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comment by goobster
goobster  ·  2723 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

And here's the bigger housing problem: You can't put them all in the same housing. Otherwise you have just created a ghetto.

The "homeless housing" simply needs to be low-rent (subsidized) flats on the ground floor of that regular old apartment building. The homeless need to be integrated into the community rather than stored away elsewhere. It has proven to be the only viable solution.

The whole idea of consolidating the homeless in one area to provide group services is just wrong. The result is a bunch of directionless people with nothing to do all day, and many of them have drug/mental issues, which are exacerbated by being closely housed with other people with similar problems.

Once the homeless are integrated into regular housing, they are out of the cycle, and out of the perpetually homeless community, and can receive the services they need to live on their own and build a real life.

Failing that, there needs to be a catch-basin for those who simply cannot care for themselves. This used to be the mental healthcare system, until Reagan de-funded the whole thing in the 1980's, and simply pushed the indigent out onto the street without their meds.

And that is the new "normal" that Reagan created for us: A world in which you walk by a crazy person, or a person who is clearly in distress, because the only recourse is the police.

Actually addressing homelessness in a meaningful way requires a restructuring of societal base expectations that have been built over the last two generations.

And that just isn't going to happen on an America-wide scale.





kleinbl00  ·  2723 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    The "homeless housing" simply needs to be low-rent (subsidized) flats on the ground floor of that regular old apartment building. The homeless need to be integrated into the community rather than stored away elsewhere.

This is, in fact, the way Seattle does it. You get tax incentives and grants for providing subsidized housing units as a part of your building complex.

snoodog  ·  2723 days ago  ·  link  ·  

IMO that doesn't provide me as a tax payer very good bang for the buck. Housing someone in Seattle proper probably costs 2-3x as much as it would to house them somewhere else. Do you think its a good idea? It may be slightly better outcomes for the homeless person but significantly worse outcomes for the community.

goobster  ·  2723 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Actually, the right solution is FareStart, which answers all of the problems around homelessness: lack of housing, lack of skills, lack of discipline, lack of connections, and lack of support.

And, for those with insurmountable drug or mental issues, they have pipelines into programs that handle these people, too.

So yes, it absolutely makes sense to have homeless programs in a city like Seattle. In fact, these exact programs work in other cities all around the world. The only difference is that those cities are backed up with federal support that takes care of the 10% that fall out the bottom of the system.

Really, your knowledge of the reasons for homelessness, the barriers to becoming un-homeless, and the support systems in place for the homeless is absolutely laughable. You are willfully uninformed on the subject, and your pontifications bring no new thinking to these well-understood issues.