[petercooper]

The crux of the matter:

The cost of services comes to about ten thousand dollars per homeless client per year. An efficiency apartment in Denver averages $376 a month, or just over forty-five hundred a year, which means that you can house and care for a chronically homeless person for at most fifteen thousand dollars, or about a third of what he or she would cost on the street.

I believe similar observations have been made in subsidizing the price of fruit and vegetables (or even bikes and gym memberships) vs the medical costs of bad diets and lack of exercise, too.

[buro9]

It's not as simple as just throwing money at the problem and managing things differently.

I've been homeless before and it's not pretty, a lot of the people who I met on the street during that time would not have been able to just take an apartment and that would be their problem solved.

They are on the street for a reason and if the reason was purely financial then perhaps the apartment would help, but a lot of the time the reasons can be associated to mental health, poverty, drugs, alcoholism... and giving someone an apartment in those cases is unlikely to add anything to the solution.

What those people need is real support and care. And an apartment will just isolate them and risks exacerbating the problems for them.

[JadeNB]

> What those people need is real support and care. And an apartment will just isolate them and risks exacerbating the problems for them.

Not to say that I think that giving a homeless person a home will magically solve all his or her problems, but how does giving someone an apartment isolate him or her in a way that being on the street does not? (It's not a snide question; I've never been homeless, and maybe there's a stronger community than I see—but it seems unlikely that that community can provide the real mental and physical care that such an afflicted person would need, and that the people who can provide it find it easier to ignore a dirty person on the street than their next-door neighbours.)

[buro9]

On the street you're likely to congregate at points where people offer some basic assistance or there is security. This means things like food wagons, shelters, drop-in health centres and places where other homeless hang-out and you can pass a little time.

In those places a lot of voluntary help is given, workers chat to you, sometimes you'll even be given some new clothes, but nearly always you get to interact with others.

I cannot emphasise how hard being homeless and without a network is. You have no-one to talk to ever except for these people who by necessity you come into contact to. I also cannot emphasise just what happens if you have too much time alone and yet live in fear, hunger and with some problem (mental health, an addiction, etc).

Some of the people I knew from the streets wouldn't have survived in a house. They needed their contact as much as they needed their next drink, it was all they had and the only thing that prevented them from losing themselves totally.

The isolation from giving them an apartment is that no-one will visit, and if they do then not enough.

And the problems they'll have are worse and will go to basics such as hygiene. On the streets they never had to clear litter, pick up dirty clothes, and clean their environment... they would just move on if it was bad enough. In a flat most of the people I knew I believe would've just rotted and allowed the space around them to become full of junk and to also rot.

They'd need to be taught how to care for themselves. How to cook safely. How to budget and make money stretch (there is little thought of the future on the street, you spend what you have pretty quick in case you lose it. You wouldn't think of bills and taxes).

And to learn those things you'd need them to have sound mental health, alertness, awareness of their surroundings. You'd need to help them to shake off their addictions, and to respect themselves. You'd likely have to counsell them and provide support for mental health problems.

And if you achieved all of that. Then they would be devastatingly lonely. They won't have what you take for granted, there are no friends for them to call upon, family to visit, money to go sit and bar and chat. They'd be alone and desperately wanting to rid themselves of that loneliness.

In all likelihood they'd go back to the streets where they have contact, interaction and community. Where they didn't have to put in all this effort to care for themselves when apparently that amounts to loneliness and isolation.

It takes far more than a roof to stop someone being homeless. Homelessness is a state that encapsulates far more problems than just the lack of a house. To solve it, you need to address all of those problems and not just the lack of a roof.

[jerf]

We need a word different than "homeless", really. You say: "Homelessness is a state that encapsulates far more problems than just the lack of a house." But the word itself dates from a time when many people truly were simply homeless, and the concept itself of course predates English. Historically speaking (going back a ways, but covering a lot of centuries) one popular way to homelessness was simply to become a widow and lose your husband. (Which is why the Old Testament goes on at length about taking care of widows; it's not about having emotional compassion for one who lost their spouse, though that won't hurt, it's about supporting someone who now has no economic income.) Civilization has not always been as wealthy as it is now; someone says "homeless" and the very word itself invites them to think the old, simple case, not the modern complicated stuff you talk about.

Today we've pretty much solved the basic home problem in the civilized world. Perhaps not 100%, but nothing is ever solved 100%. What's left are the hard cases, which is what you are describing. Our cultural attitudes haven't updated for this fact, and so when people hear about the homelessness problem they naturally think the problem is simply... homelessness. Unfortunately it's a harder problem than that, and we make it even harder by misunderstanding it.

[Mz]

We need a word different than "homeless", really.

Today we've pretty much solved the basic home problem in the civilized world.

----------------

Some data on American housing and such, that may not be 100% accurate but should paint a general picture:

Around 60 years ago, the average new home was about 1200 sq ft and housed a family of 5 (2 parents, 3 kids). Today, it is over 2000 sq ft and houses a family of 3 (2 parents, 1 kid). This difference and other factors has helped create a widening gap between the haves and have-nots: Those who can afford a new home live like kings. Those who can't may be perpetually one paycheck away from homelessness. Most of the financing instruments we have are aimed at single family suburban homes designed to meet the needs of a 1950's-style nuclear family. Meanwhile, our demographics have changed and very few people fit that bill. The housing industry has been terribly slow to adapt to the changing needs of our changing demographics.

Also, historically, it was more common to live with extended family. This was more manageable back when more than half the American population lived and worked on a farm. You could always put someone to work on the farm to help cover the cost of feeding and housing them. But a more city-centric lifestyle means that if you have no job, you typically aren't viewed as a contributing member of the household and it is much harder for people to extend generosity in that regard unless they are truly wealthy. We also had more SRO housing and boarding houses -- just the sort of supportive environment that the Murray's of the world seem to need. This was part and parcel of the culture and was not considered some kind of "special service" for problem individuals who couldn't adapt. It was also cheaper than a stand-alone apartment. Apartments designed for a nuclear family or houses designed for a nuclear family make up the majority of housing stock in the US and it is financially out of reach for many single individuals. College students often get multiple roommates to make it work but it really isn't designed to work for them. The Murray's of the world lack the ability to force the current housing situation to serve them adequately and mostly don't have other options which did exist not that many decades ago.

I have a lot more thoughts and information on the subject but I don't care to beat it to death. The current housing situation really is a factor in why homelessness has been on the rise in recent years. Yes, it is one of many. But I don't think it can be lightly dismissed.

[jerf]

When I say the literal homelessness problem is mostly solved, I don't mean that everybody gets what they want. I mean that anybody with the basic ability to work, who is not insane, who is not for some reason simply unable to function in what we are pleased to call civilization for whatever reason, is able in a first-world country to put a roof over their head, even if that means accepting charity, or government handouts, or taking a roommate or three, or quite possibly moving away from where you are to go somewhere else and do some combination of the above. The current economic issues do make that challenging at this exact instant but on the scale of time I'm considering it's still just a blip. And the trend line remains clear; for instance, I'm pretty much ready to call this a Depression, yet it is of a different character than the previous ones, no soup lines, and there are many and good reasons for that, mostly revolving around the generally higher level of wealth the whole society has, even if you feel poor right now.

It is very tempting, whenever considering progress, to look ahead at how much work remains to be done, all the more tempting because it is a valid viewpoint, after all. But I think it is also helpful to honestly consider how far we have come, too, without constantly self-flagellating about the fact we haven't gotten to perfection yet. The problems you describe are not of the same order of magnitude of the problems that buro9 described.

[danielsoneg]

Great response. I think you're touching on a lot of the more fundamental problems in any approach to helping the homeless.

You mentioned contact and community a few times there - do you think that dealing with full homeless communities, or at least a subset of 5 to 10 people, would be more successful than trying to deal with individuals? Do you think that choosing a group of four homeless folks and moving them into either a single apartment or neighboring apartments would wind up having a greater chance of success? Or do you think that would perpetuate social norms that are nonconducive to more survivable lifestyles?

Take this as a component of any particular aid approach, by the way - there are no silver bullets and a lack of a roof is often a symptom of many other problems that can't be solved by craigslist's housing section.

[jleader]

Note that the pilot program described in the article included fairly intensive support by a team of social workers. I think Gladwell mentioned one caseworker for every 10 clients?

[gaius]

Here in the UK the welfare budget is nearly 6x the defense budget. Healthcare is around 3x. We're talking serious money here. Probably we spend as much on welfare and healthcare as the US spends on the military. And the results speak for themselves: chucking money at it is not the solution.

Often in London a homeless person will ask for money to stay in a shelter overnight, but the shelters are free, funded by the local councils, and always have spare beds.

[mmphosis]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_budget

    190 social protection
    105 health
    ---
    295 total health & social
     38 defence
    ===
    519 total

population 62,041,708

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

    678 social security
    676 medicare & medicaid
    ---
   1354 total health & social
    782 defense
   ====
   3518 total

population 309,921,000

[petercooper]

I had a look at similar numbers a few years back to back up a debate I was having and was surprised. The UK and US spend in the same order of magnitude per capita on public healthcare.

Sadly, though, this isn't good. The US's healthcare budget covers a minority of the population whereas the UK's covers almost everyone. The only reason the US's budget is inflated is due to the extreme inefficiencies and price gouging that are rampant in the US healthcare market.

[statictype]

I believe similar observations have been made in subsidizing the price of fruit and vegetables (or even bikes and gym memberships) vs the medical costs of bad diets and lack of exercise, too.

Not sure if you were trying to make this point but:

The reason many people don't eat enough fruit or go to the gym isn't because its too expensive.

[Groxx]

Especially as meat is subsidized so heavily.

[hop]

This guy and I'm sure a lot of others could be pretty well off if there was some type of rural co-op they could live and work on. It could save a lot of money and probably help these people a lot by getting them out of the city.

[qq66]

A lot of homeless people cannot, or will not, live in such a situation. There are so many well-meaning people trying to help the homeless that those who stay homeless generally have a compelling reason why they are. Either they're episodically violent which makes them unsafe to house with other homeless people, or they've simply adapted to the vagrant lifestyle and don't know any other. Makes the problem much tougher to solve.