> S.R.O.’s, including residential hotel units and rooming houses, may have numbered as high as 90,000 in San Francisco at the inception of the 1930’s, meaning they were nearly as prevalent as apartments. By the early 1990’s the number of S.R.O. units in San Francisco had been reduced dramatically, to approximately 20,000.
I would imagine applying Occam's Razor here would show that there's likely a significant amount of corruption in a program designed to solve something like homelessness. It's JUST vague enough that you can manufacture all sorts of reasons to keep the federal dollars flowing in.
You argue that the policies are ignorant of incentives; I’d argue that you are ignorant of how truly differently a vast portion of the homeless population experience their existence on this planet. Your mental model of the incentives doesn’t apply to a population who don’t function the same way you do. It is not convenient being homeless, and making it even more difficult will not solve anything.
We all function the same, we're all human. It comes down to how much do we want to prevent people from spiraling down in the first place. If the laws were enforced and it was socially unacceptable to tolerate homelessness, then I think many people would look for alternatives at any cost. This would then expose those who truly have no other options. Instead what we have now is enablement of that lifestyle, at least implicitly by allowing it, but also explicitly in many cities by subsidizing it. This makes it into a viable option for many who would rather take the risk than seek for help as soon as possible.
If homelessness is so bad, why do we leave people to their own demise? Even with free housing it's not enough for many who struggle mentally, as you are pointing out. If someone is drowning they need to be forced out of the water instead of doing nothing because dragging them would hurt their arm.
Demonstrably whatever the city is doing with money has nothing to do with solving homelessness.