Quoted By:
I work in addictions and MH. In an epicenter of chinese fentanyl.
Some people are too far-gone. Their destruction is chosen and almost no amount of help will do. Schizophrenia and drugs are 80% of the reasons. Solving their drug problem isn't "fix their mind" issue, it's a "get them out of the environment".
Sure, give them temporary housing. But homeless people have cell phones. They will violate the rules of the housing such as maintaining sobriety, and then they'll call over their dirty friends and be degenerates inside a house they don't care about because it was free.
Homeless people litter more than regular ones, per item of stuff they have. When they park near a body of water, do you think they shit 100 feet from it and bury it with their handy shovel? No. They shit in the water. If enough homeless chose to live in the woods it wouldn't be "based". It would be disgusting for anybody with intact senses unperturbed by cravings or delusions.
The reddit solution is to "give them MH help". They have that already. They have free addictions programs. They have free housing programs. They have programs that will get them out of homelessness and into a job better than people who are simply unemployed but for example, live off their parents. The issue is their unwillingness to change. And honestly some are just lazy, mean people. They make more money breaking into cars all night and sleeping in all morning than they would cleaning dishes for $8/hr on a strict schedule. In society we conjured some mental image of a homeless person being this wise-but-down-on-their-luck sage. Down on their luck? Sometimes. Wise? Almost never.
There is no easy solution and I don't doubt that we do spend $100k in man-hours and resources per homeless person. Social workers and therapists aren't cheap and probably make more than 99.2% of /out/.
