[medvezhenok]

You run into the issue - once you start giving out free homes, you will suddenly have a lot more homeless people. It's called induced demand (people who were borderline homeless will prefer to go homeless to get a home rather than keep fighting to stay off the street).

People who quote a number like $8B forget that proposed solutions to the problem can actually change the scope of the problem.

I'm sure that while the number of homeless might be 600K, the number of close-to-homeless is likely at least 10X that number.

[Fatnino]

And? What's so bad if we extend free housing to everyone who is killing themselves working to just barely make rent and also may eat ramen? Not just those actually sleeping in the gutter.

[medvezhenok]

I'm not saying whether or not we should do it. I'm saying that the estimates given (8B) don't take into account behavioral changes based on the program. If we expand the scope (as you said), we're looking at ~80B instead of 8B.

But that's just one example - there are many other possible behavioral changes that can happen that will alter the cost computed up front even more (i.e. we're not even considering fraud with people applying for free housing and how much $ it will take to catch the fraud and deal with it).

I think we should advocate for solutions, as long as we keep in mind the true potential costs.

[chii]

such a gov't program would discourage jobs that pay very little, but still needs doing. It's a harsh thing to say, but society has a need for such roles, and it is the threat of homelessness that "forces" people into taking such roles. I'm not saying it's right, but it is reality.

[medvezhenok]

Those roles don't have to pay very little - that's a choice we make as a society. We can always subsidize the pay by taxing wealthy business owners, programmers, doctors and lawyers a bit more (and real estate speculators, etc).

It is actually a pretty bad thing for society how much people are paid to optimize ads and dark patterns for example - something that is absolutely of zero net benefit to society as a whole. I think there should be a tax on anyone working in ad-space.