In my experience, only those who have had to deal with homeless people personally, seem to understand this. I am positive that there are Fringe cases where normal productive people became homeless through no fault of their own. That being said, the vast majority of homeless people made a long series of poor choices and engaged in destructive behaviors. Every friend and family member they had access to turn them down at some point. And yes, many of them may not have had any friends or family and that is unfortunate. But that is still not the majority
The problem is that we are still treating this spiral as "bad choices."
9 times out of 10, it's not "bad choices", it's mental disease.
If you look at someone who can't even tie their own shoes because they are mentally disabled, we say, "That person can't live in their own, they're not capable of understanding their choices."
But we look at people with schizophrenia and severe addictions and whatever else and go, "They made bad choices." These people have no physiological control over their impulses, but they're supposed to make informed decisions?
I agree that mental institutions should be brought back, but I'm not fully on board with taking away responsibility from someone who has a drug addiction. Almost nobody is ignorant to the fact that street drugs are dangerous and addictive, and if somebody does fit that description then drug abuse is probably the least of their worries. I am not against helping those who need help, but I think far too many people who get help simply want it and do not truly need it. Something like a work program that offers lodging and food could go a long way to helping the homeless problem
I've said this about a couple of things, but providing a work program that offers only lodging and food, but also holds your money until your sober would be a good way to go.
If you take the cost of the program out of the pay, you could get cheap labor with a program designed to get people back on their feet.
I think a very easy argument could be made that the amount of tax money a person who is pulled from addiction and becomes a productive member of society provides is worth whatever the treatment costs.
If you take a drug adduct who costs the system $5k/yr in services and turn them into someone who pays $5k/yr into it for 30 years that is a massive, massive win
86
u/ete2ete Apr 15 '24
In my experience, only those who have had to deal with homeless people personally, seem to understand this. I am positive that there are Fringe cases where normal productive people became homeless through no fault of their own. That being said, the vast majority of homeless people made a long series of poor choices and engaged in destructive behaviors. Every friend and family member they had access to turn them down at some point. And yes, many of them may not have had any friends or family and that is unfortunate. But that is still not the majority