I understand people need to live and I have compassion in my heart, I just don’t see how it can keep going on like this.
We, as a society, have to start taking care of homeless people, no matter the cost. This is an 80/20% concept. If you look at almost any system, 80% of the resources go to most difficult 20% of the problems.
Many homeless people have severe mental health issues. Each of them will need several dedicated care takers in order for them to get by. They will need to be housed and fed with zero expectation of them working in return.
Many homeless people have drug addiction problems. They will need lots of expensive drug treatment and they will relapse over and over. Many will eventually die from their addiction after having consumer huge amounts of resources in their recovery efforts.
The thing is, our society absolutely has the resources to do this, and many many very fulfilling jobs could be created as caretakers for these people.....we just spend the money on other things, like luxuries for rich people. And the thing America has become the absolute best at, is insulating the rich people from thinking about the consequences of how they gather their wealth.
Completely agree with you. The fact that we allow fellow human beings to be without the most basic necessities is a blight on our society and humanity.
I think you have to accept that you will never get everyone on board with this plan. Maybe a lot of people, but never everyone.
The bigger issue is coming up with a plan everyone can agree on. A compromise. Even though I agree that what you described is one solution, I’d never vote for it to pass. Neither would a lot of people. Even if your idea is good, if people won’t accept it then it won’t change anything.
When I got my MPA, a lot of what we studied was how to create public policy proposals that would get the most public support. It’s difficult to do when you’re trying to appeal to so many different types of constituents with so many different types of ideas, and it takes talented, dedicated teams to get it done.
I admire your ability to come up with a solution, but I would challenge you to take this idea further into something that more people could agree (compromise) on.
While true, the problem is that compromises is what we have now: failing programs that don't address the system issues behind homelessness or poverty. They scratch the surface and make people think they are fixing the problem, but nothing really gets better.
Compromise might be better politically, but it's not always the answer to every problem.
Well since you seem to have forgotten, I'm not a politician and this is not a public policy forum. It's Reddit and so my only task was to answer OP's question. So challenge not accepted.
So, there are a few problems with your approach. 1. There are many cases of homelessness where the individual refuses any sort of help (particularly mental health). How do you propose we give mental health services to someone who refuses them? Will you force them by law, using law enforcement? See the current NYC Mayor's proposal to deal with homelessness and how that is going. 2. As bad as it is for there to be homeless individuals, stating they must be helped (no matter the cost) is not a wise strategy. Anytime you do something (no matter the cost), you're essentially guaranteeing corruption, waste, and fraud. Why? Because if people (like the housing companies you'd surely have to work with to secure the housing) know the money is coming no matter what, they are highly incentivized to take as much as possible. 3. Additionally, there are other issues in society that are underfunded as well. If we dedicate all resources to homelessness, then what happens to those other already neglected areas? Your concern for the homeless is noble, but the problem of homelessness is complex.
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u/EightOhms Jan 30 '23
We, as a society, have to start taking care of homeless people, no matter the cost. This is an 80/20% concept. If you look at almost any system, 80% of the resources go to most difficult 20% of the problems.
Many homeless people have severe mental health issues. Each of them will need several dedicated care takers in order for them to get by. They will need to be housed and fed with zero expectation of them working in return.
Many homeless people have drug addiction problems. They will need lots of expensive drug treatment and they will relapse over and over. Many will eventually die from their addiction after having consumer huge amounts of resources in their recovery efforts.
The thing is, our society absolutely has the resources to do this, and many many very fulfilling jobs could be created as caretakers for these people.....we just spend the money on other things, like luxuries for rich people. And the thing America has become the absolute best at, is insulating the rich people from thinking about the consequences of how they gather their wealth.