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4. Provide free housing and attempt outreach. It’s cheaper than jail or forced rehab.
by davkan 2y ago
4. Provide free housing and attempt outreach.
It’s cheaper than jail or forced rehab.
- EPWN3D 2y agoFree housing where? In one of the most expensive cities in the world? If you provide free housing, it has to be accompanied by a compulsion to accept it, even if it's not in the place you prefer to live. And lots of homeless prefer SF because they have easy access to drugs, can panhandle, etc. But if there's free housing on offer, it has to be accompanied by a stipulation that setting up a tent and being a societal menace in a major metro does not entitle you to free housing in that metro.
- davkan 2y agoThere is no solution in which society does not carry these people besides offing them. They are our burden. Anywhere you would hold homeless people by force will be more expensive to staff and maintain in the long run than just giving them a shoebox with a bed and a hotplate.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoI don’t think it’s ever going to be feasible for SF to provide free housing to anyone who just shows up. It simply wont work no matter how much of the city budget they throw at it.
- davkan 2y agoI agree, SF’s homeless are from all over the country, they can’t afford to house everyone. I would imagine the tide could be stemmed to some small degree if colder states had free housing with heat.
- __turbobrew__ 2y agoFree housing doesn’t address the root cause of the mental illnesses and homelessness. In my very expensive city they do offer free housing but the occupants remain drug addicts and petty criminals. If there is free housing and you continue to break the social contract you either need to go to jail or you need to go to rehab.
- davkan 2y agoNo, it addresses the sidewalks. People who steal things should be put in jail for stealing things, not for living in the streets.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoYou need to keep the house from being burned down, I heard the ratio in Finland for residents to social workers in 4-1.
- davkan 2y agoI assume that’s still cheaper than jail though right? Not to mention more humane.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoNo, not really. It costs around $2-3k month to house them in jail, the cost starts at $10k/resident to house them in a tiny home or RV community without many social services. None of this cheap, although jail costs keep shooting up so who knows.