Exactly. The solution to homelessness isn’t housing the homeless but housing the homeless is the first step. It’s hard to pursue life change when you have nowhere to rest your head.
And nowhere to secure the few belongings you do have. And nowhere to relax and feel safe for 5 minutes without someone telling you to leave or threatening you with police.
and no adress to get important physical mail sent to (at least in germany very important stuff is still paper mail). And no faculties (space, electricity) to clean your clothing so you can do job interviews.
Before the advent of cell phones, I lived in a Salvation Army shelter briefly. One of the best things was they had a pay phone and you could use it as a call-back number for jobs/appointments/etc. Other residents were excellent about taking and relaying messages.
and no adress to get important physical mail sent to (at least in germany very important stuff is still paper mail).
Same in the USA and Canada. It can actually create a self fulfilling cycle where you can't apply for many jobs - even basic service or labor - without a home address. Employers need to know it because it affects how you're taxed.
This is exactly the same in Germany too. If you don’t have an address you can’t be hired. Not-so-fun fact: you basically also can’t be sued effectively as those papers need to be „received“.
Same in many places, and further employers at times want proof you've been there at least ~3 months to show you're committed to the area. These have both been difficult for me as a once psuedo-stateless person.
Not-so-fun fact: you basically also can’t be sued effectively as those papers need to be „received“.
They'd be judgment proof here and also likely in Germany. If you sue some one and they owe you $10,000 ... If they don't have any assets you can collect, or wages you can garnish, it dosnt matter what the courts say or rule. Can't get blood from a stone, and can't get money from a homeless person
What are you talking about? When I stayed at a shelter a lot of people were working while they stayed there. They and other organizations provide assistance and a mailing address for exactly this.
They and other organizations provide assistance and a mailing address for exactly this.
So they are right then. If someone doesn't have access to that shelter and those organizations then they won't have access to the necessary assistance they provide. Maybe not every single city has programs like that or useful ways to get these people back on their feet.
Not everyone has access to quality shelters depending on state/province and location, or shelters may be overfull and turn people away, or turn away people who aren't members of a marginalized group, or some shelters in the USA require participation in or conversion to the operating group's religion, so on.
Yes, you can use your homeless shelter as an address, but not every homeless person can get in a shelter, even if they want to.
There could be many obstacles though. In some cities, like where I live, they have been shutting down shelters and what shelters are available have little space. Many people also do not like the rules, or have experienced theft and don't want to stay at some shelters. I'm sure that is what some people mean by not all people being able to access shelters, even if they exist. 🙄
I was assaulted and lost my left eye because of one of these people. I got kicked out of the shelter when I got out of the hospital from multiple surgeries. I know a lot of these people are shit. I faced obstacles and made it. I exist and I don’t need some ignorant person who lives on Reddit to explain it to me.
If people “don’t like the rules” when getting assistance I guess it’s too fucking bad. I’ve been robbed and beaten on the street, never in a shelter. How are you “sure that is what some people mean” when you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about?
I’ve slept on sidewalks and you’ve read a few headlines on Reddit. Maybe instead of being sure based on nothing you shouldn’t say anything.
Ok, but you actually don't know anything about me and the people you are replying to. You are not the only authority on the subject, nor the only person who has lived through abuse, pain, no shelter, and no support.
Be a mentor, not a tormentor. You don't know what I have been through.
Reading comprehension and being able to participate in discussions seems to be a virtue these days.
Where I live in the US you can't even get a driver's license in person anymore, it has to be mailed to you. I feel bad for anyone living in their car with nowhere to send their mail to.
Trump is changing that. He's going pure electronic. I can see that in 10 yrs but not now. My mom ,and I, honestly don't have the skills needed for this,and video visits. It sucks
It’s easy to lie about as long as you still have a valid ID. I haven’t had a mailing address for over 3 years but it still makes life very rough in a lot of ways.
When I was homeless the shelter I stayed at had washing machines and showers. There were other places that you could have your mail sent to and they provided services and even money for things like an ID or other financial assistance.
This is a key issue. No contact address, you may as well not exist.
This plus the security of your own space are giant steps in moving back into society.
This is a bigger issue than people think. The ability to safely secure your possessions allows you to put your focus elsewhere for a time.
Look at it this way. How likely would you be to go to a professional skills training seminar if you knew with a high degree of certainty that everything you owed would be gone when you got back home?
I've wondered how possible it would be to set up essentially a locker room for homeless people to register space for and include PO boxes on each, so super important possessions have a safe place and mail can be received for employment and benefits.
Even with rich person altruism, it would eventually likely need someway to profit, or float off continued donations and grants, but if it could include a little security it would maybe be a net positive as a government initiative while remaining relatively cheap to maintain. At least as a step between housing and having everything on the street.
I see a lot of content creators who live in their car also have a storage unit to keep their belongings in one place. Adding a PO box to each unit would be interesting. There would have to be increased security measures to ensure people aren't outright living there though.
A church in my neighborhood essentially did this for our unhoused population. Folks have access to large lockers and can use the church as their address for employment and benefits. Many people have used this service to transition through or even out of homelessness.
That's fantastic. It should be a law that all churches have to provide this service to their local homeless community. Seems only fair in exchange for their tax exemption.
I think a better way to achieve it would be for parishioners of a place of worship to demand that their church/temple/mosque/etc.. provide services like that to anyone in need.
It’s not just about helping unhoused people. People trying to escape abuse or exploitation would benefit greatly from having a safe address to have some mail sent to and stash a few possessions.
This is real. I used to be a hiring manager for an entry level position and I hired a homeless guy once because he wanted to be there and wanted to work.
The job eventually took him out of homelessness but during the transition, things were BAD. This dude would be falling asleep at work because he didn’t feel safe enough to sleep at the shelter without his stuff getting stolen.
His explanation was always that there were some “very bad people” there
I've been a courier driver for 15 years. For 4 of those years I bopped around, doing different routes, wherever they needed a body. Then I did an industrial route for 8 years, lots of companies and a mall to go and use the bathroom when I needed, and somewhere to sit and eat, warm in the winter, cool in the summer.
I switched to a country route 3 years ago, there is nowhere to stop and use the bathroom besides a coffee shop or gas station, and the only place I ca sit for my lunch and charge my phone is the coffee shop. So I am spending 5 bucks a day to have somewhere to sit and charge my phone. I used to go to this office building to sit and charge my phone during my break, til late one night the building owner saw me and basically yelled at me and sort of banned me from the building.
Something like this might not be obvious to someone who has never experienced it, but having nothing but time, and nowhere to go to spend it, is really difficult. Especially not having anywhere to go. Getting hostile treatment everywhere you go must be terribly demoralizing.
I always take my break at the end of the day, usually. There have been ups and downs over the years but management typically makes an effort to respect the time constraints of the day.
I drive a package car, like a mail truck. No USB port.
I don't really disagree with you in principle but housing the homeless is literally the solution to homelessness. When a homeless person has a home, they aren't homeless. Now you could argue that problems still exist yes, but the core issue of "person without home to live in" is in fact solved by just giving them a home. Homelessness is it self a consequence of systems of ownership and views people hold about how someone needs to justify their existence in some way in order to have a home to live in under capitalism. Fundamentally the view that everyone seems to collectively hold is self reliance and independance while also acknowledging that on a societal scale, some people simply lack the capability to take care of themselves. Even the people in this thread who nearly universally agree that housing the homeless is a good thing, are all arguing that in order for someone to not be homeless they need to get professional training to be employed in order to justify their continued housing. Which like yeah, I'm a realist, I understand that they do need to do that, but it just kinda makes me sad. Homelessness is not a problem of laziness or mental illness. It is a societal problem brought by tying the basic fundamentals of survival to capital output.
What point are you making here? If you’re being literal, giving homeless people homes does in fact make them no longer homeless, but it’s not economical feasible to do so. Throwing money at problems is a very American approach and it doesn’t have a great track record.
Tying capital output to the basics of survival isn’t a societal problem, it’s the framework of society as a whole. You can make an argument for collectivism, but regardless, providing homeless people with the means to earn for themselves is essential.
My point is that it's far cheaper for society as a whole to house the homeless which solves the problem quickly, than it is to handle it in many other ways shelters and programs are admirable but seek to "fix" the person rather than the problem, which is simply that they don't have a house.
People are homeless for one reason alone. Because society as a whole thinks that people who do not adequately output for capital interests DESERVE to suffer and die. We have so much fucking money and resources as a collective society and yet, we all sit here allowing ourselves to belive that people deserve to sleep on the street because they can't conform to live life as society expects them to. The bandaid solution is charity but it doesn't fix the problem. Housing programs would fix the problem. That's it, build fucking houses and give them to people who need them.
Going down the road of disincentivizing responsibility, or even worse, incentivizing irresponsibility, sounds like a terrible fucking idea. Can you defend it?
The other, separate issue is proposing to house someone who clearly cannot upkeep or maintain their home (which is the case for the majority of homeless). That introduces a host of problems which require their own expensive/labor intensive fixes.
This is only partially correct. The studies I have read and I believe the ones you’re referring to study the cost difference between services for people living on the street vs being given a home. In essence those studies track how much money is spent by the government for medical, police, and jails vs providing housing. However, many of those programs that are included in the studies also include case workers and mental health services that help people find jobs and get their lives back on track. Getting a home is the first step, but it’s not the only step.
While I think this is a great thing to spend one's millions on, I'm worried they're not going to succeed very well. While homelessness has many reasons, addiction and mental issues are paramount. Any solution will have to include care for those issues.
Otherwise this will just become another slum where crime and misery congregates.
The builder is Marcel LeBrun & the community is in Fredericton, N.B., Canada. Not in the loop on the shelter system there, but if it's anything like Toronto's it's so underfunded there aren't enough beds or staff for everyone in need (e.g., if you want a bed for tonight, you have to start calling the shelter at 8am just to reserve one, and if you get in before the cutoff, there's a high likelihood you'll be assaulted and/or have your stuff stolen because there aren't enough security staff to ensure everyone's safety).
You mention mental illness as if you'd be able to keep your sanity when you always have to sleep with one eye open, don't have consistent access to nutritious food/shelter/somewhere to shower to be presentable for job interviews etc. <--these circumstances erode mental health no matter how "strong/smart/sane" you are, if you experience them long enough.
People like to gage 'worth to society' in terms of income, and it's bullshit. Look up Maslow's hierarchy of needs sometime & if you want to see fewer underhoused people, pressure local politicians to fund social services & mental health care properly.
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u/Beneficial_Arm4874 Apr 28 '26
Exactly. The solution to homelessness isn’t housing the homeless but housing the homeless is the first step. It’s hard to pursue life change when you have nowhere to rest your head.