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Comment by seastonATccs | Hacker News Reader

In the US the state of Utah decided that the cure for homelessness is housing homeless people. They stop asking if the person was worthy or will be responsible and just started to house them. Turns out that the vast majority of homeless, mental health issues or not, prefer to live in a safe environment.

“In terms of preventing homelessness, it’s pretty straightforward. It’s housing.” Preston Cochrane, former executive director of Shelter the Homeless.

There are still homeless in Utah, but the government priority is House them first then figure out why they became homeless after.

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This is phenomenal and I love it.

I read about a few places doing it, but never any discussion on the following: are the houses well looked-after? And in particular, do they last?

Stereotypes and needs aside, isn't this a common issue with e.g. social housing? I guess perhaps because people who need this kind of help often have severe mental issues alongside.

I'm wondering about the sustainability of such approaches, rather than any kind of 'worthy/not worthy' arguments.

Also, how does one avoid creating ghettos? This is already an issue with low cost / subsidised housing, this sounds related.

They should be solid houses, yes. They aren't always, obviously, but that's the goal.

The term of art for this is permanent supportive housing, which is handy if you want to look for more research and documentation. Seattle currently has 1,900 units (building more this year) and we have a 99%+ success rate at keeping people from re-entering homelessness. Our homeless problem is still awful, but that's because a) pandemic and b) we've been hanging around 10,000 people living on the streets, so the units are a pretty small percentage of what we need.

We're not putting all our housing in one place, which alleviates the stigma problem. There is not a ton of research on the effect supportive housing has on the crime rate nearby, but the research we do have suggests that it's a relatively minor problem that can be solved:

https://www.huduser.gov/publications/pdf/support_1.pdf (Denver, PDF) https://furmancenter.org/research/publication/the-impact-of-... (NYC)

Yeah, I wish this was the norm nation-wide. There’s a homeless crisis in my city (as in many cities) and too many people think the solution is to harass them into leaving or to jail them. Counterproductive and morally reprehensible. There seems to be a premise in Puritan America that punishing people is more important than solving problems.

If I’m not mistaken, studies have shown this to be a quite effective way to help people out of homelessness.

I'm surprised no one has chimed in yet with "But it's not fair, I work hard to keep a roof on top of my head, but these people get it for free!!?!"...

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