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What should we do about homeless people? (1 Viewer)

timschochet

timschochet

Footballguy
The homeless issue was at the center of yesterday’s elections in California. In Los Angeles, in my estimation, it is worse than it has ever been in my lifetime. Makeshift tents are set up all over, particularly downtown, These are terrible eyesores, they are bastions of drug use and crime. Liberal and conservative politicians seem to be united in condemning these situations and pledging to deal with it but actual solutions are few and far between. More shelters cost money that nobody wants to pay, plus most communities, not unreasonably, have a “not in my backyard” attitude. Then there are the questions of civil liberties and the fact that many of these people are mentally ill and cannot be forced into shelters. 
 

The purpose of the this thread is to have a discussion about how to deal with this issue. 

 
I don't feel qualified to answer this question because its a really hard question and I haven't studied it close enough to know what works and what doesn't. 

But, of course, that won't stop me from responding. I will say that there has been this nationwide push to legalize camping on public grounds. I reckon that is a deliberate strategy by the homeless advocates to make cities deal with the homeless population. But whatever the right answer is - allowing camping in public is not it. No city can just have homeless camps all over the place. 

But, of course, if you are going to clear out the campsites, you have to have some place for the people to go. It seems to me there are two separate issues:

1) How to get people off the street as soon as possible; 

2) How to get people back on their feet and self-supporting as soon as possible.

One of the reasons that these questions are so hard to answer is because homeless folks aren't a homogenous group. Some are folks who are down on their luck, have lost their job and hopefully temporarily homeless. Some are mentally ill. Some are addicts. So a one size fits all solution probably doesn't work for everyone.

I don't know how you fix those things. Maybe someone else is more informed than me on this topic.

 
whoknew said:
I don't feel qualified to answer this question because its a really hard question and I haven't studied it close enough to know what works and what doesn't. 

But, of course, that won't stop me from responding. I will say that there has been this nationwide push to legalize camping on public grounds. I reckon that is a deliberate strategy by the homeless advocates to make cities deal with the homeless population. But whatever the right answer is - allowing camping in public is not it. No city can just have homeless camps all over the place. 

But, of course, if you are going to clear out the campsites, you have to have some place for the people to go. It seems to me there are two separate issues:

1) How to get people off the street as soon as possible; 

2) How to get people back on their feet and self-supporting as soon as possible.

One of the reasons that these questions are so hard to answer is because homeless folks aren't a homogenous group. Some are folks who are down on their luck, have lost their job and hopefully temporarily homeless. Some are mentally ill. Some are addicts. So a one size fits all solution probably doesn't work for everyone.

I don't know how you fix those things. Maybe someone else is more informed than me on this topic.
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Thoughtful post. I have all these same questions. 

 
I have no answers.   None.   And I can't be alone here.  Housing prices are just off the charts.   Drug use isn't getting better.  I wish it was as simple as just arrest them or whatever, but that won't work.   The drug use and mental illness that is rampant in this demographic means job related assistance will most likely fail. 

I don't know what to do.   It's a sucky feeling 

 
A large portion of the homeless in Philadelphia (and I assume in other states/cities as well) are drug abusers and mentally ill individuals.  You can't just set up a homeless shelter and cure those problems.

 
 
Like whoknew, I'm not well versed in this topic and haven't spent a lot of time on it but here's some off the cuff thoughts/comments:

  • My first reaction to any issue is to understand why it is happening and getting as much data as possible.  In this case, I think it would be helpful to understand why we have the number of homeless we do.  My assumption is we could categorize most of the folks that are homeless - somebody down on their luck and looking for some help, somebody who is mentally ill and needs help in that area, drug users, people that have just kind of given up on life and then probably some that are just lazy
  • I think there's potentially different solutions that can be implemented based on those categories but 1. it wouldn't be easy to categorize and 2. it doesn't really directly solve anything.  But, for example, if somebody is homeless and just down on their luck then it seems like an easier solve than somebody who is mentally ill or a drug addict
  • Government should partner with groups as much as possible to help solve the problem.  Like with most things, I don't really trust the government to solve the issue.  I think charities, churches and other groups are better positioned to help.  I think governments role should be around public safety and collecting taxes to help with the issue.
  • Possibly provide additional tax breaks or tie tax breaks to organizations helping solve the issue. 
  • Since you will never fully "solve" homelessness we need to come up with some level of success criteria.  Always hard to hit a moving target.
  • I've always thought homelessness is just another problem that a BIG would help alleviate to a degree.  Even if a BIG just gets these folks off the street some of the time it seems to be an improvement.
 
supermike80 said:
I have no answers.   None.   And I can't be alone here.  Housing prices are just off the charts.   Drug use isn't getting better.  I wish it was as simple as just arrest them or whatever, but that won't work.   The drug use and mental illness that is rampant in this demographic means job related assistance will most likely fail. 

I don't know what to do.   It's a sucky feeling 
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I don't work in this field but I don't think you are wrong. They aren't any great answers here. Things can improve as numbers seem to have gotten worse in big cities but there are so many issues at play.

 
Snotbubbles said:
A large portion of the homeless in Philadelphia (and I assume in other states/cities as well) are drug abusers and mentally ill individuals.  You can't just set up a homeless shelter and cure those problems.
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So I think the latest data is that Housing First policies generally work better than traditional conditional housing policies for homeless folks. It makes sense to me that it would work. 

But lets say it does work - what next? For the first group I talked about above - the temporarily homeless, it may be all you need. Or some job placement and expense assistance. 

For the mentally ill and addicted? That seems like a much harder question. Folks in both of those groups seem like they would need longer term health care. And I don't think Americans are willing to pay for that, unfortunately.

 
Affordable housing, drug abuse/addiction and mental illness. It's a combination of these three things (as others have said).  Portland is really bad right now. There is no inventory to rent and it is expensive. They are experimenting with tiny homes in certain parts of the city which seems to be working, but it's not enough. There are so many homeless camps and RVs parked along the road, it's a real problem. There is a stretch on 33rd street close to the airport which is lined on both sides of the street for more than a mile of parked/abandoned RVs and cars. https://youtu.be/JvAdaoSEBss

Other ideas...

https://lacrossetribune.com/news/local/housing-first-cut-homelessness-in-milwaukee-can-it-work-across-the-state/article_baa56a30-e1da-11ec-be24-e367e5364372.html

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/houston/2022/03/16/421190/houstons-unhoused-population-dropped-due-to-a-200-million-investment-a-new-report-says/

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-01-30/houston-teach-los-angeles-curbing-homelessness

 
 
timschochet said:
Thank you. 
Honest question: do you believe that cutting off medical care from illegal immigrants will help the homeless crisis, or make it worse? 
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No clue honestly. But I do believe all funding that goes towards illegal aliens should first head toward US citizen problems. 

 
crackattack said:
No clue honestly. But I do believe all funding that goes towards illegal aliens should first head toward US citizen problems. 
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And I’m sure you’re not alone in that regard. But there are consequences to every step we take. Like it or not, there are at least 15 million undocumented people in this country. Like it or not, the majority of them are on the edge of poverty. Now the truth is that the vast vast majority of them receive no government money at all because they don’t dare emerge from the shadows to collect it even were it available- in most cases it isn’t. So we’re talking about a pretty small amount of dollars, relatively speaking. Even so, if you cut it off you’re probably creating more homeless people. 

 
Gonna keep it very general (which means a lot of important details will be missing because I do not have them)...I would say the first thing is get them off the streets and get a roof over their head...they do no good for the general population and themselves right now...gotta believe there is land where we can house them and then figure out who can function in society and who can't...for those who can I would like to see some type of government work-force where they do stuff like going into poor neighborhoods and clean them up, paint houses, repair fences and stuff like that...pay them a wage and hopefully get them back on their feet where they can take the next step and re-enter society and get back to "normal" while at the same time help others who are less fortunate...for those mentally ill and/or saddled with drug problems it is a different story because there may not be an endgame where they are "normal"...for that group we may have to go back to having institutions where they are separated from society while they work on their issues and hopefully get to a point where they can take care of themselves or at least have some type of quality of life...while that may not be optimal it is a very big step up from being homeless...what scares me in general is I don't trust our government or the activist class to be able to do this correctly and not turn it into a s*** show...we need to have that trust because without it there will be pushback on spending $ on this issue...overall, I think most fair-minded people would be good with their tax $ going to stuff like this as long as they know it is not another government boondoggle...the bottom-line is we gotta figure out a way to get a roof over their heads to help them and get them away from the general population and help them until they can handle it.  

 
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Some very thoughtful posts in here so far. and without the normal conservative vs liberal bickering that dominates so many discussions on this board. I think everybody gets that this is a crisis which demands new thinking beyond our tribalistic constraints. 

 
I think am important distinction is that there are people that are homeless by circumstance and others by choice.   I think it is easier to "fix" the former with jobs programs, more affordable housing, drug and alcohol rehabs, etc.   

The tougher nut to crack are what to do about people that want to be homeless and there are a lot out there.

 
Nothing - and only said with some hyperbole.

Resources should be allocated towards increasing wages, rebuilding entitlement programs, creating affordable housing, and decreasing costs associated with education, healthcare, and financing small humans - the things we've not been doing since the 80's. It took us several decades to create these problems and we need to prepare as if it will take several decades to fix them. In the meantime, this is the sort of stuff we have to deal with because those that came before us made poor decisions.

And, yes, I realize there is more to the homeless problem than just this. This is just the basis to most of our problems. We can't adequately address the actual problem until after taking care of the primary source.

 
1) Fund developments for both transitional and permanent housing alternatives.

2) Fund local health care organizations to provide services to the homeless population (including individuals in the transitional and permanent housing alternatives listed above). In states with broad Medicaid benefits, some of the funding can come from this. In other states where Medicaid benefits are primarily limited to children and pregnant mothers, the funding will need to come from state, county and city budgets. The care will need to include medical, dental, behavioral health and addiction services at a minimum. The goal is to stabilize these individuals (ideally once housed) with regular treatment, meds, etc.

3) Provide case management services that provide guidance for these individuals to tap into available social services benefits, with a focus on training and development to improve prospects for employment.

 
Time to seriously consider the transition of commercial office space into low income and/or transitory housing and push administrative office models.into remote work. It's going to happen just a question of when.

I'm intrigued by the idea of zoning out of legality single family homes in denser city centers and their immediate surrounding areas.

The federal minimum wage needs to be a crap ton higher.

Universal health care would solve a ton of the medical, drug, mental health issues in the long run.

I'd love to see my Christian tribe make this their new mission but they won't. 

We need to completely revamp our education models..the collection of knowledge is done. Now we need to teach life skills, decision making, discernment, job skills and get away from the current model through high school. 

One size will never fit all. It can't be solved in an election cycle and there will be steps back before all the steps go forward.

 
Most homeless shelters in Denver are never full. Biggest reasons?

Many homeless people insist on having their pets, partners and possessions wherever they go. It's also true that most shelters don't allow drugs.

And so faced with these potential "hardships," many will choose to keep their "freedoms" and "rights," and instead seek out public land upon which to squat. 

The homeless that behave this way are not dumb. They know that this then places the burden on already overly stretched public safety budgets to elevate it to a priority before addressing it.

So it then becomes a type of power struggle. They know that they can't be "forced" to go to a shelter. But if no crimes are being committed, and encampments don't get so big or squalid that the public officially complains, then usually the best a public safety officer can do is just keep them on the move.

The bigger challenge is not dealing with the people who genuinely want to be helped, it's dealing with those that don't.

 
To me, the most significant issue is mental health. I say this because, in doing what I do where I've probably represented a few hundred homeless defendants, while some got to the position because of drugs or choice (which are probably scenarios we can never prevent), the vast majority of them have some pretty significant mental health issues. As such, understandably, just giving somebody with significant mental health issues the practical means to secure a place is not going to work because they lack rationality and impulse control. 

Now, I don't have a magical solution to the mental health issue as it's a constitutional hurdle to probably provide medical treatment to an individual without their consent unless the person is an imminent danger to self or others, but to me it starts and stops with mental health treatment. 

 
Zow said:
To me, the most significant issue is mental health. I say this because, in doing what I do where I've probably represented a few hundred homeless defendants, while some got to the position because of drugs or choice (which are probably scenarios we can never prevent), the vast majority of them have some pretty significant mental health issues. As such, understandably, just giving somebody with significant mental health issues the practical means to secure a place is not going to work because they lack rationality and impulse control. 

Now, I don't have a magical solution to the mental health issue as it's a constitutional hurdle to probably provide medical treatment to an individual without their consent unless the person is an imminent danger to self or others, but to me it starts and stops with mental health treatment.
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This does a good job of explaining why I would like to see if we can categorize those that are homeless.  If we determined that a high number (say 70-90%) or these folks are mentally ill then I think it really changes the discussion on how to fix things.  And after thinking about your post, I do wonder if the number could be that high - I mean, and hopefully this isn't offensive, but do mentally stable/healthy folks really choose to be homeless?  I guess maybe a better question I should ask is - how many of these folks actually want help?

 
Keep in mind that covid has a played a big part in the homeless deciding to camp outside rather than being stuck in a shelter with a bunch of other people over the past few years. I know that has lead to a lot of the RVs and large encampments here in PDX.

 
Yankee23Fan said:
Time to seriously consider the transition of commercial office space into low income and/or transitory housing and push administrative office models.into remote work. It's going to happen just a question of when.
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Now this is interesting to me, as a guy who manages and leases some of these spaces. It’s an innovative solution. 
 

But with all questions of low income housing there are two key questions: who’s going to pay the rent? No landlord I know of us going to make these conversions unless there is a profit. And who is going to provide that? 
 

The second question is even more problematic: where? I’ll be honest, I don’t want commercial office buildings housed with homeless people anywhere near the retail properties I manage. Bad for business. And I don’t want them near my home. I would feel less safe. I’m not alone. So where? 

 
One year after LA evicted the unhoused from a park, few are in stable housing

This is a great recent study of what happened after the "successful" sweep of the Echo Park homeless encampment in 2021. The park was beautiful after the sweep as I witnessed last summer, but my daughter claimed it was too heavy-handed at the end as they forcefully removed stragglers who refused to accept social services help. Unlike other encampments, like Tenderloin in SF, this was a community, but people who lived nearby were afraid to go to the park.

BTW, homelessness is increasing in cities like Austin and Miami, its not just a west coast and NYC problem.  In Lima Peru and other big cities in Latin America, there are large communities of residents without title to the land. Many start as shanty towns and then the residents slowly make improvements. IMO, this has worked in places like San Juan de Lorigancho, a million person district outside of Lima where my roomate's family has gone from a plywood house to now a 3-story concrete structure with electricity and running water, with schools and stores all over the place. It wouldn't work in the USA.

>>One year later, however, government records tell a different story: out of 183 unhoused people who were removed from the park and tracked by the county’s homelessness agency, just 17 are confirmed to be in longer-term housing. Nearly 50 are in temporary shelter waiting for stable housing. The rest either returned to the streets or disappeared from the county’s tracking systems.

Their analysis, co-authored by former park residents, concluded that although some displaced residents were eager to get indoors, the temporary shelters they initially landed in had strict regulations that stripped people of basic freedoms and caused many to leave or be kicked out. People who lasted in the temporary programs said they had been unable to transition to long-term housing as officials had promised, the researchers found. Ultimately, one year after the eviction, many were back on the streets, often living in worse conditions than they did before.<<

 
California has a homeless problem and the entire west is in a major drought. They have housing costs out of control. On and on. So what is Gov. Newsom working on???? Reparations. The billion++ high speed rail project is still active. Hundreds of millions of tax payer monies toward illegal aliens. Etc etc.

See why people who don't live in California have a hard time feeling empathy towards their big issues? It just seems (from this non Californian) they waste so much money on projects that should be waaaaaay down the list of priorities.

 
I just wish we did a better job of understanding and listening to the people who are now homeless.  How?  Why?  Where did it go wrong?  Where is your family?  How was your childhood?  Did you get help when you needed it most?  Was there a catalyst in your life that got you here?  How can we prevent this to happening to another person? 

You see them walking around - disheveled, angry, lost.  I picked my friend up from Portland train station yesterday and witnessed 2 different humans just screaming profanities at nobody in particular.  Distraught and just furious at something.  Drugs?  Mental illness?  At some point in their life, they were little kids.   Could have been on my soccer team.  Could have been sitting next to me at lunch in middle school.  Where did it go wrong?  When did the road hit a hard left for them?  

Do they have a voice?  Who speaks for them?  It's not a one size fits all sort of problem so lord knows what the solution is.  But I think we have to do a way better job at understanding their plight.  Because I don't think anybody would choose this sort of life.  It's awful.  Cold and hungry and scared and every day they have to just keep living.  Living while most of us around them must go about our own lives.

The problem just seems insurmountable.  But I do think we need to really dig and try to understand them a lot better than we do.  Until then, we're just wasting key strokes and oxygen.

 
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timschochet said:
Now this is interesting to me, as a guy who manages and leases some of these spaces. It’s an innovative solution. 
 

But with all questions of low income housing there are two key questions: who’s going to pay the rent? No landlord I know of us going to make these conversions unless there is a profit. And who is going to provide that? 
 

The second question is even more problematic: where? I’ll be honest, I don’t want commercial office buildings housed with homeless people anywhere near the retail properties I manage. Bad for business. And I don’t want them near my home. I would feel less safe. I’m not alone. So where? 
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Did you know that Amazon has a homeless shelter inside its one of its downtown Seattle office buildings?

This was something I just learned recently and found very interesting.

 
SoBeDad said:
One year after LA evicted the unhoused from a park, few are in stable housing

This is a great recent study of what happened after the "successful" sweep of the Echo Park homeless encampment in 2021. The park was beautiful after the sweep as I witnessed last summer, but my daughter claimed it was too heavy-handed at the end as they forcefully removed stragglers who refused to accept social services help. Unlike other encampments, like Tenderloin in SF, this was a community, but people who lived nearby were afraid to go to the park.

BTW, homelessness is increasing in cities like Austin and Miami, its not just a west coast and NYC problem.  In Lima Peru and other big cities in Latin America, there are large communities of residents without title to the land. Many start as shanty towns and then the residents slowly make improvements. IMO, this has worked in places like San Juan de Lorigancho, a million person district outside of Lima where my roomate's family has gone from a plywood house to now a 3-story concrete structure with electricity and running water, with schools and stores all over the place. It wouldn't work in the USA.

>>One year later, however, government records tell a different story: out of 183 unhoused people who were removed from the park and tracked by the county’s homelessness agency, just 17 are confirmed to be in longer-term housing. Nearly 50 are in temporary shelter waiting for stable housing. The rest either returned to the streets or disappeared from the county’s tracking systems.

Their analysis, co-authored by former park residents, concluded that although some displaced residents were eager to get indoors, the temporary shelters they initially landed in had strict regulations that stripped people of basic freedoms and caused many to leave or be kicked out. People who lasted in the temporary programs said they had been unable to transition to long-term housing as officials had promised, the researchers found. Ultimately, one year after the eviction, many were back on the streets, often living in worse conditions than they did before.<<
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I thought Housing First was an official California state policy. No?

 
crackattack said:
California has a homeless problem and the entire west is in a major drought. They have housing costs out of control. On and on. So what is Gov. Newsom working on???? Reparations. The billion++ high speed rail project is still active. Hundreds of millions of tax payer monies toward illegal aliens. Etc etc.

See why people who don't live in California have a hard time feeling empathy towards their big issues? It just seems (from this non Californian) they waste so much money on projects that should be waaaaaay down the list of priorities.
Click to expand...


Austin has a huge homeless problem too. San Antonio too. Dallas has at least 4500 homeless folks.

All in the great red state of Texas.

 
whoknew said:
But whatever the right answer is - allowing camping in public is not it. No city can just have homeless camps all over the place. 

But, of course, if you are going to clear out the campsites, you have to have some place for the people to go.
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Can't like this part enough. 

The problem cities run into is when they ignore 1-2 tents. They just hope it will go away. Then you have 10. Then 100. Now you have to solve a big housing issue for being the big meanies that displaced 100 people. 

If cities didn't allow this at all, you wouldn't have huge gathering places. You would still have homeless people, but they would be spread out and individual communities could each handle the one at a time issues. 

Instead you have migrations. 

You end up with cities with way too many and then cities without any. 

 
I think you have to separate them into two groups:

  1. Those that are just struggling, but willing and trying to get back on their feet and into permanent housing.
  2. Those that are neither willing or able to do what it takes to maintain their lives.
#1 is an easier thing to work on and fix and there are several organizations out there doing just that.  However, around the dividing line is a large grey area where some people just struggle too much with substance abuse to truly stay on their feet or don't have the mental/psychological capacity to keep a job and maintain basic levels of income even with a lot of help.  They sometimes look a lot like people in group #1, but in reality are in group #2.  Those people drain a lot of energy and resources out of those trying to help.  Sure it is easy to spot a guy who talks to himself and refuses to brush his teeth as being incapable, but what about the person who gives all the right answers, but then doesn't show up to the job after a couple of weeks or gets into a fight with his ex and goes on a bender?  The social workers time, the money spent getting them temp housing, all of that gets constantly flushed down the toilet trying to help someone that in reality is incapable of being helped and belongs in category #2, they just look like someone in group #1.

 
I’m an Operations Manager for a fairly large nonprofit that serves homeless veterans by providing transitional housing and intensive case management services (workforce, behavioral health, substance abuse, etc.) Some good thoughts in this thread, and it IS a very difficult problem. One thing that would absolutely help is normalizing better pay for Case Managers and making it a desirable job. As it stands, everyone is understaffed so the type of intensive focus these people require just isn’t there. Case Managers are overworked, underpaid, and frequently burn out. We need this to be a professional position and pay it so there’s a waiting list for the job. As it stands, they’re getting $40-45K a year and it’s insanely difficult work.

 
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McBokonon said:
I’m an Operations Manager for a fairly large nonprofit that serves homeless veterans by providing transitional housing and intensive case management services (workforce, behavioral health, substance abuse, etc.) Some good thoughts in this thread, and it IS a very difficult problem. One thing that would absolutely help is normalizing better pay for Case Managers and making it a desirable job. As it stands, everyone is understaffed so the type of intensive focus these people require just isn’t there. Case Managers are overworked, underpaid, and frequently burn out. We need this to be a professional position and pay it so there’s a waiting list for the job. As it stands, they’re getting $40-45K a year and it’s insanely difficult work.
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The source of so many of our problems - -paying workers instead of our corporate overlords.

 
Nothing I'm sad to say. It's so far gone, there's nothing that would reasonably happen that would help in any significance. 

 
fruity pebbles said:
Nothing I'm sad to say. It's so far gone, there's nothing that would reasonably happen that would help in any significance. 
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I just don't believe this.  It's just that we (collectively) don't care enough to fix it - and this absolutely includes me.  You could make a significant difference if we (again) collectively decided we wanted to do something about it.  That's not to say that some people don't and it also isn't to say that we wouldn't almost definitely be back in the same situation again in the future but we could do something about it.  The cost-benefit just isn't there since it's still a relatively low number of people (like half a million?).  Large number but still small enough where we don't feel the need to address it.

 
General Malaise said:
I just wish we did a better job of understanding and listening to the people who are now homeless.  How?  Why?  Where did it go wrong?  Where is your family?  How was your childhood?  Did you get help when you needed it most?  Was there a catalyst in your life that got you here?  How can we prevent this to happening to another person? 

You see them walking around - disheveled, angry, lost.  I picked my friend up from Portland train station yesterday and witnessed 2 different humans just screaming profanities at nobody in particular.  Distraught and just furious at something.  Drugs?  Mental illness?  At some point in their life, they were little kids.   Could have been on my soccer team.  Could have been sitting next to me at lunch in middle school.  Where did it go wrong?  When did the road hit a hard left for them?  

Do they have a voice?  Who speaks for them?  It's not a one size fits all sort of problem so lord knows what the solution is.  But I think we have to do a way better job at understanding their plight.  Because I don't think anybody would choose this sort of life.  It's awful.  Cold and hungry and scared and every day they have to just keep living.  Living while most of us around them must go about our own lives.

The problem just seems insurmountable.  But I do think we need to really dig and try to understand them a lot better than we do.  Until then, we're just wasting key strokes and oxygen.
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The other problem that needs addressed is that its expensive to be poor. The minute something goes wrong in your life and you have some bad breaks and end up in this position, it takes a string of perfect events to get you back on your feet. One missed step along the way and you are punished with late fees, penalties, higher interest rates, etc. From a financial perspective our capitalist system preys on the middle and lower class. Over draft fees, pay day loans...it's a mess.

 
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I think most of you are focusing too narrowly.  For every homeless person out there, there are dozens more barely holding on struggling with their mental health in unstable living situations.  Those people could be homeless tomorrow.  Homeless people sleeping on the street are just the most visible symptom of a lot of suffering in the overall population.

 
AAABatteries said:
I just don't believe this.  It's just that we (collectively) don't care enough to fix it - and this absolutely includes me.  You could make a significant difference if we (again) collectively decided we wanted to do something about it.  That's not to say that some people don't and it also isn't to say that we wouldn't almost definitely be back in the same situation again in the future but we could do something about it.  The cost-benefit just isn't there since it's still a relatively low number of people (like half a million?).  Large number but still small enough where we don't feel the need to address it.
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That’s  kinda what I’m getting at. There’s no reasonable easy fix that would cost a minimal amount of money so it’ll keep getting worse and worse until it affects us personally. 

 
I wonder if there could be a trial run.(Maybe this has been done).  Give some sort of affordable / subsidized housing to a group of homeless--monitor it for 6 months or so and see where it ends up.

--How many homeless offered this actually are still using it 6 months later?

--What are the conditions of this project?  Crime?  Living conditions etc?

--Any success stories from it?

I mean, cities have tried housing projects and they have almost universally failed.   Drugs, mental illness, crime...have killed this everytime

Of course if this thing did turn out to be successful, there are a mountain of logistical issues regarding where to put them, how to pay for them, etc etc etc...

 
I don't mean to make light of this, and I'm as close to indigent as anybody on the board, but in reading this I feel like Patrick Bateman and his cohorts discussing the plight of the poor over dinner in swank New York restaurants.

Anybody see his card? 

Bone. 

 
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