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Comment by rbanffy | Hacker News Reader

Homelessness is not a technology issue and can't be solved by creating homes on bicycles.

I'm not being snarky, but I did not gather from his efforts that he was trying to solve homelessness. This is a case of someone perceiving a need and attempting to address it in a non-profit way within his skill-set.

It’s worth a try, one bicycle home at a time.

Upon the heap of many issues involved in “homelessness” is wedged the modern lie that conventional housing and lifestyle is natural or working for us all. In addition to drugs and psychosis and devastating circumstance of impoverishment, there are also those who cannot escape living as a part of the open streets of the world.

Actually yes, Toronto's temperatures hit -20C with a lot of snowfall, this guy is giving people in need a chance.

Not your effort, not your money, not your time. What is your problem with this, exactly? That you didn't get a fee out of it?

How many lives would this save? Is this the most efficient way to do it? Is it enough? Schools are closed this time of the year and that public infrastructure, including community centres can and should be used to temporarily house and offer help (mental health is a huge issue that goes hand in hand with homelessness) they need.

>How many lives would this save? Is this the most efficient way to do it? Is it enough?

Who cares?

When was the last time you helped a fellow human being? Could you answer that question honestly?

Every time I vote (in three countries) I help select the people who have the proposals to actually solve, or at least mitigate, the problems that affect my society. Every time I pay taxes I help finance those programs. That’s not my speciality though, and I won’t pretend I’m helping when I propose something that’ll have negligible impact in the overall picture.

At a societal level, sure. And we should try to solve homelessness broadly.

But in the meantime, why not ease the suffering of those who need and want a warm, safe bed?

The best way not to solve a problem is to solve it the wrong way. I don’t wish to criticise the guy, and his actions come from the right place, but this is a distraction, and if we invest on it, we’ll fail to invest in actually solving the problem for good, which is hard, unpalatable, and implies structural changes that’ll upset a lot of people who need to be upset or the problem will never be solved, ever.

Maybe you were never homeless. This is not about "tech", it is about compassion.

Homlessness is a compassion problem.

Homelessness is a structural problem. Our society doesn’t automatically give everyone the right to live, and that has to change. A lot.

Sometimes technology can be used as a hack to workaround regulation that makes affordable housing illegal.

Toronto massively expanded shelther programs throughout covid via fairly expensive transitional housing units (i.e. hotels) that cost 300m for ~2000 spaces, or 150k per unit / year. It's structurally not sustainable and the political solution is basically tell homeless they're SOL. The hacky work around is tent cities in parks during summer and an insulated box during winter.

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