No, what you're saying is a fallacy. After the housing bubble popped around 2008, millions of people around the world found themselves homeless. It can happen to anyone at any time for almost any reason, but often for things like healthcare costs or work accidents leading to unemployment and even bankruptcy. And it will happen again, and still nobody will remember, because of this mantra that homelessness is a lack of personal responsibility.
In fact, I would go as far as to say that your labelling of homelessness as a behavioral problem is the cause of homelessness. Repeated all around the world by countless people and politicians.
If we really want to solve poverty and homelessness, we need to start by separating the financial aspect from the behavioral aspect.
The financial aspect involves everything from vast wealth inequality, to lack of urban planning, to the divergence of wealth and automation, to regressive taxation and extortive healthcare programs. This is basically represented by 40 years of trickle down economics and complete disregard for externalities like environmental damage or displaced populations.
The behavior aspect centers mostly around mental health issues like anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and yes addiction. Things which are all present in the wealthy but properly managed by therapy, medication and a large support network made possibly by the possession of money. There's absolutely no reason we can't offer treatment to the poor. And indeed we used to, before Ronald Reagan began defunding mental health programs in the US:
Personally, I vote to maintain the separation of church and state in the US, which means that the government shouldn't have a say in what appropriate personal behavior is. Which means as a culture, we have a responsibility to pay into a system which is concerned with the care of people who need it.
Churches can still feed and house the homeless, but they shouldn't be the only ones tasked with that responsibility.
For anyone reading this, if you haven't thought about how your personal moral and religious beliefs play into the problem of homelessness, now is the time.
And indeed we used to, before Ronald Reagan began defunding mental health programs in the US
This is such a worn out trope.
No, Reagan did not single handily defund mental health.
Institutionalization became a dirty word - people held against their will. The thought was that these people could be more integrated in the community, hence institutions were defunded.
>>And indeed we used to, before Ronald Reagan began defunding mental health programs in the US:
Social welfare spending has massively increased in the US since 1970. I would be willing to put money on taxpayer-funded spending on mental health seeing a similar increase.
Blaming de-institutionalization on a federal bill passed in the 1980s is a misleading simplification of the issue that ignores the larger trends in place.
Like I said, social spending has been steadily increasing in both inflation-adjusted terms, and in terms of percentage of the GDP expended on it. What changed is an opposition to institutionalization led by sociologists, who by way, are the most left-wing group of academics in the US according to surveys.
The article you linked to points out that the first law against institutionalization was passed by Califorinia, which is usually at the forefront of left-wing reforms. The move toward "community care", where drug addicts can optionally avail themselves to mental health resources, and are otherwise allowed to wander the city un-supervised, has allowed the most vulnerable segment of the population to be mercilessly preyed upon by drug dealers.
>>Personally, I vote to maintain the separation of church and state in the US, which means that the government shouldn't have a say in what appropriate personal behavior is. Which means as a culture, we have a responsibility to pay into a system which is concerned with the care of people who need it.
This assumes we as a culture has a say in how much people contribute to supporting those who are incapable of taking care of themselves, but no say in whether people actually take care of themselves, and do things like show up to their job and avoid substance-abuse. So you're not removing the government's role in saying what appropriate personal behaviour is at all. Taxation is enforcing a particular type of behaviour, and you're all for that. You just don't want to restrict self-destructive behaviour that encourages dependency on programs provided at the taxpayer's expense.
In fact, I would go as far as to say that your labelling of homelessness as a behavioral problem is the cause of homelessness. Repeated all around the world by countless people and politicians.
If we really want to solve poverty and homelessness, we need to start by separating the financial aspect from the behavioral aspect.
The financial aspect involves everything from vast wealth inequality, to lack of urban planning, to the divergence of wealth and automation, to regressive taxation and extortive healthcare programs. This is basically represented by 40 years of trickle down economics and complete disregard for externalities like environmental damage or displaced populations.
The behavior aspect centers mostly around mental health issues like anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and yes addiction. Things which are all present in the wealthy but properly managed by therapy, medication and a large support network made possibly by the possession of money. There's absolutely no reason we can't offer treatment to the poor. And indeed we used to, before Ronald Reagan began defunding mental health programs in the US:
https://sites.psu.edu/psy533wheeler/2017/02/08/u01-ronald-re...
Personally, I vote to maintain the separation of church and state in the US, which means that the government shouldn't have a say in what appropriate personal behavior is. Which means as a culture, we have a responsibility to pay into a system which is concerned with the care of people who need it.
Churches can still feed and house the homeless, but they shouldn't be the only ones tasked with that responsibility.
For anyone reading this, if you haven't thought about how your personal moral and religious beliefs play into the problem of homelessness, now is the time.