[handmodel]

I find it offensive when people bring up mental illness and drugs as the cause of homelessness in areas where housing is so expensive. Like - are we expecting people who have been on the streets for a year to be able to get off drugs and instantly walk into a job making 45k a year?

Trailer parks get made fun of but they often cost only a few hundred dollars a month so a person can be in and out of work there to either save or as a stop-gap if they are running out of money. There is no option in California for those with no savings and whose problems have caused them to be out of work for awhile - other than rely on the generosity of others and the state.

[mason55]

The real issue is conversations that talk about a single cause or single solution. There are lots of causes that need to be addressed and solved separately.

But what happens is one person says “build more housing” and another person says “the park near me is full of people who intentionally live on the street!” And you just end up with these intractable conversations where everyone talks past each other.

Humans are bad at nuance

[zwieback]

Exactly. To be fair, though, people working on homelessness are fully aware of the complexity, it's just everyday conversations that are not nuanced at all.