Homelessness is an awful, horrible, experience. Being sick while homeless, squares the misery. But how could it be otherwise? That's why homeless should never be "acceptable" for any society.

Ok, perhaps the government should give everyone food and shelter? I would love that. No more having to work! Yay!

I'd like to point out what the Seattle Times reported a few weeks ago. Nearly all of our homeless population are from Seattle. That's right, they are locals who have been displaced during the Great Wealth Density of Seattle. So when you right wing asshole Uncle tries to tell you that our homeless problem in Seattle is because of deadbeats moving to "liberal" Seattle for free services please call them out on their bullshit lie.

Our homeless used to be housed in Seattle.

It's cheaper, and more humane, to just give them free housing.

@5: There's no such thing as free housing, so I assume you meant housing paid for by the city and hence its taxpayers and to fund the mainteanance of such properties and their own property taxes in perpetuity.

@6 trumps @1. Compassion, but hey, my money's my money.

@6 Precisely!

Unless you want to spend more money and still have miserable, messy people living and dying on the streets.

@6:

So, we can all pay some to put the homeless in subsistence-level shelters and provide basic social and health services, or we can pay more, as we do currently, for the increased costs associated with homelessness: for all the unpaid first-responder calls, ER visits, public health & safety costs, additional law enforcement costs, etc., etc. Regrettably, it seems like most people would prefer to just maintain the status quo and continue to pay more to punish the homeless, rather than pay significantly LESS to solve the problem of homelessness.

Where is all this free housing? Where will this free housing be built? Who will build this free housing? Whose land will this free housing sit on? Will the free housing be taxed? Who will pay the taxes on this free housing?

This, and many additional questions are ones that you never have to answer! They just take care of themselves!

I look forward to the first bozo to mention Utah.

Quit spending our tax $$ on bombing every poor country in the world. (Doesn't seem like we ever bomb the rich ones.)

That way we can make life better for everyone: spend money on the needs of people here and stop increasing the instability over there.

"That way we can make life better for everyone: spend money on the needs of people here and stop increasing the instability over there. "

Yep.

Maybe we could tackle our homelessness crisis if we addressed our asshole crisis.

@7: Project much? Talking about public funds does not equate to saying "NO - it's my money!" No, it's good government. Do you really think it helps the homeless if properties go into foreclosure? Is this a more worthy cause than extend light rail to the suburbs? You're trigger happy retorts are getting terribly boring, please think before you type.

Refusing to house the homeless because you hate "lazy" people is cutting off your own nose to spite your face. Lots of people can't get jobs when they are homeless because their prospective employer has concerns about their access to basic hygiene. Likewise, lots of people can't get jobs when they are homeless because of disabilities like schizophrenia, where lower functioning sufferers can't hold down a job and never will. Plenty of people are on disability, but that doesn't mean their check pays their rent. And yeah, lots of homeless people do end up on drugs, but it would solve a lot of social problems to treat their addictions inpatient (which often takes 6 months to a year, not 30 days) and not release them onto the same streets where they started using. We are one of the most developed countries in the world. We can treat drug addicts. Also, if junkies get safe injection sites, diabetic homeless people should at least get the same consideration.

There are so many public health and safety problems and environmental problems because of the homeless (particularly the chronically homeless). It's in everyone's best interest to put them in housing. And I say that as someone whose neighborhood that housing would probably be in.

@4 i'm surprised nobody's said it to you today, but you're an ass..

@1 You're absolutely correct, as is the Harbourview Doctor. But that is all obvious to almost everyone. The question isn't why do we let the homeless lament. The question is why do we have a homeless population at all. And no finger pointing. Frankly, we are all to blame, including some of the behaviors of the homeless themselves. It would take all of us to solve the problem. Which doesn't seem to be happening while everyone is pointing fingers.

@11, while we have truly messed up in our zeal to protect western civilization. Truly. Messed. Up. We cannot simply stop defense spending. As nasty as you think we ourselves are, there are many nastier people and governments that would love to destroy what we have and us along with it. Surely you understand that.

@10: Think of them as jails, except where people aren't locked up. The city acquires property for all manner of buildings--police stations, fire stations, administrative offices, parks, etc. This would be no different, except for the added NIMBY outcry.

@2 - If we are required to live in this society, with all of its rules government money and "jobs" as required parts of merely existing day-to-day, then yes, this society should fucking pony up and make sure that people are minimally housed and fed and with basic health care. (We certainly have the extra money to do it, as we're quite ready to spend many billions on bloody, cynical, never-ending wars of foreign occupation.)

All the land is owned by someone, much of it the government (BLM, FS), so there is no longer any place people can simply move to and eek out their own life. Once upon a time land was "free", in that anyone rejected from society could move there and build their own habitation, plant their own food. But no more. There's no where left to go.

So if we have to now live completely within the rule-structures of this our great society, then our great society should make damn well sure that none of it's people is left in physical misery due to "economic disruption" and "housing bubbles" and "corporate downsizing" other bullshit perpetrated by those who have far less to lose.

All this "my money" individualism is crass, short-sighted selfishness, and everyone's moralizing on how the homeless --the very people our fucking society has seen fit to simply throw on the streets-- manage their lives and problems is so much sanctimonious crap as to be absolutely meaningless in a truly moral world. A world where all people are treated with dignity.

"Before you criticize a person, walk a mile in their shoes."
If you've never been homeless, and you are not helping them, then you really have nothing to say worth listening to.

LAND, n. A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure. Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own implies the right exclusively to occupy; and in fact laws of trespass are enacted wherever property in land is recognized. It follows that if the whole area of terra firma is owned by A, B and C, there will be no place for D, E, F and G to be born, or, born as trespassers, to exist.

I believe that our nation needs to directly abolish poverty as advocated by Dr. Martin Luther King. If a country is unable to produce sufficient jobs and wages its adult citizenry should receive a liveable guaranteed basic along with single payer universal health care (as our neighbors next door in Canada and everywhere else in the developed world enjoy).

Single payer saves money, and comes out of taxes, ultimately providing much more for much less, so funding is not an issue on that front.

On liveable basic income - adjusted to the cost of living - and at the federal level - it could be accomplished rather straightforwardly (like a Medicare For All) by expansion via an improved social security - which is similarly amenable to cost-effective expansion.

I wouldn't put it at New York City levels, but in today's climate, roughly 35-40K per adult citizen. This actually saves money on many fronts - for example, any number of more outdated and cumbersome social service programs are rendered obsolete (some sooner than others), money is saved via emergency, jails and other arenas where the poor wind up instead - and it stimulates the economy by permitting people to leave positions (opening them to others), permitting people to move around the country more easily, supporting small businesses, enabling people to pay down debt, go back to school, stay home with children and parent more effectively, and so on ... we gain volunteers in a lot of areas, new endeavors and experimentation and we also enable our society to transition more easily from industries that we've outgrown - like fossil fuels or health insurance.

I think it is the future (if we last long enough without destroying ourselves and the planet) mostly because we can't really produce sufficient employment fast enough - and in many respects, this problem will increase. We also have growing populations of older people who are unable to retire but unable to reenter the workforce. So there's a whole range of social issues - including the very dire issues of poverty and homelessness - that can be redressed by simply expanding Medicare and social security.

In Utah, they made some really good strides, I read, by simply and straightforwardly giving chronically homeless persons modest apartments, no strings attached. As a result, in one interview I listened to on video, they reported saving roughly 40k dollars per year per homeless person simply because so many other costs were driven up for the state in terms of emergency rooms, jails, and a whole range of issues that develop because people are living on the streets. It was really amazing how much money was saved just by getting over the idea that you can't just give people something - and by going ahead - and just giving it to them.

We're all connected in this world, and I also agree with the view that we're currently in a rigged economy system. So it's just not fair to assume that people at the very bottom are draining the top. It's actually quite the reverse. I don't believe people should be allowed to have such huge profits at the expense of so many others.

I'm not suggesting that everyone should have the same amount. But we should not be seeing such great wealth inequaity and such great differences which are continuing to increase as more and more members of the middle class fall into poverty. At present 47 million Americans are poor. This does not have to be the case in a nation like the United States where we have so many resources.

There was a time when direct abolition of slavery struck some people as an extreme notion. Now we look back and see slavery as an extreme and brutal scenario. Similarly, I think we can see that our current economic system that has so many living in the streets in extreme and brutal and that direct abolition of poverty - like direct abolition of slavery - is actually a reasonable and just solution.

@23 - Relevant to your concerns: The Future of Money