Most homeless people are just normal people who dont have a home. They can pick up garbage or dig ditches or plant trees at the very least. Plenty of menial labor that needs to be done.
1. send them to extremely cheap housing in bumfuck
2. jail
3. let them be homeless if thats what they want
Imo most of the people who think this way are addicts or mentally ill and should be involuntarily committed, so my preferred option is
4. Rebuild the asylums and commit people(with heavy oversight) who are completely incapable of caring for themselves. Although this option is similar to 2
Sounds pretty illiberal to me. Lately (due to the whole pandemic/vaccine controversies), I've begun to wonder what drugs the state can force individuals to take or not take, and increasingly it seems that individual freedom is the rule in the US at least.
Prison is a concept that has existed since the dawn of society. Maybe you disagree with criminalizing homelessness, that's certainly understandable and perhaps a bit illiberal, but it's certainly not unprecedented. And anyway, what I'm calling for is mandatory community service for the homeless, and then imprisonment/commitment/send them to kansas when they refuse to do it, not just criminalizing homelessness.
But if your question is if I believe in absolute freedoms, I absolutely do not. You are not free to harass people on the street. Not free to monopolize public parks. Certainly not free to be violent.
Our constitution requires due process before you can force anyone to do anything. You also can't ban people from public land, because it is public. Imagine if the government created a massive park and only allowed rich people to use it. That's technically the same thing, except you are the rich people (relatively).
Seems like a bit of a burn on Kansas; some people live there voluntarily.
I wonder who it is you imagine will administer this involuntary servitude program? Does it particularly matter if the work is done to some standard or other? Do you imagine the state of California is competent to manage this system?
The state already runs community service programs. They can be expanded to handle the people living in the housing we built.
I'm not sure how giving someone a home and money for essentials is involuntary servitude. If these people don't want to do the service they can get a different job. I just realize that a lot of the homeless have what it takes to be successful, they just need structure and a little help.
I suppose I missed your option 3 which basically seems to be our current status quo. But government run make-work programs just seem like a non-starter in the modern US.
Who cares about someone slapping arbitrary labels of "liberal" or "illiberal" on things? Ultimately we need to find something that actually works, and treats people with compassion. It seems like the big focus is on the second half of that, completely ignoring the first.
The label you are looking for is “duly convicted party,” per the 13th Amendment:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Read a bit about Diogenes if you think this is a recent question. But I do wonder, what do you think members of society should be required to contribute to that society?
shitting literally anywhere but the dead center of the street or sidewalk shows a non-zero amount of caring about how one conducts oneself as part of a society. when one stoops to the level of shitting in the middle of where everyone walks (I visited SF in 2016, and from what I understand, it has not gotten any better since), one implicitly displays a complete and utter disregard for his fellow man. shitting in any bush or patch of grass is a step up from that. even pooping in a bag (I was going to say "free grocery bag" but I suppose they don't have those in SF anymore, do they?) and leaving it in a gutter is better than depositing your feces right in the middle of a public thoroughfare!
if I woke up tomorrow on the streets of SF, homeless, without a penny to my name, and in dire immediate need of taking a dump, I would do it literally anywhere that could even be slightly considered "out of the way of other people," and it would never even cross my mind to even consider dropping a fat steamy deuce right where everyone can step in it.
when you take a shit in the middle of a crosswalk or sidewalk, you're implicitly displaying your total rejection of even the most baseline expected behavior of the society you physically reside within. this is completely obvious to anyone who has never immersed themselves in one of these decaying societies to the point where they become numb to it.
No one said they were going to be free. First of all, they'd be getting a home. Second, yes they should be paid something so they can afford food and other essentials. The point is to help them recover. Just throwing housing or money at them and saying good luck, do whatever you want, isn't going to work. With sponsored work, they can look for better jobs and tell their prospective employers that they've been working for a year or two with no issues at the state/federal job. That would go a long way.
Unless you can cite the source that they actually received that $17B it sure seems like you're looking to punish people for being poor rather than to fix the system which creates the environment and situations that lead to these outcomes. That's not going to work. It never has worked and it never will.
