3 ms·
A Canadian study gave $7,500 to homeless people
- canadianfella 5y ago> Although the study’s findings seem promising, they have not yet undergone peer review. Plus, it’s worth noting that cash on its own probably isn’t enough to end homelessness.
- JoeyBananas 5y agoThe website for this project says: > She also said it was a difficult decision to include a control group of people who wouldn’t receive any cash, but ultimately, the control group was deemed necessary to prove impact. “We knew that we needed the rigor, because people would be skeptical about giving people cash. We wanted that evidence base that can assuage some of people’s concerns when they want to see the hard facts,” she told me. Why would it be a difficult decision to decide to include a control group? This does not inspire confidence in their methods. The website also says: > We conducted the project as a Randomized Controlled Trial, which is the gold standard of scientific research and allows us to compare our supports to business as usual. This is a very dubious statemeng. Was the experiment blinded? Do they have p-values? If this project has an associated paper, can somebody link me to it? I cannot find one. There is one PDF on the New Leaf project website, but it doesn't go into much detail.
- ggm 5y agoProbably what made the difference was money + counselling and longterm engagement. That it was at worst roughly equal cost to traditional interventions, and arguably (a bit) cheaper stands in its benefit. Ignoring rough sleepers is not cost effective. Society as a whole does better when we pay to avoid having people sleeping on the streets.