What if they don’t want to live where the housing is at?
What if they don’t want rehab?
What if they don’t want mental health care?
Homelessness isn’t a symptom of a single issue, or even a few issues. It’s the end result when society has failed. There are no easy ways to fix it other than building a time machine and going back 50+ years to create policy that pre-empts the problems leading to it.
Those three things may not be magic bullets, but pretending that there’s nothing we can do is just lazy thinking. Obviously we don’t have a time machine, so the next best is housing, healthcare, and rehab. All things that many homeless people would take advantage of if it existed. You are correct that not all will, but many, many will.
Don’t let perfection become the enemy of progress.
I agree, we should be providing these things, but you need a magic wand to get them done. To think it’s simple, easy, or straightforward to combat homelessness isn’t helpful because every solution requires money, time, physical space in amounts that are nearly unimaginable.
To start, find money, time, and space to house 60,000 people in Los Angeles that need local access to unique healthcare and, due to their circumstances, require unique security services too.
Now consider that Los Angeles can barely create a single housing situation at a metro stop without years of planning and lawsuits.
I will always vote and support opportunities to fix this problem but I’m well aware that society may never be able to fix it beyond a few percentage points.
That’s quite the hot take you have there.
What if they don’t want to live where the housing is at?
What if they don’t want rehab?
What if they don’t want mental health care?
Homelessness isn’t a symptom of a single issue, or even a few issues. It’s the end result when society has failed. There are no easy ways to fix it other than building a time machine and going back 50+ years to create policy that pre-empts the problems leading to it.
Those three things may not be magic bullets, but pretending that there’s nothing we can do is just lazy thinking. Obviously we don’t have a time machine, so the next best is housing, healthcare, and rehab. All things that many homeless people would take advantage of if it existed. You are correct that not all will, but many, many will.
Don’t let perfection become the enemy of progress.
I agree, we should be providing these things, but you need a magic wand to get them done. To think it’s simple, easy, or straightforward to combat homelessness isn’t helpful because every solution requires money, time, physical space in amounts that are nearly unimaginable.
To start, find money, time, and space to house 60,000 people in Los Angeles that need local access to unique healthcare and, due to their circumstances, require unique security services too.
Now consider that Los Angeles can barely create a single housing situation at a metro stop without years of planning and lawsuits.
I will always vote and support opportunities to fix this problem but I’m well aware that society may never be able to fix it beyond a few percentage points.
Society has failed them due to the healthcare and housing situation.
decriminalize/stop persecution of people living on the streets
offer safe drugs and places to use them
keep the offer open and let them make their own decisions