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$750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

latimes.com

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Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

#11

Post by cwillu »

mbgerring wrote: post #5
paulpauper wrote: post #2

Of course it did. The question or debate is not if unconditional money helps, but if it's better than alternatives which may be cheaper, such as food credits. Even middle class people would benefit, like $750 to buy groceries. Inflation obviously will erode some of this new purchasing power.

The point is not that it helped, the point is that they used it to exit homelessness. This is important because of the pervasive and empirically incorrect assertion that people do not have housing because they simply choose not to.

“i correct“ -> “incorrect”, I presume?

Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

#12

Post by cwillu »

ciguy wrote: post #3

The headline as written should surprise no-one. Anyone receiving free money would probably have their life improved along some dimension, even if it just means they're not doing as many dangerous things to get money to buy more drugs. The implicit assumption seems to be that giving homeless people money to improve their lives is inherently a moral good. Unlike many homeless advocates, I don't think it is a given that…

“It may not be earth-shattering that providing money is going to help meet basic needs, but I do think it dispels this myth that people will use money for illicit purposes,” Henwood said. “We weren’t finding that in the study.”

Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

#16

Post by ska »

cwillu wrote: post #8
paulpauper wrote: post #2

Of course it did. The question or debate is not if unconditional money helps, but if it's better than alternatives which may be cheaper, such as food credits. Even middle class people would benefit, like $750 to buy groceries. Inflation obviously will erode some of this new purchasing power.

A lot of the debate is very sincerely arguing that it doesn't actually help, so making it clear that it really actually does is important to shut down some of the ignorance: “It may not be earth-shattering that providing money is going to help meet basic needs, but I do think it dispels this myth that people will use money for illicit purposes,” Henwood said. “We weren’t finding that in the study.”

> A lot of the debate is very sincerely ...

I suspect a lot of the debate is very insincerely arguing that.

Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

#17

Post by ciguy »

advael wrote: post #7
ciguy wrote: post #3

The headline as written should surprise no-one. Anyone receiving free money would probably have their life improved along some dimension, even if it just means they're not doing as many dangerous things to get money to buy more drugs. The implicit assumption seems to be that giving homeless people money to improve their lives is inherently a moral good. Unlike many homeless advocates, I don't think it is a given that…

I think a lot of productive hardworking people's money has been spent on propaganda whose sole intention is to ensure that people equate homeless people to "mentally ill drug addicts" rather than, say, "private equity real estate buyup refugees"

How many homeless people do you interact with daily? Because I'm forced to interact with many of them on a daily basis to simply go about my life in the Bay Area. And almost all of them, with very very few exceptions are both mentally ill and drug addicts. I used to think like you, but being forced to deal with them in real life on a daily basis has a way of killing preconceived convenient notions.

Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

#18

Post by hehhehaha »

advael wrote: post #7
ciguy wrote: post #3

The headline as written should surprise no-one. Anyone receiving free money would probably have their life improved along some dimension, even if it just means they're not doing as many dangerous things to get money to buy more drugs. The implicit assumption seems to be that giving homeless people money to improve their lives is inherently a moral good. Unlike many homeless advocates, I don't think it is a given that…

I think a lot of productive hardworking people's money has been spent on propaganda whose sole intention is to ensure that people equate homeless people to "mentally ill drug addicts" rather than, say, "private equity real estate buyup refugees"

the people who say this never live in areas with homeless people

Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

#19

Post by CodeyWhizzBang »

beastman82 wrote: post #15

Did it reduce their agency like it did all the covid unemployed?

According to the article:

"Those who got the stipend were less likely to be unsheltered after six months and able to meet more of their basic needs than a control group that got no money, and half as likely as the control group to have an episode of being unsheltered."

So, it seems like it helped get most people back on their feet and into a place where they can live independently without financial support.

Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

#20

Post by [deleted] »

zrail wrote: post #9
paulpauper wrote: post #2

Of course it did. The question or debate is not if unconditional money helps, but if it's better than alternatives which may be cheaper, such as food credits. Even middle class people would benefit, like $750 to buy groceries. Inflation obviously will erode some of this new purchasing power.

The government is very good at giving people money. It's less good at adjudicating whether people require that money. Replacing every government assistance program with direct, unconditional cash transfers would almost certainly be cheaper than the bureaucracy that must be maintained to ensure only "deserving" people get assistance.

[deleted]
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