Even if that is true, does it somehow invalidate the fact that they are also homeless?! Are they less deserving to be out of the elements because they have an addiction?
That's what I find so disgusting about this statement. It's just an excuse and doesn't address anything at all.
Using his own "argument", it would seem to me that a path to less addiction and violence would involve having a place to live and sleep.
Lots of people feel this way about homelessness and addiction. It's very easy to dehumanized people. My cousin interrupted me, when I said something about it, and told me "when you have people shooting up outside your house, then you can complain". As if i couldnt have an opinion until i experience the issue that is homelessness, the war on drugs, and our failure to address mental health issues in this country with my very own eyes. She's a bit snooty, and she doesn't even realize it.
Nevermind that once you become homeless, it becomes much harder to dig yourself out of that hole (probably by design).
It’s such a self-centered point of view. They can’t even conceive of themselves ever being in a similar situation so they assume the person inconveniencing them must be fully to blame for their homelessness. Then they can ignore those degenerates without feeling guilty about it.
Yeah the whole correlation causation thing is going to be very mixed up here. Like lets look at it another way:
Oh no I become disabled > Can’t work anymore shit I got no money > Try to apply for disability benefits oh fuck its a million forms and I need a lawyer oh fuck I’m broke > Crash at friends to apply for disability, first try fails after 1 year (this is pretty standard usually takes 2-3 trys), oh fuck friend kicks me out > go to homeless camp struggling to feed yourself, no time to think about applying for benefits anymore > The pain is too much I don’t have my medicine anymore its fucking freezing oh shit that guys selling drugs > get addicted
Boom, you’re homeless and addicted. That story could happen to literally anyone without generational wealth and an exceptionally strong support network.
Are they less deserving to be out of the elements because they have an addiction?
That's not what's being said. He is criticizing the fact that so many people assume that 'just give them a place to live' is the solution, when it's much, much more complicated than that. In that way, "homeless" is very reductive, and masks those other issues, in favor of making it look like it's a simple problem with a simple solution.
Very few long-term homeless people are homeless simply because they can't afford a place to live.
So we shouldn't house them unless and until we figure out all of the complex issues? They're not going to benefit any at all, or have any possibility of getting on their feet, until we have a perfect solution?
That's what's being said there: homelessness is not something we should do anything about, because of reasons. So let's do nothing.
So we shouldn't house them unless and until we figure out all of the complex issues?
That's what's being said there: homelessness is not something we should do anything about
No, Cathy, that's not what was said.
The fact of the matter is that we know what happens when we provide shelter without anything else. It doesn't last and you're right back where you started before you know it. After all, it's that stuff that is the reason they became homeless in the first place.
If you don't address the other stuff, 'just give them a house lol' literally doesn't work long-term. That's the reality.
The fact of the matter is that we know what happens when we provide shelter without anything else. It doesn’t last and you’re right back where you started before you know it. After all, it’s that stuff that is the reason they became homeless in the first place.
Houston revamped its entire system to get more people into housing quickly, and it cut homelessness by more than half.
Housing First was a revolutionary idea when it was introduced in the 1990s because it didn’t require homeless people to fix their problems before getting permanent housing. Instead, its premise — since confirmed by years of research — was that people are better able to address their individual problems when basic needs, such as food and a place to live, are met.
Housing is the first step to being able to address those issues. Yes, the issues need to be addressed for long term success, but trying to address the issues while they are homeless is not successful. Too much emphasis is put on requiring the treatment as conditional for the housing.
I think you've misunderstood my position, based specifically on something I'll quote later in this comment.
Somewhat ironic that the juxtaposition in the article is between an area of California and Texas, with the latter arguably taking the more progressive approach.
Too much emphasis is put on requiring the treatment as conditional for the housing.
For the record, I never believed in or advocated for this approach. I pushed back against specifically the implication that you can just throw these people into some sort of housing and now you can consider the problem "solved" and wipe your hands of it.
I definitely agree that the path to a long-term solution is taking that multi-faceted approach that tackles those root causes simultaneously. None of them should be conditional upon the others, and I believe that each one of them improving empowers the individual to be more capable of improving all the others. It's much more efficient than trying to 100% solve one thing, and ignoring everything else until that one thing is completely eradicated, not only on efficacy, but in resources required.
For the record, I never believed in or advocated for this approach. I pushed back against specifically the implication that you can just throw these people into some sort of housing and now you can consider the problem “solved” and wipe your hands of it.
Nobody ever said that. They have said that it should not be a requirement to provide housing.
I pushed back against specifically the implication that you can just throw these people into some sort of housing and now you can consider the problem “solved” and wipe your hands of it.
Nobody ever said that.
From the OP:
"It would cost $20 billion to end homelessness in America."
This $20 billion figure comes from an old estimate of what it'd cost to pay for homeless people's rent, and nothing more. And that person effectively said that paying for that, and nothing more, would "end homelessness."
You did a pretty good impression of her with the "so you're saying" followed by something not even close to what I was saying, so I called a spade a spade. If you don't like it, try arguing in good faith and honestly instead of strawmanning.
So I'll assume you're also not arguing in good faith either
If you were to provide housing only, nothing else, youd still pull out a significant portion of homeless people.
Of course, little to no one is advocating for housing only. These people often lack a solid support system and mental counseling.
Lastly, there will be a portion that cannot be fixed, that might remain broken but honestly? A lot of complete broken people have housing and the sole reason for them not being burned alive or bullied is that they have enough money to not sleep in the streets.
Homelessness encompasses far more than rough sleeping. I agree that there are issues that many homeless people may face that wouldn't be resolved just by giving them a roof over their head. But it'd be a great start. And don't forget, a lot of homelessness is people and families in temporary or crisis housing, or couch surfing with friends and family, because they can't afford a place of their own.
I wouldn't say this contradicts anything I said, really. I don't disagree with any of this.
I bristled specifically at the ridiculously glib and reductive "solve homelessness" line. People love to think issues like these are things that have simple obvious solutions that no one thought of before their enlightenment came along and deigned to bless the rest of us.
I mean yeah, it's a glib portrayal but I don't think it's wrong to present it this way. It's a fact that a few of America's most wealthy have enough money to house every homeless person in the US, with enough to spare to keep themselves in megayachts and luxury Texan compounds. It drives home the massive wealth inequality.
It also really isn't infeasible to build enough homes to house all the homeless in the US within one or two years. It's not infeasible to spend that same amount of time setting up universal basic income and healthcare. Those three things are achievable and would make a positive, life-long difference to the majority of people experiencing homelessness.
And there are a handful of people in the US whose combined personal wealth could easily fund all that.
It’s a fact that a few of America’s most wealthy have enough money to house every homeless person in the US
If they have enough to do that, then the government certainlyalready has enough to accomplish this, no? Even the wealthiest person on the planet's total net worth is nothing compared to what is already spent every single year by the US government.
It also really isn’t infeasible to build enough homes to house all the homeless in the US within one or two years.
I thought it was commonly said that there were more empty houses in the country than there are homeless people, already?
It’s not infeasible to spend that same amount of time setting up universal basic income and healthcare.
If you're talking about something that goes only to homeless people, then it's not "universal". If you're now talking about true UBI, I just don't see how it can be realistically afforded.
Back of the napkin math, a measly $10,000 to every working-age adult in the US amounts to an annual bill of over $2 trillion each year. We have no realistic way of paying for that--even if you squeezed all the billionaires completely dry, it'd only pay for it for a couple of years. And that's just $10,000.
It just doesn't seem feasible until/unless we are literally post-scarcity, from the raw numbers. And that's assuming it doesn't replace any of the welfare systems already in place--if it would, then it really wouldn't lift anyone out of anything long-term.
And there are a handful of people in the US whose combined personal wealth could easily fund all that.
It's honestly very difficult to believe this, knowing all the trillions upon trillions of dollars the government has already spent over the years on issues like these, without them being 'solved'.
I cannot explain how disgustingly evil it is to witness the suffering of individuals, whether due to substance abuse, illness, or homelessness, and dismiss it as untruthful.
The primary concern is the actions of a South African billionaire, whose net worth is $350 billion. Instead of recognizing the complexities of a significant social issue, he appears to dehumanize those affected and assigns blame, rather than offering assistance.
Those numbers all take into account existing housing assistance programs, which are used by mostly non-homeless people.
There are 250k homeless people in the US. For $20B, you could spend $80k per each person. Since many of the homeless are families, that's enough to buy a small house for each family.
But you still have to keep paying into the existing programs, or more people will become homeless. Compared to a quarter million homeless people, there are 4.5M households using the existing programs.
80k per person gets them a small house? It'd be more than one family to a house and for people without families it would be overcrowded atleast in my area.
While the word is “homeless” the problem is generally not just “lacking a home”. It usually stems from things like inability to work due to severe disability or psychiatric illness, unofficial immigrants struggling to find employment, addiction, abandonment from family, not enough money to retire but unable to work etc.
Like don’t get me wrong giving everyone a home is great. But it won’t magically solve all the problems. And they might not be able to afford maintinance, property tax etc. Also if it’s homelessness due to lack of employment I question whether the 80k home will be anywhere useful for someone to find a job they qualify for, and if it will have any transportation links or anything
Aside from the fact that having a safe place to live alone helps both mental illness and substance abuse in most individuals, a major cause of homelessness is domestic abuse and being disowned. Having a safe place to live will absolutely help the over a third of domestic abuse victims who become homeless, and would help those who cannot afford to get away from their abusers due to lack of ability to find a safe haven.
Home the homeless, then we can start working on the harder parts.
That too. There are so many reasons for homing the homeless first.
It's probably the cheapest and most effective first step. There's so much more that will need to follow it. There's a lot going on. But home the homeless first.
Look how much they're scrambling over the death of just one of them.
The idea that there are more of us than there are of them already terrifies them. They know they're not immortal, they know they're not divinely ordained, and they sure as hell know that they're just people with money.
As a broad statement it's dumb, but depending on the city addiction can be a major contribution to the cycle of "homelessness", especially the more visible populations who have reached peak "fuck it" and have no more cares for societal values or laws.. Even if 25% of them are kids, yeah some of those may be hooked on drugs at an early age or be affected by parental/guardian drug abuse.
But ok then... he's still a billionaire who could definitely spare a good portion of his wealth to improve both situations (homelessness and addiction) but would rather just leverage it to make more and more wealth while pushing policies that actually make life for the average person worse.
At the same time, homelessness and addiction are very much NOT just a throw-money-at-it problem and fucking both would require systemic change over time.
For Elon socially, how much of his wealth is liquid enough to make a difference I don't know, but I haven't really heard of him doing ANYTHING particularly altruistic with his money and Id say the changes/logistics required to make this world a better place are probably still a lot more feasible than building a colony on fucking Mars....
Facebook (and other "Meta" subsidiaries) censored, reddit censored, TikTok on the chopping block...seems like an effective way around the First Amendment, just hijack social media.
There's full time employees that are homeless. Go out to a bridge, find a homeless person, ask how many homeless people they know that are working 40hrs a week. An alarming number.
Looking forward to the violent end to elon musk. His violent games, have very violent ends.
The guy who is so addicted with twitter engagement boostingbhis ego he bought it for himself just to go full fascist. Is calling homeless people addicts lol.
I wonder if they use drugs to cope with the mental illness they got from being forced to live on the streets?
Naw, that's pseudoscience. We all know that it's proven that poverty is a character trait that you actively choose.
Not rich? Obviously you don't want it hard enough. /s
Doesn't matter. We have the resources available to house, feed, educate, provide health care, and community for every American but don't out of greed. The US won't survive unless we mobilize every American to achieve their best self.
There is also a cynical neoliberal argument that one could make. By helping those homeless people, they are reintroduced to the economy. They will produce value, consume products, and not dedicate on the sidewalk. In other words it's a good investment.
I agree with you all the way. However, this is a very good talking point if you're dealing with someone who doesn't care about human decency or empathy
About a year ago a homeless woman had a miscarriage in my city and a couple local media outlets jumped on it, reporting that 'police had found a dead fetus in an encampment'. Ya know, after she called 911 because she had a miscarriage. Really helped solidify my belief that a lot of people would rather just stigmatize them than do anything else
I know someone with moderate substance abuse issues and diagnosed severe mental illness - basically as bad as it gets if left untreated. But she also lives independently and holds down a solid middle class desk job. How? She has rich parents who pay for treatment (individualized psychiatry) and care (housekeeping mostly), as well as an array of friends who help oversee her.
Homelessness is not necessary, even in the most desperate cases. It's just a question of what we're willing to pay and how much we're willing to care.
The math is straightforward: Cost of a housing unit * number of unhoused people. Even assuming the extraordinarily inflated market rate for housing in 2024, $20B is more than enough to house 650k people.
Now, will the institutional actors that produced homelessness stop existing? Will we see an end to predatory lenders, robo-signed foreclosures, police harassment and civil asset forfeiture of the working poor, and unregulated real estate scammers targeting our most vulnerable neighbors? Probably not.
But we wouldn't have so many billionaires running about squandering our national wealth on vanity projects like Twitter without billions to be fleeced from the public to begin with.
I got curious, so I whipped out my phone's calculator. $20B/650k = $30,800, give or take. I truly don't know if that's enough to break the cycle of homelessness, but if it is that seems like a pretty low number. We spend 40x that number on the defense budget, which is totally a jobs program but it seems like fighting homelessness would also ultimately be a jobs program.
I have anxiety and likely some deep seated depression that would rise up with a vengeance if I didn't have a warm home and access to food. I also love drinking wine, and while I do have access to said home and fridge, this wine hobby is cute and socially acceptable.
Make me homeless and I'd very much represent a mentally ill substance abusing human like Elmo is describing there. They're not 'them'; they're just us in a different reality.
YES. Anyone reposting Kyle's daily eviscerations on Lemmy is fine by me. Kyle's consistency through my years of watching Secular Talk has always been admirable, especially in this age of soulless online grifters
Somehow I actually yearn for the days of robber barons. At least they found socially productive ways to build monuments to their own vanity. If Musk wants to spend $20 billion to build social housing in cities across the US, I'm not going to complain if he slaps his name on the buildings. At least Carnegie built libraries.
It's because the modern day wealth disparity has no equivalent in human history, at least to my knowledge. Maybe slavery - but they were at least valuable enough to shelter and feed.
Elon Musk shows in this just how much worse he is than robber barons.
Fuck Elon, but also there's absolutely zero chance you can solve homelessness with $20b unless you're just building tent cities with no other resources available there.
20 billion could house and feed our entire homeless population for twenty years. While that would not solve the problem, it would drastically improve their lives.
I don't really believe that. It cost us $10 billion just to provide free lunches to kids for a year during covid. I think we should spend that every year. But the cost of housing is much higher unless you're planning housing with no HVAC or energy costs. Even if that number were theoretically real, it clearly isn't accounting for inflation, or the potential increase in homeless population when they start providing free housing.
650,000 homeless people times one thousand in rent for twenty years.
650000 x $1,000 x 20 years = $13 billion. That leaves enough left over to also feed them for 20 years as well
Do you believe it now!? Don't answer that, because it is clear you have a serious case of learned helplessness.
Edit:
650,000 x 12 x $1,000 x 2.5 years of rent with no food. Buuuut Elon gained 50 billion so that would be over 5 years with food. He could house every homeless person and feed them with the money he made since the election.
Wouldn't that be $1k a month minimum? Even if you could find housing at that price where most destitute people are located... that's $7.8 Billion a year.
Yeah your right. That would only pay for almost three years. Honestly though $1000 may be a bit high for a room, but perhaps not an actual house depending on the area.
Putting aside your confusion on monthly versus annual rent, the pricing you are thinking of has baked in the assumption that the homeless are not participating. Every value is based on supply and demand, and there's no such thing as a true objective numerical value for "a month of rent". If hypothetically you have housing for a 1,000 but 1,500 people to house, then the rent is going to go up so long as 1,000 can afford what's available, and 500 would be left out.
Of course with more incentive, construction can happen, but just saying it's not that simple.
See also cost of college. Well intended measures to make financing available to everyone caused massive cost increases in universities. Any measure to try to secure these resources for everyone requires more than just throwing cash at the problem.
I would wonder about the distribution of available housing stock. If you can place every homeless person, but to do so you tell them they have to move 80 miles to the empty house you find for them, that is likely not going to work.
Also, they likely need more than just a roof over their heads to have a safe, healthy life. There's a high likelihood of that housing stock being mismatched with the capacity to provide those services.
I mean...you could really build rather modest dormitories outside of cities for not much money. Throw free bus rides into and out of the city (where jobs and social resources are) at it, and you've got not a solution, but a pretty damn good bandage to help people and families get (back) on their feet.
Hell, rent them on a sliding scale if so inclined. But the scale has to be $0 up until a decent income, like at least the first quintile.
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.
I don't think we'll ever really end homelessness, but we could absolutely get close if the money we spend on all these piecemeal measures was put to better use. No idea what the total spent is (probably more than that) but we're basically dumping tons of money into half measures that only really help a handful of people. Supportive housing works for a much larger percentage of people experiencing homelessness, but no one wants to fund it because they hate the idea of giving someone housing without requiring something of them first. If Americans could get past the attitude of, "if I had to suffer, so should everyone else," we'd all be a lot better off.
I may have missed it when I was skimming the article, but I didn't see any stats to back up the $20b figure. They threw out a lot of stats on homelessness, but not a plan to end homelessness on a $20b budget.
It is in fact not remotely true. You're being downvoted by gullible fools who will believe anything that helps keep their rage boner going, no matter how ridiculous.
The point of the tweet is to show the egregious "take" of Elon Musk has while leeching on society and being a raging drug abuser himself while being a nazi-loving piece of shit that got rich off of daddy's apartheid emeralds on top of that. Doesn't matter if it costed $20bn or $200bn, Musk still has more.
I'm not saying Kyle was necessarily lying about the dollar value, but you can make that point without using a number people will call bullshit on. It would probably be a better too. Also, if people used his post as the start of a discussion of homelessness I'm sure Kyle would have achieved his goal.
Doesn't matter if it costed $20bn or $200bn, Musk still has more.
It costs more than he has, so yes, it does matter. Even the bogus $20b figure was an ANNUAL figure, not one-time.
You have no sense of perspective of the monumental costs of solving problems like these. It is far beyond the means of even the wealthiest individual on the planet.
Did you know the US spends over $1 trillion (with a T) every year on welfare programs? And that's without 'solving' anything, just trying to treat symptoms.
Did you know the US spends over $1 trillion (with a T) every year on welfare programs? And that’s without ‘solving’ anything, just trying to treat symptoms.
Being poor demands paying interest, who would have thought. According to the report to congress, 3.6% of citizens receive more than half of their income through welfare. The US has about 340 million citizens, so that's about 12.5million. If you distributed 200bn of Musk's wealth among them, that'd be 16k for each one. Pretty sure that would save more money than blowing trillions each year.
I think you are confused how much 20 billion is. That could pay rent for our entire homeless population and feed them for 20 years. I would agree this may not actually solve the problem but housing first is a proven effective strategy.
I feel like that's pedantry on whether the definition of "end homelessness" means, 0 homeless forever vs, homelessness is a small, manageable problem again.
And if say, half of that 20 billion were put in a perpetual trust it could give a perpetual budget of 100s of millions of dollars to fund maintenance and social work staff to continue to better manage the problem.
Possibly, but the text already specifically says "in America". I feel like if you add qualifiers like that, you have already partitioned the problem as far down as you intended.
I guess but then you have to stop expanding what they mean by the solution. You're not partitioning the statement of the problem any further but you're seemingly appending "forever" to the end of the solution as well as other problems that go along with homelessness. $30,000 each is enough to get every currently homeless person in the US some form of legal shelter, by definition ending homelessness in the US, however briefly.
Also true, but only if you can locate every single homeless person in the country. Though I'm not sure I would consider "legal shelter" a high enough bar to consider homelessness solved for that person, even for a short duration. At minimum, I think it would require them to have control of some sort of "permanent" residence, such as a month to month rental. Not simply space at a shelter.
He isn't a moron, he's just a narcissistic sociopath. Musk is no different than you at the yolk of a WWII bomber. He has no idea what he's doing.
But in his element, he's dangerous and does very well know what he's doing.
Musk doesn't care about the homeless. He cares about their labor and how much he and his buddies can get it for free. If being homeless and sleeping in your car is suddenly illegal nationwide, then many of us will be forced into rents we don't want to pay or end up in Musk's labor camp with the rest of their undesirables.
Ironically, no, it wouldn't. At least not longterm. I know many people on lemmy don't want to hear that because capitalism bad or something, but it's the reality. Do you unironically think you can just give every homeless person a home and it would all magically sort itself out? Most likely not. Homes need to be maintained, which cost money.
In order to "solve" homelessness, you need to give people the ability to fix their lives themselves. It reminds me a lot of the attempts to help africa back in the early 2000s when europe would send a lot of heavy machinery to africa to help them improve farming, but they couldn't properly maintain or use the machinery because they didn't have the technical knowledge or the machinery simply wasn't suitable, so they just left them to rust or dismantled them for parts and quick money. Instead, europe moved to an approach that would enable those people to help themselves by providing better education etc.
Just giving people free housing will not work unless you also come up with a plan to maintain said housing, which costs money, which has to be paid for. If you don't have a plan like that in place, you will probably create a highly criminal slum within a couple of months, if not weeks.
I dislike musk and most stock-market-billionaires as much as most people on here, but pretending we can just take all their wealth away and the entire world would be a beautiful place where everyone can live happy and it smells like butterscotch-pie everywhere is just an extremely immature take.
if you give everyone a home (in somewhere rural with no inspectors) and provide one way transit it will solve it for until the rural place stops being rural.
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?
Shelters are not housing. Shelters are routinely abusive to homeless people. It is not at all surprising that they would resist going there instead of being able to camp near services or jobs.
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.
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.
There are actually two separate homeless issues. The first is a lack of services for people who just need a little help getting back on their feet. In this case, temporary housing is a way to treat the issue.
But, the second homeless issue is way more complex. The chronically homeless aren't just people who are down on their luck. They're people with severe mental illness, drug addiction, or both. Some people straight up don't want to be part of society at all. For those people, throwing housing at them isn't going to be an end to their situation.
Housing homeless people won't end homelessness. You have to also invest heavily in mental health care and addiction counseling. You'd also have to commit thousands against their will.
The homelessness issue is multifaceted, and throwing housing at the problem won't end it.
The people I'm talking about are severely mentally ill. Many people choose not to take their meds (for good reason, antipsychotics have super shitty side effects), and many of those people choose to self medicate with drugs and alcohol. They still need help, but just providing housing won't solve the issue.
When the topic of homelessness is brought up, people forget that there's two types of homeless people. Those who just need some help to get back on their feet, and those who are chronically homeless because they literally can't participate in society without violating their rights.
I'm not saying they don't deserve help, quite the opposite. I'm saying that spending $30b on housing won't end an issue that's not based on housing costs or availability.
What does it matter about the exact dollar amount? The top 3 wealthiest people in the US could provide housing, sanitation and food for every single homeless person in the US and still be multi-billionaires. It doesn't matter if the cost of tackling homelessness is $20bn or $200bn, it's still a fact that a handful of people hoarde enough wealth that they could actually pay to house every single homeless person, and still have millions (if not billions) left over.
Yes, this is a trite example and doesn't address the systemic failures in healthcare and education that are a major factor in people becoming homeless. But the wealth the ultra-rich hoarde could help with that too.
What does it matter about the exact dollar amount?
If it's an amount that exceeds the means of the person you're complaining isn't paying for it, it's pretty relevant, don't you think?
The top 3 wealthiest people in the US could provide housing, sanitation and food for every single homeless person in the US and still be multi-billionaires.
This is literally false. The combined total net worth of the three richest in the US (~$800 billion) is less than the US government spends on welfare EVERY YEAR (over $1 TRILLION), lol.
Hell, even that nonsensical $20 billion figure put forth was ANNUAL, not one-time, so even IF we used that figure for the sake of argument, and even IF you could wave a magic wand and convert all of Musk's net worth straight into cash 1:1, it STILL would barely last 10 years. Then what?
You have no idea of the magnitude of the cost of solving this problem. Stop writing as if you know what you're talking about when you obviously don't.
You uhh aren't doing yourself any favors trying to compare the entirety of welfare to a fraction of what welfare does and yes an annual 20B is affordable on a national level. Elon's wealth jumped 170B just since November. He could absolutely afford 20B a year.
It's absolutely cash. It's cash when they want to use it, but not when we want to tax it or talk about using wealth differently in our country? Bullshit. It's cash.
And you might be surprised to find out politifact is in fact not the arbiter of reality.
That article goes into a lot of detail well beyond the original claim. Which is why it's a strawman argument. And Elon used his stocks to buy Twitter. It's cash.
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.
Even if that is true, does it somehow invalidate the fact that they are also homeless?! Are they less deserving to be out of the elements because they have an addiction?
That's what I find so disgusting about this statement. It's just an excuse and doesn't address anything at all.
Using his own "argument", it would seem to me that a path to less addiction and violence would involve having a place to live and sleep.
Lots of people feel this way about homelessness and addiction. It's very easy to dehumanized people. My cousin interrupted me, when I said something about it, and told me "when you have people shooting up outside your house, then you can complain". As if i couldnt have an opinion until i experience the issue that is homelessness, the war on drugs, and our failure to address mental health issues in this country with my very own eyes. She's a bit snooty, and she doesn't even realize it.
Nevermind that once you become homeless, it becomes much harder to dig yourself out of that hole (probably by design).
It’s such a self-centered point of view. They can’t even conceive of themselves ever being in a similar situation so they assume the person inconveniencing them must be fully to blame for their homelessness. Then they can ignore those degenerates without feeling guilty about it.
If you are homeless, it’s because supply side Jesus doesn’t love you, obviously
Yeah wonder what could drive someone to addiction and desperation? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm couldn't be not having a stable food supply and a place to live?
Yeah the whole correlation causation thing is going to be very mixed up here. Like lets look at it another way:
Oh no I become disabled > Can’t work anymore shit I got no money > Try to apply for disability benefits oh fuck its a million forms and I need a lawyer oh fuck I’m broke > Crash at friends to apply for disability, first try fails after 1 year (this is pretty standard usually takes 2-3 trys), oh fuck friend kicks me out > go to homeless camp struggling to feed yourself, no time to think about applying for benefits anymore > The pain is too much I don’t have my medicine anymore its fucking freezing oh shit that guys selling drugs > get addicted
Boom, you’re homeless and addicted. That story could happen to literally anyone without generational wealth and an exceptionally strong support network.
That's not what's being said. He is criticizing the fact that so many people assume that 'just give them a place to live' is the solution, when it's much, much more complicated than that. In that way, "homeless" is very reductive, and masks those other issues, in favor of making it look like it's a simple problem with a simple solution.
Very few long-term homeless people are homeless simply because they can't afford a place to live.
So we shouldn't house them unless and until we figure out all of the complex issues? They're not going to benefit any at all, or have any possibility of getting on their feet, until we have a perfect solution?
That's what's being said there: homelessness is not something we should do anything about, because of reasons. So let's do nothing.
That's a fucking cop out.
No, Cathy, that's not what was said.
The fact of the matter is that we know what happens when we provide shelter without anything else. It doesn't last and you're right back where you started before you know it. After all, it's that stuff that is the reason they became homeless in the first place.
If you don't address the other stuff, 'just give them a house lol' literally doesn't work long-term. That's the reality.
Actually it is pretty darn successful when enough housing is provided.
Housing is the first step to being able to address those issues. Yes, the issues need to be addressed for long term success, but trying to address the issues while they are homeless is not successful. Too much emphasis is put on requiring the treatment as conditional for the housing.
I think you've misunderstood my position, based specifically on something I'll quote later in this comment.
Somewhat ironic that the juxtaposition in the article is between an area of California and Texas, with the latter arguably taking the more progressive approach.
For the record, I never believed in or advocated for this approach. I pushed back against specifically the implication that you can just throw these people into some sort of housing and now you can consider the problem "solved" and wipe your hands of it.
I definitely agree that the path to a long-term solution is taking that multi-faceted approach that tackles those root causes simultaneously. None of them should be conditional upon the others, and I believe that each one of them improving empowers the individual to be more capable of improving all the others. It's much more efficient than trying to 100% solve one thing, and ignoring everything else until that one thing is completely eradicated, not only on efficacy, but in resources required.
Nobody ever said that. They have said that it should not be a requirement to provide housing.
From the OP:
"It would cost $20 billion to end homelessness in America."
This $20 billion figure comes from an old estimate of what it'd cost to pay for homeless people's rent, and nothing more. And that person effectively said that paying for that, and nothing more, would "end homelessness."
So yes, somebody said that.
Cathy?
I see that you're not interested in actual discourse and instead are just looking to be petty.
So I'll assume you're also not arguing in good faith either, so I'll just add some downvotes and move on.
You did a pretty good impression of her with the "so you're saying" followed by something not even close to what I was saying, so I called a spade a spade. If you don't like it, try arguing in good faith and honestly instead of strawmanning.
Projection.
Ah, the "NO U" gambit
One of us wrote an entire comment that contained nothing but a lie and personal attack, and it wasn't me.
Edit: Facts make y'all real mad, lol.
If you were to provide housing only, nothing else, youd still pull out a significant portion of homeless people.
Of course, little to no one is advocating for housing only. These people often lack a solid support system and mental counseling.
Lastly, there will be a portion that cannot be fixed, that might remain broken but honestly? A lot of complete broken people have housing and the sole reason for them not being burned alive or bullied is that they have enough money to not sleep in the streets.
Homelessness encompasses far more than rough sleeping. I agree that there are issues that many homeless people may face that wouldn't be resolved just by giving them a roof over their head. But it'd be a great start. And don't forget, a lot of homelessness is people and families in temporary or crisis housing, or couch surfing with friends and family, because they can't afford a place of their own.
I wouldn't say this contradicts anything I said, really. I don't disagree with any of this.
I bristled specifically at the ridiculously glib and reductive "solve homelessness" line. People love to think issues like these are things that have simple obvious solutions that no one thought of before their enlightenment came along and deigned to bless the rest of us.
I mean yeah, it's a glib portrayal but I don't think it's wrong to present it this way. It's a fact that a few of America's most wealthy have enough money to house every homeless person in the US, with enough to spare to keep themselves in megayachts and luxury Texan compounds. It drives home the massive wealth inequality.
It also really isn't infeasible to build enough homes to house all the homeless in the US within one or two years. It's not infeasible to spend that same amount of time setting up universal basic income and healthcare. Those three things are achievable and would make a positive, life-long difference to the majority of people experiencing homelessness.
And there are a handful of people in the US whose combined personal wealth could easily fund all that.
If they have enough to do that, then the government certainly already has enough to accomplish this, no? Even the wealthiest person on the planet's total net worth is nothing compared to what is already spent every single year by the US government.
I thought it was commonly said that there were more empty houses in the country than there are homeless people, already?
If you're talking about something that goes only to homeless people, then it's not "universal". If you're now talking about true UBI, I just don't see how it can be realistically afforded.
Back of the napkin math, a measly $10,000 to every working-age adult in the US amounts to an annual bill of over $2 trillion each year. We have no realistic way of paying for that--even if you squeezed all the billionaires completely dry, it'd only pay for it for a couple of years. And that's just $10,000.
It just doesn't seem feasible until/unless we are literally post-scarcity, from the raw numbers. And that's assuming it doesn't replace any of the welfare systems already in place--if it would, then it really wouldn't lift anyone out of anything long-term.
It's honestly very difficult to believe this, knowing all the trillions upon trillions of dollars the government has already spent over the years on issues like these, without them being 'solved'.
Giving them a house is the shortest route to address all the other problems. But no, let's a Neo-Nazi junkie address the issue of deviance.
I cannot explain how disgustingly evil it is to witness the suffering of individuals, whether due to substance abuse, illness, or homelessness, and dismiss it as untruthful.
The numbers to fix homelessness may be controversial, with some sites saying it was 20 billion in 2010 and that's just to provide vouchers for a year, and some fact checking sites saying it can cost $60 billion in a year.
The primary concern is the actions of a South African billionaire, whose net worth is $350 billion. Instead of recognizing the complexities of a significant social issue, he appears to dehumanize those affected and assigns blame, rather than offering assistance.
What a fucking evil take.
Those numbers all take into account existing housing assistance programs, which are used by mostly non-homeless people.
There are 250k homeless people in the US. For $20B, you could spend $80k per each person. Since many of the homeless are families, that's enough to buy a small house for each family.
But you still have to keep paying into the existing programs, or more people will become homeless. Compared to a quarter million homeless people, there are 4.5M households using the existing programs.
80k per person gets them a small house? It'd be more than one family to a house and for people without families it would be overcrowded atleast in my area.
While the word is “homeless” the problem is generally not just “lacking a home”. It usually stems from things like inability to work due to severe disability or psychiatric illness, unofficial immigrants struggling to find employment, addiction, abandonment from family, not enough money to retire but unable to work etc.
Like don’t get me wrong giving everyone a home is great. But it won’t magically solve all the problems. And they might not be able to afford maintinance, property tax etc. Also if it’s homelessness due to lack of employment I question whether the 80k home will be anywhere useful for someone to find a job they qualify for, and if it will have any transportation links or anything
Aside from the fact that having a safe place to live alone helps both mental illness and substance abuse in most individuals, a major cause of homelessness is domestic abuse and being disowned. Having a safe place to live will absolutely help the over a third of domestic abuse victims who become homeless, and would help those who cannot afford to get away from their abusers due to lack of ability to find a safe haven.
Home the homeless, then we can start working on the harder parts.
A huge portion of the homeless population are orphans who age out of the system.
That too. There are so many reasons for homing the homeless first.
It's probably the cheapest and most effective first step. There's so much more that will need to follow it. There's a lot going on. But home the homeless first.
The entire system requires homeless people to exist as a threat to the working class.
Homeless will never get fixed for this reasons.
We can't even provide decent health care to the paying customers lol
It's why they absolutely need to fix it.
What happens when being homeless is more common than not?
Uh oh, Luigi time!
The entire system would collapse at that point. But that's the end state of Capitalism. Eventually just one ends up with all the wealth.
They want to see how far we can push it.
Look how much they're scrambling over the death of just one of them.
The idea that there are more of us than there are of them already terrifies them. They know they're not immortal, they know they're not divinely ordained, and they sure as hell know that they're just people with money.
GOOD.
Fucking dumbass. 25% of them are kids. Dude is a fucking loser.
As a broad statement it's dumb, but depending on the city addiction can be a major contribution to the cycle of "homelessness", especially the more visible populations who have reached peak "fuck it" and have no more cares for societal values or laws.. Even if 25% of them are kids, yeah some of those may be hooked on drugs at an early age or be affected by parental/guardian drug abuse.
But ok then... he's still a billionaire who could definitely spare a good portion of his wealth to improve both situations (homelessness and addiction) but would rather just leverage it to make more and more wealth while pushing policies that actually make life for the average person worse.
At the same time, homelessness and addiction are very much NOT just a throw-money-at-it problem and fucking both would require systemic change over time.
For Elon socially, how much of his wealth is liquid enough to make a difference I don't know, but I haven't really heard of him doing ANYTHING particularly altruistic with his money and Id say the changes/logistics required to make this world a better place are probably still a lot more feasible than building a colony on fucking Mars....
He bought and tanked twitter for more than that. I'd say his wealth is more than liquid enough
Bought and tanked Twitter and totally wasn't funded by people who wanted to see it dead.
Pretty sure that move made him more money than it cost him.
Facebook (and other "Meta" subsidiaries) censored, reddit censored, TikTok on the chopping block...seems like an effective way around the First Amendment, just hijack social media.
Ketamine pot, calling the mentally ill kettle black.
The word “homeless” (without a home) literally as descriptive and neutral as possible. Elon Musk: Propaganda
I was homeless for 6 years because billionaires fucked with America's housing market. I'm not even American.
I was 15 years old when that happened. My teenage years got robbed by billionaires.
There's full time employees that are homeless. Go out to a bridge, find a homeless person, ask how many homeless people they know that are working 40hrs a week. An alarming number. Looking forward to the violent end to elon musk. His violent games, have very violent ends.
Wait, I can't tell, is Elon talking about himself?
By his own definition, he is homeless, yeah.
The guy who is so addicted with twitter engagement boostingbhis ego he bought it for himself just to go full fascist. Is calling homeless people addicts lol.
Zero is also the amount of mental health therapy Musk probably had, unfortunately.
Funny because elon is a drug addict who's showing he has some affective disorder because his daddy didn't love him and is a malignant narcissist.
In short, yes.
See this graph: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-stock-spacex-valuation-xai-neuralink-trump-charts-2024-12
I wonder if they use drugs to cope with the mental illness they got from being forced to live on the streets?
Naw, that's pseudoscience. We all know that it's proven that poverty is a character trait that you actively choose. Not rich? Obviously you don't want it hard enough. /s
Completely ignoring that addiction is an illness.
Doesn't matter. We have the resources available to house, feed, educate, provide health care, and community for every American but don't out of greed. The US won't survive unless we mobilize every American to achieve their best self.
There is also a cynical neoliberal argument that one could make. By helping those homeless people, they are reintroduced to the economy. They will produce value, consume products, and not dedicate on the sidewalk. In other words it's a good investment.
I agree with you all the way. However, this is a very good talking point if you're dealing with someone who doesn't care about human decency or empathy
And yet people like that do. Every single day. People like that are the dominant political force in this country.
I hate that I'd even have to entertain that as a reason, or spew it at those who just won't care about any other argument.
Yeah it gives me the ick too. But it's a very good talking point to someone who cares more about shareholder value than human life.
So-called genius can't fathom that in many cases the mental illness and drug addiction came from the homelessness.
Homeless folks are generally no more violent than homed folks. Drug addiction and mental illness or not.
About a year ago a homeless woman had a miscarriage in my city and a couple local media outlets jumped on it, reporting that 'police had found a dead fetus in an encampment'. Ya know, after she called 911 because she had a miscarriage. Really helped solidify my belief that a lot of people would rather just stigmatize them than do anything else
We were supposed to take care of these people after de-institutionalization. We didn't.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/special/excerpt.html
We broke the promise and now it is their fault. What a bizarre world we live in.
Republican playbook. Cheat, be an asshole and don't ever care for anyone else than yourself. Classy and on Brand
I know someone with moderate substance abuse issues and diagnosed severe mental illness - basically as bad as it gets if left untreated. But she also lives independently and holds down a solid middle class desk job. How? She has rich parents who pay for treatment (individualized psychiatry) and care (housekeeping mostly), as well as an array of friends who help oversee her.
Homelessness is not necessary, even in the most desperate cases. It's just a question of what we're willing to pay and how much we're willing to care.
pretty sure you can't end homelessness with $20b unless we're talking about absolute homelessness or something..
That could be the cost to house people who are otherwise unhoused, aka “homeless”
The math is straightforward: Cost of a housing unit * number of unhoused people. Even assuming the extraordinarily inflated market rate for housing in 2024, $20B is more than enough to house 650k people.
Now, will the institutional actors that produced homelessness stop existing? Will we see an end to predatory lenders, robo-signed foreclosures, police harassment and civil asset forfeiture of the working poor, and unregulated real estate scammers targeting our most vulnerable neighbors? Probably not.
But we wouldn't have so many billionaires running about squandering our national wealth on vanity projects like Twitter without billions to be fleeced from the public to begin with.
I got curious, so I whipped out my phone's calculator. $20B/650k = $30,800, give or take. I truly don't know if that's enough to break the cycle of homelessness, but if it is that seems like a pretty low number. We spend 40x that number on the defense budget, which is totally a jobs program but it seems like fighting homelessness would also ultimately be a jobs program.
I have anxiety and likely some deep seated depression that would rise up with a vengeance if I didn't have a warm home and access to food. I also love drinking wine, and while I do have access to said home and fridge, this wine hobby is cute and socially acceptable.
Make me homeless and I'd very much represent a mentally ill substance abusing human like Elmo is describing there. They're not 'them'; they're just us in a different reality.
If Elon suddenly became "homeless" he would have a sign begging for ketamine & screaming "put I never went to therapy on my tombstone".
YES. Anyone reposting Kyle's daily eviscerations on Lemmy is fine by me. Kyle's consistency through my years of watching Secular Talk has always been admirable, especially in this age of soulless online grifters
Somehow I actually yearn for the days of robber barons. At least they found socially productive ways to build monuments to their own vanity. If Musk wants to spend $20 billion to build social housing in cities across the US, I'm not going to complain if he slaps his name on the buildings. At least Carnegie built libraries.
It's because the modern day wealth disparity has no equivalent in human history, at least to my knowledge. Maybe slavery - but they were at least valuable enough to shelter and feed.
Elon Musk shows in this just how much worse he is than robber barons.
Who pays for these libraries now?
These owners also build idiotic mansions then taxpayer has to figure how to maintain them.
These are not a win for working class.
I came to say something like this. wow that is it to have the musk centers for american dignity or something.
Fuck Elon, but also there's absolutely zero chance you can solve homelessness with $20b unless you're just building tent cities with no other resources available there.
That assumtion is an annual cost. Although doing it for one year only would still probably reduce the homeless numbers considerably.
https://www.sciotoanalysis.com/news/2024/1/16/what-would-it-cost-to-end-homelessness-in-america
20 billion could house and feed our entire homeless population for twenty years. While that would not solve the problem, it would drastically improve their lives.
I don't really believe that. It cost us $10 billion just to provide free lunches to kids for a year during covid. I think we should spend that every year. But the cost of housing is much higher unless you're planning housing with no HVAC or energy costs. Even if that number were theoretically real, it clearly isn't accounting for inflation, or the potential increase in homeless population when they start providing free housing.
You don't have to believe it, good lord!
650,000 homeless people times one thousand in rent for twenty years.
650000 x $1,000 x 20 years = $13 billion. That leaves enough left over to also feed them for 20 years as well
Do you believe it now!? Don't answer that, because it is clear you have a serious case of learned helplessness.
Edit:
650,000 x 12 x $1,000 x 2.5 years of rent with no food. Buuuut Elon gained 50 billion so that would be over 5 years with food. He could house every homeless person and feed them with the money he made since the election.
Wouldn't that be $1k a month minimum? Even if you could find housing at that price where most destitute people are located... that's $7.8 Billion a year.
Yeah your right. That would only pay for almost three years. Honestly though $1000 may be a bit high for a room, but perhaps not an actual house depending on the area.
Yeah that was not right
Putting aside your confusion on monthly versus annual rent, the pricing you are thinking of has baked in the assumption that the homeless are not participating. Every value is based on supply and demand, and there's no such thing as a true objective numerical value for "a month of rent". If hypothetically you have housing for a 1,000 but 1,500 people to house, then the rent is going to go up so long as 1,000 can afford what's available, and 500 would be left out.
Of course with more incentive, construction can happen, but just saying it's not that simple.
See also cost of college. Well intended measures to make financing available to everyone caused massive cost increases in universities. Any measure to try to secure these resources for everyone requires more than just throwing cash at the problem.
Yeah my math was way off.
Putting people in tents is just ridiculous. You need to get that thought far out of your mind.
No need for construction though as there are already more empty homes than homeless by a large margin.
I would wonder about the distribution of available housing stock. If you can place every homeless person, but to do so you tell them they have to move 80 miles to the empty house you find for them, that is likely not going to work.
Also, they likely need more than just a roof over their heads to have a safe, healthy life. There's a high likelihood of that housing stock being mismatched with the capacity to provide those services.
I mean...you could really build rather modest dormitories outside of cities for not much money. Throw free bus rides into and out of the city (where jobs and social resources are) at it, and you've got not a solution, but a pretty damn good bandage to help people and families get (back) on their feet.
Hell, rent them on a sliding scale if so inclined. But the scale has to be $0 up until a decent income, like at least the first quintile.
Where's the mental health care then? Oh, slashed to ribbons by the department of government "efficiency". Fancy that.
It never exist in the US... There is nothing to slash.
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.
Elmo Husk. A puppet and a shell of a man.
“Worth” = “cash”
How would they end homelessness with 20b? I doubt that's even remotely true
I don't think we'll ever really end homelessness, but we could absolutely get close if the money we spend on all these piecemeal measures was put to better use. No idea what the total spent is (probably more than that) but we're basically dumping tons of money into half measures that only really help a handful of people. Supportive housing works for a much larger percentage of people experiencing homelessness, but no one wants to fund it because they hate the idea of giving someone housing without requiring something of them first. If Americans could get past the attitude of, "if I had to suffer, so should everyone else," we'd all be a lot better off.
https://www.globalgiving.org/learn/how-much-would-it-cost-to-end-homelessness-in-america/
I may have missed it when I was skimming the article, but I didn't see any stats to back up the $20b figure. They threw out a lot of stats on homelessness, but not a plan to end homelessness on a $20b budget.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/aug/27/facebook-posts/no-consensus-cost-ending-homelessness-us-or-haltin/
Just buy every homeless person a sandwich, duh.
Oh, sorry, i thought we were talking about ending world hunger.
It is in fact not remotely true. You're being downvoted by gullible fools who will believe anything that helps keep their rage boner going, no matter how ridiculous.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/aug/27/facebook-posts/no-consensus-cost-ending-homelessness-us-or-haltin/
Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.
The point of the tweet is to show the egregious "take" of Elon Musk has while leeching on society and being a raging drug abuser himself while being a nazi-loving piece of shit that got rich off of daddy's apartheid emeralds on top of that. Doesn't matter if it costed $20bn or $200bn, Musk still has more.
I'm not saying Kyle was necessarily lying about the dollar value, but you can make that point without using a number people will call bullshit on. It would probably be a better too. Also, if people used his post as the start of a discussion of homelessness I'm sure Kyle would have achieved his goal.
It costs more than he has, so yes, it does matter. Even the bogus $20b figure was an ANNUAL figure, not one-time.
You have no sense of perspective of the monumental costs of solving problems like these. It is far beyond the means of even the wealthiest individual on the planet.
Did you know the US spends over $1 trillion (with a T) every year on welfare programs? And that's without 'solving' anything, just trying to treat symptoms.
Get a clue.
When they say that, the word "welfare" does not mean cash assistance to individuals based on means-tested criteria, it means "public welfare programs." In fact, 80% of that "$1 T" is Medicaid. https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/public-welfare-expenditures
Don't muddy his strong opinion with facts, please.
Being poor demands paying interest, who would have thought. According to the report to congress, 3.6% of citizens receive more than half of their income through welfare. The US has about 340 million citizens, so that's about 12.5million. If you distributed 200bn of Musk's wealth among them, that'd be 16k for each one. Pretty sure that would save more money than blowing trillions each year.
I think you are confused how much 20 billion is. That could pay rent for our entire homeless population and feed them for 20 years. I would agree this may not actually solve the problem but housing first is a proven effective strategy.
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".
I feel like that's pedantry on whether the definition of "end homelessness" means, 0 homeless forever vs, homelessness is a small, manageable problem again.
And if say, half of that 20 billion were put in a perpetual trust it could give a perpetual budget of 100s of millions of dollars to fund maintenance and social work staff to continue to better manage the problem.
Possibly, but the text already specifically says "in America". I feel like if you add qualifiers like that, you have already partitioned the problem as far down as you intended.
I guess but then you have to stop expanding what they mean by the solution. You're not partitioning the statement of the problem any further but you're seemingly appending "forever" to the end of the solution as well as other problems that go along with homelessness. $30,000 each is enough to get every currently homeless person in the US some form of legal shelter, by definition ending homelessness in the US, however briefly.
Also true, but only if you can locate every single homeless person in the country. Though I'm not sure I would consider "legal shelter" a high enough bar to consider homelessness solved for that person, even for a short duration. At minimum, I think it would require them to have control of some sort of "permanent" residence, such as a month to month rental. Not simply space at a shelter.
He isn't a moron, he's just a narcissistic sociopath. Musk is no different than you at the yolk of a WWII bomber. He has no idea what he's doing.
But in his element, he's dangerous and does very well know what he's doing.
Musk doesn't care about the homeless. He cares about their labor and how much he and his buddies can get it for free. If being homeless and sleeping in your car is suddenly illegal nationwide, then many of us will be forced into rents we don't want to pay or end up in Musk's labor camp with the rest of their undesirables.
It was never about helping anyone.
You're a moron if you don't think $20,000,000,000.00 wouldn't raise millions of people out of homelessness and poverty.
Sure it would help significantly. It would most likely be the most successful initiative in human history. But it won't "end homelessness".
How would you know ?
My wife is a tenured professor of macro social work for a major university, specializing in underserved populations. She studies these things.
Homelessnes is not a problem you can solve with any amount of money.
Buying everyone a home wouldn't end homelessness? Weird.
There are some people who that wouldn't help, therefore we shouldn't help anybody.
Ironically, no, it wouldn't. At least not longterm. I know many people on lemmy don't want to hear that because capitalism bad or something, but it's the reality. Do you unironically think you can just give every homeless person a home and it would all magically sort itself out? Most likely not. Homes need to be maintained, which cost money.
In order to "solve" homelessness, you need to give people the ability to fix their lives themselves. It reminds me a lot of the attempts to help africa back in the early 2000s when europe would send a lot of heavy machinery to africa to help them improve farming, but they couldn't properly maintain or use the machinery because they didn't have the technical knowledge or the machinery simply wasn't suitable, so they just left them to rust or dismantled them for parts and quick money. Instead, europe moved to an approach that would enable those people to help themselves by providing better education etc.
Just giving people free housing will not work unless you also come up with a plan to maintain said housing, which costs money, which has to be paid for. If you don't have a plan like that in place, you will probably create a highly criminal slum within a couple of months, if not weeks.
I dislike musk and most stock-market-billionaires as much as most people on here, but pretending we can just take all their wealth away and the entire world would be a beautiful place where everyone can live happy and it smells like butterscotch-pie everywhere is just an extremely immature take.
So pay for maintenance? That is an amount of money.
And where do you suggest we take that metric fuckton of money from?
I believe the post suggests the modern robber barons. But I wasn't suggesting a strategy.
That's the problem. You can't just say "Pay for X!" without having at least some kind of plan.
Trying to pull money off billionaires the entire time is not sustainable.I
if you give everyone a home (in somewhere rural with no inspectors) and provide one way transit it will solve it for until the rural place stops being rural.
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?
Shelters are not housing. Shelters are routinely abusive to homeless people. It is not at all surprising that they would resist going there instead of being able to camp near services or jobs.
The sort of housing the government is willing to provide.
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.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
There are actually two separate homeless issues. The first is a lack of services for people who just need a little help getting back on their feet. In this case, temporary housing is a way to treat the issue.
But, the second homeless issue is way more complex. The chronically homeless aren't just people who are down on their luck. They're people with severe mental illness, drug addiction, or both. Some people straight up don't want to be part of society at all. For those people, throwing housing at them isn't going to be an end to their situation.
It would cost significantly more than $20b to end homelessness in the US.
Housing homeless people won't end homelessness. You have to also invest heavily in mental health care and addiction counseling. You'd also have to commit thousands against their will.
The homelessness issue is multifaceted, and throwing housing at the problem won't end it.
I meant they would need to be committed to a mental health facility and forced to take meds their entire lives.
Or you could just offer them help rather than force them. Nobody should be forced to be anyones prisoner when they haven't committed any crime.
The people I'm talking about are severely mentally ill. Many people choose not to take their meds (for good reason, antipsychotics have super shitty side effects), and many of those people choose to self medicate with drugs and alcohol. They still need help, but just providing housing won't solve the issue.
When the topic of homelessness is brought up, people forget that there's two types of homeless people. Those who just need some help to get back on their feet, and those who are chronically homeless because they literally can't participate in society without violating their rights.
I'm not saying they don't deserve help, quite the opposite. I'm saying that spending $30b on housing won't end an issue that's not based on housing costs or availability.
Bullshit. Hope you guys don't seriously believe this.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/aug/27/facebook-posts/no-consensus-cost-ending-homelessness-us-or-haltin/
Edit: it really underscores the mentality of the community when a straightforward debunking of a false statement has a negative score, lol.
What does it matter about the exact dollar amount? The top 3 wealthiest people in the US could provide housing, sanitation and food for every single homeless person in the US and still be multi-billionaires. It doesn't matter if the cost of tackling homelessness is $20bn or $200bn, it's still a fact that a handful of people hoarde enough wealth that they could actually pay to house every single homeless person, and still have millions (if not billions) left over.
Yes, this is a trite example and doesn't address the systemic failures in healthcare and education that are a major factor in people becoming homeless. But the wealth the ultra-rich hoarde could help with that too.
If it's an amount that exceeds the means of the person you're complaining isn't paying for it, it's pretty relevant, don't you think?
This is literally false. The combined total net worth of the three richest in the US (~$800 billion) is less than the US government spends on welfare EVERY YEAR (over $1 TRILLION), lol.
Hell, even that nonsensical $20 billion figure put forth was ANNUAL, not one-time, so even IF we used that figure for the sake of argument, and even IF you could wave a magic wand and convert all of Musk's net worth straight into cash 1:1, it STILL would barely last 10 years. Then what?
You have no idea of the magnitude of the cost of solving this problem. Stop writing as if you know what you're talking about when you obviously don't.
You uhh aren't doing yourself any favors trying to compare the entirety of welfare to a fraction of what welfare does and yes an annual 20B is affordable on a national level. Elon's wealth jumped 170B just since November. He could absolutely afford 20B a year.
You uhh aren't doing yourself any favors taking that already-debunked 20B figure seriously.
And a couple of years ago, it shrank by $182 billion.
Stop treating net worth like it's an amount of cash. It isn't.
It is literally equivalent amount of cash lol
It is not annual income, but it would support a decade of expenditure for 10 years though, ie enough time to solve the issue.
One billionaire is a price most of are willing to pay too lol
Cash can't increase or decrease in quantity without any transaction having happened.
It's absolutely cash. It's cash when they want to use it, but not when we want to tax it or talk about using wealth differently in our country? Bullshit. It's cash.
And you might be surprised to find out politifact is in fact not the arbiter of reality.
When you sell a possession, you can obtain cash in exchange for it. It's not cash until then--up to that point, it's only a price tag, a valuation.
And taking out a loan using a possession of yours as collateral isn't income at all. Loans are not income--you need to pay loans back.
Until it debunks a claim made by the Other Team, right? That article goes into a lot of detail about how and why the claim is wrong/misleading.
That article goes into a lot of detail well beyond the original claim. Which is why it's a strawman argument. And Elon used his stocks to buy Twitter. It's cash.
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.
We could build social housing to cover the lower end of sector!
It ain't never gonna happen but that's purely ruling class decision.
Lemmy dogpiles ad nauseum.