CaptainObvious110 t1_j93smnr wrote on February 19, 2023 at 12:52 AM

Reply to comment by sllewgh in Baltimore Sees Steep Drop in Unhoused Residents by real_human__bean

Ok, thanks so much! So let's say that 75% of the homeless population could be in a stable environment. That knocks things down quite a bit for people that need complete permanent help.

That's a lot of people that could be working and providing for themselves eventually. Not nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be

sllewgh t1_j93unif wrote on February 19, 2023 at 1:08 AM

Yeah, it's a common belief that most homeless folks are homeless because they have mental illness, drug addiction, or other issues besides a lack of housing. For sure these problems are much more prevalent in the homeless population than the general population, but as I said, systemic issues and housing affordability are huge factors. Fewer folks are aware of how many homeless people are working, but still unable to afford it.

The sort of widespread, visible, chronic homelessness we see today hasn't always existed in this country. Used to be that homelessness was something experienced by relatively few people and as a relatively short term problem. It really began to emerge in the 60s as public housing began to be dismantled. Since then, the HUD budget has been slashed by about 90%, and we've lost more units of public and subsidized housing than we currently have homeless people. There are many other factors as well, including the proliferation of addictive drugs in impoverished communities, the closing of sanitariums with no substitute, but the big one is that the market has failed to made housing affordable. We absolutely know how to solve this problem- we need to spend more money and make sure people have affordable housing, even if its not profitable to do so. There's just no political will to do it.

CaptainObvious110 t1_j93vui5 wrote on February 19, 2023 at 1:18 AM

It's very sad that there is money that could solve this problem but that it's not being used for that purpose.

sllewgh t1_j93wg39 wrote on February 19, 2023 at 1:23 AM

Agreed! Our system is cruel, it fails to meet people's needs, and it's in need of deep reform.

CaptainObvious110 t1_j98rj1q wrote on February 20, 2023 at 2:59 AM

Yes it does. It's annoying to me that people that have the ability to make changes keep talking about it but don't ever really solve the problem. You don't have to do any studies, we know what the problem is, we know why it's that way and we know how to fix it. All that's left is actually doing it.