But if you give houses to the homeless, they will no longer be homeless and who am I going to look down on now?
And what else will I complain about when I go downtown? I want to be able to complain about how we need to clean the riffraff of the streets, but it gives me no joy if we're actually getting them off the streets! I need something to fucking whinge about!
Most people who complain about downtowns never go there anyways.
Exactly. I fucking live downtown and I have more to complain about businesses that operate down here than the damn homeless.
The only "thugs" I ever see downtown is the posse of ten cops it takes to shoo one homeless person out of a park.
COP = Criminals On Patrol
Well if the homeless are off the streets, then the turtles and rats can come back out of the sewers. Go rant at Splinter
The bourgeoisie requires a risk of destitution to prevent the proletariat from rising up.
There is already an order of magnitude more unused housing than unhoused people- the problem is that the market is involved and that requires winners and losers.
That's why you have people dying of exposure in the richest country in the history of the world. God damn america.
G-give....away? N-n-no money for me?? But money me, now. Money now. Money! House = money! Empty house, no money is ok, full house no money NOT OK!
CoMmUnIsM!!!
-Landleeches
Land of the free. Free to sleep under any bridge that isn't spiked.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread."
-Anatole France
Throw in unaddressed mental health and drug crises.
Not only that - they’re dying in the street immediately adjacent to vacant luxury condos.
"but who will pay for it?1!?1?!1?"
The government
"But then my taxes are going to do some good! That can't be!!!"
Housing first is a proven strategy in dealing with homelessness. The fact that every state has not adopted these policies to help eliminate the homeless population shows this is more a cultural issue than a lack of housing.
According to the Census there are a lot more empty houses than homeless people. Let that sink in and you start to realize all is not what it seems.
Until someone is safe and has their basic needs met it is impossible to work on issues such as mental health and addiction.
The solution exists but it is going to take a lot of our time, money, and most importantly a cultural shift away from blaming people to accomplish it.
If we could fix our homelessness then we would show that we truly care about our citizens rather than just paying a lip service to our most vulnerable people.
According to the Census there are a lot more empty houses than homeless people. Let that sink in and you start to realize all is not what it seems.
This particular statistic needs to be handled carefully. There are problems with both its definition and its nature. Empty housing has a fairly broad definition that includes housing that is unfinished, in the middle of repairs, or unfit for habitation.
The nature of housing with relationship to homelessness depends a lot on where the homeless people are and where the housing is. Empty housing in towns and cities that are depopulating is unlikely to be all that useful. Simply taking people from cities with high levels of homelessness, ripping them out of their communities, and plopping them down into communities that other people are leaving is not a favor.
Also, you shouldn't just warehouse unhoused people in whatever housing is available. Many of them have mental illnesses that need good access to mental health services, transit, and jobs. Just because they're under a roof doesn't mean the job is done. The housing should be tailored to the various populations that it will be serving.
I encourage you to lookup up Housing First if you have not already. While it may be misleading to say there are 16 million vacant home to half a million homeless people (32 homes for every homeless person), for the reasons you mentioned, it is entirely possible house these people.
No one who knows about this issue is thinking about warehousing people. Like you said they need a stable place to live, access to services, transportation, and work when they are ready.
Don't forget the Homeless Jesus statues that take up and entire bench so no one can sleep on them.
Ah, another “He Gets Us” moment.
“Jesus was homeless for a time (supposedly), so it’s fine for them to be homeless!” ☺️
I understand this building in downtown Vancouver probably had issues with people sleeping here, but placing a bunch of concrete filled pylons is fucked up.
Sledgehammer time. Looks like fun.
Smashing it to pieces is good practice
Housing + mental healthcare. Without mental healthcare you’d just be proving these NIMBYs right.
(sees username)
Housing + universal healthcare
Homeless exist to remind the rest of the serfs that they better go back to the coal mine or they'll end up just like them.
Wow. This format is actually put to good use here.
Well, to be fair there are indeed enough houses... We kinda just assumed they would, by the grace of the market, end up distributed among virtually all people and at a fair price. The reason they never did and increasingly don't is one of the largest unsolved problems in economics /s
We know what the problem is, and how to solve it. The people in charge just don't want it solved.
This is so weird, isn't it? I reran the model thousand times, it can't be wrong! I mean, what's supposed to be wrong? The assumptions? That's ridiculous! Let me readjust the factors once more...
Spend some taxpayer money on renovating abandoned shopping malls into housing for the homeless
Not exactly doable since living spaces legally must have egress windows, and shopping malls... Don't really have many outer walls for that compared to the amount of space internally they have
I mean houses cost money, and we know the government don't like spending in the first place, they just worried about public image not the root of the problem
Greatest meme. series problem.
"Overwatch, deploying spikes."
