[kerng]

Maybe they should be genuinely concerned about the homeless situation in their neighborhood and help address it, rather then creating feel good videos to show how awesome they are. I doubt even their employees think the current status quo where they live is acceptable.

[TulliusCicero]

Corporations aren't going to solve the problem. It's the government's responsibility, but you'd probably need a federal program, not a local one, to ensure that generous cities aren't overwhelmed by homeless people moving there from less generous cities.

Of course, short of the Democrats controlling both houses of Congress and the presidency, that seems rather unlikely to happen (and even then it's far from guaranteed). Certainly the GOP doesn't seem very concerned about this issue.

Now, what could help is relaxing zoning enough to build more housing, thus making housing itself cheaper. With cheaper housing, something like Salt Lake City's Housing First program would become more feasible.

But that would probably require ending Seattle's USA-standard segregationist zoning to allow more density in more of the city, and doing that is fraught with peril, politically. People are used to the government enforcing a certain lifestyle in their neighborhoods, and don't like the idea of the market letting in more people, especially people considered 'undesirables'.

[kerng]

I always like how everyone points to someone else and says its someone else's problem. Last time I visited Amazon I found the area pretty disturbing, I mean the amount of homeless people you pass on the way to Amazon - sad. If you live or work their you are part of the problem and solution. Most likely you are in a much more privileged situation then others, so your help and involvement would be needed - some magic federal government will not solve this for you. So you should think how you can solve it, that includes corporations also.

[TulliusCicero]

My help comes in the form of taxes I pay. I'm willing to pay more if it means people get housed.

If you have a solution that's been more effective than government social welfare, public housing and saner zoning in, say, Western Europe, I'd love to read about it.

[JasonFruit]

Why do you say it's the government's problem? I'd be interested to hear what underlies that assertion.

[TulliusCicero]

The free market has no incentive to solve the problem. Charity is nice but has limits in terms of scale. The government is the only entity that could feasibly implement a housing guarantee or something close to that.

[whb07]

Charity is a free market component. A person willingly chooses to donate time/money/effort to a specific group they like directly. If the government were to do it it would be person -> taxes -> different levels of government -> gov program. As you can imagine resources are burned up through the levels and because every party is so far removed from each other they don’t act with proper ownership. Nor do they care.

[TulliusCicero]

Charity may well be more efficient, but without the powers of taxation and regulation, it can't hit the scale that the government can.

If charity could solve the problem, it already would've.

[zo1]

Let me quote you from one of your other responses: "My help comes in the form of taxes I pay. I'm willing to pay more if it means people get housed."

If you're willing to pay more above the taxes and do so, you're already part of the solution and you're already performing charity without the need of government.

If you convince enough other people to do the same, then you're good to go and you'll have enough funding to solve the problem. Unfortunately, as with everything government, you actually want/need to use it as a big stick for more taxes or for tighter regulations when people don't behave the way they're "supposed to".

[JumpCrisscross]

> The free market has no incentive to solve the problem

My New York City neighborhood's commercial association felt incentivized to solve the problem. It finances outreach, education and relocation (to shelters) efforts to keep the neighborhood pleasant. In any case, a large part of the problem is created through voters enacting silly housing restrictions.

[TulliusCicero]

Oh, has NYC solved the homeless issue through those commercial associations?

The free market certainly does some good, but it's never gonna solve the problem in full. If it could, it already would have.

[JumpCrisscross]

You asserted "the free market has no incentive to solve the problem." I responded with a counterfactual. The broader assertion, that the free market will solve the problem, was not made until now. I agree with you on that.

[macspoofing]

Affordable housing is not a hard problem to solve, unless local government dirven by NIMBYs, places roadblocks on developers and high density housing development.

[posixplz]

It's a mental health and addiction crisis. What about either of those two problems suggests it's a corporate issue?

[alex_anglin]

In the case of the opioid crisis, corporate issues are very much a part of it.

[1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1710756

[2] https://www.addictions.com/opiate/the-role-of-pharmaceutical...