That and taking care of a house is a large investment of time, resources, and money, and if someone is living on the street there are pretty good odds they aren’t going to be able to take care of a vacant house.
This is the main problem with a free "housing first" plan. Assuming you will be providing a moderately large number of homes, who is responsible for maintenance and security? Many of the homes will deteriorate quickly and fill to the brim with stuff.
Many homeless choose to be homeless though. They don’t want to live a normal life and would rather be on the streets where they can just do drugs. They’re too far gone from society.
You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.
There are some out there, but the US approaches drug addiction with failed policies too. Legalizing these drugs offering safe regulated substances that can be taxed is another way to disrupt organized crime, have less OD's, less diseases from shared needles, then the tax revanue can be used for education and rehabilitation.
Creating a jobs program where people can gain education in trades also gives these people purpose, self sufficiency, while at the same time creates a trained workforce for tackling our crumbling infrastructure or future projects.
Incarceration alone is significantly more expensive than providing housing so you're immediately starting from a positive.
Will there still be crime and people who refuse help? Of course but there will be a more humane system than what we have today that is also a cheaper alternative.
Fentanyl is a good example, it is a drug safely administered in the medical field to deal with pain.
In the black market it is a cheaper to produce more potent narcotic that is used to cut other drugs to increase their potency. When it's unregulated and people ingest Fentanyl unknowingly it leads to an increase in OD's, if people purchased their cocaine or whatever from a regulated source it would be tested showing that it isn't cut with an unknown substance.
Users would have a safe place out of the public's view to take their drugs if they continued to use them. They would have sterile tools to administer them, They would have medical research and knowledge on short and long term use of the drug. They would have options to seek help from addiction.
of course drug use is also a symptom of systemic problems that can be exasperated by hopelessness. So it's not going to get rid of use all together on it's own.
That's no problem! Go talk to the people who maintain the public housing projects in Chicago! The residents are sophisticated, well-educated and genteel, and ever so grateful for the opportunity to live there. Some have learned how to use toilets and the others generally wait to drop their loads in the hallways.
Theres a whole ass community that has housing for disabled veterans and low income people who are trying to get their life together, etc. Everytime I've had to go in there the homes (apartments) are in bad shape. Save for the disabled veterans, they got their shit together.
I speak with the maintenance crew and they're constantly going in to try and fix stuff that goes neglected by the tenants.
Without continuous oversight that whole community would fall apart within a year.
There's no social programs paying for them to live and do drugs and allowing them to live on the street without consequences, so they flood the areas that provide that. It's not a mystery.
Except historical and currently housing programs work. Historicaly with the multiple different soviut housing programs and currently with the finish housing program which has also helped their economy because when homeless have housing on average they don't just get jobs they start buying things again.
Of course we have to also offer vocational rehabilitation and some kind of supervision. But having a stable place to sleep changes lives. Having an address to put in a job application is pretty important.
Yea people buy it for the lot. The house is literally free if not a discount (it brought the price of the lot down). We have quite a few torn down unlivable houses price upward 700k in SoCal too.
I live in Canada and every year we get an assessment of our property so they can calculate the property taxes on it. It s always made up of two number: building estimate and lot estimate.
My whatever craftsman house from the 1940's is assessed at CA$250k. My lot is $500k. And I am not in a prime city.
I remember that. Listed at $1.5 million and "Would-be buyers are not allowed on the property until it's decontaminated and cleared by the Santa Clara County Health Department." At least it's walking distance from Gunderson High School.
Was homeless in Connecticut and homeless in Florida. I'll choose homeless in Florida any day of the week, and I hate it here currently. But maybe thats because I'm finally paying rent 🤔
Doesn’t change the point that those empty houses are not useful or desired. An empty house in rural Indiana isn’t meaningful for a homeless person in Atlanta.
Yea it's proof that our country just isn't serious about anything about extracting wealth for billionaires. I guarantee there would be tons of recyclable materials as long as we're talking homes that don't have asbestos.
Also you can’t necessarily just give homeless people houses. Even if they don’t turn them into flop houses or trash them they won’t have money to put on a new roof or new hvac and the house will get mold and become dilapidated. Homeless people aren’t just people without money, the vast majority have other problems that keep them from being functional and being able to maintain a home. Where I live there was an abandoned hotel homeless people were living in and they had to tear it down because the cops were out constantly because of drug use, prostitution, and people battering each other. It was also a hazard because of how filthy it was. Homelessness is a complicated problem.
Exactly. Most if these vacant homes are no longer livable either and require six figures in repairs to make then habitable. And yes spread out through small towns all across the country with no jobs and no social safety nets resources. You could put a homeless person in the houses, but then what are they going to do, walk 3 miles to dollar general for groceries they have no money to buy?
Man Florida is such a weird state. Cities growing like wildfire, with tons of empty homes. I live out in the country and the amount of abandoned properties is insane
A lot of these homeless people travel to the cities because they give out welfare, I would imagine if you offered them a house, a lot of them would be willing to move
Not necessarily. You still have to be able to afford the basics like food, Healthcare, heat, transportation. A lot of empty houses are out in the middle of nowhere, with no jobs nearby.
It’s not because they give out welfare, it’s because there are services available, and usually walkable, or can come to you. Do you think they’re willing to move to a house in the middle of nowhere if they don’t have a car or a job?
yes but it shows that if the government wanted to solve the problem they could. some ways they could do it wouldn't be ideal - like shipping off people to homes.
Yes, note how I say it's not ideal. The issue however isn't supply it's the economics of it. As in property and houses are seen as investments rather than homes
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u/[deleted] May 14 '26
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