Fixing Homelessness Should be Easy
In theory, homelessness should be a trivially easy social ill to correct since eliminating it has negative dollar cost — you save millions by correcting it in any given city each year, however, in practice, solving it is intractable. Why? The homeless are the politically correct scapegoats. People have no interest in why people became homeless; they despise them and wish them ill.
It may be that:
- They are drug addicts or alcoholics.
- They lost their job and could not get another.
- They have a mental problem and cannot possibly traverse the maze of paperwork to apply for government assistance.
- Their parents threw them out onto the street because of a religious conflict.
- Their parents shunned them because they were gay.
- They are ugly.
- They have low intelligence.
- For some reason they have rejected ordinary society.
- They have embraced poverty for religious or philosophical reasons.
People will put considerable effort into persecuting the homeless and stopping them from acquiring housing.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- Tax payers are more that willing to pay twice as much to maintain the status quo than to house the homeless. BC Politicians now freely admit this is the number one motive for their inaction on the problem of homelessness.
- Citizens will turn out with metaphoric pitchforks to block the creation of low cost housing.
- In Victoria, BC, Canada, where I live, police take great glee in confiscating and smashing the meagre possessions of the homeless, including tents, carts, sleeping bags, back packs, clothes… That is a malicious, deliberate effort to keep them homeless.
- Some people entertain themselves by chastising the homeless for their idle, idyllic life, even when they know nothing about their victim’s circumstances. They are garden-variety bullies who kid themselves they are pursuing virtue.