We need societal-level solutions to homelessness. We need housing, free healthcare, free mental healthcare, criminal justice reform, and more. But until we can do that, the reality is, concentrations of the homeless are associated with higher crime, reduced patronage of businesses, and decreased property values.
It super duper sucks, but homelessness is a really difficult problem for cities and property owners they aren’t equipped to address. Since they can’t fix the problem, they instead focus on keeping the problem away.
This feels like a very US-specific way of framing it. In the UK and much of Europe, many of those “societal-level solutions” already exist to varying degrees: healthcare and mental healthcare free at the point of use, unemployment support, benefits towards rent, social and temporary housing, legal homelessness-prevention duties, and Housing First programmes.
They’re nowhere near perfect. We have social-housing shortages, benefit limits, long healthcare waiting lists and plenty of people who still fall through the gaps. But the response doesn’t have to begin and end with moving homeless people somewhere less visible to protect property values.
Your point that individual businesses and property owners cannot solve homelessness is completely fair. That’s precisely why they should sit behind a publicly funded safety net which helps keep people housed and supports them back into stability, instead of leaving everyone involved to deal with the consequences.
We need societal-level solutions to homelessness. We need housing, free healthcare, free mental healthcare, criminal justice reform, and more. But until we can do that, the reality is, concentrations of the homeless are associated with higher crime, reduced patronage of businesses, and decreased property values.
It super duper sucks, but homelessness is a really difficult problem for cities and property owners they aren’t equipped to address. Since they can’t fix the problem, they instead focus on keeping the problem away.
It’s all so fucked.
This feels like a very US-specific way of framing it. In the UK and much of Europe, many of those “societal-level solutions” already exist to varying degrees: healthcare and mental healthcare free at the point of use, unemployment support, benefits towards rent, social and temporary housing, legal homelessness-prevention duties, and Housing First programmes.
They’re nowhere near perfect. We have social-housing shortages, benefit limits, long healthcare waiting lists and plenty of people who still fall through the gaps. But the response doesn’t have to begin and end with moving homeless people somewhere less visible to protect property values.
Your point that individual businesses and property owners cannot solve homelessness is completely fair. That’s precisely why they should sit behind a publicly funded safety net which helps keep people housed and supports them back into stability, instead of leaving everyone involved to deal with the consequences.