No, it really doesn't. My argument boils down to "poisoned/expired milk is never worth it, even if it would help reduce the price of milk".
> I spent nearly six years homeless. I got off the street by moving into an SRO.
I'm glad you found something that's better than nothing. I totally get how an SRO helped you out, and that you want to maintain that step for others. That's a good and admirable thing. But this is not an argument for SROs. It's an argument for more real apartments.
If you had not managed to land an SRO, but had instead found a coleman tent, and it had helped you out, should we provide free camping tents to the homeless? That's not a solution, it's a band-aid. SROs are obviously much much nicer than this, but ultimately are just a much nicer band-aid.
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We don't need to create "shittier" housing to get homeless people off the street. We don't need to revert back to tenements. The solution to homelessness is housing -- real housing -- the kind that meets all relevant local regulations. We can do this just as easily as SROs, for nearly the same price, there's zero reason not to build real housing for everyone. Including those with low income. Including those with no income.
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If your complaint is that no one is doing this housing (or not doing it properly), then I agree with you 100%. I personally believe housing is a fundamental human right, and that the government should be compelled to provide free housing to all citizens, automatically, by right of law. It should be systematically impossible for any citizen to ever be "homeless". (In the same way that's systematically impossible for a child to be "uneducated", since a public K-12 education is guaranteed for free to all citizens. In the same way that it's systemically impossible for almost any citizen to be "emergency-less", anyone can call 911 almost anywhere in the US, and be automatically connected to local emergency services, even if their cell phone isn't paid up, even if their provider is roaming, even if they borrowed it from a friend, even if they have no income at all, and so on)