[faeriechangling]

The primary ones that politicians don’t like is that if they just give the homeless cash they can’t get kickbacks from anybody claiming to offer government funded services for the homeless, and they give up control. There is a billion ways to shoot yourself in the foot or allow for corruption by not doing direct cash transfers and I’ve never seen any alternative outperform direct cash transfers.

This all being said, the homeless referred to the welfare check day where I lived as “Mardi Gras” and got shitfaced on booze. Which to me is a problem which could be largely fixed by doing more frequent welfare transfers. Keep in mind though the people getting welfare are diverse, this study was concerning the recently homeless.

On the whole the homeless virtually never are negatively affected by cash anyways. If anything they benefit from each dollar more than the average person would. Even a drug addict is seldom better off poorer.

[lockhouse]

I think the argument could be made that giving an addict more money means giving them more money for their self destructive addictions, which is ultimately counter productive.

On the flip side, giving them more money could reduce the likelihood they turn to crime to fund their addictions.

[jeffbee]

You could make this exact argument against income tax cuts for the rich. Drug and alcohol consumption is strongly correlated to income, so cutting the top marginal tax rate is just feeding the destructive habits of the rich.