> Roughly 550k homeless and roughly 16M vacant homes.
> Someone did an analysis and the true number of vacant homes someone can move into is like 10% of that figure.
If that 10% figure from the analysis of San Fransisco applies to the entire country (and I recognize it may not), then the 550k homeless would be compared to 1.6M homes, or still ~3x the number of houses we would need to house every homeless person in the country. That 3x gives us a fair amount of wiggle-room, for the analysis not being replicable across the country.
My main point is not that we should seize an arbitrary number of houses and house homeless people in them, but rather that homelessness is both a choice that we've made as a society and as government policy.
We absolutely have the wealth that we could choose not to have homelessness in the country. And it's a stain on our society that we choose to have homelessness.
Well, as you point out, assuming the SF stats apply to the entire US is a stretch.
But regardless, do you think the only reason why people are homeless is because they can't afford a home? They did a survey in SF and 60%+ were homeless due to mental health and/or drug and alcohol issues.
Housing First approaches have found much better outcomes for mental health treatment, and addiction treatment.
It’s so hard to address mental health issues with a population that’s homeless. Simple things like weekly visits with a therapist become much much more difficult. Keeping medication safe and secure is much more feasible when someone has stable housing.
You’re absolutely right that housing people won’t necessarily fix all their problems. But it makes those other problems much easier to address, and leads to better outcomes [1].
And it can drive down other costs (like healthcare costs specifically) to the point that it’s cheaper [2].
> Someone did an analysis and the true number of vacant homes someone can move into is like 10% of that figure.
If that 10% figure from the analysis of San Fransisco applies to the entire country (and I recognize it may not), then the 550k homeless would be compared to 1.6M homes, or still ~3x the number of houses we would need to house every homeless person in the country. That 3x gives us a fair amount of wiggle-room, for the analysis not being replicable across the country.
My main point is not that we should seize an arbitrary number of houses and house homeless people in them, but rather that homelessness is both a choice that we've made as a society and as government policy.
We absolutely have the wealth that we could choose not to have homelessness in the country. And it's a stain on our society that we choose to have homelessness.