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We've tried your idea. Have you ever seen a housing project?
Spend enough money? We have been throwing scads of money at this problem for many decades, nothing changes. Most government housing projects start out nice, but they don't stay that way. At least the ones I've seen.Darling, for a part of my youth I grew up in a decent one. I grew up in the UK where they're called council estates. Some of them are scummy and some of them very decent places to live. If the governing local authority invests enough in them, and they're houses/apartments of a decent standard with green spaces, play areas, commerces, facilities, youth clubs etc. where people can live their lives with dignity, then guess what? People respect their environment as much as any owner-occupiers. I had a decent life in that public housing complex.
I now live in France - some local authorities don't invest in their public housing estates and they're $hit places to live - like the places where riots broke out a few years back. Others do invest - and those estates stayed riot free. It was essentially about poverty, not race or Islam as Fox News tried to portray. I live in a very progressive Parisian suburb where there is much decent public housing. The whole town has areas that are mixed public/private housing and quite frankly, it can be hard to tell which apartment complexes are public housing and which aren't. Low income families have decent apartments - what's so awful about that?
Of course, if you stick people in US style ghettos and limit their life chances, they're not going to be nice places to live.
Spend enough money? We have been throwing scads of money at this problem for many decades, nothing changes. Most government housing projects start out nice, but they don't stay that way. At least the ones I've seen.
But I'm glad your experience was a good one.
On this one, Pete, I agree with you.As a liberal, I don't support this in anyway. It would be an excelant way of trashing apartment complexes.The homeless need to have shelter, but giving them an apartment is not the way to do it. I believe this has been tried before without any success.
Google and read the studies - they found that providing apartments for the homeless is actually cheaper than it is to pay for the increased police presence, the use of the court system, and the extra prison capacity that comes with having those people on the streets.
Yes, that's counterintuitive...but one is cheaper than the other. And there's the rub - you do pay. One way or another, you pay anyway. You can pay more for cops and courts and prisons...or you can pay somewhat less for apartments to give them a place where they can take a shower, wash and iron their clothes, and get a job.
But you pay anyway. Do you want to pay more for the stick...or less for the carrot?
Salt Lake City built apartment buildings for the chronic homeless and the program seems to working for cutting costs and getting them the help they need....
"...with the traditional approach, the average chronically homeless person used to cost Salt Lake City more than twenty thousand dollars a year. Putting someone into permanent housing costs the state just eight thousand dollars, and that’s after you include the cost of the case managers who work with the formerly homeless to help them adjust. The same is true elsewhere. A Colorado study found that the average homeless person cost the state forty-three thousand dollars a year, while housing that person would cost just seventeen thousand dollars...."
Give the Homeless Homes - The New Yorker
why do you HAVE a kid before you've got at LEAST 1/4 million $ safely invested, hmm? Cause you're STUPID, arrogant, selfish, hypocritical and just generally a sorry sack of it who has no problem pointing govt guns at other people, to pay for the raising of kids that you had no biz having.
Ok can you link the budget numbers that say SLC and Colorado cut social services or law enforcement budgets after this program was started?
If the state is spending less on the homeless than they were prior to the program then why would it need to cut other social services or law enforcement to fund it?
Actually from a cost-saving perspective I've no doubt it is cheaper to give homeless their own houses or apts.
If it is shown that it costs less in taxpayer dollars to provide apartments for the homeless than it would be to just let them remain homeless in the streets, would you support using taxpayer dollars to pay for apartments for the homeless?
Why or why not?
Just because you're spending less on fuel doesn't mean you won't still have rising costs in buying a car, car insurance, registration and car maintenance/repair bills. There's more to the homeless problem than just finding housing because a lot of them are mentally ill or drug abusers and require a lot of medical care. Getting people off the street helps keep them safer and healthier which means less medical costs.If they're spending less money then social services should have a smaller budget.
If goes down to 1 buck a gallon from three, you should be spending 66% less on fuel.
Well, if Medicaid costs are going up it's probably because doctors are using more technology and expensive drugs to treat patients and because there are more people than there were 20 or so years ago and because there's more Medicaid fraud. But just reducing fraud would go a long way to lowering costs by a few billion.Same principal, if not as many homeless people are being dealt with by law enforcement we need fewer corrections officers and jail expenses like food or the such.
The reality is it doesn't save us money otherwise, like years ago when the state of Washington claimed mandatory helmets for motorcycles would cut Medicaid costs and the indoor smoking ban would cut Medicaid costs, but Medicaid expenditures continue to rise
If they're spending less money then social services should have a smaller budget.
If goes down to 1 buck a gallon from three, you should be spending 66% less on fuel
Same principal, if not as many homeless people are being dealt with by law enforcement we need fewer corrections officers and jail expenses like food or the such.
The reality is it doesn't save us money otherwise, like years ago when the state of Washington claimed mandatory helmets for motorcycles would cut Medicaid costs and the indoor smoking ban would cut Medicaid costs, but Medicaid expenditures continue to rise
And part of why I don't. If you believe in something, fund it with your own money. Don't vote into power politicians who will steal from others to implement policies you like.That's part of why I vote Democratic.
Because we are a nation of free individuals. If you prefer a nation where the citizens are devoid of rights of their own and must bow to the needs of the Motherland or the Fatherland, I am sure there are places out there that can accommodate you.Why is everything in america deduced to a strict monetary equation, rather than at least put up a semblance of humanitarian/moral duty?
Christianity is based upon charity and voluntary giving. What you advocate is state imposed humanitarian/moral duty. Any Christian who supports that, doesn't understand their own religion.To think that 3/4 of the country identifies as christian and doesn't even support shelter for the homeless. How do i know they don't support it? The dwindling number of even ghetto shelters that are available
If they're spending less money then social services should have a smaller budget.
If goes down to 1 buck a gallon from three, you should be spending 66% less on fuel
Same principal, if not as many homeless people are being dealt with by law enforcement we need fewer corrections officers and jail expenses like food or the such.
The reality is it doesn't save us money otherwise, like years ago when the state of Washington claimed mandatory helmets for motorcycles would cut Medicaid costs and the indoor smoking ban would cut Medicaid costs, but Medicaid expenditures continue to rise
It would be far cheaper, and better for the economy overall, for the homeless that were able bodied and mentally healthy to clean themselves up and use whatever opportunities are available to not be homeless anymore.
Because we are a nation of free individuals. If you prefer a nation where the citizens are devoid of rights of their own and must bow to the needs of the Motherland or the Fatherland, I am sure there are places out there that can accommodate you.
Christianity is based upon charity and voluntary giving. What you advocate is state imposed humanitarian/moral duty. Any Christian who supports that, doesn't understand their own religion.
I am not obligated to help these people and neither are you. You are free to do so and so am I. Except that isn't good enough for liberals. They want to help these people but not with their own money. They want to take it from others. And look at the results. The left has gotten its theft schemes enacted and there are still more homeless than you can count. Just as much poverty as ever. And $18,000,000,000,000 worth of debt. So what do you want? More of the same. No thanks.Give me a break. That's only your opinion.
If we're going to play this game, though, how about Christian charities rise up and house all these homeless and then the "State" wouldn't have anyone else to deal with, they'd all have housing provided by Christian charities. I work with one of them, and we can house 150 people at any one time, and we always have a waiting list of several hundred - could be 1,000 easy enough but no point keeping a list that long. And we get homeless throughout the region, because most regions have ZERO facilities to deal with the chronic homeless and addicted who can't afford a $12,000/month treatment facility. The fact is there aren't enough faith based orgs to even begin to deal with all the homeless in our expanded area.
So if you're telling me the moral thing to do in this situation is to say screw the homeless, let them rot on the streets, until the faith based voluntary!!! charities emerge, I'd say it's you who doesn't understand their religion, which is also MY opinion.
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