Amid record homelessness, a Texas think tank tries to upend how states tackle it

[Della]

"In October, Florida will become the latest state to ban homeless camping. Starting in January, any city that does not enforce the ban can be sued, by the State Attorney General or by a local business or resident.

"We're gonna have clean sidewalks. We're gonna have clean parks. We're gonna have safe streets," said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, when he signed the new law in March.

If there are not enough beds available in homeless shelters, the law will also let cities designate their own temporary shelter sites, something former President Trump supports and has called "relocation camps."

[jessilin0113]

Just give them housing. It's legitimately the best way to fix the problem.

[highlandmum]

Just give them housing. It's legitimately the best way to fix the problem.

Logistically this is impossible

1 - Where are they finding the housing? In my area housing is at a premium and houses are still selling in under a week and apartments are being rented at a fast rate despite the high rental costs
2 - Who is paying the rent, and other expenses? Are you intending on providing them with free rent, free utilities, free furniture and such?
3 - If you intend to build homes/affordable housing where is the land coming from and this could take years to do.

[jessilin0113]

Just give them housing. It's legitimately the best way to fix the problem.

Logistically this is impossible

1 - Where are they finding the housing? In my area housing is at a premium and houses are still selling in under a week and apartments are being rented at a fast rate despite the high rental costs
2 - Who is paying the rent, and other expenses? Are you intending on providing them with free rent, free utilities, free furniture and such?
3 - If you intend to build homes/affordable housing where is the land coming from and this could take years to do.

There are 15 million vacant homes in the country. Old motels or nursing homes can be repurposed into multi-unit housing. Lots can be purchased for tiny homes. There are a lot of options, we just have to want to do it. Rapid rehousing with no criteria other than homelessness is the best way to keep them off the street AND keep them housed, allowing them to stabilize and rejoin society. It's no more expensive, and often less expensive, then paying cops to roust them out, move them, jail them, put them through the court system, and actually allows them a chance to overcome their difficulties far better than shuffling them through the legal system or making them jump through a bunch of hoops prior to getting housed. If we wanted to, we would. But I know this country and I know what our priorities are, so I'm sure it won't happen.

[RIZZY]

Just give them housing. It's legitimately the best way to fix the problem.

Logistically this is impossible

1 - Where are they finding the housing? In my area housing is at a premium and houses are still selling in under a week and apartments are being rented at a fast rate despite the high rental costs
2 - Who is paying the rent, and other expenses? Are you intending on providing them with free rent, free utilities, free furniture and such?
3 - If you intend to build homes/affordable housing where is the land coming from and this could take years to do.

It's been done before and it actually saves tax payers money.

[highlandmum]

Just give them housing. It's legitimately the best way to fix the problem.

Logistically this is impossible

1 - Where are they finding the housing? In my area housing is at a premium and houses are still selling in under a week and apartments are being rented at a fast rate despite the high rental costs
2 - Who is paying the rent, and other expenses? Are you intending on providing them with free rent, free utilities, free furniture and such?
3 - If you intend to build homes/affordable housing where is the land coming from and this could take years to do.

There are 15 million vacant homes in the country. Old motels or nursing homes can be repurposed into multi-unit housing. Lots can be purchased for tiny homes. There are a lot of options, we just have to want to do it. Rapid rehousing with no criteria other than homelessness is the best way to keep them off the street AND keep them housed, allowing them to stabilize and rejoin society. It's no more expensive, and often less expensive, then paying cops to roust them out, move them, jail them, put them through the court system, and actually allows them a chance to overcome their difficulties far better than shuffling them through the legal system or making them jump through a bunch of hoops prior to getting housed. If we wanted to, we would. But I know this country and I know what our priorities are, so I'm sure it won't happen.

Those vacant homes are owned by people, the old motels and nursing homes would cost millions of dollars to repurpose into mulit-unit housing to meet building code/fire code standards. You would need to hire property management, right now in my country construction workers and trades are at a premium and are hard to come by. So how does this work when you do not have the labour force to do the work.

It is not as easy as snapping your fingers and getting people into these places. My city has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in placing tiny homes on to unused parcels of city land, but there is push back of the "not in my backyard" crews. Are you also going to force people to sell their unused properties and land? Are you going to start taking over farm land for these places? Plus lets be realistic here, the population that we are talking about needs access to public transit, and most of these places we are looking at are away from the city core and the convenience of grocery stores and such and will probably be under serviced in terms of public transit, so now how do the get from point A to point B. Plus are you going to start setting limits on the amount of time they are eligible for these living arrangements?

It looks great on paper but logistically it is impossible to implement.

[AZOldGal66]

My state... Arizona...has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the U.S., and has increased its percentage in the past couple of years.

Part of the problem is our high eviction percentage coinciding with high rent costs.

Interesting article...

"The long way home: Insights into Arizona’s homelessness crisis | ASU News" https://news.asu.edu/20240117-universit ... d%20steady.

[AZOldGal66]

Another sad reality for many U.S. cities, a lot of communities do not want a homeless shelter or even housing neighborhoods devoted to the homeless in their areas.

THAT alone is a big pushback from creating homes and even communities for the homeless.

[jessilin0113]

Logistically this is impossible

1 - Where are they finding the housing? In my area housing is at a premium and houses are still selling in under a week and apartments are being rented at a fast rate despite the high rental costs
2 - Who is paying the rent, and other expenses? Are you intending on providing them with free rent, free utilities, free furniture and such?
3 - If you intend to build homes/affordable housing where is the land coming from and this could take years to do.

There are 15 million vacant homes in the country. Old motels or nursing homes can be repurposed into multi-unit housing. Lots can be purchased for tiny homes. There are a lot of options, we just have to want to do it. Rapid rehousing with no criteria other than homelessness is the best way to keep them off the street AND keep them housed, allowing them to stabilize and rejoin society. It's no more expensive, and often less expensive, then paying cops to roust them out, move them, jail them, put them through the court system, and actually allows them a chance to overcome their difficulties far better than shuffling them through the legal system or making them jump through a bunch of hoops prior to getting housed. If we wanted to, we would. But I know this country and I know what our priorities are, so I'm sure it won't happen.

Those vacant homes are owned by people, the old motels and nursing homes would cost millions of dollars to repurpose into mulit-unit housing to meet building code/fire code standards. You would need to hire property management, right now in my country construction workers and trades are at a premium and are hard to come by. So how does this work when you do not have the labour force to do the work.

It is not as easy as snapping your fingers and getting people into these places. My city has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in placing tiny homes on to unused parcels of city land, but there is push back of the "not in my backyard" crews. Are you also going to force people to sell their unused properties and land? Are you going to start taking over farm land for these places? Plus lets be realistic here, the population that we are talking about needs access to public transit, and most of these places we are looking at are away from the city core and the convenience of grocery stores and such and will probably be under serviced in terms of public transit, so now how do the get from point A to point B. Plus are you going to start setting limits on the amount of time they are eligible for these living arrangements?

It looks great on paper but logistically it is impossible to implement.

I doubt impossible. Yes, there are expensive up-front costs. Yes, there are logistical issues. Nothing insurmountable. Like I said, we could, we just don't want to. Shuffling them through the justice system hasn't done anything to curb homelessness. Unfettered capitalism and greed contribute to it more than anything, and that's what we reward in this country. But hey, private prisons gotta meet their quota and big businesses need cheap prison labor, so I guess we'll just keep on doing what we're doing.

[Della]

Perhaps we should treat them like refugees and build tent cities like they do for the people in Palestine.