We ignore, for many reasons, the fact that most of the chronically homeless are homeless precisely because they can’t keep it together enough to have and keep a home. Giving them places to live doesn’t work. Usually a combination of drugs, mental illness and other psychological problems, etc etc are to blame. I’ve lost count of the number of patients I’ve met who were homeless, then by some miracle got a place to live, and then promptly left to be homeless again for any number of very bad reasons.
It's terribly sad. No easy solutions. I deal with this kind of thing at work daily. Personally, I go back and forth between thinking we should just decide to accommodate homelessness to some extent vs. take more of a hard line.
On the accommodate side, one idea would be to bite the bullet and bring back something like asylums, but for the homeless. Obviously many risks and potential downsides. Basically we'd be acknowledging that we're publicly funding the subsistence of some small percent of the population who can't make it on their own and don't have family or other help to turn to.
But other times I think about incentives and wonder if we're being far too lenient and accommodating to the homeless—not as people—but in terms of being too accommodating to drug addiction, antisocial behavior, untreated mental illness, etc. If we make it harder to be homeless, there will be fewer homeless people. Incentives matter. The number of homeless won't go down to zero but we're clearly not at anything like an optimum re: homelessness these days so why not make homelessness less appealing?
At the end of the day I think I take the low-tolerance side, but I could be convinced either way. But ultimately in 2023 USA homelessness is largely a problem of human nature, not lack of resources.
In all likelihood some combination of both approaches is probably necessary. For many raising the bar is the right thing, and for others it's better to relocate them to somewhere they'll be taken care of. I think it's probably extremely difficult work and would take a very well thought out, longterm approach. However, public order and safety ought to come first in these approaches, as it is desperately neglected today.
We ignore, for many reasons, the fact that most of the chronically homeless are homeless precisely because they can’t keep it together enough to have and keep a home. Giving them places to live doesn’t work. Usually a combination of drugs, mental illness and other psychological problems, etc etc are to blame. I’ve lost count of the number of patients I’ve met who were homeless, then by some miracle got a place to live, and then promptly left to be homeless again for any number of very bad reasons.
Exactly. It’s sad but there are some people where no matter what resources you give them they’re unable to use them wisely. What then?
It's terribly sad. No easy solutions. I deal with this kind of thing at work daily. Personally, I go back and forth between thinking we should just decide to accommodate homelessness to some extent vs. take more of a hard line.
On the accommodate side, one idea would be to bite the bullet and bring back something like asylums, but for the homeless. Obviously many risks and potential downsides. Basically we'd be acknowledging that we're publicly funding the subsistence of some small percent of the population who can't make it on their own and don't have family or other help to turn to.
But other times I think about incentives and wonder if we're being far too lenient and accommodating to the homeless—not as people—but in terms of being too accommodating to drug addiction, antisocial behavior, untreated mental illness, etc. If we make it harder to be homeless, there will be fewer homeless people. Incentives matter. The number of homeless won't go down to zero but we're clearly not at anything like an optimum re: homelessness these days so why not make homelessness less appealing?
At the end of the day I think I take the low-tolerance side, but I could be convinced either way. But ultimately in 2023 USA homelessness is largely a problem of human nature, not lack of resources.
In all likelihood some combination of both approaches is probably necessary. For many raising the bar is the right thing, and for others it's better to relocate them to somewhere they'll be taken care of. I think it's probably extremely difficult work and would take a very well thought out, longterm approach. However, public order and safety ought to come first in these approaches, as it is desperately neglected today.