Not only that, but giving them homes is going to be one first and essential step in ending the relentless mental pressure and misery that keeps them on drugs in the first place.
Hating to see needles on the street, or people shitting on the sidewalk, should be coupled with absolute passionate full throated support for UBI and “housing first.” If you hate both of them then you make no sense.
most homeless people aren’t alcoholics or drug addicts, btw…
but, yep… most of the time, you’re spending all of your energy on meeting the lowest tier of maslow’s hierarchy… by the time you get some of that, there’s not much left in you to go and “get a job”
which, btw, most jobs very much will not be hiring homeless people, in particular…
not to mention just grooming, showering, and bathing to get that job is pretty hard to come by, in most hostile designed cities…
And that’s why a “shelter” isn’t enough. Heating, water and electricity should be covered as well, as long as necessary.
And internet. People don’t think internet is essential because it’s new, and those people have been paying no attention to how quickly the world is moving. If covid vaccines can become a human right in the span of a year (and they are), then internet can become a human right in the span of 50 years. It’s a necessity to getting a job, it’s a necessity to claiming unemployment, it’s a human right.
And there are a lot of homeless people who have jobs, but they don’t make enough to actually live on. I met a woman who wanted to know if we knew of anywhere she could get a small towable trailer because she worked full time as a CNA but rent is so high that she was living in her car. She’d found a place that would let her park a trailer so she could at least have a bed, but didn’t have one. This woman was basically the primary caregiver for a ton of people, and had to live in her fucking car. Housing in this country is fucked pretty much every way it can be, as are wages.
The kind of people who are chronically homeless might as well be commited as they’re more often than not mentally ill, or need massive counciling to bring them back into society.
People who are actively seeking in-patient mental health treatment find they cannot receive it.
Unless somebody is in the criminal justice system and held in a hospital until they are deemed fit to aid in their defense or the clock runs out, assuming there was even space, “committed” most often means the cops taking someone to a hospital for a hold and the hospital releasing them an hour later because they have no space.
Your comment is as useless as saying people should just fly over traffic jams. It contributes nothing to solving any issues.
Since when has anyone said housing is a right? Certainty shelter is necessary but so is safety. If you’re such a degenerate that you cannot just live in a place and not cause people to fear you then maybe its a problem. Go live in a tent. Its shelter.
Go live in a tent.
There are also efforts under way in Oregon to get the US Supreme Court to overturn lower court rulings that prevent the removal of tent encampments, including those based on constitutional arguments.
So you say “tent” even as tents are being made illegal, too.
Contrast those with various “housing first” initiatives that are actually working. I think the most notable such program is running in Medicine Hat, Alberta. I’ve long thought of it as one of the more right wing cities in a province that is giving Florida a run for its money in a race to see who can cause the most human suffering, yet they manage to run a successful housing-first program.
Maybe go read some actual studies and think things through instead of running on instinct. Your brain is not supposed to be treated like a vestigial organ.
We’ve criminalized living in a tent as vagrancy, thus exacerbating the problem of people being stuck in a bad situation and preventing them from being able to support themselves.
Also, “go live in a tent” really doesn’t work in places where the temperature regularly drops below freezing, or is regularly above 90F, and where there isn’t easy access to clean water and public bathrooms/showers. You’re basically just telling people “go die of exposure”.
Since when has anyone said housing is a right?
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Article 11
- The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions. The States Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right, recognizing to this effect the essential importance of international co- operation based on free consent.
CHARTER OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
Article 34 Social security and social assistance
…
3. In order to combat social exclusion and poverty, the Union recognises and respects the right to social and housing assistance so as to ensure a decent existence for all those who lack sufficient resources, in accordance with the rules laid down by Union law and national laws and practices.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 25
- Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
The larger argument is providing homes for unhoused criminals. It’s much more difficult for people to get steady work in the US with a criminal record, resulting in frequent unemployment and homelessness. Normalize the concept of rehabilitation. Consider your own past before defining someone else by theirs.
And vastly cheaper than housing them in prison.
If anything, prison is kind of confirmation that there is a universal right to shelter and food. To put people in a prison which was not sheltered and to not feed them proper meals would be cruel and unusual punishment, but to homeless people its fine?
How is anyone meant to rehabilitate and integrate back into society when they are struggling to find their next meal and are not sure where they will sleep that night? Not to mention the hurdles they have to jump just to get assistance.
95% agree, the only sticking point is what we each might consider “unconditional”. You wreck the home I gave you and I’ll maybe give you one more and then too bad. Violence or sexual assault and we can give you a different home with bars.
Yeah this is the main problem. Might just mean the homes need to be more barebones and strongly constructed(soviet blocks?) so that if they start filling it with furniture its their furniture and they might be less likely to break it.
Gee, don’t those sound like conditions to avoid being homeless?
For the record I don’t inherently have issues with having conditions for people to be allowed to exist in our society I’m just saying that these 2 comments are exactly what the post is talking about
To be clear, im not suggesting unhousing them because they wreak the place. What i am suggesting is giving them a roof to sleep under and some basic facilities. All of which are designed to be prettymuch bulletproof to abuse, so we dont just spend money giving homeless people inhospitible conditions to live in.
One of the sibling comments talked about giving them mental health help as well which i think is a great idea.
The ones that fuck up any place you put them in will fuck up every place they’re allowed to. Some people are just too mentally ill and should be institutionalized for the betterment of everyone.
I get the feeling most people in this thread don’t care about that though. They just don’t want people on the street where they have to see them. There’s a lot of out of sight, out of mind thinking going on here.