Treatment for mental health and addiction is probably half of the problem though. Homelessness exploded when governments closed sanatoriums. Is living people away in a Victorian sanatorium the best way to deal with mental illness? Probably not in most cases. But it was an attempt.
Nope, time and again it is shown that the most effective way to house people without homes is to give them homes. By providing no-strings housing first, you make all the other issues easier to deal with.
We’ve also shown time and again that the strongest predictor for unhoused populations is the cost of property. And at the same time the number of empty homes in a lot of the western world greatly outnumber the number of unhoused.
But giving homes to the unhoused or doing anything to lower property values or prevent the rich from hoarding property would make the wealthy elite upset.
By providing no-strings housing first, you make all the other issues easier to deal with.
First, absolutely, but not in isolation.
If that person doesn’t also get some help dealing with the issues that led to their homelessness, they’re likely to end up back on the street in the future.
In the current system, which is rigged heavily in the favor of those with money, it is hard to end homelessness, not complicated.
The issues you mention that are connected to homelessness today; mental health and addiction, are complicated. But those people should not need to also be homeless while we try to solve them.
Any kind of hospital setting with medication would be a vast improvement over skid row. We know laughably little about mental health even now, but compared to Victorian, times when they fumigated vaginas, we know a lot more now. I think well funded institutions are step in the right direction, with independent oversight to avoid abuse as much as possible.
It is complicated ending homelessness.
Treatment for mental health and addiction is probably half of the problem though. Homelessness exploded when governments closed sanatoriums. Is living people away in a Victorian sanatorium the best way to deal with mental illness? Probably not in most cases. But it was an attempt.
Nope, time and again it is shown that the most effective way to house people without homes is to give them homes. By providing no-strings housing first, you make all the other issues easier to deal with.
We’ve also shown time and again that the strongest predictor for unhoused populations is the cost of property. And at the same time the number of empty homes in a lot of the western world greatly outnumber the number of unhoused.
But giving homes to the unhoused or doing anything to lower property values or prevent the rich from hoarding property would make the wealthy elite upset.
First, absolutely, but not in isolation.
If that person doesn’t also get some help dealing with the issues that led to their homelessness, they’re likely to end up back on the street in the future.
In the current system, which is rigged heavily in the favor of those with money, it is hard to end homelessness, not complicated.
The issues you mention that are connected to homelessness today; mental health and addiction, are complicated. But those people should not need to also be homeless while we try to solve them.
Any kind of hospital setting with medication would be a vast improvement over skid row. We know laughably little about mental health even now, but compared to Victorian, times when they fumigated vaginas, we know a lot more now. I think well funded institutions are step in the right direction, with independent oversight to avoid abuse as much as possible.