L.A. to declare 'state of emergency' on homelessness

I remember reading something about how one of the biggest hurdles of tackling homelessness is dealing with those who were made homeless through a history of mental illness. If someone suffers homelessness due to mental illness, I'm sure that chucking them in with a bunch of other homeless people in a shared home isn't going to fix the problem, so it'll be interesting to see how these people will be treated.

$100m isn't really a lot, but if that money can be offered to help people that need more than money and a roof over their head, it could do some genuine good.

Homelessness and people being vulnerably housed are useful indicators of poor availability of mental health treatment; of poor availability of drug and alcohol treatment; of a lack of rehabilitation in criminal justice; of predatory and aggressive debt chasing; etc.

There's a lot of misinformation and stigma around people who are vulnerably housed (often along the lines of "they did it themselves") so by by creating a culture that helps homeless people you're helping a potential future-you.

No. This libertarian idea that people would give more if they weren't taxed is utter bullshit. As is the idea that every human is an island. We're all in this together.

The charities people give to? For the most part, it's acute and visible charities. Very few people give to the same charity again and again, over the course of decades. People also give to attractive charities - kids with terminal diseases is a much easier charity to raise money for than mental health in young adults. Same with animals - people care about cruelty to dogs, but they don't care about cruelty to voles. And while you haven't said it, another libertarian refrain is that people would donate more than they get taxed, which is obvious nonsense, because nothing is stopping them from disposing of that extra money.

Anyway, if you don't want "violent" (stupid bloody redefining, that) taxes, then move to Vanuatu. It has good weather, happy people, a small government, and the army is so small it's also the police force (fewer than a thousand people). There's no income tax. Of course, there's little comparable in the way of infrastructure or services, but you'll get to live the libertarian dream of hiring your own garbage collector instead of having one violently forced on you by the incompetant apparatus of the overbearing state.

Funny how leaders rather would declare "state of emergency" than alter the city planning that causes too little housing to be built.

That's not really how homelessness tends to work though.