I live in a shitty area of NYC now. I walk past people like Andre every single day, and you can call me cynical, but I'm unconvinced that the problems they face

I live in a shitty area of NYC now. I walk past people like Andre every single day, and you can call me cynical, but I'm unconvinced that the problems they face are outside of their control to stop. These are guys with a new blanket of merch, often hundreds of dollars worth, every single day on my corner. This is merchandise usually stolen from Mom & Pop pharmacies without any security, so there's quite literally 0 repercussions from walking in and taking as much as you can carry. I see that happen at least once a week, as well. You can make at least $100/day selling stolen crap on the sidewalk. For perspective, a shelter (with beds and a shower) is $20/night. There are also countless places in this city you can get clean for either free or a couple dollars [1]. As I mentioned in my post, there are quite literally thousands of restaurants, warehouses, cleanup crews in the city you can work under the table for if you show up sober and willing to work. I say this because I personally know individuals that do this. Don't believe me? Go to /r/homeless and look up cash jobs. Thousands of other people have figured it out, why can't Andre? I'm all for societal change which ensures that individuals like Andre don't end up in that situation in the first place, but I'm of the opinion those changes start in the classroom and with ones parents, not by the state giving away free apartments. The fact of the matter is that if Andre's already been stealing from Target's and selling the goods on the sidewalk for fifteen years, maybe he doesn't want a minimum wage job in the first place? I don't doubt that a free place to live would help Andre, I mean hell, not having to pay rent would help me as well. But surely there's a better strategy than housing life-long criminals for free, indefinitely? There's a program in New York called ACE [2] which guides homeless people from the street to a job to eventually subsidized rent or a temporary free place to live. Every year they move a couple thousand individuals out of poverty. It's worth watching some of their success stories. All it will do is resonate the point I've been making this entire time - homelessness is an incredibly complex problem and the strategy of 'free houses for anyone who asks' is misguided, expensive, and ultimately fruitless. I don't doubt it works for some, but for others, it's at best an incredibly expensive band-aid, and at worst a point of enablement of their already destructive behaviour. I've seen it remarked before on this site that the real solution to the Fermi Paradox is that every other intelligent civilization in the universe is forever held back because of its need to provide for its members that have collectively decided they no longer feel like contributing. In the words of Ned Flanders, "taxes pay for trees, sunshine, policemen, and the folks who just don't feel like working - god bless 'em!" [1] https://www.dare2bnyc.org/showers https://www.dare2bnyc.org/showers [2] https://acenewyork.org/ https://acenewyork.org/