Thread: Is is cheaper for the taxpayer to provide apartments for the homeless?

Originally Posted by JC Callender

I think more and more people would just become homeless because life is hard and this would be an easy alternative.

Nonsense.

Originally Posted by prison/con.net

I'm not Scrooge..I'm just opposed to ANYBODY, using govt guns to take money from anybody. If you aren't able to provide for yourself, then either rely on charity or perish in and of your own void, or do the honorable thing and end your own worthless life.

What the actual ****?

Originally Posted by cpgrad08

It would be cheaper if the state did none of that.

This thread has reminded me why I have almost zero faith in humanity these days.

Originally Posted by Moon

How much cheaper would it be if they weren't being warehoused and had jobs instead?

You can't get a job without an address or without looking like ... well, like you just spent the night sleeping in a cardboard box.

Originally Posted by Kobie

You can't get a job without an address or without looking like ... well, like you just spent the night sleeping in a cardboard box.

Okay, so you vote for warehousing them. Got it.

Originally Posted by Fletch

No that's too cruel. We cant expect our homeless to live like some lowly private. They need a place of their own, with three meals a day, a tv, internet, job training, transportation, leisure time, and a wardrobe that wont stigmatize them. You know, all those things that the rest of us actually have to get up every morning and bust our asses to achieve...

If you're "busting your ass" just to get the bare minimum on which to survive as a productive member of society, you're doing it wrong.

That's the wholly dishonest conserva-answer to anything regarding social spending -- that the poor will live like kings while everyone else toils in the salt mines.

Originally Posted by Glen Contrarian

Ah. If it were true, THEN you'd support it. But you know how those doggone lib'ruls are, y'know, 'cause they're just a-gonna skew the numbers just 'cause they hate 'Merica, y'know...'cause you know them lib'ruls ain't never honest, and all them studies are all part of one big left-wing conspiracy.

An' we all know it too, don' we? We couldn't prove it, but we just knows how the got every single one of the world's major scientific institutions (an' almost all the scientists) to all agree about global warming - but we just can't show how they went about doin' it. Not only that, but them lib'ruls also got millions - an' I mean MILLIONS - of fraudulent votes out there. We haven't been able to prove more than about twenty of them since the turn of the century, but you know them lib'ruls - they're awful sneaky, gettin' millions an' millions of them illegal im-grants to risk arrest and deportation to cast that there vote! An' I bet it's that there George Soros who directs all this from his ivory castle somewhere, even though we haven't caught him doin' it yet....

....

In other words, guy, has it ever occurred to you that maybe, just maybe we DON'T 'skew the numbers', that maybe, just maybe those studies might be exactly what they say they are?

Some people cannot be reasoned with, Glen. There is a large segment of conservative America that has been taught -- indoctrinated, even -- for years that every single thing liberals say is a lie.

Originally Posted by Kobie

Some people cannot be reasoned with, Glen. There is a large segment of conservative America that has been taught -- indoctrinated, even -- for years that every single thing liberals say is a lie.

No, just the things that are lies.

Originally Posted by Lakryte

I would, but I see it as a band-aid solution. A disproportionate percentage of people who are chronically homeless suffer from mental illness or some type of drug addiction or substance abuse problem. These issues need to be addressed, and throwing people in public housing is not an adequate solution to resolving them.

As to people who are homeless for a brief period, often the cause is bad economic policy. Others may be pushed into streets due to rents rising beyond what is affordable, which is often a function of bad housing and development policy.

Sure, putting homeless individuals in apartments is better than doing nothing. But if we throw them in apartments and then turn a blind eye to the above issues, we aren't solving anything.

That's not what's been done in the places that have implemented this type of system -- see Salt Lake City, for example. A case worker is also provided.

Originally Posted by Moon

Okay, so you vote for warehousing them. Got it.

Don't put words in my mouth, pal.

The system that Salt Lake City used works. It is incontrovertible FACT that it does not "soak the taxpayer," and it's seen homelessness reduced by about 80 percent. Would it work as well everywhere? Probably not, in part because some places would just refuse to properly fund the program, in part because of incompetent city government, in part because of bad breaks. But just sticking them in a warehouse and forgetting about them accomplishes nothing.

A modest apartment, a case worker, proper mental health care as needed, and job preparation/training would do wonders for many of these people, and it seems like a lot of conservatives here just couldn't care less.