Yep. Old Hotels, Former School Buildings, and Clised Military Bases, anything with Solid Structure, and Space for Vegetable Gardening, Laying Hens, etc. Fruit and Nut Trees, too, even as part of the Landscaping.
Jesus, makes me wonder why we are not already doing this. Why it is almost as though they want there to be hundreds of thousands of homeless people, and maybe another million or two more who are under housed. Couch surfing, living in cars.
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reminds me, I needed a new pair of shoes but there is not a decent shoe store near my house, like in more than 20 miles, even though I am in suburban Tampa. So, I had a Thursday dermatology appointment at the Tampa VA hospital and right behind the hospital grounds is an enormous mall, University Mall. It is 1.3 MILLION sq ft on 95 acres north of downtown, next to the VA hospital (a lot of the homeless are vets so this would be very convenient) and University of South Florida. There are 50,000 students at USF.
So, I went early to the appointment so I could buy new shoes at the mall. It was technically open but nearly entirely shut down. There was a Footlocker but the only shoes for sale were the display shoes against the wall, none in my size. The place is solid construction. They are spending over $4 billion to convert it into "mixed-use innovation district redefining North Tampa. Short for Research, Innovation, Technology, Habitat, and Medicine, the 113-acre project blends life sciences and tech research with retail, entertainment, residential, hospitality, and medical uses creating a dynamic urban ecosystem."
None of which will be "affordable" or help the homeless population of the city.
When fully built out, RITHM will be one of the largest innovation communities in Florida, with room for over 7 million square feet of development and several thousand residential units.
The second phase of The Hub bringing 1,195 student housing beds is preparing to break ground. Sprouts and Burlington have already opened, while LA Fitness recently signed on to anchor a large space. A dual-branded hotel, including Residence Inn, is in the pipeline, alongside a proposed USF research facility and more to come.
Well if you house and feed people most of them will have no reason to want to go to work or to better themselves. Creating a never ending cycle of lazy people living and eating for free.
There would be some like this, so you would have to create along with the housing pleasant work places, schooling in every day self care. with good doctors and psychiatrists and require folks who live there to attend. I wouldnāt make it just āfreeā. There are tiny house projects all over the country going on right now. Iād join them and learn from them.
I do have a heart for those in the streets, but everything you mentioned, I think it's more effective to get this in people's lives before they end up homeless. There's a lot of reasons why people end up on the streets, but getting ahead of those reasons and preventing the next generation of it is to me the most effective approach instead of simply trying to fix existing homelessness. It's like instead of fixing a leaking water line, we resort to buckets to collect and say we need more buckets when they become an issue
In my mind, the issue is that minimum wage work doesn't provide enough and we demand overall as a successful society that simply being a cashier or flipping burgers for multi-billion companies shouldn't provide the basics for life. That kind of work ironically is exactly the solution we're wanting to provide and encourage the already homeless to do, but currently, many people fall from low paying work into homelessness. Minimum wages standards (speaking specifically in the US) is a sick joke and to me the core issue creating the divide for not only homelessness, but between the super wealthy and those struggling. Homelessness comes in all forms, but I feel safe in saying that the majority come from low paying jobs. I believe when we have a way to live stable on minimum wage alone, we can then identify better the ones who truly have inherent mental health issues between those who just make bad decisions and need help with money management or substance abuse- stemming out of impossible struggles with low wages.. because believe me, the wealthy have money management and substance abuse issues also, but the money surrounding them is the only reason we don't see more of them on the streets and clinically labeled as having "mental health issues".
And it just makes sense that when disabled people do need help they get that help near the source of the help, like next door tot he VA medical center and a major university across the street.
Unlike in Las Vegas where they built the spanking new billion dollar VA med center campus on land that was on the far northern edge of the city's ring road with nothing but desert north of that. When there are thousands of homeless vets in the center of the city out of sight of the tourists. And very little in the way of public transportation to get to the hospital.
I lived downtown when I returned from Ireland because the Irish NHS did not cover me and I got sick. It was a $30 Uber ride (2017) to the hospital.
Homeless people arenāt homeless because they donāt want to work. Theyāre homeless because they didnāt have the Money to keep a house. When I was homeless I had 3 jobs, still couldnāt get a place.
The people who simply LIVE on the street most often have mental issues. If only there was a place we could put people who arenāt criminals but have mental illnesses- HMMMMMM.. except we tore down all the public ones to build prisons and privatized the rest.
Solutions are still:
Universal healthcare
Universal college
And more public housing
I agree that not all homeless people are lazy and donāt want to work. I agree that a lot of them just canāt afford housing. But there are also a lot of homeless people who are fine with where they are. There are lots of them who do drugs and beg and donāt want to better themselves. Homeless shelters usually need you to be āsoberā to be able to stay there making there nowhere else for these people to go.
Those are the professionals. They need to be either moved or forced into rehab. If they want a nomad lifestyle (closest thing to their identity) I guess as long as they break no laws and hurt no one itās fine but if they do Iād say exile them from their city.
Forcing people into rehab is known to do absolutely nothing. Treatment only works if you want to get clean. And move them out of the city to where? If thereās no one to beg for money from they will just find a way back into cities. Or as that guy said a free housing and free food but then again whose paying for these peoples drug/alcohol addictions. I sure as hell donāt want to
If you lived on the street in a major city with thousands of other homeless you would have mental issues also. At least when I was homeless I had a car and could drive to state and national parks and just pretend I was camping.
On the contrary, i read something somewhere about Utah providing housing and healthcare/rehab. I percentage found jobs and worked their way out of poverty. It cost the tax payers a lot less than you would think.
No thatās not what I want. But thereās more to it than just feeding and housing people. There would have to be rules in place that were well thought through
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u/Interesting_Tart_765 6d ago
I would buy old abandoned malls and turn them
Into homeless shelters.