"Increase social service programs so that we address the reason why they're homeless and doing drugs in the first place."
"No, that's socialism and Fox News tells me I should be scared of that word!"
I don't want to pay for other peoples' healthcare so I'd rather pay a lot more for an oppressive police force that also takes away my civil rights.
While still paying for other people's healthcare because that's how insurance works.
Not to mention the societal costs that inevitably come from people being sick
The real "fiscal conservatives" are the "bleeding-heart liberals."
Turns out, productivity soars when you have a well rested, well compensated, well treated, healthy, and housed people who don't have constant stessors of literally every aspect of their lives nearly crumbling beneath them...
But then how are you supposed to subjugate them???
Guns.
Okay but if there's infrastructure then the idea of structural forces wont seem so alien to people, and they will be harder to oppress.
So maybe the crazy idea you just pulled out of your ass isnt quite so clever in the real world, hm?
No, its the anarchists; libs still means test everything.
Edit: we're also for slashing government spending!
Hell yeah! high five
The real anti homeless infrastructure is cheap or free housing
Let's consider a tax on vacant homes. If landlords got charged market rent for vacancies the house prices would plummet.
Grace to second homeowners or set-length renovations.
It's actually social services. You gotta treat the reason they're homeless in the first place.
To my knowledge, "housing first" programs work pretty good
Social Services doesn’t treat physical disability (because most are untreatable).
Free housing for disabled people gives them a home, even if they can’t work and earn income due to disability.
Or just, like, free housing in general?
Usually it's a lack of money.
It depends on which homeless group you're talking about.
Whenever the subject of homelessness comes up, people seem to think the issue is only people who are temporarily down on their luck and just need a hand up.
They're not the group that's the main issue. The main issue is the people who are chronically homeless because they have an untreated mental illness, are treating that mental illness with drugs, or are just using drugs.
Their issue isn't a lack of money, it's a lack of help to actually be able to function in society. Because just giving them a house and money isn't treating the cause of their issue.
Think of it like crash dieting. Sure, you'll probably lose weight, but if you don't make the changes to address the reason you got fat in the first place, it's not a long term solution.
Chronic homelessness also causes drug addiction and severe mental illness, and even physical disability due to being mentally and physically traumatized every day, starving, lacking for water, being assaulted, being robbed, being harrassed / arrested for existing while homeless, being exposed to extreme heat and cold, wearing through your shoes and walking everywhere... etc etc.
(Look up the Grants Pass decision from last year. It is now literally illegal to exist in public while homeless, almost every state and city in the country has used that to justify cracking down on the homeless... it is now literally illegal to exist while homeless)
The vast majority of people who are, or at risk of becoming homeless... well the most common causes are losing a job and not being able to find a new one, having a sudden unexpected massive expense (rent getting jacked up, medical bills, etc), or fleeing domestic violence.
Source is me, I used to be a data analyst / db admin for a large network of homeless shelters.
You are 100% ass backwards wrong that the main problem is 'drug addicts and the mentally ill become homeless.'
Yes, that is a significant chunk, but only about 15%.
The other 85% is fleeing domestic violence, getting kicked out or fleeing a bad home situation because you are as queer or trans or being abused by culty religious wackos, and then all the financial root causes.
They are the people who are infact temporarily down on their luck and just need a safety net.
Further, the proportion of this 85% who just needs a safety net and doesn't need total rehabilitation?
It is growing. It is getting larger as the economy collapses.
Its just that the most visible and most problematic and most 'newsworthy' homeless tends to be in the 'needs serious, long term, complex help' category, so thats what people think it is.
You'd be amazed how many people and families live in their cars, or bounce around to a new motel every 3 weeks... while also working a or multiole jobs. If you just give them a few thousand bucks, chances are quite high that they'll be able to escape the trap they're stuck in on their own.
It is something like 10x to 20x more cost effective from a big picture standpoint, accounting for all org costs... to just give people emergency money to pay their missed rent for them than it is to house them in a shelter you operate.
... In summary, sure, yes, for some, the problem is significant mentall illness and/or drug addiction that necessitates a more hands on, intensive solution.... but for the vast majority of homeless and at risk of becoming homeless, the most effective direct solution literally is 'pay their rent and help them find a job untill they get back to stability.'
...
The actual most effective solution to homelessness is to build affordable housing by taxing the rich and upzoning or completely reworking economically wasteful districts (single family home neighborhoods), and also investing in public transit so that cars (which are massively unaffordable for the poor) are no longer a requirement for having a job or interacting with the rest of society.
Oh right, that and wiping out our private healthcare system and going universal, medical debt is the most common cause of bankruptcy in the US.
(The next two are losing a job and rent/mortgage hikes)
Personally, I am a fan of a progressive tax on rental rates that is legally mandated to be directly reinvested into:
Building new, non-profit, government agency run, affordable housing
&
Taking over existing buildings and converting them to the former
&
Maintianing such properties.
If idiot apartment developers and homes built to rent developers only want to build 'luxury' units and charge 'luxury' rates, if small time landlords want to rent out their second or third home, or airbnb it....
...tax the landlord directly via a continuous, not tiered, progressive metric anchored on area median income and area median rental rate, which climbs in severity the higher the rent rate is.
This causes pass through cost to the renter, but that's the point. 'Luxury' units become even more expensive, the consumer/renter either balks at this at rents a more modest place, and then the landlords and developers learn to build more modest places or charge less... or the renters/consumers pay the stupid high rent, and directly fund affordable housing for those below area median income by doing so.
Its functionally similar to rent control in desired and actual effect, but with less downsides, and massive upsides.
Its also maybe actually politically possible to pull off in some American cities, unlike a wealth tax that would have to be done at the federal level, which is currently a clownshow of senile/corrupt/cult sycophant demons.
Do you have stats for the assertion that homelessness isn't primarily an issue of money? I'm a "yes, and" type so I believe we should do both, but considering the success rate of housing first, we should start there.
No but see they need to be punished so they still exist as an example to motivate workers and create an internal other to justify police.
Not to help them. Why would we help them? Stop trolling.
The last panel reminded me of almost 20 years ago when the HPV vaccine first came available. Here in the US I remember the conservative backlash over it.
It wasn't the same as today where conservatives reject the COVID vaccine because that's how they prove to themselves that their freedom and bodily autonomy are intact or some shit. It was much more along the lines of how they like to see people suffer as long as they can tell themselves it was justified.
So it was basically "my daughter isn't getting it because she doesn't need it and isn't a slut," and of course they meant it in the way that anybody who IS a slut deserves to be punished with cervical cancer. Back then they didn't always say the quiet part out loud.
*You're
If you believe that laws forbidding gambling, sale of liquor, sale of contraceptives, requiring definite closing hours, enforcing the Sabbath, or any such, are necessary to the welfare of your community, that is your right and I do not ask you to surrender your beliefs or give up your efforts to put over such laws. But remember that such laws are, at most, a preliminary step in doing away with the evils they indict. Moral evils can never be solved by anything as easy as passing laws alone. If you aid in passing such laws without bothering to follow through by digging in to the involved questions of sociology, economics, and psychology which underlie the causes of the evils you are gunning for, you will not only fail to correct the evils you sought to prohibit but will create a dozen new evils as well.
—Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government
That sounds like something Heinlein would write during his earlier days. I completely agree with both the argument and reasoning, even tho he turned anti-Communist and insane before he wrote that.
Funny thing! Here's a quote from the same book:
Of what use, then, are the American Communists?
They serve one function extremely useful to you and to the country, so useful that, if there were no Communists, we would almost be forced to create some. They are a reliable litmus paper for detecting real sources of danger to the Republic.
Communism is so repugnant to almost all Americans, when they are getting along even tolerably well, that one may predict with certainty that any social field or group in which the Communists make real strides in gaining members or acceptance of their doctrines, any such spot is in such bad shape from real and not imaginary social ills that the rest of us should take emergency, drastic action to investigate and correct the trouble.
Unfortunately we are more prone to ignore the sick spot thus disclosed and content ourselves with calling out more cops.
Drug use rooms?
Why not give all people living in a country homes to live in and be done with it?
That is one option, yes.
But safe injection sites are a good idea even when you're housed.
In germany they even provide safe syringes, I was impressed when I saw those dispensers in public WCs.
There's no logical objection for it, but it goes against the interests of landlords, real estate managers, and other people who see housing as a financial investment rather than a human right. If we want to give people homes to live in that they will not be deprived of, we first have to bring out the guillotine.
Not sure if it is that easy to just built housing for everybody (excluding those 2 people in the entirety of NL who choose to be fully homeless). At least speaking from a NL point of view. If you have no income and you don't have assets you get money and the ability to rent something. It isn't a lot of money, but it should be enough to survive. This is sayiong that if you are actually Dutch and not somebody who came from another country without going through the system to get either asylum or become Dutch.
However, it is really hard to find housing for people in general. Even harder if you earn just enough to not have any rights for social security.
I believe the people who want to do drugs here in NL have the ability to do so in coffee shops (the drug serving once)
Add in "we can't give them drugs that stop overdoses because they'll just want to overdose more"
Nah nah, that’s not cruel or honest enough. “Why should we save them? They deserve to overdose for being an addict! Has anybody seen my coffee order?”
The language of the left in America has been so thoroughly played with by the right we have to go to absurd lengths to try and communicate any policy approach that involves public interest.
you're*
*you're
Every single one of these always links back to a government that absolutely refuses to help its people. It’s simple cause and effect.
Where else are they supposed to shit, they don't have a house, that's the whole premise of the thing
Switzerland cleaned up their drug problem.
How?
They built government run facilities for drug addicts and the dosages are controlled by medical staff. The result, decreases in crime, over doses, emergency medical care, and garbage left by junkies. The USA and their pointless War on Drugs is a fucking scam because the problem is the demand for illegal drugs.
The USA and their pointless War on Drugs is a fucking scam because the problem is the demand for illegal drugs.
The other problem/scam is also the demand for slave labor via prisoners, so there's not much demand for resolving the issue. It also helps that it's a good weapon to weld against marginalized communities, just sprinkle a little crack on them or bring up old marijuana charges and boom, "justified shooting".
And give them affordable housing and you'll solve the homelessness problem.
MYYYYYYYYYYYY promoting drug use??!! :D
I know it sounds wrong too. Of course, obviously, it does, but a pretty cartoon-y solution would be a no-privacy bathroom for the homeless. A private space also provides secrecy and allows crime.
The correct solution of course, is to eliminate drugs and homelessness.
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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
