> My understanding is the shelters often require no drugs or alchol and that is a deal breaker for some homeless people.
My understanding is that many do not consider homless shelters a dignifying place to live in: no private space, no private room, etc.
They'd rather live in their care or their tent where they have some "me" space, than in a shelter.
In Germany, for example, the government would pay for your rent before letting you sleep on the street, car, or tent. They don't consider shelters a dignifying place to live either, and having a sane place to live is pretty much a pre-requisite for being able to turn your life around.
This seems like just another "America bad" post. When's the last time you walked the streets of Berlin at night? People sleeping on the streets all over.
> When's the last time you walked the streets of Berlin at night?
Half a decade ago, at least where I was there wasn't many homeless there, but the rents in Berlin have exploded since, so the situation might have changed there.
I think you're both right. Homeless shelters are are rough places. No privacy, hard to get good sleep, and your shit gets stolen.
But well over half of homeless people are addicts, and a lot of these folks will bail out of much nicer arrangements simply because they're not allowed to drink or do drugs.
Um... no? But there is a significant portion of the indigent population who are so resistant to change that they're effectively not treatable. Anyone who's worked with addicts knows this in their bones.
I know there are folks who say out loud that addicts "deserve" their fate, and by that they mean society has a prerogative to ignore or punish them.
I'm certainly not one of those, and I appreciate that you're not either, but I also wouldn't say that society is obligated to expend unlimited resources to accommodate people that refuse to take care of themselves.
Ensuring everyone is adequately housed is not an “expense of unlimited resources” in fact it is cheaper[1] than providing all the piecemeal, deliberately insufficient programs and enforcement schemes they are currently subjected to.
Just that easy huh? Housing-first programs work well for people who are willing to be housed and treated. But if the housing comes with any rules regarding substance abuse, many of these people will refuse it. Some others will agree but then destroy whatever housing they're given, or they revert to crime. These aren't exceptional cases; like I said before, somewhere around half of homeless people are addicts, and a signifanct proportion have severe mental health issues. We can throw as many resources as we want at trying to treat people who refuse treatment, and house people who continually sabotage themselves, and still end up in a situation where the streets (or prison) remains the end game.
I've seen a lot of this first hand. I can see you have strong opinions, but I would encourage you to actually learn a bit about it, maybe volunteer at a shelter or with a treatment and placement organization.
Supportive housing reduces even extremely high risk, chronically homeless people's dependence on emergency services[1]. Your characterization of addicts as people inherently prone to crime and destruction and your continued hyperbole about "throwing as many resources as we want" is not grounded in reality. You are carrying a line of thinking "the streets (or prison) remains the end game" that closes off any opportunity for us to actually address the root causes of these problems. Of course interventions will not work in every individual case. What is at issue here is that we live in a system (market-based housing) that is structurally dependent on the existence of homelessness for growing profit.
Nowhere did I say or imply that homeless people are "inherently" anything, and I never said or implied that a problem "cannot be solved". Quite the opposite, I'll assert that housing-first plus treatment is in fact a permanent solution for many indigent people, and I wholeheartedly support it.
In your apparent lack of experience, you're strawmanning any argument that doesn't align with your opinions.
And you also apparently forgot to read the study you cited, because it supports exactly what I've been saying: fourteen percent of their participants could not be kept in their intensive housing+treatment program. Fourteen percent is a hell of a lot better than the usual two-thirds, but that's still a whole lot of people that we don't know how to help, no matter how many resources we throw at them. I know people just like that, even if you refuse to acknowledge their existence, and I don't pretend to have the answers. It's a hard, hard problem.
How about this: since you seem to have this figured out, write up your proposal for a permanent, humane solution for that fourteen percent. I'm sure the folks who've spent careers trying to figure it out would love to know what you think they're doing wrong. Go get em tiger!
You can and should avoid personal attacks and assumptions about my experience. You have failed to provide evidence to support your ancedotes.
>I know people just like that, even if you refuse to acknowledge their existence, and I don't pretend to have the answers.
I am not refusing to acknowledge the existence of that cohort. You are moving the goalposts: saying that if we can not find a solution for those people specifically, then we can not address the structural deficiencies that lead to the movement of more people into homelessness. The data shows "the streets (or prison)" is not "the endgame" for the 86% that actually benefit from supportive housing.
The US does have some experience giving housing. There are various programs to help poor people get free / heavily subsidized housing. In some (all?) places in the US you need an address in order to qualify for such a program. Homeless shelters are supposed to be the short term solution to deal with that. It is not ideal, but they could stay in a homelss shelter for a a while and get an id, ssn card, address, etc. This allows them to qualify for low income housing.
There is also a shortage, in some areas, of low income housing. I am not sure what it is like in Germany but developers don't want to create low income housing since it tends to be treated poorly and increases crime in the area. How does Germany deal with that or are the German homeless better stewards of the place they live?
In Germany you just find an appartment to rent - any appartment - and the government foots the rent, heating, electricity, water, health insurance, etc. and gives you 400$ or so for food, booze, whatever (which is enough to live "safe").
It does not have to be an special "low income housing".
Wait so I could go to Germany, find an apartment that costs €10000 a month and the government would pay for it? Surely there is some kind of limit?
Also, in the US it is my understanding you don't have to go to low income housing, but non low income housing can reject you. Since people receiving money for housing do not tend to treat the housing well most landlords reject them. Why rent to somebody who is at an increased likelihood of damaging your place and won't have enough money to cover the damage?
> ince people receiving money for housing do not tend to treat the housing well most landlords reject them. Why rent to somebody who is at an increased likelihood of damaging your place and won't have enough money to cover the damage?
In Germany the government gives you the money, and you to the landlord. The landlord doesn't need to know where you got the money.
Having said that, many landlords will reject based on looks, which can be tough.
> Wait so I could go to Germany, find an apartment that costs €10000 a month and the government would pay for it? Surely there is some kind of limit?
The government collects the rent prices of the last 4 years on each area, and uses them to create tables per region / city, of the upper limits.
Depending on the city, that might allow you to live downtown, or force you into the suburbs.
There are single rooms < 50m2 for less than 680 EUR/month in munich. Not downtown, but not too far in the suburbs either. The prices there look ok for somebody without any assets nor income. Its not going to be luxurious, but it won't be crappy either. A university student might be living in worse conditions, which isn't bad for someone without income nor assets.
I think that article is accurate. Those are 2014 numbers, which is when Germany took 1 million of refugees, which are counted as "homeless" since they have no "home".
Refugees were initially moved into refugee camps, so you didn't see them in cities, and then they were and still are being slowly integrated.
Refugee camps are no place to for people to live, but if you are escaping from a war zone, they are better than staying in the war zone.
Requesting it isn't hard. I know many highly educated people that suddenly had no income or were evicted, e.g., due to loosing all "student benefits" right the same day they finished university, including housing, being evicted a couple of days later. They got Hartz IV benefits in a matter of hours, which paid for an apartment and gave them 400 EUR or so per month for food and basic stuff (you can live an ok-ish life with that if housing is covered).
But most homeless I saw in the streets in Germany, which you can actually just go and talk to, didn't want to receive any help from the state, had psychological problems, didn't want to receive medical attention, etc.
Due to how the German system for this works, it is actually super hard to help these people. Still, in a sense, the people that are homeless in Germany, is because at least in some way, they want to. Since not being homeless - with the exception of refugees - is as easy as going by an office, signing a sheet of paper, and the government pays for your rent, heating, water, electricity, internet, clothes, work training, healthcare and on top gives you 400 EUR that you can spend however you want (food, or just booze, etc.).
For the refugees... Germany is tight on housing, and new developments are slow, so being 1 million houses short (for 1% of the population), and then taking 1 million refugees on top, their access to housing is improving very slowly. I'd say they are free to apply for asylum somewhere else, but pretty much everywhere else the conditions are much worse for them.
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For context, relative to Germany's population, the 1 million of refugees Germany took per capita would be similar to the US taking 4-5 million refugees, in a very short period of time. IIRC, the US took less than 20k refugees from a war-zone they are very responsible for. At least they are consistent: they don't care about their homeless, and they don't care about the homeless they create everywhere else in the world. Then they are surprised when the homeless that end up growing up in ISIS camps end up flying planes into their skyscrapers.
My understanding is that many do not consider homless shelters a dignifying place to live in: no private space, no private room, etc.
They'd rather live in their care or their tent where they have some "me" space, than in a shelter.
In Germany, for example, the government would pay for your rent before letting you sleep on the street, car, or tent. They don't consider shelters a dignifying place to live either, and having a sane place to live is pretty much a pre-requisite for being able to turn your life around.