I am all for helping the homeless but these numbers seem misleading. Now I want to see how much if they also get all of the amenities that come with prison. 3 meals a day and (shitty) healthcare.
Housing - 10,050 Medicare average cost per beneficiary (2022) - 15,730
31065-10050-15730 = 5285 remaining for meals, three meals everyday for a year would be $4.83 per meal, low but doable. This assumes the government will be providing everything with no contribution from the individual. Lack of housing is probably the largest impediment to employment, no address or id for job apps, nowhere to shower and be clean, have clean clothes, etc. Addiction is another issue but safe stable housing would be a major help in getting clean as well. So some number of these people will be able to get back on track and start contributing to themselves and society at large.
I realized after typing I found Medicare instead of Medicaid, it varies by state but average cost per enrollee is 8651, so another 1400 is available in the equation.
And that is probably on the low end. So even if we round up to $30,000, it’s still less. And the people are better off. I have been a homeless drug addict. It’s a rough life. The only reason I broke free from heroin/fentanyl addiction is because I went to prison. But I also wanted to quit. If someone does not want to quit, they won’t quit.
Thank you for taking the time to research and do the math. You are a good person.
In my city the annual cost of a bed and support was about $80,000/year, not sure what’s different 😅
Your city obviously decided to employ psychologists in a 1 to 1 ratio.
I distrust toots that assert something without providing a link
I was lucky and found a link to the 31K figure; sounds partially like it does NOT apply to all homeless people, just some small percentage, so probably a bullshit numberhttps://homelessvoice.org/the-cost-to-criminalize-homelessness/
I appreciate the link!
The article, I think, is very clear on how those dollar amounts were measured, and I don’t think they’re bullshit at all, but everybody here can read the article and decide for themselves.
Also, they quote $10k for “supportive housing” and show a picture of San Francisco. I guarantee that’s not accurate. The state needs to pay to house these people, but we need to be realistic about the cost.
Housing in places like SF is expensive because of private landlords jacking up proces to the moon. If the government owns the property and gets to control the cost then it’s really not any more expensive than housing them anywhere else. Better still it puts those people within the range of public services like transit so they can actually work on getting themselves into a better situation.
And where does the government get this land from?
Cities have more property than you’d think. They homd a lot of it so they don’t get locked out of being able to do things like this.
Government identifies optimal residential location for facility. Invites largest residential land owner in that location over. Place land lenders head in guillotine. Presents document to sign over land to the government assuring them they can maintain possession of their head in turn. Validate signature. Remove head so they can’t claim they signed under duress.
If they refuse to sign then remove head and forge signature.
Needs strict compartmentalization. Group A identifies optimal location and knows nothing about anyone else.
Group B finds land owner but knows nothing about why or who it’s for.
Group C secures ownership transfer documents and sends to a drop box
Group D delivers landowners to intake facility but knows only who they are getting and to where.
Group E transports landowner to meeting facility/room.
Group F picks up transfer documents and holds meeting with land owner. Sends documents to city hall.
Nobody knows or talks to anyone outside of their group or is provided any information on why they are performing their portion of the process. Group F needs to be strictly limited to a very small number of people. Vetting for group F is done by kidnapping a potential candidates young children and spouse while leaving a note where they are to report for work. Perform their duties for six months to have their family safely returned. During the exit interview remind the group F individual and kidnapped party that all group F members that have ever been involved in the history of the program, their family along with any subsequent family members will be executed should they ever speak to anyone regarding the existence of the program.
There’s a number of other studies that show that, overall, letting people go unhoused is far, far more costly than just fucking housing them. It’s not just paying for the cops and demo teams to chase them around, you’re also paying for excess use of medical services that wouldn’t be taking place otherwise, lost revenue because of people wanting to avoid the homeless, and a bunch of other things that all just pile up. It doesn’t help that some startups have entered this space and you’ve got cities like San Francisco paying them something like 40 or 80 thousand a year to keep the homeless in a fenced off area in a tent grid. It doesn’t really fix anything, it’s just another shitty, expensive band-aid whose funding could have gone to fixing the problem but didn’t.
Yes. They should do it like NYC, where it’s basically illegal to live on the street. The city is required by law to offer free housing at a certain quality level for anyone who needs it. It’s not amazing but you get a door that locks and a security team, plus a bathroom.
If you don’t want to sleep inside, you literally have to leave the city. It’s not cheap but it works much better than letting people live in tents.
Why the illegal part, though? People don’t really need an incentive to have shelter. It just punishes people who are struggling with even deeper issues.
People don’t really need an incentive to have shelter
Unfortunately some people do.
no. shut the fuck up with this authoritarian garbage. when the “shelter” offered comes with a slew of dehumanizing draconian traditions, forces them to abandon other resources (including pets, which are also functional when you’re homeless) and wildly precarious, you would have to be fucking stupid to take the deal. cut this shit out, or let me impose those conditions on YOUR shelter.
Hey, just to get it off my chest since you attacked me for no reason other than some preconception you brought with you, fuck you too!
Now that I’ve dealt with that, back to the topic. Some people don’t want structure, or shelter, or society, or any of it. It doesn’t matter if there’s no conditions applied, they just don’t want it.
I remember years ago reading about this guy who was the director of a huge hospital. He was worth millions of dollars. He could do anything he wanted to do. Guess what he wanted to do? He wanted to live on the streets and drink alcohol until he died. He left his mansion, and his family, and went and drank himself to death on the streets. Was he mentally ill? Probably, man! But if anyone had access to every available option for help that existed, it was him. He didn’t want it. He wanted to be a drunk homeless person.
So my point stands. You can offer whatever catch-all, condition-free solution you want, and some people are still going to reject it. That’s just reality, regardless of what we wish.
Are you talking about Todd Waters? Otherwise link source. It’s pretty rare for someone to want that lifestyle unless they’ve already involuntarily experienced it previously. Todd had started trainhopping when he was in high school.
I know of one other individual who is a millionaire and has a mansion he sleeps in, but during the day appears to be homeless and pushes a cart around cleaning up cans and trash. He’s beloved by his local community (very nice man and generous tipper). He also experienced living on the street involuntarily previously and got an inheritance.
Waters was a “hobo” who proudly noted in 2012 that he’s been arrested about 70 times jumping railroad cars out of St. Paul for parts unknown and known. He was also a millionaire.
“My life went south after my wife ran off with a bartender to Arizona. I sold everything I owned and hit the ‘first thing smokin’, running away, then after a year or so, drifting where ever I damned well pleased. I got off ‘the road’ after a few years to settle down,” he wrote on Hobo Times. “That lasted about three weeks. I was homesick for ‘the road’. I returned to ‘the road’. That lasted a few months until I got homesick for settled society. That lasted until I got homesick for the road again.”
Somewhere along the line, he got in the advertising business, made a lot of money, and lived in a million-dollar home on Lake Minnetonka.
Todd’s childhood friend, Bill Martin, once asked him why he would leave the comfort and security of his family and his Lake Minnetonka home every summer for 40 years to live the hobo life, with no money and no phone, exposing himself to danger, dodging the law and sleeping out in the elements. He replied, “It’s the freedom I feel.” The more risks he took, and the less he had in his pack, the more he was free to experience.
While Todd rubbed shoulders with the wealthy, prominent and powerful, the people he probably respected most for their guts and straightforwardness were hobos. So before hiring account executives for his agencies Waters Advertising, Waters & Company and WatersMolitor, Inc. he sometimes asked candidates to hit the streets and panhandle. He insisted that the people he worked with be brave, and know how to close a sale.
No, not him. I can’t find a source. I read about it in a newspaper, or magazine like 15-20 years ago. If I remember correctly, he was the director of St. Agnes hospital in Fresno, CA.
WHY do these people not want structure, or shelter, or society?
have you considered that? have you fucking asked that? why someone might want to see the world burn? or do you just accept when you’re told they do, and assume they’re a magical evil monster?
I used to do a lot of work with unhoused populations. I tended to get those people, because nobody else could deal with them. I could, because the structure I offered wasn’t coercive, the shelter I offered was clearly defined (when I could offer any) and no-strings-attached, and the society I was working for was one that would include them and give them a voice and treat them like fucking human beings.
okay. so someone wanted to drink on the streets. there’s a reason. maybe a dumb reason, maybe a crazy reason, but a reason. I’ve been pretty close to taking this option before, once after seeing some shit that an emergency room kicked out, once after dealing with police victims. if I had been complicit and tied into existing systems, if I hadn’t read all the theory and committed myself to working against oppression, I would have done something an awful lot like that.
seems like you just really enjoy throwing people away, and don’t want to put any effort into understanding awful shit that they’ve experienced and how it motivates them to do the things they do, which you sometimes find odd.
why do the sociopaths who declare noncompliant unhoused people ontologically evil want us to understand them, when they won’t even try to understand the people who make THEM uncomfortable?
People don’t really need an incentive to have shelter
Not neccessarily true. For example if the place has “no alcohol and no being drunk” policy, some of them will rather stay out.
Right but that’s a choice the shelter can make and not a point against the idea that people, ultimately, won’t really refuse a place to sleep. It’s a more complex issue that takes more time than an evening so rules like “no being drunk” which sound fine don’t really help anyone.
I’d imagine it’d help make the unhoused who don’t want to have to deal with drunk people feel a lot safer about using them.
So what are the people who depend on alcohol supposed to do? They aren’t allowed to have seizures and go through withdrawal there either.
and if you want to use public money on it, then the goal has to be to help them get back to society, to which dealing with problematic behavioral patterns, like substance abuse, is a necessity…
Have you seen alcohol withdrawal?
Technically it’s not illegal to sleep on the street, but there are sanitation rules regarding it. NYC has 8 million people. Any problem you can think of is magnified. It’s literally a sanitary issue if you allow thousands of people to camp outside.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/26/nyregion/nyc-homeless-camp-bill-of-rights.html
In New York City, there are many rules on the books that have been used to restrict sleeping rough.
One is a piece of sanitation code that makes it unlawful to leave “any box, barrel, bale or merchandise or other movable property” or to erect “any shed, building or other obstruction” on “any public place.”
In city parks, it is illegal to “engage in camping, or erect or maintain a tent, shelter or camp” without a permit, or to be in a park at all between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. unless posted rules state otherwise.
And on the property of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, both underground and in outdoor elevated subway stations, it is a form of banned disorderly conduct to “sleep or doze” in any manner that “may interfere” with the comfort of passengers. Nor may subway riders “lie down or place feet on the seat of a train, bus or platform bench or occupy more than one seat” or “place bags or personal items on seats” in ways that “impede the comfort of other passengers.”
Note that these rules also restrict people who have homes too. No one can have a party in the park after hours or take up a ton of space on the subway. Note also that you can sleep outside if you don’t get in the way.
someone who did not violate any of those rules — say, someone who set a sleeping bag in an out-of-the-way spot under a highway overpass and did not put up any kind of shelter — was legally in the clear, at least in theory.
That’s not to mention that it gets very cold in NYC in the winter, unlike San Francisco. If you’re stuck outside in the winter in NYC, you will die.
Obviously they restrict people who have homes but that isn’t really relevant here, is it? Those people have choices, they get to choose to stay late in a park and the alternative for them is go home.
It’s not even close to the same thing.
They didn’t say it was the same thing, they just mentioned that it’s not just to target the homeless.
As you said in another comment, things are often more complex than one thing or another.
Exactly. These are necessary rules for a large city. No one can camp without a permit because then parks would be unusable. The same permit is for weddings, parties, whatever. It’s pretty easy to get one for a few hours, but they will reject it if you ask to use the park every day and night.
People living outside in public parks and on streets is a really bad use of urban space. It takes public space and makes it private. That’s why the city gives out free room in old hotels and shelters. It’s a good thing people can’t sleep wherever.
Note that these rules also restrict people who have homes too. No one can have a party in the park after hours or take up a ton of space on the subway. Note also that you can sleep outside if you don’t get in the way.
This doesn’t apply because the law doesn’t forbid anyone from sleeping under bridges. Also, you can get housing for free. That’s my point. It’s the opposite of that quote. Unless you’re pro-theft or something.
I am not sure what the housing situation is actually like for homeless in NYC because I’ve never spoken to anyone there who experienced it. I don’t take your word for it that it’s good or ethical.
I am not protheft. I’m not wealthy like that. https://www.edelson-law.com/blog/2022/10/wage-theft-outpaces-all-other-theft-in-america/
There are a ton of articles on it. The system is huge and has been around for decades. Look it up if you like. If you don’t care, don’t.
No one said it was good at all. It’s a necessary service in a big city. Obviously some shelters are very different from others. None of them are at nice hotels, but you can get your own room and a place for some of your stuff.
The major complaints are usually “it’s too small” or “they don’t let me have pets”. Guess what? There are actual apartments people pay for that are too small and don’t allow pets. It’s NYC.
I’m talking about reality in this century. You’re quoting an 1800s writer from another country. The system is a complicated solution to a complicated problem. So there’s not going to be any simple answer, and definitely not from online quotes.
you’ve got cities like San Francisco paying them something like 40 or 80 thousand a year to keep the homeless in a fenced off area in a tent grid
Star Trek DS9 predicting the future yet again
We’re less than 3 weeks away from the Bell Riots if we’re in the Prime Universe.
Unless I slept through the Eugenics Wars in the 90s I’m sad to report we are not in the Prime Universe.
Though in that case there is a distinctive lack of lens flare.
nah, they’re about to happen, just late. check india and silicon valley.
Who are you going to believe your lying eyes or your buddy teft? The eugenics wars totally happened. Dolly the sheep was one of the first soldiers.
The Eugenics wars were moved to 2022 through 2056 due to time travel bullshit.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Eugenics_Wars
So we still got time to fuck it up.
San Francisco infuriates me. There are activist groups that are made of actual literal unhoused people telling the city what they need and what they want. And the city could just give people the money they need for a fraction of the administrative costs it spins on its non-profits and its government agencies.
But the city says homeless people are drug addicts and criminals and can’t be trusted to use money responsibly.
So they funnel millions of dollars to corrupt non-profits and government agencies who promise to use the money responsibly for the benefit of the homeless and they fucking don’t. There was a $350K program run by the Salvation Army in partnership with the local public transit agency. One homeless person used their services.. One.
At least government agencies are, at some remove, responsible to the taxpayers and the voters. Non-profits dedicated to “helping” the homeless have a very strong incentive to make the problem worse. Because the worse the homelessness crisis becomes, the more money goes to the nonprofits. So they take government money, give it to their employees, make some sort of pathetic token effort to help unhoused people, and as the crisis worsens they go back to the government and say “the crisis is worse, we need more money”.
And civilians look at the amount of money being poured into assistance to unhoused people, and look at the crisis getting worse, and say “more money and services won’t help these people, we need to criminalize them”. And fucking Newsom is all over that because he’s angling for the Presidency and military style crackdowns impress the fascists in red states.
There’s a homelessness crisis because of government corruption and incompetence. And the majority of Americans think the solution is to give the government more military power, more police power, and let those same corrupt agencies brutalize the homeless more. It’s sickening.
I actually kind of went to a major fancy pants conference in Portland last year for homelessness issues.
Yes, it was extremely dystopian to drink wine and wear jewelry and fancy dresses while seeing presentations on homelessness. The whole thing was depressing. The other people who were there to genuinely resolve the issue were also depressed. Everyone got drunk. We talked a bit.
The problem is that it’s all a gridlock and all controversial and these people don’t face any real discomfort from that gridlock or from prolonging the situation. They still get paid. As much as they wince and say how it’s bad and they can’t figure out how to work with NIMBY’s and all the stigma and regulations etc- they still get paid. And they get to brag to all their friends about how kind and amazing they are for being the head of the Sad Pathetic Homeless People NonProfit Fund for the last 8 years.
It’s like they sympathy jerk off. They are just edging to the suffering in a different way. If they were effective, then they wouldn’t look so amazing and charitable because the homeless wouldn’t be an issue. They couldn’t keep jerking off to their own saintly ego.
The nonprofit industrial complex is a leech. At least government agencies have some level of accountability, because if they fail to solve a problem, the voters blame the politicians, and the politicians shit downhill on the agencies. Nonprofits don’t even have that minimal level of accountability. They just spend all the government money they get, write grants saying “we spent all the money you gave us doing stuff, please give us more”, and get more money.
But this is what you get when both the left and right have bought into libertarian free market ideology and agree that privatizing government services is more efficient than letting the government do its goddamn job.
Yes, charitable organizations are unfortunately corrupt.
and honestly, I would like to sit on a bench at night without worrying im keeping somebody out of their bed. that would be cool. I would like to stop the streets smelling like piss. I would like too walk on the sidewalk without having to detour and step into the street to avoid people’s homes at least twice a block.
clearly, armed neo nazi thugs, even if you LIKE armed neo nazi thugs (we should, um, have a chat separately. what the fuck is wrong with hypothetical you?) don’t make that happen. and for the libs: you wouldn’t even have to look at human tragedy beyond their full comprehension every time you go outside! yes, you would have to give resources and basic human dignity to the ‘undeserving’, and supply side jesus WOULD damn you to eternal hell (being homeless in san francisco but during extreme weather events), but the few years before you die would be substantially nicer.
Not asking as a challenge to your comment, but what studies are you referring to? I’d be interested to learn more.
I would be very proud to say I had them on hand, but I don’t. I’ll look around, and share if I find them.
But you see this easy they would be getting an …undeserved benefit (gasp!!) and we can’t have those.
I kid you not, this is what the conservative brain thinks.
Yep, punishment must be part of the deal, even if it costs us 3 times as much. This is how we know that, for conservatives, the cruelty is the point.
It’s honestly stunning how much they value cruelty. This is why we shouldn’t spank our kids. All it teaches them is to add a pointless step for violence before actually problem solving.
We’re fine providing housing for these losers.
In prison.
We cannot allow these men a little wooden house with windows and an open door. Their housing must be a little part of a concrete and iron world attended by sadists, their neigbors and roommates should be mean, violent people.
And you have to let us enslave them a little bit and ensure they have no freedom to roam and no worldly pleasures, no intimacy or sex except that which the strong can take homosexually nonconsensually from their fellow man.
It’s what Jesus would want us to do.
And what do you do with the mentally ill homeless who refuse services and help? Cause I’m my city those are the homeless that remain. And until people accept that some will have to be taken off the streets and forced into help, against their will, then we’re always gonna have this issue.
My city provides great homeless services, but only if you ask or want them. If you’re the guy who doesn’t know or want help and running around the subway threatening and harassing people, you get to stay on the street and do as you want.
You can thank Reagan for shutting down the mental institutions instead of fixing them.
We just let our mentally ill roam the streets now, even the veterans
Why should mental illness be a crime someone is locked up for? And what level of crazy is permitted so you can maintain your freedom? Depression? Anxiety? PTSD? What if someone is mentally fine but might appear otherwise, like if they have cerebral palsy? Should we lock them up too?
Obviously that’s why they were shut down. There were serious ethical issues…
But why did we throw out the baby with the bathwater? Why throw them on the streets instead of fixing the system?
Of course I don’t want people with anxiety locked up. What about we give very mentally ill a place to go? And those who are hurting themselves or others are sent there against their will.
Well, anyone could say somrone was crazy and they’d maybe get locked up. Women were getting diagnosed with hysteria and lobotomized. You can’t really fix a system that takes away people’s autonomy as the main feature of that system. Like people who get PTSD and are disempowered are the ones being diagnosed and locked up - even though it actually seems pretty rational to develop PTSD from the stuff they went through. So are they actually crazy, or are they victims?
It’s really not that simple, and this is forced imprisonment we’re talking about here. Not even in the fields of ethics and bioethics do we have concrete answers.
https://journals.academiczone.net/index.php/ijfe/article/view/2261
The article discusses an approach to solving bioethics problems through consensus and the establishment of conditional demarcation boundaries within the legal field. The author notes the lack of general criteria for assessing positions, which leads to an “eternal discussion” and makes some problems, such as abortion, euthanasia and biomedical experiment, fundamentally insoluble. Existing bioethical theories consider problems from an axiological position, remaining divorced from ontological foundations. The issue of abortion has historically depended on the dominant type of worldview - pantheistic, theistic, deistic and atheistic. The resolution of such issues is determined by external factors, which creates the ground for conflicts in society. The author calls for a deeper understanding of human nature and ideological dialogues to resolve bioethical contradictions.
If I could create the system it would be the level at which you cannot sustain yourself outside the system. But I would not be treating them in with the level at which you’re a danger to others. Two different systems with two different goals. It would be far more residential, an apartment building with a clinic on the ground floor type thing. Everyone jumps straight to lockdown wards but it doesn’t have to be that.
Well, if the residents are free to leave, then what you’re proposing is assisted living or a permeable institution, not a traditional institution. Institution by the traditional colloquial definition, means they cannot leave and they have their personal liberties taken. Everyone thinks you mean “lockdown” because that’s what an institution is to pretty much everyone. If you specify “permeable institution,” or “assisted living,” it would better convey your meaning
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3702490/
Restriction of freedom is still often associated with psychiatric institutionalization and hospital treatment although modern psychiatric wards and hospitals have been found to be ‘permeable’ [20]. Similar to Goffman’s interpretation of psychiatric hospitals, McNown Johnson & Rhodes characterized psychiatric institutions as establishments where their residents have little or no choice about their participation in activities, and have little say about how they are being treated [38]. Admitted residents are not allowed to leave the psychiatric institution without being officially released or discharged. From this perspective, patients’ freedom of movement is restricted and the functions of psychiatric institutions are similar to a security guard.
The results of this review can be related to critiques of Goffman’s notion of the mental institution [20,37,83,84] namely that the earlier conceptualizations of institutionalization are limiting and can no longer be applicable in today’s context. The traditional conceptualization of institutionalization reinforces mainly a restrictive understanding of institutionalization as taking place in institutions, where patients are only the sufferers of the treatment process and have limited autonomy and are completely isolated from the outside world. Townsend [82] concluded in his review that studies from 1959 to 1975 support the idea that institutionalization involves patients accepting institutional life and developing a lack of desire to leave after a long stay in mental institutions. More recently, Quirk and his associates [20,56] found that ‘permeable institutions’ provide a better representation of the reality of everyday life in modern ‘bricks and mortar’ psychiatric institutions.
I think someone benefits from creating that expectation, but nobody I’ve talked to wants to bring back cold war era mental institutions.
There are literally people itt advocating for it. I have seen people advocate for putting homeless in prisons and even concentration/work camps. People 100000% advocate for that type of psychiatric institution. In fact, per the link in my previous comment, the vast majority of psychiatric institutions are this type of institution and it is actually an exception to the norm and a new style of institution to do the permeable institution. So if you mean a permeable institution, you should specify that if you want to be understood, because that’s what common use means.
Words mean things. People are cruel. Can’t assume you aren’t cruel. Use right word if you want to be understood.
Oh I know there are people advocating to abuse homeless people. But when you assume all mental health facilities are lockdown facilities for dangerous people you’re hurting the entire mental health community. When pressed, people do not want lockdown facilities.
Well, having a home will help their mental illness because they’ll be able to develop a circadian rhythm, sleep, not be constantly stressed. They are more likely to be able to take their meds on time. They can spend time on their phones to relax because they will have access to chargers/electricity. Very very few people are so mentally disabled they need assisted living, and those people don’t usually stay alive on the streets.
And this time of year gets extra crazy homeless/street people because of sunstroke, heatstroke, and dehydration which they also would be able to avoid in a home. It’s probably your same local homeless people, just some are allowed in libraries and places with AC, and the ones that aren’t are getting extra agitated.
Like literally, cosplay homelessness in your city at peak heat times and no money. How would you cool off if you can’t go in a store? Where is the nearest shade you can sit and rest in? How cool are you, really? Many city have designed infrastructure specifically so homeless can’t cool off. That makes everything worse. Including with climate change for housed people.
You sound very idealistic. I have a cousin who is willingly homeless. He has places he can stay, jobs he’s been offered. He doesn’t want it.
Well, I speak to a lot of homeless people. Maybe your cousin is trans or has some other identity issue or a disability that makes it hard for him to stay with people. What started him living on the street? Why did he initially move out of your aunt and uncle’s house and at what age? Does he have trauma with caregivers such as sexual assault? How do you know he doesn’t?
And fine, let him live on the streets and camp of he doesn’t want free and clear housing. People camp all the time. He shouldn’t be harassed for it. We are animals, we belong outside anyway if we so choose. I know people who have hiked for months across America. There are people who live in the middle of nowhere in Alaska. Why should people be prevented from living freely? Think throughout history - the idea is preposterous. The only reason we force institutionalization is to get slave labor.
He’s just mentally ill, refuses help and just can’t handle the responsibility of just living. It’s sad, but yeah it’s like he craves the homelessness and lack of any expectations maybe? His parents are well off so he has everything he needs at home, but he doesn’t want it. He’s been taken to mental health professionals and programs but he doesn’t want to take part. He would honestly just rather live under a bridge, I don’t know what it is.
So you don’t know why and are just speculating.
I know more than you
So much arrogance and yet you have no firsthand accounts from your cousin, from his pov, why he doesn’t want to live at home
Unhoused people refuse help because past “help” failed them or people they know, or “help” comes with conditions that are unacceptable to them, or “help” will not solve the actual problems they have. The solution is not to force people into institutions that abuse them, neglect them, and then kick them out for failing to follow arbitrary rules.
I mean, if you have a dog, and the shelters don’t allow dogs, what do you do? What sane person would risk their dog being put down at the pound in exchange for a few weeks of housing - housing, moreover, that is demonstratively less safe than living on the street?
The solution is to improve the services available without conditions so that unhoused people feel safe in asking for those services.
There are a small number of people who genuinely cannot make decisions because they cannot comprehend reality. And those people need help, possibly involuntary help. But even then, that doesn’t mean taking them away from the people and places they know and locking them up. People blame Reagan’s deinstitutionalization of mentally ill people in the '80s for the current homeless crisis - people forget Reagan’s deinstitutionalization policy was popular because insane asylums were horrifically incompetent and abusive.
And if you see a homeless person experiencing a mental health crisis or acting irrational in public, please remember, they have no private place to go - how would you come off to the public if your worst moments had to be displayed in public? - and then ask yourself whether their actions are making you feel unsafe, or merely uncomfortable.
I wish more people went to the Glore Psychiatric Museum in St Joseph, MO. Here’s a famous display from that museum, for “pica”:
That museum really really shows how little difference there was in the way we treated patients of asylums, versus inmates, versus prisoners of war. There are so many torture devices in there, disguised as medical devices. As someone formerly in the bioengineering field, it was a sober warning to the harm that can be created through “medical” devices and our own hubris and cruelty.
People have no idea what those were like. And how unethical forced imprisonment is. That should make everyone recoil. I thought we all hated slavery, right? It would be more compassionate to let them set up squats than to force institutionalization on them.
Ps the above picture results in the patient dying. It was one of the first surgeries to remove stomach contents and anesthesia wasn’t refined back then. So they performed an experimental procedure on a patient who couldn’t consent to it and who DIDN’T consent to it, and she died from it. That’s what asylums were like.
“So for 20 000 extra we can keep a cop on the payroll that will protect us when the people rise against us?”
Housing is kept artificially scarce to keep prices up. Criminalizing homelessness raises the demand for housing. I wonder how many people making these policies have rental properties or invest in housing.
Well sure, but if you spend the ten thousand, will you get sixty thousand of free labor production in return like you will with the incarcerated option? We’ve got to look at net profit, people!
/s
We need to end slavery
The shareholders will not like this concept
We should enslave them
Does anyone have the actual research on this? Both of those numbers seem really low.
https://www.npscoalition.org/post/fact-sheet-cost-of-homelessness
The savings/costs drastically change based on state/city. But the overwhelming majority of the time it is cheaper to do the morally correct thing of providing permanent housing assistance.
$10,000 a year to provide a single person housing? To put that in perspective. I’d assume that means a studio type apartment of some kind. Not high end, but a roof and place to live for $10,000 a year. I have a 1500sqft home in Washington state on 3 acres of land, and I pay $27,000 a year for my mortgage. So to me, $10,000 seems reasonable for a government funded studio for a year.
And I know it’s probably unheard of in America now, but $840 a month in rent is not that wildly low. I assume there’s more to it than just that though.
It depends on where you are. $840 a month anywhere near Chicago is either stupidly cheap for what you’re getting, or stupidly bad for what you’re paying.
I live in the middle of Hamburg, second biggest city of Germany, in a recently renovated apartment of roughly 40 sqm and pay round about 700 EUR (~ 770 USD) for that with all facilities including electric power, home insurance and internet. The housing market in this city is considered to be tough for this country.
If you “dare” to live in a “small” flat the price really should manageable. Social assistance is another cost factor but that’s an investment in your country and its people.
That sounds so nice! I’m from America, am 32, make $35,000 a year and still live in my parents basement. I know I can “afford” an apartment, but I really don’t want to see ~50% of my pay go to rent. If you don’t mind me asking, how much do you make a month in Hamburg?
By the way, I’ve been to Germany a few times! Only ever around Frankfurt but it’s such a lovely country. ☺️
You’re judging a country by one city?
Not to invalidate your lovely experiences, mind you. Germany has its lovely sides. But keep in mind that we have more people than California and Texas combined in an area smaller than either. There is a vastly diverse array of cultures and personalities. If you want an accurate image, you’ll have to spend enough time here to observe the discourse around significant events, including the ugly sides, and judge from that.
I don’t know what that person makes, nor what industry you’re in, but minimum wage (12.41 EUR ~ 13.67 USD) with a full 40h job comes out to a gross income of about 31.4k USD per year. Your net income varies depending on where you are, whether you’re married etc. but including public (legally mandated) health / long term care insurance, unemployment insurance and pension insurance, your net income would be about 22.5k USD per year / 1.85k USD per month. It’s not exactly a way to get rich, but at least that’s the bottom of the range.
Also, which Frankfurt? We have two and it’s fun to see confused foreignerd 😄
It was more the fact that, while I stayed in Frankfurt (expo hall Frankfurt) for work, I got to go outside of the city and see a handful of different ‘villages’ and castles and stuff. It was really cool.
But I do understand where you’re coming from. Blows my mind that people would come to the US from another country and not come here:
I just need to say that 31k/22k with health as a bottom line would be a dream for so many Americans. They’re running on 25k without medical, and having to fit rent in there too.
Don’t forget a minimum of 20 days paid time off and unlimited sick leave (the employer pays full for the first six weeks, after that the government pays a reduced amount, but you’re not suddenly unemployed or without income), as well as limited (paid) leave if you need to take care of sick children (30 days per parent per year for single children, 65 if you have multiple, single parents get double).
These are things we occasionally take for granted, but I’ve learned that they seem utterly fantastical to others.
I have a Bachelor’s Degree, I’m working IT full time on a permanent contract with a Union, I get about 46k gross / 34k net per year and 30 days paid time off, while paying about 12k in rent. Food prices have gone nuts lately and various other private bills gobble up most of the rest, but I’m doing alright.
Full time equivalent of about 2.500 EUR net per month (it’s more pre taxes, of course; I don’t mind paying taxes as that affords me living in a safe and functional country). As I work part-time I take home less than that number but still get by easily (time is much more valuable than money if you cross a certain relatively low threshold of income and don’t live a flashy lifestyle).
Thanks for the praise ;) Germany has its troubles and problems but continues to be a nice place to live.
Sure, but are you accounting for the profit gained from slave labor in the private prisons?
Begs the question: who’s getting paid the difference right now? And how much are they paying which elected officials?
The overhead goes to a bunch of stuff. The costs of housing inmates include the cost of hours of judges, lawyers, COs, etc. However the way it it profitable, beyond just collecting fines, and deciding your money is suspect, and taking it, is because of the corpratization of the legal system. Huge, but, often, not well known, corporations that run aspects of jails, and prisons. They make the food, run the inmate phone systems, control the inmate commissary, staff the medical departments, and more. These are just the ones that work with jails. There are third part corporations that provide bulk legal assistance work, editing services, services for a lot of the moving factors of the legal system.
These companies, in turn, give huge amounts of “donations” to politician’s needs. Campaign funds being the most well known. This money, while paying for these costs, is also used to keep them living an exceptionally comfortable life. Many, after pushing through legislation favorable to a company, will be compensated in a number of ways. From them being able to take advantage of stock investment knowing how the law is about to change, and how that will affect their holdings, to exiting politics and being given a cushy, high paying, fluff job in the industry they helped out.
There isn’t so much of the straight bribes, graft, and other forms of corruption people assume with politics. It is more abstracted than that, and technically legal. Obviously there are conflicts of interest that can easily be seen in this, however, since a company isn’t just handing the official a bag of money, that they will keep as their own income, it is deemed legal.
There’s frequently a lot more to homelessness than just giving someone a place to live. Many of these people are mentally ill or addicted to something and cannot function or take care of themselves. There’s additional costs above just providing a place to live - like food and clothing and healthcare.
Inmates are supposed to be provided with services like meals, showers, uniforms, and healthcare so that’s part of the reason for the discrepancy in costs. I doubt there’s much addiction care or mental health care in prison though.
These people really need a better place to get help than jail. But we don’t have socialized medicine in the US, and that’s probably a huge contributor to homelessness. Just think if you couldn’t drown in medical debt, or could walk in to any clinic and sign up for addiction care or mental health assistance how many homeless people might not have ended up homeless.
Also I’m not aware of any major US city where rent or mortgage is $10k per year. A lot of cities are buying up old motels and providing support services and temporary housing. That seems to be a good start, but it probably costs more than $10k per year per person. And without free continuing healthcare a lot of people are going to end up back on the street.
Some of them it was for sure a preexisting condidtion. But how many homeless people developed addictions and assorted health problems because of homelessness?
A HELL of a lot more.
If they had had a home that they wouldn’t lose to bullshit to begin with…
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If only they did what was cheaper for them…
