Your thought process in commendable but years of this has made me cynical. No one wants to live in the same apartment complex as junkies. If you put them all together it turns into a crime filled cesspool. A hard drug addict is essentially toxic to any situation you drop them in. The solution is to forcibly treat them in rehab centers and then maybe follow up with free housing. This is followed up by drug testing for atleast a few years otherwise you lose your free housing. If the person relapses, the worst that can happen is they are back in forced rehab and at the very least are off the streets, out of sight and not bothering regular people.
I can attest to part of this. I spent several months in a halfway house earlier this year for those coming out of prison. Putting (mostly) addicts together in one building was total and utter chaos. They all fed off each other. The few that were trying to stay sober and get employment had an insane challenge because everyone around them was using and stealing their stuff to sell for drugs. It was crazy.
It is also mind-blowing that you would release addicts with essentially zero support. They don't even get ID coming out of prison in Illinois, so they can't access any support services at all.
Again, I don't know what the solution is, but I know some things that don't work :(
I have to tell you that I have quite a bit of experience on this and a little bit of compassion and love goes along way.
Maybe talking to people one on one asking who they are how their day is, can you help them? Can you get them anything?
This time last year I helped a man named John stop sleeping outside by supporting him and giving him the moral and ethical support that he needed to reconnect with his family and he was off the streets and a couple of months. When we reconnected, he said that it was because of my outreach that he was able to have what he needed to reach back out to his family. It cost me 50 dollars in groceries/medical kit and about an hour of my time.
So it’s eminently possible, you can do it every single day that you go out into the world.
> No one wants to live in the same apartment complex as junkies.
You sound like you'd be shocked at how many high-functioning junkies live in most apartment complexes in most major cities. Upper-middle-class guys, holding down jobs - at least until a run of bad luck hits.
The functioning junkies obviously aren't the ones who "need" free housing. The junkies on the street are the ones who can't handle their shit and have alienated all of their friends and family who might otherwise help them. Nobody wants to live with them and they can't take care of themselves, and therefore they're on the street. And for these very reasons, nobody wants to share an apartment building with them.
> The junkies on the street are the ones who can't handle their shit
Yes. And nobody can handle their shit 100% of the time, so this is really quite a lot of people one or two mistakes away from being on the street. Many of whom you ignorantly count as "clean" friends or neighbors.
How does America go through the whole fucking opioid crisis and still think that addiction is a personal moral failing endemic to some outgroup? It's a sickening view.
What percentage of Americans ever end up on the street? "Homeless" but couch surfing with friends or relatives doesn't count for this consideration because we're talking about people who lost that fallback (despite you chopping off that part when you quoted me.)
Because, despite what we Americans have claimed forever, America is actually an anarcho-capitalist wasteland of domination.
So if you can figure out how to dominate a group, you will win and you’ll be rewarded for it. This is why people come here. America is the last place where you can basically do whatever the fuck you want, and as long as you gain enough money and influence, you’ll be celebrated.
I mean Trump EMBODIED what I just described and he not only won the presidency, he has successfully created a cult that could actually ruin everything.
Where else but a lawless wasteland would produce that?
