A broad social safety net makes a huge difference. It’s not just housing it’s socialized medicine, paid family leave, good transit, free high quality education, solving fewer problems with police and more with social support programs and social workers, free meal programs for adults and children in schools, libraries, and a variety of other programs that help ensure people don’t fall through the cracks here or there. How many people in the US are teetering on the edge of homelessness due to medical debt, and what happens if their partner is in an accident and they lose shared income for rent? Situations like this don’t have a single solution it’s a system of solutions.
I intentionally described policies which are already common practice in most European countries, nothing extravagant. Yes there is some cost but the alternative is deep human suffering which is otherwise avoidable.
But this isn’t really “giving them” anything. It’s giving ourselves safety and security.
It wouldn’t make sense to give you a car. We would give you a working train system instead. Again this is common in Europe and Asia. Indeed every person is “given” access to a high quality transit network with affordable tickets.
To be clear, I personally am an anarcho communist. I think we would be better off if we organized to ensure every person has their basic needs met by the established wealth of society. That isn’t all that dramatic - making sure everyone can ride high quality trains and get medical care when they need it are common in most countries for example.
Consider the Linux ecosystem. “Give them everything and expect nothing” works fine despite the great effort which goes in to building and maintaining that system. We can study the economics of this and build more systems like that.
Ship them somewhere else, then print a banner saying, "mission accomplished."
It worked at a state level for years, with certain states bussing their homeless to other states. And recently, the USA has been building up the capability to do the same thing on an international scale.
That's the "solution" we are going to be throwing money at. Ship them to labor camps propped up by horrible regimes.
Many experiments have shown that when you take away people's concerns about money for housing and food, that frees up energy and attention to do other things.
Like the famous experiment in Finland where homeless people were given cash with no strings attached and most were able to rise out of their despair. The healthcare professionals could then focus their energy on the harder cases. It also saved a bunch of money in the process.
I suspect giving them away is a bridge too far, however not rewarding capital for treating them as speculative investment vehicles might be a good start.
