I don't wish homelessness upon anyone but you have to recognize that it was the baby boomers that created this situation. We, as a society, are desensitized to state violence. The state withholding basic necessities so a few can profit is state violence. In the wealthiest country on Earth there is absolutely no justification for anyone not having shelter and adequate food and water. The homeowners who vote in these w…
Adequate food and water and shelter is available to everyone. We spend billions on it every year. People choose not to access it either due to mental illness, drug/alcohol addiction, or some other antisocial or personal reason. And although there’s help for those issues I’d agree more could be done, especially for the vast numbers of mentally ill that walk amongst us. We do have a safety net though. You are advocatin…
When people talk about homelessness they often refer to people living in the streets. Like an iceberg though, this is just the visible part of homelessness. Before you get to this point you go through several stages. The first stage of housing insecurity is couchsurfing and staying a few days here and there with relatives and friends. At some point this dries up and you move onto the next stage: living in your car. This last until your car gets towed or stolen or torched and you can't afford to fix it. At this point you are now on the streets. Before this you may have been able to hold down a job. Now it gets incredibly difficult.
As for providing housing, you don't specify what but I suepct you're talking about shelters. Many homeless people prefer to live on the streets. Why? Shelters tend to be highly restrictive, have limited availability and be incredibly unsafe. You might have to be in for curfew at like 3pm. You will be in a large room with people who may be mentally unwell and/or may have weapons. SA is a real risk. Having your stuff stolen is a huge risk. So after staying there for 12 hours you may then have to go to some religious service and then get fed, maybe.
You are right that a lot of money does get spent on this problem without it going anywhere. There is an awful lot of rent-seeking that goes on here as well as general corruption (eg [1][2][3]).
What we need is a housing-first policy. That is, provide permanent private shelter. According to HUD, it would require $20 billion to end homelessness [4]. Not $20 billion a year. Just $20 billion.
We also need to address to main cause of homelessness: the cost of housing. It's not drugs or mental illness that cause most people to become homeless. It's being unable to afford housing, even while employed.
[1]: https://sfstandard.com/2022/11/17/city-audit-finds-serious-p...
[2]: https://deal.town/san-francisco-chronicle/update-sf-official...
[3]: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/stor...
[4]: https://aah-inc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/whomeless.pdf