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Comment by jpdoherty | Hacker News Reader

You're right that homelessness is a complex problem. However, taking steps to protect lives (or even just improve comfort) isn't papering over the problem. I think taking tiny steps toward a solution, even limited in scope, is still a very helpful thing to do.

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Homelessness is an incredibly simple problem with an incredibly simple solution: build more housing. Since this is not a step in that direction, it does not seem like a "step forward" to me. If anything, all these "occupods" do is widen the social divide between homeless and housed people..... While poisoning the homeless with chemicals from the wood pallets. LMAO at this misguided attempt to do good that actually does harm.

Build more of that good ol' free housing that capitalism loves to provide?

No just build more housing in general

The studies have been done bro, there is only one solution and I just described it

Also we don't actually live in a capitalist system, health care and housing are already socialist in many many ways. It would be easy to pass govt regulations making it easier to build housing. Capitalism is not the problem because we don't actually live in a fully capitalist society dude.

I'm not sure which studies have you so convinced that one overly simplistic thing can "solve" homelessness. This paper from 1991 does a great job of laying out the dozens of different factors which make homelessness such a complex and challenging issue to address: https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

A lack of affordable housing compounds the challenge, but to say housing is the only solution when it isn't even a good partial solution misses the entire problem.

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