In this MPSIMS thread the question is asked how one can best help a homeless person. I have always been told by the directors of local homeless shelters to not give them money under any circumstances since that just enables their bad habits and contributes to their dysfunctional situation.
As a thought experiment let’s say you are a billionaire and want to do something that will be **effective **in addressing homelessness in your community.
I want some opinions on how well some of the ideas below would pan out in terms of real world effectiveness.
Proposition 1:
If you offer food and shelter but tie it directly to several hours of some basic sort of work that needs to be done gardening, farm work, maintenance, janitorial etc. in a contained, fenced, safe environment where strict non-violence, non-harassment, non-drug, non alcohol, non tobacco use policies are monitored and enforced and people are drug tested. You are not paid cash, but 4 hours of work a day is required for the room and board. Scheduling can be flexible. People could stay as long as they wanted as long as they behaved, but one violation incident and you’re out forever. It’s effectively a fully controlled environment. You can leave but you have to back to be in bed by midnight and up for work at 8AM. There are basic recreational facilities and wireless internet. Everyone is given a cheap basic smartphone with enough minutes for daily communication. You have 3 years to get your life together and get out of the compound.
Proposition 2:
You offer a fenced compound setup physically similar to the above, but it is not drug tested. People are given work to do on the compound and are paid a basic minimum wage, but you have to pay back approx. 50% of your pay for your daily room and board and the work you do takes 4 hours a day. You can work up to 8 hours a day and get paid if you wish, People will get booted permanently for being harassing or violent or shirking work, but you can smoke in outdoor areas and you are not drug tested. You can come and go from the compound as you please but you have to be ready to work in the morning. There are basic recreational facilities and wireless internet. Everyone is given a cheap basic smartphone with enough minutes for daily communication. You have 3 years to get your life together and get out of the compound.
Proposition 3:
Housing is rented throughout the area and these apartments are leased to homeless people. A bus picks you up and takes you back and forth to a place where you have to work 8 hours a day in some low skill but not overly oppressive work, and you are paid a minimum wage. 35% of your wages are taken for the apartment. Your food and other expenses are your responsibility. You are drug tested weekly and failure gets you booted from the apartment and the program. Failure to be ready to work will also get you booted. Everyone is given a cheap basic smartphone with enough minutes for daily communication. You have 3 years to get your life together and get out of the compound.
In all three of these scenarios addiction counseling is provided free of charge. Which of these setups has the best chance of helping the most people get out of homelessness? If none of these are appealing to you what is your billionaire plan?
Essentially, the housing is free to the client, as are the social services. Square away the housing, get them security and a chance to really rest and heal, and the rest will follow. It’s also much more cost-effective than more punitive or controlling methods.
And it makes total sense, once you think about it. If you don’t have a home, the simple logistics of life become incredibly difficult. You can have almost no stuff, and even what little you have isn’t safe. You can’t cook, you can’t store food, you have no place to rest during the day. Being homeless multiplies whatever problems you have. Just getting homeless people housed is the best thing one can do to help them.
So if I were a billionaire, and doing something about homelessness in America was my mission in life, I’d build apartment buildings in a number of cities in locations convenient to bus lines and so forth.
You also dont have an address and without that, how can one get a checking account? You’d basically be doing everything in cash.
Also another thing. Once you put the target population in one place, its much easier to provide services to them like drug rehab and job counseling. Its no good if say you build a treatment center but they must get a ride across town to get to it.
I think any of the three plans would work as well as the others. That is to say, not very well.
My plan would be to fund research into better treatment options for schizophrenia and chemcal dependency, since these are the causes of most chronic, long-term homelessness in the US.
astro, for various reasons, I don’t think any of your three plans would work. I can’t, with any intelligence, say what I WOULD do - I don’t have the capacity to figure something like that out - having the monetary resources would only make me rich, but still kinda stupid. That being said, however, I DO like what Kaio and RTFirefly had to say - I think the concepts they are talking about would go a whole lot further, and be a whole lot more effective.
It’s really a very interesting and thought provoking question - I’ll be giving it some thought and study if for no other reason than just to educate myself on the situation further.
I’m sorry for fighting the premise, but the government is a billionaire, after all. Any proposal thus sort of has to overcome the question of why it’s not being done already.
This is the first thing I thought of too. It’s been working so far, I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work in more places.
I’m assuming that for this premise I’m a billionaire and my major goal is to help homeless. The government has billions, but helping the homeless is one of thousands of goals they are trying to do.
Also, with my own money, I can just look at what works and do it. Some people object to programs that would just give homes to homeless people, because they think they should have to work harder first. So government people might have to fight other government people on issues like that, but I wouldn’t as a billionaire.
I would make sizable donations to the local public housing agency and local public health, specifically for mental health and substance abuse treatment.
My wife worked in public housing for years - on the agency side, not at a particular property or anything. #1 reason for homelessness is mental illness. Couple that with how the waiting list to get public housing is often 2-3 years. So, by my logic, get them mental health care and help expand housing to make it more available.
Every public housing agency is independent. A donation to the local agency would see that it gets used locally and not just put into a giant fund federal fund or something. In addition, you could specifically direct those funds by working with the agency - work on some new construction or purchasing existing properties.
Fund homeless people to run their own program designed to help homeless people. Plan is required to recruit at least 40% of all employees from the pool of homeless people. Assistance provided if requested to write up the grant proposals.
Continued funding to be tied to success after initial pilot program period is over.
Default definition of “success” is 40% of participants in stable fully-independent housing and either self-supporting or fully supported through social security and/or disability payments that they are entitled to; program proposals can include counterproposals for a working definition of “success”.
Well… I’m operating on the premise that overall, their lives are out of control for some reason mainly related to bad luck, addiction and/or mental issues, and the structured environments are meant to provide order and stability for them to recover their bearings. If homeless people have these baseline dysfunctional issues just in living day to day how do you figure giving them a bag of money and expecting them to automatically become non-drug using, non-crazy, responsible administrators of a complex support program is going to pan out?
I get that you’re all about the right to be “nuts” without being oppressed and I agree with many of your points, but at some point if real, complex work requiring consistent performance needs to get done loading those responsibilities on people with addictions and mental issues seems unwise.
My knee-jerk reaction to this was to have it centered around opening up jobs for them. “Reputable” (and I have no idea what that actually means) jobs wouldn’t look twice at a homeless person to hire them, so they’re stuck either being completely jobless, or in a situation where they aren’t making enough money to have sufficient capital to actually acquire homes.
If I’m a billionaire who has enough income to support it, I would create a business/call center/manufacturing plant/something where homeless can do a job, be paid better-than-minimum-wage, and get work experience to fund a new home or a better life
But the housing thing is neat too. Maybe combine them somehow
While a large portion of homeless population has problems with alcoholism, drug abuse and mental illness there are large parts of the country where the price of housing is simply too high. So I would bribe politicians to get rid of restrictive zoning laws.
Use your influence to have the government do the housing, spend your money on the jobs end. Job training should be a big part of it, some of it for specific skills, others just to get people to learn the basics, going to work everyday, on time, dressed properly, communicate, and use basic office computer apps.
You don’t want to be personally responsible for the housing, let the government assume the liability, but some of the jobs program can be part of a housing renovation effort.
Homeless by choice. They really just like the outdoors. They really don’t need help and offering them a home or a place to stay really isn’t going to interest them that much.
Temporarily homeless. People so poor that one bad decision or one setback sweeps them away. These are people who you can help with an opportunity. A job. A place to stay. Repayment of medical bills and/or medical care if that’s the original problem. Payment of their outstanding loans/credit card debt. Etc etc etc. But you’re going to have to couple that with a basic understanding of finances so that it lessens the odds of the situation occurring again in the future.
The mentally ill. Simply put, no solution will work for them short of medication and/or counseling. If even that helps. And this group comprises the vast majority of the homeless out there.
How do you solve the problem that if you build an efficient structures intended to hold a lot of poor and homeless, those things tend to become high crime, high vandalism “housing projects”. These things are like a landfill or a water treatment plant - nobody wants one in their backyard. A second problem is that locations close to bus lines tend to be more valuable real estate…
All I can think of is that you should build smaller structures. Large crowds of people crammed into a project may create a sort of anonymity environment that breeds crime. Overcrowded people may lash out and commit crimes. The modules should be smaller, and you should carefully match how you assign residents to each one, and there has to be solid camera coverage of all public areas (and ID badges to get in and out) so that criminals can be swiftly and surely punished. (it turns out, for the purposes of deterring crime, it seems that the certainty of being caught is much more important than the length of a punishment)
In my personal experience, the above assumptions are only true in about 1/2 the cases. And it’s the other half that can most effectively help themselves and others.
About as well as your typical social workers, project administrators, charitable do-gooders, and others who’ve made the attempt, to be honest.
That being said, however, I DO like what Kaio and RTFirefly had to say - I think the concepts they are talking about would go a whole lot further, and be a whole lot more effective.