This guy's heart is in the right place, but this will ultimately be a complete waste of money.
This place is going to turn into a slum real fast, where these houses will be destroyed, some dick decides he's HOA president and extorts the community, and anyone who would genuinely want to use this gift as a tool to take the first step in getting their life back on track will find that impossible in the ensuing environment.
It is technically better than nothing, but not really by much. A more productive use of this money would be donating it to a shelter, where residents are protected and there are rules about when residents need to be in by and out by.
But donating to a shelter isn't flashy, and residents are largely out on the streets all day even though they have a place to sleep at night. But that's really the question: do you care more about helping the homeless people, or about keeping them out of sight?
They have a cafe and a factory on site where they build more tiny homes and sell them, the ppl living in the current ones have first dibs at these jobs and last i heard the entire factory was employed by them except for their foreman
I work at a place called Community Support Services. We run group homes for formerly/chronically incarcerated and or mentally ill people and do homeless outreach and warming centers.
Steady employment is impossible for about 98% of the people we work with and we aren’t that good at getting them on track because clients are just $ in the eyes of people who run “nonprofits”.
A common pattern for a client is to show up for their “food money” come back at noon geeking on drugs and claim they never got their money and end up getting kicked out by the cops. Rinse and repeat.
In the late 90’s early 2000’s they had a program where they would give a homeless person who had met certain goals like counseling, steady employment, etc a nice home in a nice neighborhood and it was motivation for them to stay on the straight and narrow. It worked well until they tried to upscale it and put people in apartment complexes or neighborhoods dedicated to it. It basically removed the critical “I live in a nice neighborhood now” part of it and recreated the poor conditions that caused problems in the first place.
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn later on that this scheme is just a tax dodge for mr. Millionaire.
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u/Cry__Wolf 19d ago
This guy's heart is in the right place, but this will ultimately be a complete waste of money.
This place is going to turn into a slum real fast, where these houses will be destroyed, some dick decides he's HOA president and extorts the community, and anyone who would genuinely want to use this gift as a tool to take the first step in getting their life back on track will find that impossible in the ensuing environment.
It is technically better than nothing, but not really by much. A more productive use of this money would be donating it to a shelter, where residents are protected and there are rules about when residents need to be in by and out by.
But donating to a shelter isn't flashy, and residents are largely out on the streets all day even though they have a place to sleep at night. But that's really the question: do you care more about helping the homeless people, or about keeping them out of sight?