If that’s the best they can say about $750 a month, it sounds like a terrible investment.
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$750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people
21–30 of 206 posts
Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people
#22The 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…
Read the article, or read the recent UCSF study on homelessness[0]. The data suggest that mental illness and drug addiction are both symptoms of, or exacerbated by, homelessness, not causes of it. Please don’t argue with me about this here without citing the available data. 0. https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/our-impact/our-studies/califor...
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Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Selection bias is a strong effect here.
Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Weird, I do. I live within a minute's walk of three separate encampments of homeless people, most of whom seem reasonably sane when I talk to them, and if they have drug problems they certainly aren't more apparent than those of my coworkers on average
Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people
#25The 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…
The fact that you call all homeless people "mentally ill drug addicts" is very telling. Do some basic research. I hope you find some empathy in your heart.
Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I would say more than one on average daily, and these are just the ten percent of homeless people I see that will say hello and interact with me rather than simply go about their own business
Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people
#27Of 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.
Some people choose to.
Any assertion that all or none do are wrong.
Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
the people who say this never live in areas with homeless people
Weird, I do. I live within a minute's walk of three separate encampments of homeless people, most of whom seem reasonably sane when I talk to them, and if they have drug problems they certainly aren't more apparent than those of my coworkers on average
I don't believe you for a second because you dont need to sniff out if homeless people are sane. You can just see them shooting up in broad daylight. You can just look on the ground and see syringes ontop of the mountain of trash.
Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people
#30"About 2% of the total went to alcohol, cigarettes and drug expenses — the largest portion of which was cigarettes"
I'm pretty sure that the average American spends more than 2% of their income on drugs.