I hope threads get notice over here in CDZ. I was going back and forth on the effectiveness of certain political parties and decided I needed to come up with a solid question to ask of both parties, of all parties, of all Americans: Should the government do more for the homeless?
Yes. A lack of will and an abundance of selfishness are the only reasons anyone is homeless in the USA. I mean really. The country can and will fund, to the sum of a trillion dollars, the survival of industries and corporations that drive themselves into bankruptcy and erode the savings of the millions of citizens who must, via their tax dollars, pay to make that happen. The only reason a U.S. citizen should be without a home (house or apartment) of their own is because they expressly choose not to live in one.
To put that in perspective, there are about 580K homeless people in the U.S. Just outright giving each homeless citizen a one time $250K gift would cost ~15% of what we spent to save the automotive and financial services industries. Giving every homeless person that much is obviously preposterous, but that figure makes patently clear that homelessness can be eliminated for a good deal less.
Am I intimating that we should not have bailed out those industries? No, I'm not. I'm saying that the sum it would cost to eradicate homelessness in America is paltry in relation to the sums the nation has available to spend. One might ask how would we pay for eliminating homelessness. Well, one way might be to dispense with the over
$100B in corporate tax breaks (subsidies) for just two years, which would fully fund making the $250K gift noted above. Heck, even just cutting the those subsidies in half would almost totally pay for outright giving every American homeless person a $100K gift. So, one can easily see that eradicating homelessness isn't a matter of affording it, it's a matter of having the will to do so.
Now tell me, were you homeless and bereft of marketable skills, would giving you $100K (to say nothing of $250K) be enough to get your life together and become a contributing member of society? I think for anyone it is. That's enough to pay for transportation to a low or moderate cost-of-living town, housing in that town, food, daily transportation and training to allow one to get a decent job.
To close, one might wonder what is the per-taxpayer cost of this, be it the corporate subsidies or using the same money to eradicate homelessness. Well it's about $900 per person. By comparison, we pay ~$40 per person to fund welfare.
The fact is that you and I are already paying that $900. Eliminating homelessness is just a matter of redirecting it one time to house 580K people. It's not as though another 580K folks are going to show up the following year in need of homes. Unlike the $900/per person spent annually to fund corporate tax breaks, housing 580K people isn't something we have to afford every year. You pay for it once and get it over with. Then we only have a few hundred, maybe a few thousand, folks to deal with in any following years, and as one can tell from the figures above, doing that costs "chump change."
How does one fund the effort?
- Tell corporations that for two years, they will be disallowed their $100B in tax breaks.
- Allocate part of the money to finance administering the homelessness eradication program.
- Put the rest of the money into an interest bearing account.
- Have homeless people sign up or go round them up.
- Enroll them in training that provides the skills that America most needs.
- Buy them bus tickets, housing, modest furnishings, a change of clothing for three days, etc.
- Move them into their furnished quarters.
- Dole out the remainder of each person's gift-less-recurring cost. on a periodic basis until they finish the training or use up the totality of their gift.
Let them take their training, get a job in that field, and that's it; they're on their own from that point forward. On their own because although I believe in eradicating homelessness, I also believe that by not taking advantage of the gift to the extent that they can fend for themselves afterwards, the homeless folks are tacitly stating they are willfully without a home. If one doesn't want to have a home, far be it from me to force one to do so.
No. The government only wastes money when they "help". Let churches and assorted charities help the homeless with hands-on help providing temporary shelter, assistance in finding a job, assistance in finding permanent housing, follow up assistance for a while till the people are on their own feet.
It would be nice if that approach actually worked. It's the one we've been using for over 100 years and we still have homeless people. There's a simple reason why it doesn't work:
the total of U.S. charitable giving amounts to about $360B. Divy that among all the needy, and it's just not enough.
The point of the matter isn't who should ensure that every citizen has a home. The question is whether any citizen should, other than by their own choice, not have a home. One, that is we taxpayers, either commits to the principle that nobody should be homeless (other than by expressly choosing to be so) and does one's part to make sure that happens, or one does not commit to it and allows people to be homeless.
Neither I nor the government can force the nation as a whole to espouse the principle that nobody should be unwillfully homeless. The thing is that by opposing the use of national funds to eliminate homelessness, one tacitly asserts
- unwillful homelessness is an acceptable state of existence for some U.S. citizens
- one's parsimony and/or refusal to give the benefit of the doubt is more important that allowing the government to use one's tax dollar(s) to eliminate homelessness.
Frankly, I don't see much difference between government charity and private charity. A dollar paid in taxes and used to help destitute vagrants or a dollar donated to a church or other charitable organization, is the same dollar being used for the same purpose. The only difference, as things stand now, is that one must make two "donations" rather than one.
