If you were a community, municipality or country committing to the principle that all people deserve shelter, how would you make that principle a reality?
If you were a community, municipality or country committing to the principle that all people deserve shelter, how would you make that principle a reality?
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I’d keep building homeless shelters until there was enough beds for every homeless person. If later on there were more homeless people, I’d build more shelters.
I mean it’s pretty straightforward.
In actual fact I’m not willing to commit to that, but if I were committing to that the solution is dead obvious.
Homeless shelters are not housing; they're shelter for the night. They kick you out in the morning and you can't be sure you'll have a bed there in the evening. You can't keep your stuff there from day to day. And while you're sleeping, your stuff gets stolen. You can't have visitors. You don't have a permanent address, so you can't get mail.
The low end of housing starts with something like a room in a rooming house, SRO, residential hotel, or the like. You share a bathroom and kitchen with other tenants, but you have a room with a bed and a lock on the door. You can keep your stuff there and nobody will rummage through it while you sleep. You can come home to the same place every night. You have an address; you can get mail.
Sure but imo shelter is step zero. If you have people living on the streets, focusing on housing is putting the cart before the horse.
Shelter - - > housing - - > homes
In order of priority
Sure, but there are folks who prefer to stay in tent encampments or cars rather than try to get into homeless shelters. In an encampment, they get to keep their dogs, their drugs, their self-defense tools; their friends can visit; they have a spot they can stay in during the day ... until the city sends someone to clear them out. Whereas in a shelter they're forced to abandon the dog, the drugs, and the knife; and they don't even get a place they can stay for more than a night at a time.
Yes, I debated addressing that...we need better shelters. And safe consumption sites.
You also have to consider infrastructure. What good would 1000 homeless shelters be if you only had the staff or resources to run 100? For the record I am very pro-public housing, but it's a pretty complex situation.