it's hard for people to acknowledge the basic truth - and you can learn this by simply going to talk to them - that almost the entire chronically homeless population in developed countries like canada and the us are there because they choose to be there.
in fact, a substantive percentage of them even have jobs. yes - this is basic public information. around 10% of chronic homeless people have jobs. many of them own vehicles and a lot of them have family that they could potentially stay with in the short run. the number of abandoned homeless people with nowhere to go is very small.
i was a few days away from experiencing that last year. i would have legitimately had nowhere to go and had to go through the shelter system, but i had some money put aside and i was able to get everything out to a storage bin and stay in a hotel instead. i'm more than sympathetic to people dealing with short term homelessness, and the point of my argument is that the money is not getting to the short term displaced population, who deserves and can make benefit of the help, but is instead being constantly wasted on the chronic homeless population, which is chronically homeless for a reason.
the reality is that almost 100% of the chronic homeless population does some combination of opiates and methamphetamines and the reason they choose to be homeless is because they'd rather spend their rent money on drugs. that is the simple truth. they make a choice to spend the support money they get on drugs instead of on rent. giving them more money just means they do more drugs. they don't have a disease, they're not unable to control themselves, it's a simple lifestyle decision, and the reality is that polite society needs to acknowledge it as a lifestyle decision and stop living in denial about it.
they are not going to be saved by interventions. no make believe god or any religious services are going to save them. there's no magic pill to give them. there is no cure because there is no disease. there is no solution because there is no problem to solve. they are making a decision as to how they choose to live their lives, and there is no solution to that. it's up to them to make that choice.
the focus of public policy and public money should be to find ways to ensure there are consequences for making those choices, not to bend over backwards to go out of it's way to ensure there aren't consequences for it. when they break the law, they should be sent to jail. the focus of public money and public policy should also be to ensure that the general public doesn't suffer from the externalities that result from homeless addicts choosing to be homeless addicts.
i support the idea of cleaning up the streets. if what the federal government ultimately wants is to get the homeless population off of the street, it needs to get rid of rent as a concept. you can't house addicts through a system of rent payment; they'll always choose to spend the rent money on drugs and live outside instead. however, what they call transitional housing is tied to the idea of "curing" them and then forcing them to pay rent. there is no possibility of this being anything more than a waste of time and money because the whole point is that they'd rather spend money on drugs than rent. that's why they're chronically homeless people in the first place.
i understand that it sounds harsh, but it isn't, and you can go ask these people yourselves. the best thing you can do for them is give them somewhere safe to do their drugs. that's what they want. they don't want therapy (although they might say they do, if they think it will give them more drug money). they don't want your god. and while nobody would turn down free shelter, they aren't going to pay for it. they will spend every cent you give them on drugs, and they'll end up back on the streets every time.
getting them out of the city core and keeping them out of the city core will never be accomplished by building them housing, unless it comes with free rent, and then you're taking away the consequences.
getting them out of the city core and keeping them out means finding a geographic area where they can go and live their lives the way they choose - in tents and on drugs. everybody would be happier and better off if we just accepted it and did it and stopped wasting time and money on pretending you can alter people's autonomous decisions. you can't. it's up to them to work it out and move on or die in a tent trying.
the money should instead be spent on eliminating short-term homelessness caused largely by an incompetent court system staffed by incompetent judges or by acts of god and generally getting more money in the hands of people that need it and that don't do drugs. the problem is the way that the funds are prioritized. you're put on a waiting list and told to wait your turn while the money gets wasted on drug addicts.
no more.
put the addicts at the bottom of the list, not the top of it.