Homelessness

The Left Says

We need a comprehensive system of affordable housing, education/skills training, and healthcare – especially mental health-care before the problem of homelessness is going anywhere.

The Right Says

There are millions of unfilled jobs. Society has removed the incentive to work by ensuring a steady stream of hand-outs. Private charities are best suited to address the needs of the poor and indigent. This is not the government’s job.

The Solution

First, we need to recognize that homelessness comes in many forms, but we can start by adressing the big 3: Hard times, hard drugs, and mental hardship. People that have had a financial setback do quite well with some rent assitance for a finite period of time. Drugs need treatment, and often (but not always) coincide with mental health issues - which need therapy and sometimes institutionalization. State mental hospitals were done poorly in the past (to say the least), but we can do better, and certainly better than incarceration or just tossing folks back on the street.

In this day and age, no one should be sleeping in cardboard or under a bridge. Build little 5-unit efficiency apartments everywhere! One manager, four tenants – one shared kitchen and bath. Can’t handle it on your own, then you get institutionalized – schooling and mental health care – mentorship to get you functional. Take the bars out of the prisons and get the whackos off the streets.

Next:

Get to work! Social welfare programs have an important and finite role, but the government should always be the employer of last resort. We don’t care if you’re picking up trash by the side of the road, or sorting recyclables, being a companion/caregiver to a vet in a nursing home, making phone calls to check on shut-ins, or any of a thousand other things that need to be done, just get to work. No more standing on a street corner with a “Please Help” sign. It is critical to have a source of meaning-making, and a path of advancement: if you do a good job picking trash, then you can start to manage the trash-pickers.