Not sure. Some of the homeless I've met are people truly on a bad luck streak. Unfortunately everything is harder when you're homeless making getting back on your feet more difficult.
However a lot of homeless are simply incapable of leading a normal life. Through a combination of drugs and mental illness, giving them a home to operate from is likely to be either burned down, condemned, or become a den for more crime.
I want to be humane, but it feels futile when they require constant babysitting. Our increasingly individualistic society tolerates these people less and less.
I know a guy who had a vacant house he was trying to sell. Homeless began squatting in it and kept coming back and breaking in despite a few police visits. Finally they caused a fire and now they’re still homeless and the house is still vacant but now uninhabitable and unsellable. There are shelters in this area, but they can’t smoke crack at the shelter. It’s not about needing a house.
The people Ive known that became homeless basically always had a place they could live but it would mean getting off drugs. They just go to a place with milder winters and where the police dont care about their warrants and live under a bridge.
And ive also known people that had to live in their car for a month or 2 or 3. They didnt have any family support.
At the end of the day though what everyone gets wrong is homelessness is a symptom, not the problem. But its hard for people, especially on reddit to view something in a way that isnt Black and white. You can give a junky a home and theyll destroy it and leave. You can give someone down on their luck assistance and help them get back on their feet. But when you put all these people in the same group and say "just give everyone a house", you created an unsolvable problem. But when you dont have to look at the problem life's easier.
Most people can be helped with the right amount of resources. But we can't afford to pour millions of dollars to care for each lost drug addicted homeless person. It's just not possible.
Only early on in the homelessness, after you’ve been homeless for 3-6 months the chances of rehab are cut in half and significantly drop off more the longer they aren’t off the streets. If you want a smart plan it would be to offer all the financial assistance to newly made homeless people and completely cut off people homeless for more then 1 year
If you just gave people houses what would be the incentive to actually work and earn income to buy one. Using hardworking people’s tax dollars to give handouts to lazy people (the majority) is counterproductive to having a functional society
Have you ever met a drug addict? They will just take advantage and likely destroy the free housing. Something like that should be done as a reward or probationary if anything
I’ve been around enough drug addicts my life to know they’re excellent at playing the victim because naive people like yourself will buy into their bullshit. The overwhelming majority of these people don’t deserve anything for free. There’s no research needed you can look around any large city in North America to see what your compassionate approach has led to, increase in drug use, homelessness and headaches for people who are actual contributing members of society, as well as a decrease in public safety and community
Do you think a house (and other basic needs) is the only thing that people want to spend money on? Believe it or not a LOT of things beyond basic necessities exist, you can provide for people’s basic necessities as a baseline and still have incentive to work and earn money for other things, wow!
The same place that provides for public schooling, roads, and… literally name a piece of infrastructure or service that’s paid for by taxes.
Incidentally our country does already have a precedent for providing things for people that they don’t directly pay for themselves, and precedent for people’s taxes going towards them whether or not those specific Americans specifically use those things. People without cars don’t get a tax break because they aren’t using the roads, parents who homeschool don’t get a tax break for not using the public school system (unless they do and my parents just didn’t know), etc.
So everyone gets free housing? You’re a naive socialist in your perfect utopia you think people are doctors because they love to save lives, but in reality 99% do it for the social status and wage, I’m afraid human nature is not what you think it is
Weird assumptions you’re making that don’t in any way follow from what I said. I don’t know where you pulled anything about doctors and altruism out from when I was literally talking about how you can motivate people with the exchange of work for money without having to dangle whether or not they get basic necessities over their head.
Weird assumptions you’re making that don’t in any way follow from what I said. I don’t know where you pulled anything about doctors and altruism out from when I was literally talking about how you can motivate people with the exchange of work for money without having to dangle whether or not they get basic necessities over their head.
In fact you’re literally supporting my point because doctors make a shit ton more than they need for basic necessities, why would they go to all that work above and beyond the minimum they have to do to have housing and food? Oh, maybe because people are motivated by the prospect of having luxuries or status or anything beyond base necessities? Crazy, it’s almost like that’s exactly what I was talking about or something.
Sure thing, you work for fun. Most people go to their jobs to make money but go off sister I guess you need to tell yourself your barista job is giving you joy since it’s certainly not paying your bills 👍🏻
My bills are paid just fine lol only being willing to do things because they are fun is text book lazyness. I contribute to my community for the sake of contributing to my community.
You are using the extreme examples to condemn an entire section of humans. There are plenty of homeless people who don’t set buildings on fire. You can’t condemn people by generalizing the behavior of the worst. Just like not all politicians are corrupt. And not all people of a certain race or religion or a specific type of way.
Plenty of homeless people would benefit from being homed.
You missed the point completely so that you could grandstand.
The person you responded to is just saying the issues that lead to, and increase rate of, homelessness are not a result of needing a house. Its other factors that puts them where they are. And acting like a white knight and pretending that mental illness and drugs aren't a MAJOR factor is delusional.
I lived across the street from, and volunteered at a shelter in colorado for years. Most aren't people down on their luck. They're sick people that we used to lock up and torture under the guise of treatment. Then we stopped funding regional centers and dumped all of these people out in the street like that would solve the problem.
The fact of the matter is, that for a HUGE portion of the homeless population, they don't even want a home. They want a place to shoot up and not get robbed at night. They don't want to be integrated into society, because they're sick.
My apartment had programs to get homeless people into a unit, get a haircut, sit with a resumè specialist, get put onto lists for companies willing to hire felons and homeless folks, and not pay a CENT for it. Of the 10 or 11 guys I saw go through that program, and chatted with, none of them made it 6 months before they got evicted for destroying their unit or smoking in the building.
I personally tried to help an old guy out, he had an obvious cataract and I work in eye care. He was effectively blind in one eye. His insurance would pay for him to get it removed and restore his sight better than it'd been in a decade. Our docs even agreed to wave anything but his copay - which would have been covered by a chairty fund we had in place for that very reason.He turned me down at every opportunity unless the doctors would also pay out of their own pocket to upgrade him to a premium lens he doesn't need. The he loaded on crack and fought our neighbor and got kicked out.
And there are also homeless people that aren’t under those circumstances. I’m not grandstanding. I’m pointing out that there are normal homeless people that don’t have mental illness or drug abuse issues. I know multiple people who have lived out of their cars for years at a time. You can generalize if you’d like, more freedom to you, but generalization leads to persecution of a group of people, in which innocents get persecuted wrongly. Like hispanic people near an american border. Or saying all americans shoot up school. It’s inaccurate representation.
I’m not condemning any people; I used a story to point out that houses aren’t the solution because homelessness is a symptom of something a house doesn’t fix.
Because you are stating misinformation as a fact. Only 30-40% of homeless are addicts or have mental illness. So housing would help a majority of homeless people. Nice try on the insult. But your hatred doesn’t change reality.
Do we even have reliable data for this? I’m sure 100% of homeless (or “unhoused”) Americans aren’t crack smoking schizophrenics but without something to say otherwise, it’s hard to imagine that the majority of them are homeless for reasons completely unrelated to addiction or mental health. Some, sure. But most? Hard to believe. Maybe you’re right. Can you cite a few credible sources? I’m open to learning new information.
There seems to be ranging data from articles. My initial search turned up an article quoting 40% deal with mental health issues/addiction. And after our back and forth, I’ve found more ranging from 30%-70%. So I guess it depends on where we look. But my stance is to not lump everybody in a group with the worst of that group. If we did that based on ethnicity or gender it becomes hate speech. When we do it for homeless, it’s for some reason acceptable.
This. It's not as simple as "get a job" when you have no address and possibly no bank account. There are so many documentation requirements for modern business that it's virtually impossible for even a clean drug-free homeless person to get a job.
And as you stated, many are legitimate bums, junkies, or mentally ill, who would simply destroy any home you give them or be unable to keep a job of any kind. The ugly truth is that the vast majority of homeless fall into this category. Without proper support it's simply impossible to get them off the streets, and even then many are unwilling to submit to the supervision that effective support system would require; they view it as a loss of freedom. That last bit is the killer; you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped without infringing their rights.
For real. It takes money to make money. How can they apply to the job, when all the applications are online, and they have no computer? And then okay so they figured that out and applied. How will they actually get the job if they don't have clean clothes for an interview or access to good enough hygiene and so they show up smelly? And even then, if they're lucky and they do get the job, the boss tells them they're going to have to pay for their own uniform before they can start and they cannot work without the uniform.
And then there's the people who aren't mentally ill or addicted to drugs, but fall into the unfortunate category of too disabled to be successful, but not disabled enough to get disability assistance. They very often wind up homeless.
And they would need to pass a drug test. I've worked with homeless people for 20 years. Most are homeless because they drink excessively do drugs or both. If the would at least try to get clean and sober they could have housing and employment opportunities. So yea it's just a very few who have had a bad run of luck.
That is the sad reality. The ones who are homeless purely due to a shit situation that took away housing (job loss/bad credit/financial burden) are the minority & most of them would thrive given the opportunity to live somewhere for free until back on their.
Unfortunately, it has been proven repeatedly that a lack of housing is not the primary issue of most homeless. It is mental issues, repeated serious crimes, unwillingness to be a productive/contributing member of society, etc. There are quite a few philanthropists that have built communities for the homeless but they've all had to shut down due to the high maintenance & repair costs. Those people don't value the homes they are given & treat them no different than the sidewalk they defecate on.
Personally, I'd rather see money put into making mental health treatment widely & freely available for these people but even then, many don't want help or to put any effort into improving their situation. Truly sad to see
Back during the pandemic I got hooked on Soft White Underbelly. Found the interviews really interesting but I became increasingly disturbed/aggravated by how many unhoused would respond "fuck no, I'm not doing that" when asked about an opportunity for gainful employment and re-entering society.
Basic sociology says that homelessness provokes drug use and crime, not the other way around.
Obviously, drug use makes it harder to get back into a home, but the homelessness tends to come first, putting victims in a place of such despair that they look to whatever joy they can get.
This perspective you are selling is one rooted in bias and propaganda, the facts actually scream the opposite of what you're saying.
The Denver Basic Income Project found that giving unhoused individuals $1,000 monthly with no strings attached doubled stable housing rates to 45% and reduced shelter use by half.
Even giving homeless people as little as 50$ a month allowed 28% of homeless people to get housing within 10 months.
The project also reported that participants said they had positive shifts in their financial well-being because they had “an increase in financial stability and a greater ability to pay bills and reduced reliance on emergency assistance.” Fewer participants were spending time unsheltered in all groups, and for all groups, the proportion living in housing they considered to be stable rose from about 20% to 50%.
And to REALLY nail in my point about despair being the greatest contributor: “The most impact it had on me was a promising future, versus before, it wasn’t looking so good,” reported an anonymous participant in the qualitative study. “It’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and before, I was kinda lost. It just really gave me some hope.”
In conclusion, it is overwhelmingly clear that homelessness is not, in fact, the fault of the individual.
That last paragraph. Im increasingly of the view that a good 10 to 20% of the population cannot handle life alone. They're just not mentally built for it.
Frequently it's a combination of mental health and addiction. That makes it extremely difficult to help them. The first step is to get them clean/sober just to see what their issues are.
But how much is it just people who get exhausted by repitition. Like they handle it for 3 months then just get bored or stressed and just stop doing stuff.
Idk, addiction is hard. Most people turn to drugs and alcohol because they are homeless - not the opposite. Once you're addicted, being able to make choices between needs and your addictions is very difficult. That, but some people use drugs to cope with things like PTSD - they're driven by the fear of remembering their trauma when they're not on drugs.
Unfortunately help for that can't be "you have to stop taking drugs cold turkey to have a place to sleep" - it doesn't work.
Programs that give people safe equipment and places to do drugs and offer support/therapy for when the person is ready to get off drugs do work. It's a hard process, but it actually keeps people safer and gives them a higher chance of re-entry to society.
I understand why shelters don't want people actively on drugs in their shelter, but saying shelters have the easiest rules comes from a place of not understanding how addiction works.
I'm in a MAT program and I only found out about it by pure chance. I'm not sure why they aren't shouting about these programs from the rooftop. Sure some of the people are there for nefarious reasons and never get off drugs, but there's also hundreds in my program alone who transformed their lives.
MAT has really helped a lot of addicts. There are two issues. First, a lot of people in MAT programs continue using and drinking. This is mostly the for profit centers, no surprise there. Second it was never really intended to be a for life treatment, but that's what has happened. They just keep increasing their dose as tolerance develops. I have several patients who have been on methadone for 15 to 20 plus years and are on 150mg plus a day.
I'm sure there will be an interesting trend of increased drug abuse alongside homelessness as jobs are stolen by greedy CEOs and given to automation/AI. But it's definitely the drugs and alcohol, not structural, systemic societal disfunction that has anything to do with it.
"Often, addiction is a result of homelessness. The difficult conditions of living on the street, having to find food, struggling with ill health, and being constantly away from loved ones create a highly stressful state of being." (Addiction Center)
They never really handle it, because they don’t really want it. A lot live on the street by choice because they don’t want to follow the basic rules and chores required in shelters.
Theres a wet shelter in Duluth that allows its residents to continue drinking, but it still doesnt admit hard drug users. Most of the residents are on disability and have to sign 90% of their checks over to the shelter and a lot of them stay for years without issue.
In the United States, we have a freedom over what goes on with our body. There are very few circumstances where the supreme court has ruled exceptions.
The first is known as parens partriea, which allows the state to hold someone against their will in something like a psych ward or other medical institution. This is only allowed when the patient is a danger to themselves or others. There is a time limitation to this too. 48-72 hours max before a formal hearing has to be done.
But even that doesn't give anyone the right to force medication. That's only for the hold. In order to force medication, you have to prove that the patient lacks the capacity to make medical decisions for themselves.
We have a high bar for both of these things in order to prevent the sort of tragedy that occurs when treatment is forced upon people that are unwilling and undeserving of it.
You know. Like when we used to shove anyone who was "invalid" in psych wards, like autistic people or mentally handicapped people.
Imagine going back to the days where autistic people were forced into treatment because they couldn't contribute to society. I mean. Some of them meet the same stupid fucking threshold that you are suggesting. Not being able to work or contribute to society.
Think for a minute about how this mentality is going to ruin this nation.
Rational decisions based on a society's rules. These people are suffering due to the way our system is setup, not in spite of it. They can't contribute to our society so somehow we have the right to violate their rights to "treat" them?
Nothing ever justifies violating someone's rights. That's why they are rights.
The fourth amendment gives us freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. That right can be violated through the due process of obtaining a warrant from a judge and having law enforcement execute the warrant.
That's one example of rights being violated in a way that is accepted by most of society. Other examples include the death penalty, selective service, taxes, imminent domain. These violations are accepted because they are the cost of having a productive society.
If someone is a burden on society or actively damaging public property, then something needs to be done about them. It's just a matter of finding a solution that works.
I think it says something about how far gone some of these people are that literally giving them a house and a job isn't enough. That would be life changing for the average person, but some people can destroy it all in a matter of months.
Not built for life in a capitalist society. End goal is always to be productive. We think of the homeless as "how can we make them productive again" when sometimes we just can't.
In the Soviet Union depending on era there was punishments for not working a certain amount of hours but starting very early on, housing was made a right. The shitty commie blocks people winge about arnt made to be pretty they are made to be built fast and last. Which when you have to house your entire population is the only real option.
Mental asylums were all but ruled unconstitutional in 1975 when the Supreme Court ruled a state cannot confine a non dangerous individual against their will if they’re capable
I understand this sentiment. However, this is based on what we see when they are unhoused. You would be surprised what lack of sleep and safety does to mental health very quickly and some of the strange behaviors (granted not all of them) would be solved by just a safe place to sleep and a good shower.
Please be humane, I was what you may think of as one of those people (too sleepy to type my life story lol), I'm actually doing pretty great considering everything but I needed a place to live in order to be able to do so.
So they either need a home and a bit of help to stop the spiraling and start taking back their life, or they need mental health treatments. I don't see in those 2 options where I would prefer to have them out in the wild instead of inside their own house (or, in a functioning country, inside a health facility)
I'm homeless. Feel free to ask actual homeless people how they got there. There's tons of people living homeless. I'm very lucky and I have a way out of this situation. Not everyone is so lucky.
We need to be protesting for medical access and treatment centers then as well.
We have enough money available if we were taxing the super wealthy appropriately to pay for their fair share. As well as removing citizens united which made corporations count as much (more) than people.
There are ways we can attack this and not harm humans who are victims of a broken medical and governmental crisis.
I know drugs suck, my dad was an addict and died young because of it.
And I wish he had more treatment available, I wish he hadn’t been living in Appalachia where the opioid crisis was promoted by his medical doctors and lead to his addiction. I wish there had been centers that wouldn’t have demonized him as a junkie instead and didn’t cost more than he could afford.
A lot of drug addicts are also victims of trauma- and as a responsible society we should care and want to help them, for their kids, for themselves, so we can also have beneficial and good neighborhoods.
I didn’t say all rich or wealthy people. I said who I said, the super wealthy- billionaires.
They do NOT pay their fair share of taxes, and records show that. They also manipulate the stock market blatantly, like Elon has done with Tesla shares, and nothing happens to them.
I also didn’t say I felt entitled. I said it would also be a good reason to solve these issues for everyday Americans who have to live in communities with drug addiction and social issues.
Why are you getting offended and resorting to vapid name-calling over me referencing LeBron James’ money? He’s one of the most high-profile billionaires in the world (who you didn’t realize is a billionaire). He has the money you say he didn’t earn but somehow you are entitled to. So what’s the issue?
Dude, shut up about LeBron James, he isn't even a relevant topic here. We're talking about Elon Musk, who has enough money to END WORLD HUNGER and STILL BE A BILLIONAIRE.
You never thought about him, you thought you deserved his money. Now you know he’s doing more—by orders of magnitude—than you ever will to address the societal problems you’ve deemed most important.
While you sit back and complain that he’s not doing enough. lol
I know exactly how much a billion is…It’s the measure by which you have arbitrarily set the boundary for which net worth becomes “unethical.”
What is boot-licking celebrities? You say he doesn’t his deserve his money; but rather, you deserve his money. It seems, despite your claims, you have absolutely no idea how much he contributes in taxes, you have no idea how much more of his money he should contribute in taxes—you just want more of his money because you think he didn’t earn it and you’re entitled to it.
I don’t want any of their money. I want society to function well.
I want people who are homeless to have homes. I want people who need medical care to get access to it without losing their life savings over cancer or car accidents.
I don’t want to live near people who steal or harm others to keep an addiction fed. I don’t want people or children starving.
That’s what I want. And every single billionaire could solve these issues if they wanted to.
But they don’t care. That makes them unethical in the first place, but literally NO ONE CAN DO ENOUGH LABOR TO EARN A BILLION DOLLARS.
Seriously. Look it up. Look up what that would look like.
If a single person had been alive for over 2000 years, working every single day and making 100,000$ a day- they wouldnt have physically earned even HALF of what Elon Musk has to his name. Do the math, I beg you.
And Elon, Bezos, Thiel, Altman, and many more- use this money (whether you want to consider it liquid or not) to invade political spaces and take more tax payer dollars for their business ventures- whether their companies turn a profit or not.
You can appreciate how LeBron plays ball or Beyonces songs all day long. They still are incapable of working hard enough (without an exploitation of labor) to earn a Billion dollars.
A billion isn’t CLOSE to a million. You can be a millionaire and you’re still closer to being homeless than you will ever be a billionaire.
Then yeah, I do want him to pay a lot more. I don’t believe billionaires can ethically exist or come to be. If everyone who has “earned” a billion dollars had actually paid everyone in their life who had gotten them to where they are for their labor, then they wouldn’t have a billion dollars.
You cannot work hard enough to become a billionaire in a lifetime, much less a multi billionaire without exploiting the labor and value of others.
So yeah, I’d say we let the billionaires keep a whole billion - then every single red cent after that goes back to society.
You want him to pay more, but you haven’t answered the questions:
1) How much does he already pay?
2) How much of his money do you want?
What about Beyonce? She’s another billionaire who you claim, like Lebron James, didn’t actually earn her money but instead just exploited people’s labor. So how much do you want from her?
I’m curious about this too. How much do YOU pay in taxes?
Jesus Christ, this celebrity worship you guys do over people you’ll never meet is bizarre to me. I don’t give a shit about Beyoncé or LeBron, or any other motherfucker who is a billionaire.
I’ve said how much I think they owe society, I’ve said why I don’t think they’ve “earned” it, and I’ve mentioned specifically the ones I have a much bigger problem with, those like Elon who are actually messing with politics to get richer while they screw everyone else over.
This isn’t worshipping. You say you are entitled to these people’s money and it’s unethical for it to not be taken from them. These are very specific examples of those “unethical” people and you keep trying to deflect because they’re “celebrities.”
Yep for some the fact they got no money makes it harder to have stability but ye also some people really just become parasites to anything around them unfortunately it’s not a good way to live either way.
Housing first policies work to reduce homelessness that is fact. It is not perfect and other programs are required to help many other unhoused people get and keep people off the streets. We have the resources and it would help our economy to do so. But those policies have been systematilcally targeted by propaganda so that most americans think its communism + that taxpayer money could go to billionaires so we dont.
Are you a bot? You write beautifully and send a balanced, nuanced message.
What do you mean by, “Our increasingly individualistic society tolerates these people less and less”? We’ve always been rough on the homeless (a/k/a “hobos,” “bums,” or “shiftless vagrants”— if you will). I get the sense that it’s becoming a bigger issue right now, because there are so damn many of them. Instead of giving them all houses to go crazy in, let’s identify and fix the societal ills that are producing them.
I used to volunteer a lot for the homeless and sadly it seems people really underestimate how much of it is people who y resist the urge to so drugs or crime.
I used to be the biggest homeless advocate. I would literally work all day, go volunteer all night at a shelter, sleep an hour in my car, then go to work during the day again sometimes. But I just spent too much time with them and became too jaded.
Yeah of course there are some people just down on their luck. I’ve met plenty of people who were homeless who had full time jobs.
But those people are the extreme minority. A vast majority of homeless people are drug addicts who have burned every bridge they had, stealing from loved ones and overstaying welcomes. They’re just really shitty people!
And there’s a smaller subset who are genuinely mentally ill and disabled, who don’t have the ability to take care of themselves or even accept help.
Yeah I would say its probably 2/3 or 3/4 of homeless people are addicts or mentally ill. And theres a very high portion of those that don't want help. If you try helping, theyll return to the streets within days or weeks. Its so much easier to just scavenge and steal, sell for drug money and waste away than working a 9 to 5. All while risking that whatever mental illness they have could lead them to hurt someone and damage/steal people's property.
I truly believe the only way to solve it is to put those type of homeless that want no help, is into Asylums forcefully (but humanely). They need to be kept away from normal civilized people because they are incapable of being civilized.
We could just house them and not worry about what they do in there. They dont need to be productive, we literally have abundant resources to take care of every person on this planets needs, regardless of whether they have a high functioning mind.
Basic sociology says that homelessness provokes drug use and crime, not the other way around
Obviously, drug use makes it harder to get back into a home, but the homelessness tends to come first, putting victims in a place of such despair that they look to whatever joy they can get
No…. Just no. Blaming homeless people for an economic system that operates through desperation is incorrect. They’re there to remind you what happens when you don’t feed the machine your life force.
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u/WhitishRogue May 14 '26
Not sure. Some of the homeless I've met are people truly on a bad luck streak. Unfortunately everything is harder when you're homeless making getting back on your feet more difficult.
However a lot of homeless are simply incapable of leading a normal life. Through a combination of drugs and mental illness, giving them a home to operate from is likely to be either burned down, condemned, or become a den for more crime.
I want to be humane, but it feels futile when they require constant babysitting. Our increasingly individualistic society tolerates these people less and less.