Yeah, I don’t mean to be cruel or dismissive, but you should ask yourself two questions:
- Do I know any chronically homeless people?
- Do I know any farmers?
The answer clearly seems to be “no”. If it was not, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
We’re paying farmers subsidies, because prices of the crops they grow are too low. What’s going to happen if we try to get more people to try to grow the same crops? The farm lobby, which has managed to kill several attempts to end farm subsidies, isn’t going to like this…
Sure I do. A friend of mine and his girlfriend have been in and out of homelessness since I’ve known them. They’re not mentally ill or otherwise messed up; some people just have terrible luck.
When you’re homeless, you can’t work because dealing with the probelms of homelessness is a full-time job. Your problems of shelter, employment, transportation, and food need to be solved all at once, or else one problem makes it impossible to solve the others.
And yes, my mother’s side of the family are farmers, so I’ve spent plenty of time on farms.
I doubt if this would be on such a scale as to significantly affect commodity prices. And the land we’re speculating about is probably already in production.
We’ll just include that as one of the questions on the application.
FDR built several communities like the one the OP describes. I grew up in one. Here is a wikipedia link, check out the history section.
I think one of the key differences between the OP’s idea and FDR’s was the depression created many people, often families, that suffered terrible economic hardship, while many (not all) of today’s homeless have mental, substance abuse problems or are for some other reason simply unable to live in society.
Sorry if I didn’t link correctly, I welcome any advice on board policy or culture.