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It would cost $20 billion to end homelessness in America.
Bullshit. Hope you guys don't seriously believe this.
Edit: it really underscores the mentality of the community when a straightforward debunking of a false statement has a negative score, lol.
The billionaires of this country could spend 20B a year, every year of their lives, and never run out of money.
Politifact isn't the end all of fact checking. 20B is in fact the widely cited figure for yearly housing costs if we just paid rent for all homeless people.
San Francisco spends (very roughly) $100,000 a year per homeless person and that doesn't "end homelessness" there. It doesn't even come close. These dollar estimates are all unrealistic because the issue is generally not that there's insufficient funding. It's that the sort of person who is homeless long-term is often not the sort of person who would want to be housed in any housing that the government could reasonably provide.
Here in NYC there was controversy because the city government was telling some homeless people that they could choose between going to a shelter or being arrested but they couldn't remain camped where they were. If you want to end homelessness, you can't just build housing. You have to force these homeless people to live in it. Are you willing to do that?
the sort of housing that government could relatively provide.
The sort of housing the government is willing to provide.
choose between going to a shelter or being arrested but they couldn't remain camping
Given the a choice between restricted temporary housing or imprisonment, it’s no wonder someone would choose independent living on one’s own terms. People need support for independent living not being forced into a soulless shelter room shared with strangers and a dictated schedule, where they can’t bring their children, pets, or dependent substances. It’s the same reason folks dread being shuttled off to a nursing home.
Be careful. Lemmy hates it when you point out that not all homeless people are those temporarily down on their luck.
Yeah. What I do when I’m out walking downtown, I carry a special measuring stick. Just wave it near a homeless person to calculate the value of their life. It’s the basic version, so it’s missing the autoeuthanize features, but it does make me feel better about myself just to have it.
Musk is a moron, but if you think $20 billion could end homelessness, so are you
You don't think ~$31,000 spent productively per every single homeless person in the US could effectively reset the homeless crisis?
Sure it would help significantly. It would most likely be the most successful initiative in human history. But it won't "end homelessness".
Yeah, I'm addicted.
Addicted to the good old outdoors.
Funny. So less public health would do what exactly to benefit the homeless/insane?
People with addiction and mental health issues don't deserve help or a home then?
When it comes to the homeless, some are forced into that situation (see: tent cities coming up around metros during COVID, 2020-2023 ish, some are ongoing), while others, mostly long term homeless, are either there because of mental illness or drugs, or stay there because of mental issues/drugs.
It can be both cause and effect.
Dehumanizing the homeless as all drug addicts and mentally ill people is unnecessarily cruel. A lot of them simply need help and support, whether that support is stable and affordable (cheap/free) housing, and food banks, or more broad social services like drug rehab, and mental health assistance.
Some mental health conditions are difficult to treat, like those with paranoid schizophrenia, who are constantly fighting with voices telling them that any medication to alleviate the symptoms is poison or something like that. This is just one example of many; but the majority of mental health conditions are very easily treatable.
However, with the US healthcare system in such a wretched condition as it is, though it has improved somewhat, it is not built for the people who need the most help, or need help more significantly or urgently, such as those who are homeless.
IMO, the watermark of how "good" a society is, in no small part, is demonstrated by how we regard and "deal with" homelessness. Needless to say, America ranks pretty low on that list.
Compared to something like the National defense budget, making even the smallest move towards helping the homeless would be a massive help, for a relatively small cost. In no small part because everyone would ask where the money is coming from.
Where does any money come from? When a society issues bonds for more currency from the "global banks", and gets, say $100M to spend, then in a year, they owe $103M on that debt, but only have $100M in total currency, what then? This "debt" will never be paid. Also, for an international superpower, who do they owe this money to? Who are you in debt to?
The Fiat money system is a sham and the currency has no value at all. It's simply the worthless material we use as a middle man for the barter system. I trade my effort/labor for this worthless paper, and this worthless paper grants me the ability to feed and house myself. Rather than my labor being paid for in... I dunno, coal? Wheat? Coffee beans? Then me having to trade that for something the grocer wants, and something my landlord wants. It's stupid.