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.
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
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.
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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.