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City Paying Homeless People to Clean Up After Themselves, and It’s Working
- dukeofdoom 6y agoThis gave me an idea. What if they employed some of them in the garden departments. Essentially paid them to do gardening work in the parks. For example, a Japanese garden requires lots of maintenance.
- 42droids 6y agoIsn’t this what we call social work?
- edflsafoiewq 6y agoIsn't this just regular work?
- bostonvaulter2 6y agoIt probably wouldn't meet minimum wage, so it I wouldn't consider it "regular work"
- bluefirebrand 6y agoThe simplest answer is because they generally don't actually want jobs.
- Gravyness 6y agoWhat can we (as a society) do with this kind of people?
- DoreenMichele 6y agoI did gig work while homeless. I didn't "want" a regular job because I couldn't successfully hold one down while coping with a lengthy health crisis. Among other things, I run r/GigWorks on Reddit to try to foster solutions for other people like me who are willing to work but can't make a "normal" job work for them currently.
- xnyan 6y agoThere always have and always will be people that need more help than those around them can provide. The key to helping those people is having lots of options so that we have the best chance of meeting some/most/all of their needs. Educational programs, jobs programs, cash payments, assisted/managed living, institutional facilities in someo cases or some combination of these services depending on the person. Some may say we already have these options - we don’t, at least there are many places in the USA and the rest of the world where they are not generally available to everyone who needs them.
- pingpongchef 6y agoSounds great but we should be worried about the cobra effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
- jokethrowaway 6y agoIf the amount given is low enough it probably won't attract scammers pretending to be homeless - but it may shift the number of homeless from cities that don't do the program to city that do it (assuming word of mouth spreads and homeless mobility allows it)
- xsmasher 6y agoHow would that apply in this case? They're not paying per bag of trash or anything.
- ElijahLynn 6y agoIt is $20 every other Wednesday. It has cost 10K over the course of a year. Not exactly a way to get a lot of cash.
- jukabo 6y agoOr we arrest them, instead of enabling them. Anyone that thinks that giving money to a homeless alcoholic is a good idea, you deserve to go to jail. You are killing these people.
- Thetawaves 6y agoI'm shocked that anyone would see arrest as a solution to this problem. Thats just great - 3 hots and a kot to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a year. Great idea.
- ElijahLynn 6y agoExactly!! I can't post to parent but this is my reply along with yours: ==================== Do you know how much money it cost to arrest someone and keep them in jail? It is like $40,000-$60,000 a year/person. And most houseless folks don't commit violent crimes. They just had a shitty life and are still having a shitty life and need a little help.
- jjeaff 6y agoIn California, it's about $81k per year per prisoner. https://lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost https://lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost