04-10-2022, 10:00 AM
Just providing homes is definitely not the complete answer and we can see that all around the world. I was recently watching a video that featured the documentary filmmaker Mark Laita - better known as the person behind Soft White Underbelly - where they explore Skid Row in Los Angeles. At the start of the video, he prefaces it by saying that the problems that cause homelessness are so multifaceted. He states that while the city has provided people homes, that is often not enough because there are problems that cause and catalyze homelessness. You peel back each layer and you understand that it isn't simply a lack of housing, but it's economic, educational, drug addiction, mental illness, trauma, criminal records and so on.
To fix homelessness you need to solve these kind of issues but the issue is that it is extremely expensive and time consuming to throw homeless people with drug addictions and mental illness etc problems into treatment...and in many cases it's not even successful because they've been broken for so long. Simply providing them homes is often not sufficient. Sure, it keeps them off the streets for a bit, but the problems that got them there in the first place still exist, so they usually don't improve. Homelessness is most often a symptom of a deeper, more complex problem and until we spend the resources on trying to help these people fix themselves, we're fighting a Sisyphean battle.
To fix homelessness you need to solve these kind of issues but the issue is that it is extremely expensive and time consuming to throw homeless people with drug addictions and mental illness etc problems into treatment...and in many cases it's not even successful because they've been broken for so long. Simply providing them homes is often not sufficient. Sure, it keeps them off the streets for a bit, but the problems that got them there in the first place still exist, so they usually don't improve. Homelessness is most often a symptom of a deeper, more complex problem and until we spend the resources on trying to help these people fix themselves, we're fighting a Sisyphean battle.