The solution is to build ways out. Shelters and job programs do help. Direct charity, giving money to beggars, only keeps them begging.
Employ homeless people.
Give a homeless person a break. Maybe just ignore them in their shelter. They must do everything in public, for they rarely have a private space. They can't afford the luxury of choosing which actions others may view.
Learn how communities in your area address the homeless people who live there. Remember that homeless people do still live somewhere. This is not a part of their life they will be proud of, but it's not the end of their life, not a permanent placement.
Sorry for not getting back until now. Homelessness is a result with several very different causes. That means that any single answer to "the problem" will be wrong most of the time. The answer must be a combination of programs that each deal with a different category. Some people are desperate to get off the street and have safe housing but can't obtain it for various reasons. Others want to stay on the street for various reasons. Some of them might be willing to move under certain conditions, and you might move different sub-groups of them with different combinations of carrot and stick. Some are mentally ill, some are ruled by chemical addictions, some are hardcore predators wanting to stay near their prey (mostly other homeless), some are scammers (pretending to be homeless, because they prefer begging to being at the mercy of an employer), etc., etc.
So, a good (not showpiece) solution could have no one place to "put" them. Any solution optimized for the needs of the homeless rather than for their advocates will necessarily be an ever-adapting patchwork based on lots of experiments that are allowed to fail, one that can't ever fully solve the problem but gradually gets better at it, like genuine, evidence-based medicine addressing the needs of sick people.
I don't believe you can constitutionally put someone anywhere they don't want to go unless they threaten others, but you can tell them that they "can't stay here" and let them decide where else to put themselves. Like all of the patches, that will only work for some. Others are unable to put themselves someplace safe, so options have to be created--again different options for different categories. "You can't stay here but you can go here" will be an important patch in the patchwork.
But it still leaves many categories uncovered. Those who are predators can constitutionally be taken off the streets and locked up and need to be. Their most likely prey are other homeless, who need to be kept safe even if you haven't found a housing solution for them. And the mentally ill? There are categories of mental impairments, too. Some aren't too bad off and might be "bribed" in various ways to take their meds.
And I have to repeat, some things will help these people, some things will help those people, and there will always remain unsolved categories. I can no more provide the solution to homelessness than the solution to all illness, but an adapting, experimental, evidence-based approach to solving it in pieces--focused on measured reduction in homelessness rather than on benefits to the service providers--is the most likely to succeed, as is the case with medicine.
Homelessness is not simply a money problem. A lot of homeless people have mental illnesses, drug addictions, and other significant health problems. Many of them are suspicious of shelters and especially of the police and other forms of government authority because of bad past experiences.
Even for people who initially became homeless because they couldn't afford housing, a lot of those other factors have become part of what keeps them homeless. Just giving them housing doesn't solve any of those other problems.
The long term solution (getting someone off the streets) is irrelevant for most homeless people. They're homeless now. What might be done to fix their situation in the future isn't something they spend much time thinking about. Unless you have a way to get someone of the streets right there and then, giving them money is by far the best thing you can do.
I spent 5.7 years homeless. I have also had a college class on homelessness.
This is not a problem readily solved by throwing money at it. This is a people problem and it is quite complex.
Most people on the street have very serious, intractable personal problems, such as medical issues, mental health issues, addiction and/or various barriers to employment.
I have read articles where they put a homeless person in housing and the individual set it on fire. You don't solve such problems by just sticking them in housing.
We don't have a slam dunk guaranteed solution for addiction. Even when someone very much wants off the drugs, they don't always succeed because we don't really know how to fix it. A lot of medical and mental health issues are similarly intractable.
One thing that would help: more market based low cost housing. Another thing that would help: more flexible earning opportunities for people with barriers to regular employment.
Pursuing a flexible earned income via the internet was one piece of the puzzle for getting myself back into housing. I am trying to design a program to help other people who need flexible earning opportunities access the same, whether they are currently homeless or simply at risk (however, I am in the US, not Europe). I also am doing research to try to come up with some solutions for providing market based low cost housing in the US.
Those things won't solve homelessness, but I think they can make a meaningful dent. I don't like the trends we are seeing and I don't think we should simply accept them. But it is, in fact, a challenging problem space, not mere lack of willingness to throw money at the problem.
That doesn't solve the problem. If you just gave housing to most homeless people and walked away, the majority of them would be homeless again after a short time.
You'd need to commit to ongoing, indefinite financial support for the person and for the maintenance of the housing.
The problem is nobody wants the homeless at their doorsteps, including this community. If you leave them in tents in some place, nothing will change. If you apply pressure to the problem then hopefully it will get solved.
I think part of the problem is that there is a certain percentage of homeless people that are just completely irredeemable.
Anyone that’s spent some time riding on the NYC subway can attest to this. No matter how much money you throw at them, they will keep begging or acting crazy.
Short of locking them up, what do you do with those people?
I am asking a question in good faith because I really don't know what you're thinking.
You said that homelessness is a symptom of underlying problems, which is true, but also said, "You need to address the issues that cause people to act like that". Sure, this will work for some, but not others.
I am genuinely asking what you propose to do about the people for whom this is not feasible or possible - whose underlying problems we cannot address.
Problems with homeless is deeper than finding a place to sleep. For example, some homeless people voluntarily choose to sleep on the street even when they have homes (like one man I knew who refused to go home after his wife death after many years of struggling with cancer). Some people would destroy that property that would be given to them, and will be thrown out by the building administration. Homelessness is partially mental health problem, it cannot be solved just by handing out free apartments.
1. Employed but unable to afford the COL of the area.
2. Too mentally unwell to hold down a job, possibly due to a history of hard drug addiction.
I agree that some homeless people can be meaningfully helped through drug addiction treatment and/or employment programs, but it won't solve the whole problem.
And the current approach of leaving them to the streets is failing much much worse in practice. Of the politically and economically viable options, kicking them off the street and sending them to shelter (which they can refuse, but they can't stay on the street) is the best option I have seen. Long term we absolutely need to address the issues that cause homelessness, and I think we are overall heading that direction, but the problems of today need to be addressed with solutions for today.
There is a part of the homeless population that will not stay in free housing, damages it when it's given to them, or is severely disruptive to neighbors, and refuses addiction treatment or returns to drugs immediately after leaving treatment. Improving the circumstances of these people is an unsolved problem, and one many consider not worth solving when these people actively resist all "solutions" offered to them.
This has sort of been said, but this really isn't true. The type of homelessness solved by building more housing is people living out of weekly rentals, hotels, couch-surfing with their friends, or staying with their parents forever. They're not the kind of people cities are trying to bus away. The kind of people cities are trying to bus away are walking the streets screaming at imagined ghosts. Some small number may have jobs and money but just not enough to afford housing and no friends or family to turn to, but some are functionally incapable of operating in normal society. A humane community needs some solution to what to do with these people as well, aside from send them somewhere else, put them in prison, and/or hope they die.
Employ homeless people.
Give a homeless person a break. Maybe just ignore them in their shelter. They must do everything in public, for they rarely have a private space. They can't afford the luxury of choosing which actions others may view.
Learn how communities in your area address the homeless people who live there. Remember that homeless people do still live somewhere. This is not a part of their life they will be proud of, but it's not the end of their life, not a permanent placement.
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