This is just provably false. Utah solved it's homelessness problem by just giving people homes. And it was pretty effective.
Utah is not an example that proves anything. It's a fairly unusual area when talking about this problem. Utah's entire population is less than Los Angeles.
The claim that 91% of Utah's homeless population was abated is somewhat suspicious, given the remaining 14k would mean they had a previous 155k+ - which outstrips the homeless count of most major cities (including Los Angeles). This is not as cut an dry as "make more housing" because that isn't demonstrated. Certainly not with numbers that are all over the place.
Why can't the Utah success be replicated elsewhere? There are no religion-specific aspects to the Utah plan.
Are you implying that atheists are incapable of compassion, generosity, or the need to help their fellow man?
From what I gather, the Mormon church has a very complex and well developed infrastructure for deciding who gets help, what kind of help they get, etc. This seems unlikely to be readily and easily replicable without the Mormon church. It has nothing to do with whether or not one believes in god. It has to do with social infrastructure.
A government agency could eventually build the social infrastructure (though they might make a mess of it). But building the consensus that we're going to solve this problem, even if it costs us a lot is... difficult. As you said, probably not reproduceable elsewhere.
I'm a non-Mormon living in Utah. I don't praise the Mormon Church very often. But on this I think they have done well, to have the desire and willpower to address the issue.
Though, to my mind, the willpower and desire is part and parcel of what I am talking about when I say social infrastructure. That sense of community and social responsibility etc is something we tend to see closely tied to religious groups and tend to not see to that degree for, say, government run social programs.
*former Latter-day Saint
>used to cut the welfare checks under congregational leadership
You mean, send people to the storehouse as part of the Bishopric? It's pretty rare for people to be given money. Food from the storehouses yes, work through Church-owned companies and help via job placement services yes.
At least around here, maybe it's different in SLC.
"Who can help bro/sis so and so" or in EQ "So and so is looking for part-time work if you know of any place" and being sent to the storehouse for food. A friend was told no financial assistance and that she should consider subletting one of the rooms in the house she rented, even though there were 3 bedrooms for her and 5 kids and then 'coincidentally' within a week after that she had family services in her house saying she had x days to get a functional refrigerator before her children would be taken (apparently that's a thing). People here will ask for help on the private FB group for the ward when they do occasionally need it.
I imagine you see more instances because you probably have a considerably larger ward. We don't even set up overflow most weeks and I'm fairly certain in 13 years I've had to share a pew less than 5 times for sacrament and even at tri-stake mid-singles firesides we have tons of empty pew space.
With regards to referring to the Mormon church as Mormon: I will use the common reference standard as it will likely be returned to in a few years. The whole recent re-labeling is useful internally but not my business externally.[0] Not my rodeo, not my clowns.
[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/08/17/us/m...
You can’t afford to live in San Francisco on a teacher’s salary. If it were possible for all homeless people to get housing in San Francisco, does that apply for all teachers, too? For everybody making minimum wage? There just isn’t enough housing in San Francisco to provide it to everyone with a low-paying job in the area, regardless of how it is paid for, regardless of whether you overthrow capitalism and institute an all wise dictator.
Either we need to build lots more housing in San Francisco, or house the homeless somewhere else, or accept a permanent homeless underclass in San Francisco.
Utah doesn't have a climate suited to living on the streets. When you're averaging just shy of 4 feet of snow a year and 3-4 months of freezing temps it's a lot different than say Seattle or San Francisco where the average low is above freezing all year.