[breakyerself]

West Virginia has much lower rates of homelessness and public drug use compared to liberal states despite having higher rates of drug addiction. Because housing is much more affordable.

Homelessness rates increase and decrease in direct proportion to the cost of housing as a proportion of median income. When housing costs increase more and more people become homeless and the ones that end up on the street tends to be those already living at the margins so you see more drug addicts and mentally ill people on the street and assume it's the cause.

Its well understood that being homeless makes it much harder to provide treatment and services. Sweeps of encampments make it even harder as their belongings tend to be thrown out.

So we have places with lots of services, but extremely expensive housing or places with affordable housing, but no poor public services.

Imagine if people could have housing and services how much better it would be. Maybe we wouldn't even have to strip people of their freedoms to make improvements. Wouldn't that be preferable? Isn't it worth trying?