[mrtomservo]

I live in a city with a large number of unhoused people. I think I would use unlimited resources to buy and renovate old buildings[1] downtown to build housing, and fund support services on-site to help people escape homelessness and addiction.

I would want to solve this because unhoused people are suffering, and downtown (as a neighborhood) has been sort of hollowed out by business choosing to leave for practical reasons (WFH) and because of the perception of "too many" unhoused people. I love downtown, it's just not a pleasant place to spend time, especially at night.

I do not have the resources nor the political acumen for these kinds of initiatives, and I think it would take a great deal of resources to not only buy the land but demolish or renovate the buildings. It would create a lot of jobs (construction at first) but I think there's a large amount of activation energy required to get started.

[1]: https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/legal-action-taken-a...

[AStonesThrow]

But why would you do that when you are guaranteed to fail?

It's very twee of people to believe that solving homelessness is a matter of resource allocation, or if we were all just more philanthropic, or if only there were more services and we could get to people where they're at.

But it's never a matter of these things. Being homeless has many advantages, many perks, and indeed there are non-negligible percentages of homeless people who prefer to be that way. And if you try to talk them out of it, they will resist. And there are also non-negligible percentages of homeless people who don't know how to be anything but, and when it becomes a way of life for them, they are technically feral, and it is simply a monumental effort to change them into "housed people" who can actually manage a stable household. That's a big ask for so many people, including those who do not struggle with mental health and addiction issues.

The root causes of homelessness are manifold and varied. There may be a dozen identifiable root causes here; are you going to attack all of them equally? Even your unlimited resources cannot. You need to work with a willing population here. Many homeless people are simply unwilling. Many others are not so selfish that they wouldn't share those resources with others, and that's a huge problem. Section 8 regularly chases people out after they've let in undesirable guests. SNAP has to close out people who are sharing their food resources. If you've got unlimited resources, then who's going to tell you that you need to allocate them judiciously to get the best impact?

One huge reason that people are out on the streets is because, 50 years ago, they may have been institutionalized. And that can't be done presently, so they are held by "virtual restraints" such as drugs and clinics. And so, if you really wanted to get people off the streets, would you ramp up imprisonment and incarceration? Would you lower the standards, to institutionalize people who cannot care for themselves?

What sort of mass labor camps and imprisonment looks attractive to you at this point, Mr. Unlimited Resources? Would you also pay for the trains to cart them off to wherever they are designated? It doesn't feel so good to "get people off the streets" when your realistic alternatives have an unsavory edge to them.

[_luiza_]

The "choice" to be homeless sort of confuses adaptation with preference. People don't _choose_ trauma responses; brains develop survival mechanisms that self-reinforce when lacking intervention.

Complex problems require layered solutions, but difficulty is not equal to impossibility. Also, not trying kinda makes us a tiny bit more evil.

Homelessness is tractable when we understand that basic/fundamental needs precede behavior change ^^

[owebmaster]

> Homelessness is tractable when we understand that basic/fundamental needs precede behavior change ^^

Unfortunately, and it breaks my heart to conclude that, some people can't be brought back to socialization. I'm talking from first-person experience living in the streets for a while.

[didgetmaster]

Homelessness, like poverty, crime, and ignorance will never be eradicated. There are just too many people who refuse to accept a way out of them, even if others think that way is easy.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. That does not mean we should stop finding ways to help those who feel trapped by them and will take a opportunity when it is presented. There are countless 'success stories' where people change.

Thus, 'solving' homelessness is a fools errand. Using resources wisely to maximize its effect on as many as possible should be the goal.

[fuzzfactor]

That is a realistic attitude.

I think problems like this can be best informed by those who have interacted with very different kinds of homelessness on its own terms.

But there are so many people already where actual bare-bones housing is so inadequate, and it's been that way for so long, that desperation can only increase. More & more of whom are working for a living but that's just not quite enough to maintain domestic life as much as it used to be. There is just no substitute for more housing in the most generous way.

OTOH whether it's somebody who's penniless, or a rock star on endless tour, or anything in between, if they are not congruent with domestic life, or domestic life is not suitable for them, this is not where domestic housing effort is helpful. Depending on need or desperation, other kinds of help which can make a bigger positive impact is where effort should be concentrated.

Accelerated transition from homeless to a domestic environment should turn into a successfully beaten path with stronger force enabling it, but is most sensible only for those who are most suitable.

Actual "socialization" may still be too high a bar for some of those who thrive domestically otherwise, but the reverse can also be true.

[meristohm]

Having read Mutual Aid by Dean Spade I understand better what you're saying, namely that solidarity amongst people outside the dominant paradigm of capitalism (owning land, renting, working for scraps while the Capitalist's boats are lifted higher) can be quite strong, and that they have extensive freedoms while also not having the luxuries I grew up with (hot water, food when I'm hungry, a quiet and relatively secure place to sleep, lots of stuff and room to store it, health insurance, ...). If we in the US decoupled health care from employment that would be a huge step in caring for people here. Capitalists (if anything I'm a small-c capitalist because I sometimes "own" land but I'm against owning more than the property I live on, and I buy/use things produced by the enslaved labor of others- this hand-me-down mobile computer, for one) would be with less leverage in that case, though.

Edit to add: if I wasn't a parent and didn't have support from my spouse I might be homeless or at least "highly mobile". I'd probably live with family or friends first, and hopefully find again meaningful work (teaching, probably, but the list is longer now), but I'm not interested in amassing wealth to survive whatever apocalypse. I choose to survive in community with other humans, a far richer experience.

Also, I didn't include education on the list of luxuries because I consider the dominant form of schooling in the US to be akin to the "kill the indian, save the man" residential schools. We could all be indigenous to the land we grow up on, even as children of immigrants without deep roots, but so much nonsense gets in the way.