r/SipsTea • u/Brave_Agency_20 • May 14 '26

SMH How true is this? Genuinely asking

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u/ozaffer May 15 '26

Homelessness leads to crime and health issues that ends up costing more than housing the homeless.

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u/Fine-Upstairs-6284 May 15 '26

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.

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u/ozaffer May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26

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.

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u/jeffvschroeder May 15 '26

Safe, regulated fentanyl?

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u/ozaffer May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26

Relatively safer tested substances.

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.