Guillotines have a way of loosening one’s grip.

Next you’re going to tell me you can solve homelessness by giving people housing

But I’m using these bootstraps, they can go find their own!

I almost thought this was going a different way. I’m happy to be wrong.

I imagine some capitalist, right-wing fucker is screaming at their screen going “nu-uhhh” and furiously typing that you’re wrong despite having done zero research.

I’m employed, and I live like I’m in poverty. As much as I want to lift up the homeless, I would also appreciate fair wages for the employed.

Since rent/housing has gone insane, I’m having a hard time making things work on the money I’m making. I’m well over the “poverty” line and I can’t afford to put fuel in my car and buy name brand products, even if I wanted to. Products like… Idk, Campbell’s.

Amazingly shitty.

Idk… Maybe he knew he sucks with money so couldn’t offer his own wisdom on the topic, but wanted to help his kid avoid his mistakes however he could

No. UBI studies have shown that unconditional cash both reduces poverty levels and improves mental and physical health. Recipients of that money were actually drinking less and spent more on basic needs. Employment went up, not down. And so what if some people end up spending it on drugs? Providing them free access to healthcare, education, and housing as well instead of stigmatizing them is infinitely better than living in fear of an imaginary problem. Besides, I’m less worried about someone spending like $50 or whatever on weed than I am of them spending obscene hundreds or thousands on necessary prescription drugs.

I’d say with those people you just need to give the money to a care giver instead of directly to the person… But it’s still just giving money without making them jump through all kinds of dehumanizing hoops

And most cases of substance abuse come from people living in a society with no community and no safety nets. Even if you give everyone a thousand bucks a month but society is stil hell, it solves very little.

bUt SoMeTiMeS

Theres a difference between homelessness and poverty.

9 times out of 10, people are poor simply because they are poor, not because of some moral failing on their part. But instead we tell ourselves comforting lies that they must have done something wrong. We tell ourselves this because as long as we don’t do those wrong things, we don’t end up poor or homeless.

In truth, all that is necessary to be homeless is for the cost of housing to rise above the market value of your skill set. That is all. Or a severe illness is all that’s really required.

We can choose to either provide for those who lack food, housing, and other things, or we can choose not to. We often choose not to despite having both sufficient food and shelter.

We can also choose to pursue the goal of making the poor independent.

But if we choose to leave people unprovided for, that is just what we have chosen. There is no way around that.

Making the poor independent is a separate project, in the same vein as making people stop being violent, or unhealthy, or depressed, or sick. An eternal pursuit , with a curious caveat. Because in the case of the poor, if the population of dependent poor die off while the newly improved Independent population remains, it would be a success. No more dependants is the goal, quite literally. It is treated more like ridding ourselves of leeches.

Because contribution is demanded, no matter how banale, cynical, useless, performative or downright harmful. Marketing, manipulation, waste and serving up garbage is all much better than the insufficiently productive poor. Learn to weld, only to make giant steel flower beds to decorate an apartment building, supply the ridiculous demand. Supplying something is the point, regardless of how necessary the demand is.

There’s also the matter that we’ve chosen very explicitly to disallow the poor any power to simply leave the city and establish their of towns of rejects with the materials that exist in nature, as harvesting huge quantities of wood and clay without permissions – unlikely to be obtained – is expressly illegal. Apparently we have to, to protect the environment from people. But it’s not civilization’s responsibility to rectify that injustice, is it? It can just disallow you your shelter and leave it at that. Civilization does not have to compensate a man for the option it has taken away from him.

Thing is, the research into direct cash transfusions and other straight basic income has shown that poor people generally have a very good idea of what they specifically need to do to get out of poverty, be that a gym membership to shower, good clothes, a bike or car, an apartment, someplace to keep documents and medications where they won’t be thrown out by cops, getting a GED after their parents threw them out for being gay, or other prerequisite to getting a job / a job that pays well enough for an apartment, they just don’t have the money to actually do any of it.

A person have a good community kitchen they can go to and get free food, and as such food stamps are worthless to them, but they can’t spend that same pittance on something that would actually help them get out of poverty like clothes and a gym membership or saving up for a small car where they can store their stuff and get to jobs, all because a government commite of people and lobbyists who have never lived outside of a gated community have decided what each poor persons budget should look like and coincidentally they all look the same.

I’m not convinced that just cash will solve homelessness or poverty. It may help, but it seems like a “give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime” kinda situation. Give people the fish so they can eat, but if you want them to actually be independent, then you gotta make sure they have the tools they need to do so.

I think the reason you’ve taken so much flak is that money isn’t fish. Money can be converted into tools. Yes, of course you’re right that some people won’t use the money in a way which will end their homelessness, and may benefit from ‘other programs’. But the meme was specifically about people objecting to the idea of giving poor people money so that they can solve their own problems. Rolling out ‘other programs’ is great, but the ‘other programs’ will be much more effective if they’re not clogged with people that can solve their own problems with a bit of cash.

Most people who are homeless were a paycheck or two away from homelessness.

It’s easier for the housed to become homeless, than for the homeless to become housed. It’s systemic, and a good chunk of it is employers mistreating employees.

Research seems to show that a lot of people just need a small step up to get back on track.

How dare these people wanting to improve the life of the poors by giving them handouts. For shame.

*I’m a “poor” and I approve this sarcasm.

At an individual level, “Just give people money” is an immediate and useful generic panacea. But at a more macro level, geographic access to grocery stores and clinics and colleges and bus stops and permanent homes and factories matter just as much.

FTFY.

But to take it a bit further, high capacity public infrastructure can go a long way towards improving the lives of low income working people.

Trains, buses, and subways can eliminate the need to own and maintain a car.

The real problem is zoning. If the density is high enough (and mixed-use enough), people can just fucking walk places whether you’ve got public transit or not!

Clearly, the Venn of those who’re empowered to make those changes and those who’ve played at least a couple hours of SimCity is two estranged circles.

It needs to be quality of those things, as well. And they know this. It’s designed to keep us too tired, broken physically and mentally to get off the wheel, and not just under it, either. There’s enough for everyone, just some few want to hoard it like decades worth of paper, not because it may come in handy, just because bloodsport is still entertainment, no matter how well they dress it.

Then we’ll have to give them more pie, and they’ll just eat the pie! Eventually they’ll eat all of the pie and the poor rich folks won’t have any pie :(

Yeah, I’m still salty about that vile skit.

Housing without kitchens has come up in modern history multiple times: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-frankfurt-kitchen/

their designs just had single family homes with kitchens. But Marie Howland convinced them to sketch in small groups of kitchen-free houses, each with access to a shared kitchen, where residents would take turns working.

Austin thought it could be a city of kitchen-less houses. And she thought that the food could to each house on a system of underground trains. She drew maps upon maps, and tons of floor plans. She published her ideas in a journal called ‘The Western Comrade’ and even applied to patent her underground food train idea.

But the kitchen-less house movement still didn’t die. In England, the urban planner Ebenezer Howard actually incorporated kitchen-less homes into some of his “garden city” communities. He called these homes “cooperative quadrangles.” They had a shared courtyard and shared kitchen, surrounded by smaller kitchen-less dwellings.

Isn’t that just a hotel room?

Wat, why? What is the idea here?