What happens when they’re too mentally ill or overwhelmed with addiction to be helped? These folks used to be institutionalized against their will but we as a society decided decades ago that this was a violation of their rights. So we kicked them out of hospitals (where they had access to shelter, hygiene, food, medication, education, and recreation) and onto the streets (where they have none of those things).
Housing first advocates like to believe that giving all these deeply troubled folks a rent-free apartment will magically solve all their problems. It doesn’t. All of the filth and despair of their situation simply gets moved off the streets and into the apartment. And then all of the problem of dealing with the unhygienic situation gets foisted upon the landlord and all of other tenants who live in the building. Don’t take my word for it, see for yourself.
The people who don’t have these issues are the invisible homeless. They’re sleeping in cars or couch surfing. They have resources and their period of homelessness tends to be temporary. At any one time there may be a lot of them but very few are long term homeless. We could eliminate homelessness for these folks by providing them with an apartment and it wouldn’t be a problem.
It just wouldn’t do anything to solve the highly visible problem of hard core street homeless people. And so for many people it would seem like nothing at all had been accomplished.
What happens when they’re too mentally ill or overwhelmed with addiction to be helped? These folks used to be institutionalized against their will but we as a society decided decades ago that this was a violation of their rights. So we kicked them out of hospitals (where they had access to shelter, hygiene, food, medication, education, and recreation) and onto the streets (where they have none of those things).
Housing first advocates like to believe that giving all these deeply troubled folks a rent-free apartment will magically solve all their problems. It doesn’t. All of the filth and despair of their situation simply gets moved off the streets and into the apartment. And then all of the problem of dealing with the unhygienic situation gets foisted upon the landlord and all of other tenants who live in the building. Don’t take my word for it, see for yourself.
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The people who don’t have these issues are the invisible homeless. They’re sleeping in cars or couch surfing. They have resources and their period of homelessness tends to be temporary. At any one time there may be a lot of them but very few are long term homeless. We could eliminate homelessness for these folks by providing them with an apartment and it wouldn’t be a problem.
It just wouldn’t do anything to solve the highly visible problem of hard core street homeless people. And so for many people it would seem like nothing at all had been accomplished.