What ends up happening is they generally just destroy the living space in a variety of ways.
It's because the majority of homelessness is an issue of mental health. In the USA, there are pretty much zero mental health resources for people in poverty.
Citation very much needed here. This certainly does happen. But, I don’t believe this the general (i.e. typical) outcome. From what I understand talking to acquaintances who work in this area, wrecking the place is not the typical outcome. And property damage is generally cheaper to address than the constant provision of emergency services.
I agree that mental health (and substance use) are major factors in homelessness, but those issues are more or less impossible to address when people are living on the street with no permanent address and no place to keep e.g. a cell phone without it being stolen.
This has gone badly. The property sees intense vandalism and destruction, the neighbors are afraid for their safety, and the whole thing is an amazingly expensive boondoggle.
[0]: https://www.foxnews.com/us/austin-hotel-purchased-homeless-s...
[1]: https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2022/05/16/austin-homel...
The risk of course is that you are ripping potentially live circuits out of a building. It usually requires you to already be impaired and desperate to do it. It's that fun combo of illegal and dangerous.
1) Austin buys the property
2) Begins renovations on vacant premises
3) Vandalism takes place
---------------
4) The conversion is complete
5) Property officially offered to homeless residents
Steps 4 and 5 haven't happened yet. So homeless people who "generally just destroy the living space" isn't a good fit for what's going on. This is simply a situation of an unsecured construction site that has attracted squatters and vandals.
This isn't true or at least it doesn't start that way. What people don't understand is that there isn't a single homeless population. You have people who are temporarily homeless and people who are chronically homeless. The temporarily homeless are people who lost jobs, fell on hard times, etc etc. The simplest solution for them is yes to give them housing. The chronically homeless is where things get more complicated and those are the people who typically need mental health and abuse services. The simplest and most efficient thing we can do is help the temporarily homeless and prevent them from becoming chronically homeless.
I’ll take tautological statements for $200 please Alex
Also your sweeping statement about the destruction of their living space smells to high heaven prejudiced thinking based on myth or hearsay rather than actual data.