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As someone else from the UK, at the start of the pandemic lockdown measures several cities tried to give every homeless person a bed. In every case, the majority ended up leaving the accommodation offered due to the rules around drugs, smoking, antisocial behaviour, whatever. I'm not sure I agree with the above poster about their solutions to the problem, but "solving" homelessness, or addiction, is a lot harder than making some broad brush laws about decriminilisation. My cousin is a heroin addict, 12 years running at this point. He's in Dundee, the smack capital of the UK and quite possibly western Europe. Methadone is the worst idea possible for him, because he swaps it with the cancer patients for diazepam and then makes himself a happy cocktail. He's from a genuinely loving, supportive family, but still breaks into their house to steal stuff to pawn for smack money. The only thing that would probably "help" him is full decriminalisation, but that would not help his victims, or his family, or the already overstressed health service in general, because the whole point of these measures is an expectation that addicts will suddenly "see the error of their ways", rather than thinking "wahay, free smack". And back to the original point, when you have people actively preferring the street to the fully serviced hotel rooms, then you've probably got a severe structural problem. At which point it's easy to understand the above point of view, especially if you have a home and a family in close proximity to the inevitable social disorder (and I've also lived in Portugal. It is far from the free drug liberal paradise that some imagine it as) |
We don't have all that many people preferring this. Pretty much all of these and all homeless shelters come with massive catches that are reason for why they are not viable solution for many people. It opens at certain hour and you have to completely leave with everything in the morning. Cant have work tools inside, cant lock doors. Noise.
The shelters themselves do have reasons for all those rules. One of them being homeless do make your mental issues and addition issues worst in addition to these people being overrepresented in the first place. But, framing these places as "fully serviced hotel rooms" as if that was what life in them actually looked like is not accurate.