I’m not one to think in conspiracies. But here is a clear, structural issue. The reward to NGOs should be granted upon reintegration, not upon crises.
The big question I have is how do you help people who refuse to be helped? That’s an ethical dilemma not necessarily a $ question.
The ethical dilemma is deep. Is forcing someone into an asylum—where they can be sheltered, monitored, and treated—more ethical than giving someone the self-determination to self-destruct on the street?
I don't have the answer, I'm not Kant. But it's a question we have been unwilling to face because it is deeply unsettling. It goes against our liberal instinct.
This never works though because once you decide to do this, it is abused. So to prevent abuse, you use law enforcement. What I mean is that we decided freedom is more important than forcing treatment. And since there are no other levers, law enforcement is left to deal with the problem.
You set up a system to help people that could be abused, and then you set up oversight committee, external auditors, regulators, board of trustees, ombudsman, inspector general. A giant pile of bureaucrats and bureaucracy. And yes, abuses will still happen. You get it all on camera, in writing, you find the abuses of the system and you close those down. New abuses happen, you find those loopholes and close them down. The problem is there's no will to do that. The systems broken, so we just threw it out and the people that it was helping got fucked. Instead of like, hey the systems broken, lets fix it.
So instead we got people living in tents with no running water, no sewage, no electricity.