Because… getting housing often means losing the community support they get from other homeless. If you get a house, but lose your friends and support system and the people who (eg) go shopping for you, then how is that a win?
These people would happily be housed if it didn’t mean yanking them away from their community.
So the solution is to house entire homeless communities together and at the same time.
Why would they lose their community? All their homeless friends also get free housing, probably in the same building or nearby. Their friends who did shopping and shit for them, there’s probably more reason than they’re homeless that they’re helping out. And if you’re referring to state or private institutions, there’s no reason not to keep those resources available.
Further, the former homeless now has more opportunities to form even better communities, and start standing on their own. It’s wins all the way around. Hell, it even ends up being CHEAPER for the average person, because crime tends to go down, medical expenses go down, etc.
That’s not how housing works. You answer the housing lottery, get in the queue, and eventually you get a house if you’re lucky. So when you look at a homeless community, it’s random who gets a house when.
Look up the podcast “according to need”. They talked with a bunch of homeless people and did a great analysis of the situation. It’s only like 5 or 6 episodes.
Right. That’s not how it works. Right now. There’s no reason it can’t work better. I could spitball ideas, but I’m not an expert, so anything I proposed would be full of holes. Off the top of my head, I could see initiatives to locate homeless communities, and building higher density dwellings somewhere central to them and the resources they’d need, with the intent to keep these communities as close as possible.
I’ll listen to that podcast for sure.
