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He discounts immediately the obvious solution for the problem houseless people face: providing them homes. At $80,000 a year, it's absurd that we are unable to
by omegaworks 8y ago
He discounts immediately the obvious solution for the problem houseless people face: providing them homes.
At $80,000 a year, it's absurd that we are unable to use that money to actually finance housing.
What he says about it:
>about 80 percent of people who are on the streets, uh, struggle with lifetime drug and alcohol addiction and mental illness
Is a total non-sequitur. People that struggle with lifetime addiction and mental illness have those problems exacerbated by not having housing. Providing stable housing is the first step toward coping with that illness.
They're doing it in Canada, and the results validate this policy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/26/world/canada/homeless-canada-medicine-hat-housing-first.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/26/world/canada/homeless-can...
>the cost of housing the homeless was far less than the cost of the emergency services needed by the homeless while they were living on the street.
>“The reduction in days in jail alone pays for the program,” said Jaime Rogers, a Medicine Hat housing official. She cited studies that said the average homeless person costs taxpayers 120,000 Canadian dollars a year, or $91,600, in services, while it costs just 18,000 Canadian dollars a year, or $13,740, to house someone and provide the necessary retention support.
- longerthoughts 8y ago>He discounts immediately the obvious solution for the problem houseless people face: providing them homes. Keep reading. He leads by highlighting flaws of the commonly proposed strategies for addressing homelessness but later goes back and proposes a solution tying several things together, including providing housing. He essentially says 1) build housing, 2) enforce laws against low-level offenses associated with homelessness (e.g. littering, vandalism), 3) provide services for addiction and mental illness, 4) create a jobs program.
- TaylorAlexander 8y agoI really dislike it when people downvote perfectly valid political opinions they disagree with and don’t even bother to respond to you. I agree with you that building homes for the homeless is a fantastically effective way to deal with homelessness. I’m sorry you’re not getting the respect you deserve. You’ve got my upvote.
- longerthoughts 8y agoI suspect some of the downvotes are coming not from disagreement, but because the first line of the parent's comment misstates the interviewee's conclusions about providing housing. I share your view that downvotes should be reserved for comments that don't encourage productive discussion and comments should be used to disagree, and misstating conclusions from an article is not productive.
- TaylorAlexander 8y agoAgreed. Thanks for the clear reply. :)