[no-dr-onboard]

Nah it's caused by poor family cultures that lead to mental illness and drug addiction. Short of rounding up families and forcing them to be responsible for their children, teens, and young adults, there's actually nothing we can do to get these people off the street.

You know it's funny. A lot of people look at the US and turn up their noses at our "poor infrastructure". Just a couple of months ago I watched a very tropey discussion take place on the lack of a robust US rail system. In another discussion, the lack of a robust US healthcare system.

All the armchair pundits come out to point to other countries as leaders in these areas, but when it comes to homelessness, I see a lot less of it pointing to places like Japan, Singapore and the APAC region, where homelessness is a cultural stigma placed not just on the individual but on the family. Family name and culture mean something. Generational safety nets are present because the family cares for the individual simply because they share a common genealogy. Families will go very far to avoid allowing a member of their heritage to become a vagabond.

Weird to me how this part is left out of the conversation. Perhaps this is a consequence of our indulgence in unrestricted libertarian individualism.

[hnuser847]

I'm glad you brought up Singapore, since they can actually force people with mental health or addiction issues into shelters. Imprisoning people for being mentally ill or addicts is a viable to solution to homeless and it clearly works for Singapore, however this will never happen in the West. For better or worse, individual liberty is sacred in our cultural tradition, and it will never be politically palatable to force people into shelters.

[jlawson]

Forcing people into treatment was our standard approach to this problem for decades and it worked very well. We need to bring it back.

There should be zero people doing meth on the street; if you see one it should be a single phone call to have the cops pick that person up and send them to the secured treatment facility on the edge of town.

This really is not complex or cruel or novel.

[goatlover]

Yet too many people think it's better to just let people do meth on the street, despite the problems it causes for everyone, and the huge amount of money wasted not solving the problem of the chronically homeless.

[no-dr-onboard]

That's a probable consequence, but not my point.

My point is that our drunkenness on individualism has led to a low view of the family. If you have a low view of family then you're primed to inevitably become ambivalent at best, cynical at worst, to your own kin.

Again, all in the name of individualism.

[specialist]

Your thesis is that the USA isn't sufficiently punitive towards the poor and working class?

What are some (policy) ideas for making them more desperate, more miserable?