| With all due respect, I was responding to your original highly reductionistic take > Do you want me to solve this for you? Here you go: As if your list was anything close to a viable solution for someone already homeless and addicted. With this post, you're right - it is absolutely more complex. There are absolutely families on the street, they're just more likely in cars or squatting rather than assaulting people. Beds can be located in places that lock people out of employment or introduce them to toxic elements... and becoming unhoused by itself causes mental health issues in a society which does nothing but stigmatize that from birth to adulthood. Even within treatment, skilled help is chronically burned out and mediocre help is worse than a rubber duck. There's a need for structural reform, from policing through sentencing and voluntary/mandatory rehabilitation, as well as public education. Not to mention real estate bottlenecks that drive up prices for everone from low-income odd-job workers, to the city police force, to building new institutional facilities, to staffing social services. |