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Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

That’s not why they are homeless.

"A chronically homeless person costs the tax payer an average of $35,578 per year. Costs on average are reduced by 49.5% when they are placed in supportive housing. Supportive housing costs on average $12,800, making the net savings roughly $4,800 per year."

This has been known for a long time. It costs the public less to provide direct federal and state-financed housing for the homeless than to keep them on the streets. Finland and many other countries do this and they have the happiest people in the world. States like Utah have also implemented successful programs based on this model. The question isn't what do we do, it's why aren't we doing what we know works.

People don't become homeless because they run out of resources, they become homeless because they run out of relationships.

What you're proposing is me, in another state, city, neighborhood, paying for your states issue(s). My neighborhood, state and city has no homeless issue. In part because we have functioning churches, family units, etc

In SF, a portion choose to be homeless (have you ever asked them? I have). Many couldn't handle or don't want to handle the public housing (which SF has) requirements.

> Finland and many other countries do this and they have the happiest people in the world.

Finally, some facts -- they are "happy" because they have a functioning, nationalistic and proud culture. Aka their society works. This keeps people from being homeless, lowers drug abuse rates, etc

- 83% of the country has a man and a women with or without children married or co-habitating [1]

- ~100% white, 93% Finn

- 88% Speak Finnish as their first language

- 71% Lutheran

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1101541/families-by-type...

Your answer is seriously "race mixing bad"?

No, what keeps people homeless here is giving them homes and money for food. This is trivially verifiable.

> What you're proposing is me, in another state, city, neighborhood, paying for your states issue(s).

"An Associated Press Fact Check finds...High-tax, traditionally Democratic states (blue), subsidize low-tax, traditionally Republican states (red)..."

https://apnews.com/article/north-america-business-local-taxe...

That's a broad brush. There are a great many reasons why people become homeless in this country.

I'm not endorsing the idea of bezos buying houses for them, mind you, but for a lot of homeless people in this country that would be a lifesaver.

Are there even enough vacant housing units in that area for all the homeless if you ignore the price?

A lack of social funding in America is, in fact, contributing to the homelessness epidemic.

You are answering a question that wasn't asked.

Did the poster make a causality statement?

The implication was that if they just had a house their lives would turn around. This isn’t the case for a lot of people as it’s an addiction or mental illness problem.

Multiple case studies and real world examples show the opposite. It's cheaper to provide housing for the homeless, there's more success with drug/alcohol/mental illness programs when they have housing, and many of them do get a chance to re-enter the job market.

Can you link me to some of these studies?

They wouldn’t be homeless anymore, though. I think that’s a pretty solid improvement, regardless of any other challenges they have in their lives.

The point is though that a lot of them might be. Besides houses aren’t cheap or free you still have all kinds of bills to pay so your basically giving an addict a burdensome issue. Homeless shelters are a much better place for someone just trying to get clean and off the streets. There’s also an abundance of beds in homeless shelters because a lot of the people don’t want to get clean or off the streets.

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