The Homeless Problem

I know this exists everywhere. But I will speak specifically about the shortcomings in the US.

The main issue is defined incorrectly here. My feeling is that you need to focus on stopping more people from becoming homeless as opposed to trying to make homeless people more comfortable. Not saying that you should ignore the latter... but it's much harder to reintegrate a homeless person into society as opposed to stopping it from happening in the first place.

The US has major issues because the cities (and states) are focusing on the rights of homeless people... when they should focus a lot of their efforts on having fewer people fall into that level of poverty.

The solutions? Giving money away is not one of them. It's not sustainable. Forcing arbitrary higher minimum wage on private businesses is also not sustainable. It's fairly complicated; so I'll only give a few examples.

1- Increase minimum wage, but not arbitrarily. In instances where economic growth is higher than inflation, then force the private business to share some of that with their employees in the form of higher wages. If economic growth is about the same as inflation, only ask private businesses that are in high-margin industries to increase their minimum wage. Leave business with low-margin businesses alone in an unfavorable economic environment. If you're dealing with stagflation, forget it lol.

2- Have government subsidize a higher minimum wage SMARTLY. By that, I mean figure out how much additional tax revenue you're going to get by people making more money, spending more, needing less social services, etc... and subsidize the wage increase accordingly.

3- Tax breaks for the owners of private businesses for increasing their minimum wage AND hiring more minimum wage workers. Similar formula to point 2 above, except you're asking people to invest their cash flow. This is better and worse because people don't like to part with cash flow of course.

Some thoughts.

What bothers me is that the narrative focused on the social program and what they deem as "right"... as opposed to figuring out an executable solution that doesn't actually make the problem bigger, or cause other similarly dangerous issues.

My 2 cents.

I'll add, again, that you have to help homeless people.  But unless you deal with the cause of the homeless problem, you're just applying band-aids.

I'm suggesting that the US deal with the core problem as a priority AND get people off the street.  

Also, anyone selling drugs to kids, homeless people, and any other person that honestly can't make good judgment calls...  30 years.  See how many drug dealers will take the risk if they look at that sentence.  And if they do, better for society they're off the street.

I'd say exclude cannabis... but then again, these people shouldn't be smoking weed either.  So 30 years there too.

And I'm talking about dealers targeting these very vulnerable people.  For the rest of society, regulate cannabis and make it legal + same sentences for the rest of the hard drugs.

F-in enough of this.  US need to handle its business.  The sad part is that IT CAN.  There's enough money.

Imagine being homeless and people refuse to grant you the alleviation of booze or drugs

that's just cruel

El Gunner wrote:

Also, anyone selling drugs to kids, homeless people, and any other person that honestly can't make good judgment calls...  30 years.  See how many drug dealers will take the risk if they look at that sentence.  And if they do, better for society they're off the street.

I'd say exclude cannabis... but then again, these people shouldn't be smoking weed either.  So 30 years there too.

lol, these are the people most at-risk to becoming homeless themselves... so your reasoning of better helping them in the first post compared to this criminal justice facade in your second post is hypocritically hilarious

Drug dealers are at risk of becoming homeless?  That's news to me and, frankly, everyone else.  Never heard of a homeless drug dealer before loooool.

Drug dealers in the US live like kings.  They die very young... but are FAR from homeless.

I'll give a very awful real example from a few years ago (not sure if still true today).  In San Francisco, the homeless are given hard money once a month.  They just need to go at the city payment locations and are basically given a salary.  Well, all the drug dealers hang out around those locations on payday...  and, according to the last study I saw, 2/3 of the cash given is spent on drugs.

That's unbelievable.

Also, look at this in Philadelpia today:



City officials who allow this should be in jail.

This is in Brentwood, Ca, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Los Angeles:

The mental issues start once they become homeless... just the stress and anxiety breaks them at that point.

You really need to save people before they become homeless. And there's no reason we shouldn't... especially families with kids. The transition to becoming homeless is extremely fast in the US. It happens almost overnight. It's scary.

El Gunner wrote:yea you know absolutely nothing about the street life

You have no idea what my family had to go through after the Iranian revolution.  So STFU. The extreme struggle for a bit is something I will never forget.

I'm sure you have no experience with extreme struggle whatsoever... I mean not knowing if you can buy food from one week to another. Or being forcefully separated from your parents at a very young age because immigration from various countries wasn't allowing everyone to be together. I have.

VivaStPauli wrote:

sportsczy wrote:The mental issues start once they become homeless... just the stress and anxiety breaks them at that point.

You really need to save people before they become homeless. And there's no reason we shouldn't... especially families with kids. The transition to becoming homeless is extremely fast in the US. It happens almost overnight. It's scary.

I mean yeah, you guys keep telling everyone social security is communist, have done it since the 50s. Maybe stop it.

Instiutionalized social security (i have friends who are professional unemployment scammers in France) is not communist, just stupid. That's the trap you can't allow society to fall into. HOWEVER, I'm totally for having some scamming if it means saving people from homelessness.

The crazy thing is that the US is no longer taxing its people less than Europe. It's pretty much the same. So i don't get the lack of social services given the taxation.

I honestly can't speak for other cities but the ones I've lived in. I'm buenos aires , homelessness is due joblessness . It's economic and heartbreaking, but if their circumstances change they mostly are able to transition back into homed life.

Here in Boston it's mostly addiction driven. And the thing holding it back are NIMBY "progressives". There's been a number of proposals to solve the issue and alleviate it but the thing holding it back is always neighbors complaints about traffic, property values , etc, never mind that there are people shooting up at children's parks .

Sports, I believe we should differentiate between hard drugs such as heroin and meth and pharmaceuticals such as fentanyl and opiates, versus stuff like cocaine, marijuana, etc. the government should have no business regulating these things anyhow.

If someone wants to be homeless, fine, they can live in the woods, not camp in front of someone’s house and shit on their yard. I have no sympathy for homeless people. None. Let’s have sympathy for people that matter, such as hard working kids who are running into a economy of disarray and inflation. Let’s help people who want it.

Make it illegal to live homeless in the city and watch how fast those losers will adapt. This country is WAYYYY too easy to make it in. People do not know how good they have it in the US. If you’re homeless that’s your own fault. It’s not my problem. I have bills to pay and goals to achieve. Not my problem if someone wants to ruin their life and forego showers. People try to help them. They try. Just like you said, they get free money paid by TAXpayer money. Lol and they spend it on drugs.

By the way sports, the war on drugs will never, ever be won. The cartel, big pharma have too much to lose from ending it, as well as US imperial interests in central and South America.

I think cocaine and marijuana aren't as benign as people make them out to be... if you're on the brink of homelessness of homeless, you should not be allowed to buy recreational drugs period. I think it's a crime to sell it to these people. It's not going to help them at all.

If you're not in the especially vulnerable groups, then by all means f yourself up as long as you don't hurt others.

@El Gunner. No problem dude. I get heated lol.

The question is how would we enforce something like that? That’s where I run into problems

Maybe, I see marijuana in the same strain as coffee or tea or Kratom. A lot of the guys on the streets are on meth and heroin. Agreed on cocaine, but it is a very popular drug done by a lot of high end business men (as you probably know)

Seeing how poor people are more likely to vote republican, conservatives have a real incentive in keeping people poor (and uneducated)

They're horrified by free universal kindergarten, free college, free 12 weeks of family leave, extending child care credit, expanding medicare, subsidizing renewable energy and low income housing, creating sustainable housing and public transport etc etc.

They basically hate people

Some homeless people cannot be helped, they're just too far gone into drug addiction and/or mental health problems that you could give them a rent-free apartment and they would still get evicted or wreck the place.

One thing I'd like to see tried - if it hasn't been already somewhere - is making the welfare payments weekly instead of monthly to homeless or in-danger-of-becoming homeless people. Many homeless people have no impulse or self-control. Even if their welfare payments would be enough to rent a place and buy food, they instead spend all their cash within days of receiving it and then have nothing for the rest of the month.

BarrileteCosmico wrote:I honestly can't speak for other cities but the ones I've lived in. I'm buenos aires , homelessness is due joblessness . It's economic and heartbreaking, but if their circumstances change they mostly are able to transition back into homed life.

Here in Boston it's mostly addiction driven. And the thing holding it back are NIMBY "progressives". There's been a number of proposals to solve the issue and alleviate it but the thing holding it back is always neighbors complaints about traffic, property values , etc, never mind that there are people shooting up at children's parks .

This is what I see and the most accurate take re: homelessness that I've seen so far. You can come up with all the federal and state solutions you want, and those can help, but the most direct way to alleviate homelessness through local means because it's a local issue that requires local solutions.

And unfortunately progressives and conservatives alike often are disappointing when it comes to homelessness, because at the local level people are very self motivated -- things affect them very directly. So both conservative/progressive NIMBY's are the biggest issue.

Oh, and we need more housing. But that relates to the above point about NIMBY's. No one wants affordable housing in *their* neighborhood, so it gets put into no neighborhoods, or it's tucked far away from social services/bussing etc and it's useless.

Homeless people don't use coke ffs

coke is fucking expensive

It also doesn't help you sleep or forget

FennecFox7 wrote:Sports, I believe we should differentiate between hard drugs such as heroin and meth and pharmaceuticals such as fentanyl and opiates, versus stuff like cocaine, marijuana, etc. the government should have no business regulating these things anyhow.

If someone wants to be homeless, fine, they can live in the woods, not camp in front of someone’s house and shit on their yard. I have no sympathy for homeless people. None. Let’s have sympathy for people that matter, such as hard working kids who are running into a economy of disarray and inflation. Let’s help people who want it.

Make it illegal to live homeless in the city and watch how fast those losers will adapt. This country is WAYYYY too easy to make it in. People do not know how good they have it in the US. If you’re homeless that’s your own fault. It’s not my problem. I have bills to pay and goals to achieve. Not my problem if someone wants to ruin their life and forego showers. People try to help them. They try. Just like you said, they get free money paid by TAXpayer money. Lol and they spend it on drugs.

By the way sports, the war on drugs will never, ever be won. The cartel, big pharma have too much to lose from ending it, as well as US imperial interests in central and South America.

What the fuck is wrong with you. Seriously, what a godawful post and what a despicable attitude. You should be fucking ashamed of yourself.