless person is good for and exploiting that, to wit: homeless people tend to beat normal people at dealing with homeless people. They might also be able to help out with e.g. trash pickup or road maintenance. The typical road-map people envision for increasing V looks like this: homeless -> [treatment] -> normal but in reality looks more like this: very low V -> [treatment] -> low V -> [more treatment] -> slightly low V -> [more treatment] -> mediocre V -> [more treatment] -> with luck normal V The typical way of dealing with the intermediate stages currently consists of either locking them in a small compound with shitty beds and twelve other crazy people or giving them a bottle of pills and hoping Jesus can handle the rest. This, really, is the problem. Halfway housing for homeless people might look like a situation where housing is provided in return for part-time labor. I'd also like to point out that while in "treatment" for homelessness it might not be reasonable to demand complete sobriety when you consider that you're preparing them for eventual release into a world where they'll be allowed to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes and probably marijuana and their drug use will not be so heavily monitored. Supporting the development of self-control means that people have to be able to have a little control in the first place, and the ability to make small mistakes before making big ones