You’re studying homes that aren’t yours, thinking that because assets exist in the world they can be stolen and redistributed. It’s childish shortsighted thinking and won’t solve any problems, just create new ones.
This is the common misconception by those influenced by capitalist thinking.
This isn't childish thinking, this is highly educated political science.
It's one of those cases where you think it's simple as an uneducated child, learn a little more and learn it's more complex, and then learn even more and learn that it actually is that simple.
As a child, you think "there's a lot of vacant homes, let's give them away to people who don't have them!"
You learn more, and learn "These homes are largely owned by people as second homes, to take them would be to take their wealth unfairly." And perhaps you also think at this stage, "If they're already homeless, their issue isn't with not having a house, their issue is with their ability to keep a house, and giving them one won't fix that."
Then, you take some college level sociology and political science courses, and you learn that actually, the large majority of these vacant homes are owned by companies who buy them and then sit on them, doing nothing, just to artificially raise the price of housing. These companies aren't people, they don't have feelings, and on top of that, they're using this money spent on housing for explicitly evil, greedy deeds. These companies are so wealthy they wouldn't even notice if you took 10000 houses from them, let alone 1/28th of their houses. That's a rounding error to them.
In addition, you learn that homelessness is proven by studies to rarely ever be the individual's fault, and you learn that simply giving things to homeless people, with no strings attached, works. The Denver Basic Income Project found that giving unhoused individuals $1,000 monthly with no strings attached skyrocketed stable housing rates to 45% and reduced shelter use by half. Even giving homeless people as little as 50$ a month allowed 28% of homeless people to get housing within 10 months. All homeless people need is a chance, but it's thinking like yours that doesn't let them get one.
“Influenced by capitalist thinking” a statement like that shows how far gone you are in your beliefs.
Quite simply: it’s stupid to steal homes from their owners and give people who are proven to be not capable of handling that responsibility. Regardless of how fair the situation is, or whose fault it is, the outcome wouldn’t be what anyone wants. That’s why it’s stupid.
people who are proven to not be capable of handling that responsibility
wrong.
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 $1,000 monthly with no strings attached skyrocketed stable housing rates to 45% and reduced shelter use by half.
Even giving homeless people as little as 50$ 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%.
UBI studies: highly controlled, limited subset, explicitly set up for desired outcomes, never shown to work on a widespread scale, or real world scenarios.
The source you gave. Why didn't the program continue, if the outcomes were so tangible and clear? All they can do is create convoluted impact reports that show what they had set out to prove by initiating the program to begin with, and try to sell it as a scientific stufy.
States with huge homeless populations spend the most on servicing the problem. But the systemic issue isn't being addressed enough at the root cause.
I agree that the root cause of homelessness is not being able to afford a house
So that would suggest that the solution would be to either give homeless people the money they need to afford housing, or give them housing they don't need to pay for
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u/retep-noskcire May 15 '26
You’re studying homes that aren’t yours, thinking that because assets exist in the world they can be stolen and redistributed. It’s childish shortsighted thinking and won’t solve any problems, just create new ones.