2. Wildly profitable businesses occupying nearly every inch of usable space directly correlates to the inability of humans to occupy that same space. The greater the concentration of wealth holding property, the greater the degree of difficulty for those without wealth to access property.
3. Government delegating responsibility for providing public services to private businesses by essentially doing nothing and letting them fill the space guarantees that they’ll fill the space in the way which most benefits them.
4. That doesn’t mean that it’s sensible to expect nothing of businesses in contribution to public services. Businesses enjoy a wide array of benefits, many of which are scarce, from being licensed by their various jurisdictions.
5. Rampant homelessness is solvable. Solutions are known (housing first). Governments don’t pursue known solutions because they lack either political will or resources or both.
6. Solving homelessness should be a predicate for discussion of public service provisions so long as provision of public services is predicated on rampant homelessness and issues that arise around it. Any discussion around this which doesn’t have systemic goals, and which isn’t an emergency response which wouldn’t be better suited by systemic goals, is reinforcing rampant homelessness.
7. Businesses which enjoy such largess are morally responsible for the largess humans cannot enjoy as a consequence. They should be responsible for redressing that.
8. That doesn’t mean they should be de facto providers of public services. To the extent they are, that function should be codified as public services and separated from their businesses accounting.
9. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t provide services. They should, until such a time as their largess affords access to property and livelihood sufficient to solve rampant homelessness. A reasonable way to square that is by taxing businesses for the benefits they derive from doing business and holding exclusive access to resources which enable that.
10. If any of that seems unachievable pragmatically or politically, the groundwork for this has been laid in Washington state and Utah. Housing people first eliminates chronic homelessness.
11. This should be 1a. We still need public bathrooms. It’s a basic accessibility issue, not only but especially for many people with disabilities.