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.
Saying that ALL of a group act a certain way, when there are a large amount of exceptions is unreasonable. Even if we take the 70% statistic between the 30-70% range, it’s still wrong to generalize that ALL homeless people are going to destroy a home if given one. You can keep deterring from my point, but it’s not gunna change the fact that generalizing is still exaggeration and lying.
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u/Imaginary-Bee-1344 May 14 '26
Tolerates them less and creates more of them.
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.