9 ms·

I really wish we could all, liberals and conservatives, could come up with a "grand compromise" with regards to the homeless. Elements of the compromise: 1) Gu

I really wish we could all, liberals and conservatives, could come up with a "grand compromise" with regards to the homeless. Elements of the compromise: 1) Guarantee all people access to cheap, government provided dormitory style living, with a door that locks, a kitchen and basic food staples, and security screening of fellow residents. There would be different forms of permanent living for the mentally ill, drug addicts, recovering addicts, or able body people who have fallen on hard times. It would seem reasonable to require the sane and able bodied to do 20 hours of very basic work (picking up trash, watching security cameras, etc.) in return for the living. [this line has been edited, see footnote] 2) Re-enact and enforce vagrancy laws. No sleeping in the street, no panhandling, no begging, no telling manipulative sob stories on the subway. 3) Make the support for 1) the responsibility of the community they are from. The problem right now is any community that wishes to be generous to the homeless becomes a homeless magnet. This creates an incentive for cities not to be charitable, and to not take care of their own. The cities that are generous then get mocked for their homeless problem. Instead, if San Francisco police arrest a vagrant, they should make an effort to find out where his closest family from, or where his last established residency or hometown is, and then give him a one-way bus ticket back to that town. Unfortunately, liberals are generally against #2, conservatives are against #1, no one even talks about #3 and so nothing gets done and the problem, which could be so easily solved given our resources, persists on and on. (a) Edit/footnote: obviously many homeless people have drug and mental health problems that would make dorm living and performing a government job infeasible. There also needs to be funded supportive housing and programs for those cases. Also, there needs to be different levels of dorm living so those trying to escape drug addiction are not around those who are still using. The dorm living would need rules and management to prevent the problems that plague homeless shelter.

VBprogrammer 12y ago
1) Sounds a lot like slavery. 2) Make being homeless illegal. 3) Eliminate freedom of travel for the homeless. I think I prefer the status quo to your version of a solution.
- dubfan 12y ago
  #3 is probably unconstitutional but the laws for #2 are on the books in most cities. They just aren't enforced in cities like SF and Seattle.
- bobbyhotpockets 12y ago
  "1) Sounds a lot like slavery." IANAE, but I don't think that's how slavery worked.
- bokonist 12y ago
  1) Sounds a lot like slavery. What? You are being spitefully obtuse. With slavery, the entire problem is you cannot leave your job, you are owned, and at the mercy of your owner. With my first bullet point, I am simply creating an option that does not currently exist. #2 is the more controversial point. My gut and personal preferences say that the long-term utility gain to the general public plus the homeless person of moving them into dorm living exceeds the short-term utility loss to the homeless person of not being allowed to sleep on the street, and being forced to move into the dorm living (provided the dorm living is actually clean and maintained, and is not like awful shelter living).
  - VBprogrammer 12y ago
    Absolutely not, I simply believe that forcing people to work against their will, and likely their capabilities given the issues many homeless people face, is a form of slavery. It may not perfectly match the model of slavery from US history but that doesn't make it not slavery. What harm does homelessness cause the general public? Does it negatively impact their everyday life?
    - smtddr 12y ago
      The OP said: >>Guarantee all people access to cheap, government provided dormitory style living, with a kitchen and basic food staples, in return for 20 hours of very basic work (picking up trash, watching security cameras, etc.). This is what slavery is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery They're not equal at all. Now, there is another factor that perhaps you could have been clearer about that would help support your case. You could argue that there are dynamics in society that drive people into #1 without having any real choice. That's a different problem, but still not at the level of what slavery was. e.g., the criminal system becomes easier and easier to fall into everyday and extremely hard to get out of.
cgtyoder 12y ago
So basically: you may ask for help, but only at certain places and with certain people. I guess if we specify the community as "Earth," this sounds good.
octo_t 12y ago
Lots of homeless people have drug addictions, mental health problems that make it exceptionally hard for them to do 20 hours of work a week. Fetishing work isn't the way to do this.
- bokonist 12y ago
  Many of those people would actually like jobs, but the gap between where they are, and what is required to even work at McDonald's is huge. That is why the job needs to be community provided, guaranteed, and tailored for that person. Even most people with problems can start by doing something. If they really are far gone than supportive housing or an institution might be required. The dorm living shouldn't be the only option, case workers need to have good judgement about what is realistic for a particular person.
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    And working at McDonald's isn't remotely sufficient to prevent homelessness.
    - Omniusaspirer 12y ago
      Maybe not in San Fransico, but it's more than enough in nearly every small town in the midwest. I've had rents as low as $225/month w/ all utilities included (newly furnished/redone kitchen, no obvious problems). That's low enough that ~ 1 week of McDonald's work will have paid for your rent, the other 3 weeks of monthly income can go to food ($100-150) and assorted needs like toiletries ($20-50). That still leaves you with ~$500/month after essentials which is honestly more than most people making $30-50k/yr actually put away into savings. The issue with the homeless isn't that the jobs don't pay enough to keep them off the streets, it's that they lack the mental faculties to hold onto even the most basic of jobs. Alternatively they're just exploiting suckers for easy money- a reality that many feel-good white evangelists like to pretend isn't a significant reality.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  Yeah. The person above is seriously out of touch. There's a reason why ex-military are disproportionately homeless. These aren't lazy people or people who don't know the meaning of hard work. These are people who have sometimes serious mental health issues (e.g. PTSD, depression, alcohol addiction, etc) which make holding a job difficult or impossible. 20 hours of work might be difficult for many. Also who is going to live in a dorm with addicts, people with other assorted mental health issues, and people with various criminal records? There's a reason a lot of homeless people avoid "shelters," those places are sometimes MORE dangerous than prison (wanna get stabbed? Because going to a homeless shelter is a good way to get stabbed). Honestly there isn't a "one size fits all" solution to homelessness. All homeless people are homeless for different reasons. All we as a society can do is start dealing with SOME of those problems one at a time. If you do want to do the dorm thing then security has to be priority number one. For homeless people the streets can actually be safer than living with some of their peers.
random28345 12y ago
While all your ideas have problems individually, modern homelessness is a mental health problem, rather than one of housing. While perfectly healthy people choosing eking out a meager living of booze or drugs by panhandling on the subway is irritating, the real issue is that many homeless are not homeless by choice, but because they have mental illness that inhibits their ability to work or associate with people. Any solution aimed at punishing the voluntary homeless while ignoring the mentally ill is missing the point.
- olefoo 12y ago
  Umm. The characterization of homelessness as a mental health issue is very convenient for not facing the ongoing changes in our society. While it may be true that some segment of the homeless population is mentally ill; that's the tip of the iceberg for the real problem. Young, wealthy, privileged people like the majority of the audience of this site have no concept of how easy it is to fall through the cracks and lose everything. And the problem of poverty and homelessness is only going to grow. The majority of Generation X has NO Savings for retirement [1] and what do you think will happen to them? And in fact one of the cities having an epic and fairly invisible homelessness problem is San Francisco [2]. There may be a very small minority of people who choose to be unhoused; but they are generally not the problem. 1. http://rall.com/2014/10/13/syndicated-column-millions-of-gen-xers-will-be-homeless-before-you-know-it http://rall.com/2014/10/13/syndicated-column-millions-of-gen... 2. http://www.vox.com/a/homeless-san-francisco-tech-boom http://www.vox.com/a/homeless-san-francisco-tech-boom
- dntrkv 12y ago
  Mental health is definitely a part of the homeless problem, but it's not the majority. 37% of homeless in SF are reported to have a mental illness. Whether or not that's the primary cause in those 37%, is another question. Source: http://www.sfgov3.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=4819 http://www.sfgov3.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=4...
mikeash 12y ago
1) What about all the people who can't work? What about all the people who can work but simply won't? Do you deny them access to the services you propose? If so, then you haven't solved the problem at all. 3) How do you propose to enforce that they use the one-way bus ticket? How do you keep them from coming back? I think this problem may be a bit harder to solve than you think.
chc 12y ago
I'm not sure this is practical. Many homeless people are too mentally ill to be able to hold down even a janitorial position.
kauffj 12y ago
Wouldn't banning panhandling/begging be an immoral restriction of speech? What is the fundamental difference between a beggar telling a sob story and the woman who stops you to talk about the ACLU/Planned Parenthood/<charity of the week>? Or are you for banning all public requests for money for any reason?
- bokonist 12y ago
  "What is the fundamental difference between a beggar telling a sob story and the woman who stops you to talk about the ACLU/Planned Parenthood/<charity of the week>? Or are you for banning all public requests for money for any reason?" Well, given my druthers I'd ban those too. Cities are very dense and, in the scheme of human existence, unnatural places. It takes effort and rules to make tens of thousands of humans occupy the same space and stay sane. That is why cities have the ability to pass ordinances to restrict all sorts of activity in public spaces. There is a right to freedom of assembly, but that does not mean you can assemble a crowd in the streets or sidewalks at any time, you need a permit. There is freedom of speech, but there are ordinances against playing blaring music or disturbing the peace. There are laws against unsolicited phone calls and spamming. There are ordinances banning neon signs on some streets, to prevent a race to the bottom where stores compete for the most obnoxious store frontage. Etc. etc. I view any form of asking of money to strangers on city streets to be a form of spamming. It is perfectly within the rights of a city to ban it.
  - JadeNB 12y ago
    > Cities are very dense and, in the scheme of human existence, unnatural places. I think that this kind of statement must be qualified very carefully. I believe (though I don't know) that cities are unnatural in the sense that they don't arise in nature among other animals than humans; but I'd be reluctant to call them unnatural for humans, in the sense that it seems to me that a large part of what makes us human is the ability to live together and function (well or poorly!) in large groups.
    - bokonist 12y ago
lotsofmangos 12y ago
3 is much like the medieval crime of wandering abroad, where the poor were effectively criminalised from trying to leave their parish of birth without permission.
shkkmo 12y ago
I could support 1) if they are also paid minimum wage in addition to the free housing. But only if we don't implement 2) and 3) because those will force people to have to choose to participate in 1) and not everybody can.
rthomas6 12y ago
I have a counter-proposal: 1) Universal basic income. You get paid like $10,000 no matter what. 2) Eliminate minimum wage. Anyone is free to earn extra if they so desire. 3) Outlaw rent control. Now you have more abundant housing. That wouldn't take care of all of it, but it would sure help.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  "3) Outlaw rent control. Now you have more abundant housing." There's multiple interactions implicit there. That's fine, just noting it - I agree that would be a consequence.
- orbitingpluto 12y ago
  That system is ripe for abuse as well. You would have to outlaw a landlord from being to ask what their financial status is, doing credit checks, proof of employment. Otherwise homes for the homeless will have rents with disproportionate high rents for poor quality slum homes. Also without rent control, you will suddenly find cities suddenly very empty of people able to do things like get you your coffee. And shipping them in every day from 100 miles away is a dystopian nightmare.
  - rthomas6 12y ago
    No... that's not really the effect of no rent control. In fact rent control is often the cause of excessive credit checks, proof of employment, etc. Maybe in the short run no rent control would make disproportionate high rents, but not in the long run. In fact it's the opposite. No rent control results in something like Hong Kong: abundant, extremely tiny apartments that people can afford. That may not be ideal, but it's certainly better than being homeless. Luxury apartments are lucrative, sure, but if you can fit more rooms into a given space you can often make even more money. For example if you could have 1 apartment and charge $3000, or 2 apartments and charge $1700, the 2 apartments are a better deal.
    - orbitingpluto 12y ago
      The above plan will have the effect of landlords knowing how much those only on the minimum living allowance can pay. Combine that with the ability to still perform credit checks and it's ripe for abuse. If you have a guaranteed minimum income that is suffcient to qualify you for the apartment, you should probably be able to skip the credit check for it. Citing Hong Kong struck me as odd. It's probably better being homeless in certain states. I think most people have seen the following, or similar, set of pictures about Hong Kong micro-apartments: http://inhabitat.com/exhibit-on-the-micro-apartments-of-hong-kong-exposes-human-rights-issues/ http://inhabitat.com/exhibit-on-the-micro-apartments-of-hong... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cage_home http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cage_home Real urban planning has low income housing distributed throughout the city. If not, the wage slaves have to be shipped in. Some form of rent control/social housing incentives have to be in place. Otherwise you get situations in the states where welfare mothers have to bus 3 hours each way to get to their minimum wage job.
wheels 12y ago
As others have said, this is pretty out of touch with the reality of homelessness. It assumes that homelessness is primarily a condition caused by laziness. While that's occasionally true, it's such a small minority that it's an absurd place to start. It'd be like rebuilding your football team starting with your second-string punter. As a prelude, remember that your proposed system basically exists. Project housing isn't a novel idea. The homeless are by and large the folks that can't or don't want to get themselves into project housing. In a rather odd turn of events, when I was 19, I ended up staying in a homeless shelter for a week. It was an incredibly interesting experience. For most of a week I stayed there, ate in soup kitchens and had a rather interesting look from the inside. For the most part, in the shelter I was in, I saw two big categories of folks that were there: - Folks that were crazy. This included long term drug and alcohol addicts. They were probably a slight majority. The type and severity of crazy varied, but you got the sense that the goal with those types of folks was helping them to the extent possible, but in most cases, they were often going to need assistance for the remainder of their lives. - Folks that were pretty darn normal, but had two things go particularly bad in their lives at once. This group was pretty surprising for someone from a middle class background. These people seemed totally normal to me. There was one combination of events that was so common that I saw it several times -- people who'd lost their jobs and their wives (it was a men's shelter) had kicked them out at the same time. Some of these people had graduate degrees, reasonably respectable middle class careers, and so on ... but for one reason or another all at once they had no money and nowhere to live. Neither of those cases would be especially well addressed by your proposal. I'm skeptical that it would do anything other than make rich people feel better about complaining about the homeless, but really, that sounds like what it's designed for.
- bokonist 12y ago
  Neither of those cases would be especially well addressed by your proposal. Really, wouldn't option #1 help the normal, hard-luck people quite a bit? It would give you a permanent bed, and address to get mail, etc. while you applied for jobs and got back on your feet? It seems like an immensely superior option to the status quo. As for the crazy people, I agree, which is why I edited my answer to make it clear that there should be government provided permanent living arrangements that are supportive for the types of problems people have. The normal hard luck people should not have to live in dorms with crazy people and drug addicts.
zmmmmm 12y ago
That's a hell of a lot of work to do to avoid the simple solution that some other countries come to - just give people a simple, low, living wage that is enough to cover basic needs. Then let them choose their own housing, work, etc etc. It's almost amusing (if it wasn't so sad) how the ideology against socialism in the US is so strong that people will almost reinvent it in trying to avoid it.

VBprogrammer 12y ago

1) Sounds a lot like slavery. 2) Make being homeless illegal. 3) Eliminate freedom of travel for the homeless. I think I prefer the status quo to your version of a solution.

dubfan 12y ago
#3 is probably unconstitutional but the laws for #2 are on the books in most cities. They just aren't enforced in cities like SF and Seattle.
bobbyhotpockets 12y ago
"1) Sounds a lot like slavery." IANAE, but I don't think that's how slavery worked.
bokonist 12y ago
1) Sounds a lot like slavery. What? You are being spitefully obtuse. With slavery, the entire problem is you cannot leave your job, you are owned, and at the mercy of your owner. With my first bullet point, I am simply creating an option that does not currently exist. #2 is the more controversial point. My gut and personal preferences say that the long-term utility gain to the general public plus the homeless person of moving them into dorm living exceeds the short-term utility loss to the homeless person of not being allowed to sleep on the street, and being forced to move into the dorm living (provided the dorm living is actually clean and maintained, and is not like awful shelter living).
- VBprogrammer 12y ago
  Absolutely not, I simply believe that forcing people to work against their will, and likely their capabilities given the issues many homeless people face, is a form of slavery. It may not perfectly match the model of slavery from US history but that doesn't make it not slavery. What harm does homelessness cause the general public? Does it negatively impact their everyday life?
  - smtddr 12y ago
    The OP said: >>Guarantee all people access to cheap, government provided dormitory style living, with a kitchen and basic food staples, in return for 20 hours of very basic work (picking up trash, watching security cameras, etc.). This is what slavery is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery They're not equal at all. Now, there is another factor that perhaps you could have been clearer about that would help support your case. You could argue that there are dynamics in society that drive people into #1 without having any real choice. That's a different problem, but still not at the level of what slavery was. e.g., the criminal system becomes easier and easier to fall into everyday and extremely hard to get out of.

cgtyoder 12y ago

So basically: you may ask for help, but only at certain places and with certain people. I guess if we specify the community as "Earth," this sounds good.

octo_t 12y ago

Lots of homeless people have drug addictions, mental health problems that make it exceptionally hard for them to do 20 hours of work a week. Fetishing work isn't the way to do this.

bokonist 12y ago
Many of those people would actually like jobs, but the gap between where they are, and what is required to even work at McDonald's is huge. That is why the job needs to be community provided, guaranteed, and tailored for that person. Even most people with problems can start by doing something. If they really are far gone than supportive housing or an institution might be required. The dorm living shouldn't be the only option, case workers need to have good judgement about what is realistic for a particular person.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  And working at McDonald's isn't remotely sufficient to prevent homelessness.
  - Omniusaspirer 12y ago
    Maybe not in San Fransico, but it's more than enough in nearly every small town in the midwest. I've had rents as low as $225/month w/ all utilities included (newly furnished/redone kitchen, no obvious problems). That's low enough that ~ 1 week of McDonald's work will have paid for your rent, the other 3 weeks of monthly income can go to food ($100-150) and assorted needs like toiletries ($20-50). That still leaves you with ~$500/month after essentials which is honestly more than most people making $30-50k/yr actually put away into savings. The issue with the homeless isn't that the jobs don't pay enough to keep them off the streets, it's that they lack the mental faculties to hold onto even the most basic of jobs. Alternatively they're just exploiting suckers for easy money- a reality that many feel-good white evangelists like to pretend isn't a significant reality.
Someone1234 12y ago
Yeah. The person above is seriously out of touch. There's a reason why ex-military are disproportionately homeless. These aren't lazy people or people who don't know the meaning of hard work. These are people who have sometimes serious mental health issues (e.g. PTSD, depression, alcohol addiction, etc) which make holding a job difficult or impossible. 20 hours of work might be difficult for many. Also who is going to live in a dorm with addicts, people with other assorted mental health issues, and people with various criminal records? There's a reason a lot of homeless people avoid "shelters," those places are sometimes MORE dangerous than prison (wanna get stabbed? Because going to a homeless shelter is a good way to get stabbed). Honestly there isn't a "one size fits all" solution to homelessness. All homeless people are homeless for different reasons. All we as a society can do is start dealing with SOME of those problems one at a time. If you do want to do the dorm thing then security has to be priority number one. For homeless people the streets can actually be safer than living with some of their peers.

random28345 12y ago

While all your ideas have problems individually, modern homelessness is a mental health problem, rather than one of housing. While perfectly healthy people choosing eking out a meager living of booze or drugs by panhandling on the subway is irritating, the real issue is that many homeless are not homeless by choice, but because they have mental illness that inhibits their ability to work or associate with people. Any solution aimed at punishing the voluntary homeless while ignoring the mentally ill is missing the point.

olefoo 12y ago
Umm. The characterization of homelessness as a mental health issue is very convenient for not facing the ongoing changes in our society. While it may be true that some segment of the homeless population is mentally ill; that's the tip of the iceberg for the real problem. Young, wealthy, privileged people like the majority of the audience of this site have no concept of how easy it is to fall through the cracks and lose everything. And the problem of poverty and homelessness is only going to grow. The majority of Generation X has NO Savings for retirement [1] and what do you think will happen to them? And in fact one of the cities having an epic and fairly invisible homelessness problem is San Francisco [2]. There may be a very small minority of people who choose to be unhoused; but they are generally not the problem. 1. http://rall.com/2014/10/13/syndicated-column-millions-of-gen-xers-will-be-homeless-before-you-know-it http://rall.com/2014/10/13/syndicated-column-millions-of-gen... 2. http://www.vox.com/a/homeless-san-francisco-tech-boom http://www.vox.com/a/homeless-san-francisco-tech-boom
dntrkv 12y ago
Mental health is definitely a part of the homeless problem, but it's not the majority. 37% of homeless in SF are reported to have a mental illness. Whether or not that's the primary cause in those 37%, is another question. Source: http://www.sfgov3.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=4819 http://www.sfgov3.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=4...

mikeash 12y ago

1) What about all the people who can't work? What about all the people who can work but simply won't? Do you deny them access to the services you propose? If so, then you haven't solved the problem at all. 3) How do you propose to enforce that they use the one-way bus ticket? How do you keep them from coming back? I think this problem may be a bit harder to solve than you think.

chc 12y ago

I'm not sure this is practical. Many homeless people are too mentally ill to be able to hold down even a janitorial position.

kauffj 12y ago

Wouldn't banning panhandling/begging be an immoral restriction of speech? What is the fundamental difference between a beggar telling a sob story and the woman who stops you to talk about the ACLU/Planned Parenthood/<charity of the week>? Or are you for banning all public requests for money for any reason?

bokonist 12y ago
"What is the fundamental difference between a beggar telling a sob story and the woman who stops you to talk about the ACLU/Planned Parenthood/<charity of the week>? Or are you for banning all public requests for money for any reason?" Well, given my druthers I'd ban those too. Cities are very dense and, in the scheme of human existence, unnatural places. It takes effort and rules to make tens of thousands of humans occupy the same space and stay sane. That is why cities have the ability to pass ordinances to restrict all sorts of activity in public spaces. There is a right to freedom of assembly, but that does not mean you can assemble a crowd in the streets or sidewalks at any time, you need a permit. There is freedom of speech, but there are ordinances against playing blaring music or disturbing the peace. There are laws against unsolicited phone calls and spamming. There are ordinances banning neon signs on some streets, to prevent a race to the bottom where stores compete for the most obnoxious store frontage. Etc. etc. I view any form of asking of money to strangers on city streets to be a form of spamming. It is perfectly within the rights of a city to ban it.
- JadeNB 12y ago
  > Cities are very dense and, in the scheme of human existence, unnatural places. I think that this kind of statement must be qualified very carefully. I believe (though I don't know) that cities are unnatural in the sense that they don't arise in nature among other animals than humans; but I'd be reluctant to call them unnatural for humans, in the sense that it seems to me that a large part of what makes us human is the ability to live together and function (well or poorly!) in large groups.
  - bokonist 12y ago

lotsofmangos 12y ago

3 is much like the medieval crime of wandering abroad, where the poor were effectively criminalised from trying to leave their parish of birth without permission.

shkkmo 12y ago

I could support 1) if they are also paid minimum wage in addition to the free housing. But only if we don't implement 2) and 3) because those will force people to have to choose to participate in 1) and not everybody can.

rthomas6 12y ago

I have a counter-proposal: 1) Universal basic income. You get paid like $10,000 no matter what. 2) Eliminate minimum wage. Anyone is free to earn extra if they so desire. 3) Outlaw rent control. Now you have more abundant housing. That wouldn't take care of all of it, but it would sure help.

dllthomas 12y ago
"3) Outlaw rent control. Now you have more abundant housing." There's multiple interactions implicit there. That's fine, just noting it - I agree that would be a consequence.
orbitingpluto 12y ago
That system is ripe for abuse as well. You would have to outlaw a landlord from being to ask what their financial status is, doing credit checks, proof of employment. Otherwise homes for the homeless will have rents with disproportionate high rents for poor quality slum homes. Also without rent control, you will suddenly find cities suddenly very empty of people able to do things like get you your coffee. And shipping them in every day from 100 miles away is a dystopian nightmare.
- rthomas6 12y ago
  No... that's not really the effect of no rent control. In fact rent control is often the cause of excessive credit checks, proof of employment, etc. Maybe in the short run no rent control would make disproportionate high rents, but not in the long run. In fact it's the opposite. No rent control results in something like Hong Kong: abundant, extremely tiny apartments that people can afford. That may not be ideal, but it's certainly better than being homeless. Luxury apartments are lucrative, sure, but if you can fit more rooms into a given space you can often make even more money. For example if you could have 1 apartment and charge $3000, or 2 apartments and charge $1700, the 2 apartments are a better deal.
  - orbitingpluto 12y ago
    The above plan will have the effect of landlords knowing how much those only on the minimum living allowance can pay. Combine that with the ability to still perform credit checks and it's ripe for abuse. If you have a guaranteed minimum income that is suffcient to qualify you for the apartment, you should probably be able to skip the credit check for it. Citing Hong Kong struck me as odd. It's probably better being homeless in certain states. I think most people have seen the following, or similar, set of pictures about Hong Kong micro-apartments: http://inhabitat.com/exhibit-on-the-micro-apartments-of-hong-kong-exposes-human-rights-issues/ http://inhabitat.com/exhibit-on-the-micro-apartments-of-hong... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cage_home http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cage_home Real urban planning has low income housing distributed throughout the city. If not, the wage slaves have to be shipped in. Some form of rent control/social housing incentives have to be in place. Otherwise you get situations in the states where welfare mothers have to bus 3 hours each way to get to their minimum wage job.

wheels 12y ago

As others have said, this is pretty out of touch with the reality of homelessness. It assumes that homelessness is primarily a condition caused by laziness. While that's occasionally true, it's such a small minority that it's an absurd place to start. It'd be like rebuilding your football team starting with your second-string punter. As a prelude, remember that your proposed system basically exists. Project housing isn't a novel idea. The homeless are by and large the folks that can't or don't want to get themselves into project housing. In a rather odd turn of events, when I was 19, I ended up staying in a homeless shelter for a week. It was an incredibly interesting experience. For most of a week I stayed there, ate in soup kitchens and had a rather interesting look from the inside. For the most part, in the shelter I was in, I saw two big categories of folks that were there: - Folks that were crazy. This included long term drug and alcohol addicts. They were probably a slight majority. The type and severity of crazy varied, but you got the sense that the goal with those types of folks was helping them to the extent possible, but in most cases, they were often going to need assistance for the remainder of their lives. - Folks that were pretty darn normal, but had two things go particularly bad in their lives at once. This group was pretty surprising for someone from a middle class background. These people seemed totally normal to me. There was one combination of events that was so common that I saw it several times -- people who'd lost their jobs and their wives (it was a men's shelter) had kicked them out at the same time. Some of these people had graduate degrees, reasonably respectable middle class careers, and so on ... but for one reason or another all at once they had no money and nowhere to live. Neither of those cases would be especially well addressed by your proposal. I'm skeptical that it would do anything other than make rich people feel better about complaining about the homeless, but really, that sounds like what it's designed for.

bokonist 12y ago
Neither of those cases would be especially well addressed by your proposal. Really, wouldn't option #1 help the normal, hard-luck people quite a bit? It would give you a permanent bed, and address to get mail, etc. while you applied for jobs and got back on your feet? It seems like an immensely superior option to the status quo. As for the crazy people, I agree, which is why I edited my answer to make it clear that there should be government provided permanent living arrangements that are supportive for the types of problems people have. The normal hard luck people should not have to live in dorms with crazy people and drug addicts.

zmmmmm 12y ago

That's a hell of a lot of work to do to avoid the simple solution that some other countries come to - just give people a simple, low, living wage that is enough to cover basic needs. Then let them choose their own housing, work, etc etc. It's almost amusing (if it wasn't so sad) how the ideology against socialism in the US is so strong that people will almost reinvent it in trying to avoid it.