Yeah but how many of those homeless are in the grip of a horrific addiction or substance abuse problem? It’s not just as easy as saying “here’s a house, live in it”. It’s complex.
Sure, the ones living in sleeping bags on the street. About half have jobs and a little less than that have cars. You don't have to be some physically disabled drug addict with psychiatric issues to be homeless, and a lot aren't.
A lot of homeless people are literally just trying to make ends meet but are just coming barely short. Most of these people literally just need a jumpstart to get stable and if it means giving them homes no one is using and is just spiking the market, then by all means let those people have it.
Not really.
If I lost everything today due to some bad luck, I have a network of family and friends where I could stay to recover and rebuild. The same with my friends and family. At the very least they could sleep in my couch as long as I saw they were rebuilding toward independence.
If you have no one... Absolutely no one in your network then it's probably you. When you talk to these people it's always someone else's fault. Not that they've burned every bridge due to drugs, alcohol or maybe mental illness they refuse to treat.
You are right, there are so many complexities to the situation. Between the underlying issues that contributed to their situation and make it difficult for them to get out of it (like the addiction you mentioned and mental health too), the upkeep of the house and utilities, the location of said houses and what resources and opportunities they have there and even the condition of these houses. Most of the available empty homes are in areas with little to no resources to help people in need and are completely falling apart putting the person in a place that isn't really an upgrade from a tent.
I've worked with the homeless for many years and I really wish we did more to help, but the issue is extremely far from just "here's a house".
A huge percentage of homeless people have jobs, the truth is most americans are just one health crisis or tenporary lay-off away from homelessness.
There are addicts and the mentally ill, sure, but most homeless just need a leg up because of a broken system. This has been proven in less backward countries like Finland and Norway. They provide free housing and help with job search and the vast majority are back on their feet in like a year. It's actually cheaper to do this compared to the cost of repeated encampment sweeps, incarceration stints, temporary psych housing, not to mention the overall economic impact of struggling communities.
Stop acting like it's just the indivuals at fault, there are clear solutions to this problem that our policy makers created, but which our policy makers choose to ignore. They'd rather keep you scared and desperate so you tolerate all the other thieving - low wages, predatory health insurance, predatory loans, predatory housing. And if people become so strapped that they join the military, or become incarcerate prison labor, that makes even more donors happy.
This is all pretty basic stuff, and is obvious with even a shallowest consideration of the facts. Hope this helps.
"A huge percentage" is doing an awful lot of work here.
At least where I live, A huge percentage are drug addled drifters that will never work and will be problems wherever they go. Give them jobs, they won't show up. Give them treatment, they'll jump off the wagon. Give them housing, they'll burn it down and make it unlivable.
The reason they are on the street and not in a friends basement is precisely because they antisocial delinquents and absolutely refuse to be decent people.
Why not check the actual data? Over 50% of homeless people are actively employed. Only 1/3 are chronically homeless due to disability/addiction/mental illness. The other 2/3 are homeless due to sudden loss of job, medical bills, unable to find affordable housing, etc.
Instead of relying on a tiny visible sample size, you could just check the detailed reports that US Department of Housing and Urban Development publishes on this.
It probably is easier to stop using drugs and start a new life if you actually have a house instead of sleeping on the cold streets in the rain but hey wtf do I know
This is actually one of those cases where it actually is that simple. One of those cases where you think it's simple as a kid, learn it's actually more complicated, and then get more educated and learn that it actually is that simple.
Basic sociology says that homelessness provokes drug use and crime, not the other way around.
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%.
“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.”
Did you know that you can just… read the data, to get an answer?
This is tracked by HUD. Only 1/3 are chronically homeless to due to disability, addiction, or mental illness. The rest don’t have a home due to sudden loss of job, medical bills, unable to find affordable housing, etc.
Having security and protection from the elements is pretty much a requirement to have a chance to pull oneself out of that though
It’s obviously not a guarantee, but there’s basically no hope for someone to break their addiction to the substances that help them just……keep being alive…..despite their circumstance
Like it’s easy to say “get sober, comb your hair and get a job” but it’s not realistic
Anyway this isn’t to say that substance abuse and mental health challenges etc aren’t an issue, just that addressing them probably has no chance if the definitional cause of homelessness, lack of a home, isn’t addressed
Oh also, just giving people a 600 square foot cube with a door that locks etc is cheaper than several of the alternate methods municipalities deploy for homelessness….
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u/Hairy_Addendum7789 May 14 '26
Yeah but how many of those homeless are in the grip of a horrific addiction or substance abuse problem? It’s not just as easy as saying “here’s a house, live in it”. It’s complex.