Talk politics.

Much in line with the monthly topic, comes this:

Giving apartments to the chronically homeless can save taxpayer dollars, advocates say

Sometimes you have to spend money in order to save money and get the job done, as any progressive would tell you...

"Giving apartments to homeless people who've been on the streets for years before they've received treatment for drug or alcohol problems or mental illness may not sound like a wise idea. But that's what's being done in cities across America in an approach that targets those who've been homeless the longest and are believed to be at greatest risk of dying. They're people who once might have been viewed as unreachable. But cities and counties affiliated with a movement known as the 100,000 Homes Campaign announced this past week that they had gotten more than 100,000 of these people off the streets and into permanent housing. We first told you about this initiative earlier this year. Local governments and non-profit groups do most of the work. The money comes mostly from existing federal programs and private donations, and there's evidence that this approach saves taxpayers' money."

At least from a first reading, this sounds like a nice response to a serious problem that affects millions of people in America, particularly veterans, pensioners and handicapped. In fact this has already been done by Utah, and has shown some promising results while saving a lot of money:

Utah Solves Homelessness by Giving Away Homes

Utah Is on Track to End Homelessness by 2015 With This One Simple Idea

"The state is giving away apartments, no strings attached. In 2005, Utah calculated the annual cost of E.R. visits and jail stays for an average homeless person was $16,670, while the cost of providing an apartment and social worker would be $11,000. Each participant works with a caseworker to become self-sufficient, but if they fail, they still get to keep their apartment".

Of course, there are caveats. First off, they'd probably need to expand a bit more on what "existing federal programs" exactly means. Because, the way it's formulated right now, it could mean practically anything involving tax money - therefore by definition it's not saving taxpayer money, but is rather spending taxpayer money. On the other hand, if it were all private donations there'd be no controversy, but that's apparently not exactly the case, is it.

Some'd also argue that the only reason it saves money is because entitling penniless people to medical care just for showing up at the ER door is much more expensive in comparison. Homeless are known to abuse that practice because they have nothing else, but the ER providers get to bill the taxpayers for the time they "waste" tending to these people, anyway. In a sense, it's not that housing everyone on taxpayer funds is intrinsically frugal, but it's that the entitlement to infinite health-care in its current form is so stunningly wasteful that housing the homeless only saves money by comparison. In other words, housing the homeless has a potential to modestly curtail the immense waste caused by other inefficient social policies, and it's mild financial damage control at best.

On the other hand, you just don't deny medical care to a group of people, especially when a high share of them have mental and physical illnesses. It may be economically expedient from a business point of view, but it's not moral, not Christian, and ultimately, detrimental to society at large. It's exactly because the health-care and insurance system is now being designed and operated as if it were a mere for-profit business as opposed to a fundamentally significant aspect of society, that it has reached its disastrous current predicament.

Meanwhile, such a policy would also require proper enforcement and oversight. Because otherwise there'd be a risk of teenagers getting a free party pad at the taxpayer's expense by just calling the government and claiming they're homeless with a heroin addiction and asking for a free apartment, while remaining totally clean and living in their parents' house, and then renting out their free apartment to friends and making money out of it.

I'm sure those among our more conservative pals who are somewhat prone to hyperbolic talking-point FOX-style vomiting would imminently argue that there's no stopping at merely giving apartments for free, and what's next is free food, free cars, free drugs, and, - gasp! - even free health-care and education! (OMGs and FFSs are in order). And, ya know, other such un-American stuff. (Well, free guns are probably a completely different story).

There's also the more rational counter-point to such a proposal, in that the more the root problem remains hidden from the public, the more it'll be ignored and its real solution delayed. We all know the reasoning behind the opposition to entitlement programs like these: they tend to create a culture of dependency, remove any incentive for personal development, hide away a whole segment of society in crappy, federally funded subdivisions and make it harder for society to garner support for addressing the root cause of these people's homelessness.

That said, the matter is not so black-and-white as some might be trying to portray it. Some homeless people are stable enough to live in a home without screwing up. All they need is a chance. They should be identified and given housing ASAP, so they could kick off from a way better position and possibly improve their life. Others need supervision. The most successful programs are the ones that have services AND monitoring. Not saying that there should necessarily be requirements to homeless people to become clean and sober before getting housing, as there's ample evidence suggesting that having a home in fact does make it far more likely that an addict would look after the place and clean up.

Personally, I don't support giving anyone free housing indefinitely, i.e. for life. Ultimately, the goal of this policy should be to stabilize the homeless so they could get a job, or at least social security, and pay for their housing within a certain period, eventually. That should be the whole idea of welfare: to provide a security net so that peope don't crash down on the ground; and then offer a launching pad from which people could start anew on their own, with their own efforts. The more people are helped that way, the better for society overall, no?

Social programs like these are not harmful per se - the ones that are wasteful and promote abuse of the system are the truly problematic ones. Sadly, those are not going away any time soon, because as long as there are politicians trying to buy votes, and perpetuate social problems for the sake of continuously exploiting them without finding a solution, to justify a few more votes on each election cycle, the problem is not going anywhere.

That said, it sounds like a good idea to see major cities building large living areas with residential quarters of various size depending on their needs, with food warehouses that carry all anyone would need to survive. After all, with what's being wasted on excessive programs of incredibly low efficacy, we could provide much better for those who truly need help.

Plus, the other thing that this needs to be coupled with, is rehabilitation. In America, drug problems are also swept under the rug by mostly jailing humongous swaths of people for petty crimes, stuffing the bloated jail system with cheap labor, again all at the taxpayer's back and for the profit of the private companies operating those jails. And let's face it, a large part of the problem with the homeless is directly intertwined with the problem of drug addiction.