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Comment by MeinBlutIstBlau | Hacker News Reader

And also make homelessness a crime. But conveniently they push you toward places that help with people on the verge of homelessness. All things combined with yours that these coastal places do not. If people are threatened with jail for being a vagrant, they'll eventually take the path of least resistance and get a job.

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> If people are threatened with jail for being a vagrant, they'll eventually take the path of least resistance and get a job.

More like they'll take the path of least resistance and go to the next town.

Solves the problem of the people who wanted to minimize homelessness in their area didn't it?

> If people are threatened with jail for being a vagrant, they'll eventually take the path of least resistance and get a job.

I'd love to see the data to back this up. Sounds like you're coming from some idea that most homeless want to be lazy and not work and stay homeless, and if jail were threatened, that all of the sudden they'd get a job and re-integrate into society. That's extremely disconnected from reality.

I've never met a homeless person that actually wanted to get out of homelessness to not do so. Almost all homeless people I've ever run into are the severely mentally ill and drug addicts. It's awful to say this, but they are not worth devoting resources to if they can't fix themselves. They are lost causes until they decide themselves that they are not. It'd be great if we could help them, but it's an utter waste of time to devote resources to these people who just don't want to change. If they want to prove us wrong, they need to show us they want to change. We're not gonna be some sort of saviors to them to foster an enabling environment for them to just abuse.

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