The Secret Lives of Homeless Students

From what I've understood from threads like this, I think the idea is that social services designed for people in need should not try to prove that the person requesting actually needs it. It creates friction, and it's a waste of resources (money, people, time), and some people that need the service might not get it because the system fucks up every now and then.

If you'd open it up to whoever asked for it, people in need would naturally request it and get it, and people that don't wouldn't. If someone abused the system (and this is the big assumption IMO), the amount lost would probably be lower than what would have been spent trying to enforce requirements. So you'd solve the false negatives and would also spend less, and the system would be simpler.

Of course, I don't know much about this, this is what I've gathered from reading around.

In the 1950s, the average new house was under 1200 square feet. It was bought by a family that either had kids or was going to have kids. The average family had 2-3 kids. It had basics, like a functioning kitchen and heat in the winter.

By 2000, the average new home was over 2000 square feet. The average family had one child. It had all kinds of amenities, like a microwave and multiple bathrooms.

You seem to think, as many people do, that "poor people" are a separate class of people, distinct from everyone else. I was middle class most of my life.

I am not mentally ill. I am physically ill. Most people on the street do have some sort of mental health or medical issue or disability. The fact that the American health care system is such a mess is definitely part of the problem. The last time I looked at stats on the issue, more than half of all bankruptcies involved high medical bills. This held true even in cases where they had good insurance.

So fixing our health care system would help. But also removing some of the tax incentives that give tax breaks to folks who can already afford a house in a way that actively encourages them to buy the largest house they can afford, with the most amenities, would help. We need to stop dividing up the housing market between housing for rich folks and slum housing. There used to be middle class housing. That is essentially disappearing.

The other thing we need is more walkable communities and better public transit. America is arranged such that most people basically need a car in order to have a job at all. I gave up my car while still working for a Fortune 500 company and although it was about a 7-10 minute drive to work, it was an hour long walk and you basically "couldn't get there from here" via public transit -- or, more accurately, it would have taken me longer to use public transit than to walk there. All of the incentive programs at work trying to encourage people to carpool and what not were heavily biased towards an assumption of everyone having a car and driving everywhere and largely worthless for someone like me. I eventually stopped trying to participate in any of them. People who drive everywhere have very biased and inaccurate concepts about how getting around works if your life is not car-centered.

If America worked better, there would be fewer poor people. Fucking people over and then forcing them to become "charity cases" (please note that is a contemptuous term, not one of caring) is an actively harmful, disrespectful model and blames the victims of larger processes that are largely beyond their control. You seem unable to view this as a societal issue that negatively impacts specific individuals. Your comment makes it clear that you view "poor people" as simply incompetents who need charity, not folks who need a system that makes it easier to make their lives work while still exercising agency.