The Solution to Homelessness
The following is a summary of solutions to homelessness from the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and several other organizations’ websites on the problem.
- Offer people homes.
The tiny home movement is an easy way to offer people a place of shelter that they could call their own. It may not be large, but it’s better than underneath an overpass or some other outdoor location that is exposed to the elements.
- Open more shelters.
Many shelters in today’s urban centers are completely full most nights, which means a bed isn’t available for everyone who may want one. If more beds were available, it would give more opportunities for people to regroup because they don’t have to worry about being on the street.
- Integrate Health Care
To treat and manage chronic health and behavioral health conditions that often affect their ability to stay housed and achieve their personal goals, people experiencing homelessness must have access to comprehensive health care.
- Offer drug and alcohol treatment and rehabilitation
Many homeless are addicts. Offering treatment for addiction provides the homeless with an opportunity to abstain and recover and start a normal life.
- Encourage vocational re-training.
Some people are on the street because they lost a job and couldn’t find a new one. They’re still looking without success. With vocational training and re-training programs available, they would be able to begin the process of starting over on a more solid foundation.
- Subsidize foreclosed homes.
Initiating a program like Habitat for Humanity for the tens of thousands of homes that are currently vacant through the foreclosure process could help to get a lot of people off of the street. There is an estimated home available for every person in the US right now because of how many are available. By subsidizing the homes for those who have found a job, finances can be stabilized, a permanent address established, and life can get back to normal.
- Comprehensive youth programs.
Many of the homeless today are youth. Many youths who are on the street belong to the LGBTQIA community, where assistance and programming is often scarce. Providing safe resources to this group of teens and youths could help them find a new place to call home.
- Foster Education Connections
For children and youth experiencing homelessness, schools can be a lifeline. They provide safety, stability, and a connection to community that can help mitigate the impact of homelessness.
Let me start by saying the assumptions generating the solutions outlined above are put forth by naive people who say they know how to fix the problem and don’t have a clue on the choices made by most of the homeless. Oh, they sound compassionate, supportive, and considerate – and some are good programs that should be available to everyone all the time. Others are pie in the sky.
Let’s understand something: just like anything else, the more services provided the homeless the more “homeless” show up. There’s an insatiable demand for free goods and services. You can’t measure a problem by the number of people who show up for something free. Unfortunately, that phony measurement happens a lot by organizations whose role it is to provide services.
If anyone wants to solve the problem, they must start with the ideal result as an objective. That means the objective of a city, or any civil jurisdiction, is to not allow people to squat on the street. If a city has people living on the street, the first objective should be to get these people off it.
Streets and sidewalks and parks and public parking lots, etc. belong to the community. The city is entrusted with the responsibility to keep the streets and public areas clean, safe and accessible to the taxpaying public.
Seeing the tents and cardboard shelters lining a public street or sidewalk or any public area is a dereliction of the city’s responsibility to its permanent residents.
There are people and families that find themselves homeless without choice or addiction, but those folks are not the problem.
On the other hand, there are ‘homeless’ people who choose the street to live. For the most part they are addicts who want to feed their dependence on drugs/alcohol and find living on the street allows them to do that – if it’s tolerated.
Not only are these tent people an eyesore, but they also inhibit those businesses on the streets any chance for a profitable enterprise. That negatively impacts them and their families – and the vitality of a community. These people have no means of support and rely on panhandling and theft – both negative situations.
Addicts have choices. Those choices should not be to publicly feed their habit(s), publicly defecate, or generally being, at best, a public nuisance. Their choices should be getting help or going to jail for vagrancy and/or trespassing. Some may be deemed as needing institutionalization.
Social services for the homeless are certainly called for, especially for families with dependent children, and temporary accommodation and assistance should be available. Those services should experience high turnover if they are effective and worthwhile.
Those homeless who are mentally impaired or ill should not be on the street. Mental health centers need to be available, although I realize there are not as many of these ‘hospitals’ after the closures in the ‘70’s. The state or county has the primary responsibility in this arena. In addition, the services of mental health centers should be available, perhaps required, for those whose mental illness could/would lead to doing harm to others. If those services are not available, our leaders need to create them.
I realize the solutions offered here require what some might call “tough love.” But the solutions offered in the opening of this piece will not solve the problem – or even make a dent in it. They may look good on paper to social workers, but most of those solutions assume most of those homeless want to participate in those solutions. That assumption misses the mark – the truth.
A civilized society cannot tolerate tent cities. Period.
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Have a great ad prosperous week.
Hug somebody.
References:
SPIDER Bites
I’ve mentioned being a Rotarian before, a member of the international service club dedicated to truth and service. Some 30+ years ago Rotary took on the challenge to eradicate polio in the world. It will be only the 2nd disease to gain that objective behind smallpox – and is 99.9% achieved. It’s basically down to a few cases in two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Since I forgot the trivia question last week, here’s two this week. 1) What is “cynophobia”? 2) Who was the first woman pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic?
NASA moved its Artemis I rocket from the pad to shelter last Monday in anticipation of Ian, delaying the launch now to November. But NASA did successfully test its Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft, or DART, colliding it with a distant asteroid Monday night. While the asteroid, named Dimorphos and the size of a football stadium, was not a threat to earth, NASA showed it could potentially destroy or redirect one that might be.
As many Europeans are now burning wood for heat and energy and we are faced with runaway inflation, our Congress has plugged another $12B to Ukraine in a bill to avoid a government shutdown yesterday. Here’s the three major things wrong it: 1) Congress continues its unprecedented spending fueling inflation; 2) Congress and this administration is escalating and elongating the Russian-Ukraine war rather than seeking to end it; 3) The Senate removed language to loosen the administration’s non-leasing of land for oil and gas and get back to energy independence. Is there any wonder why more and more voters are registering as Independent?
Meanwhile the Nord Stream pipelines from Russia to Europe were sabotaged last week – releasing natural gas and its high methane content into the atmosphere. Europe’s in even deeper energy trouble now.
Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy Party won the two houses of Parliament in Italy’s national election last week. Our mainstream media is full of ‘concern” and “dismay” and negative opining about this far right, ‘fascist’ leader and her party’s takeover of the government there. Many left leaning media outlets and left-wing politicians lament in predicting she will be the next Mussolini, despite becoming the 1st woman Italian prime minister. The ‘’offense” Meloni apparently committed was to stand for a change in the country to reembrace God, family and country. Those ‘ultra-conservative’ ideas represent far-right-wingers to some these days, both in Europe and here.
The interest on Treasury Bills hit 4+% last week as the Federal Reserve looks like it will deepen the recession by continuing to substantially raise interest rates to fight inflation. Rock and a hard place. The stock market tanked.
