I can: the solution to homelessness is a combination of mental health ed in schools, free & non-judgemental mental health support (incl. medication), free addiction recovery programs, free food, job & community support, and free housing.
If you just provide free housing, there will be a significant proportion of people who would not be able to fully benefit from it due to mental health issues, addictions, and lack of purpose in life.
I don’t know why you worded that as if you disagree with him. He described housing-first. That’s what the “first” implies - other things to support them as well as housing
I’m interested, do you have sources on this? I remember reading about some places providing homes to the homeless, but I can’t think of any examples where they didn’t provide mental health support alongside it
First reply states that mental health assistance must accompany housing assistance 1.2;
If you just provide free housing, there will be a significant proportion of people who would not be able to fully benefit from it due to mental health issues, addictions, and lack of purpose in life.
Next reply states that this goes against the findings of a housing-first approach 2.1:
Your speculation doesn’t trump the massive real-world success and scientific evidence behind a housing-first approach.
Their next statement makes little sense to me 2.2:
You know the difference between a homeless person with mental health issues and a housed person with mental health issues? The latter has housing.
Because the initial reply said to give both, not one or the other 1.1:
the solution to homelessness is a combination of mental health ed in schools, free & non-judgemental mental health support (incl. medication), free addiction recovery programs, free food, job & community support, and free housing.
So, if giving both mental health assistance as well as housing assistance is antithetical to housing-first research, then there must be a study which shows that mental health assistance is either unnecessary or detrimental.
Which portion am I interpreting incorrectly?
ETA: If they’re arguing for the same thing, then why did the second person imply that the first one was wrong?
The portion contained in the reply you were responding to.
You were asking for sources in response to a specific reply, sources that included only housing and not accompanying mental health support.
i was just saying that the reply you responded to mentioned “housing-first” not “housing-only”, so it seemed like you were asking for sources for something that was never mentioned ( in that reply ).
But i’ll respond to your reply , point by point.
First reply states that mental health assistance must accompany housing assistance 1.2;
It does not, it posits that mental health support will help a greater proportion of people, there is no must in there.
Next reply states that this goes against the findings of a housing-first approach 2.1:
So i’ll concede that this person does seem a bit confused, given that they seem to be arguing the same point as the person they were responding to in what seems to be a fairly hostile manner.
But they still seem to be championing a housing-first approach.
Their next statement makes little sense to me 2.2:
Because the initial reply said to give both, not one or the other 1.1:
Those two statements aren’t mutually exclusive.
One is a proposed solution, the other is a somewhat pointless statement, but it’s not contradictory.
So, if giving both mental health assistance as well as housing assistance is antithetical to housing-first research, then there must be a study which shows that mental health assistance is either unnecessary or detrimental.
I’m not sure how you’re getting from "I think these two things would solve the problem " to “Only thing one is required, thing two is useless and possibly detrimental to the goal”.
ETA: If they’re arguing for the same thing, then why did the second person imply that the first one was wrong?
This where we disagree and the communication broke down. Let’s look at the whole context, starting with the original comment that started the reply chain:
I never understood this. How can anyone say with a straight face that the solution to homelessness is anything other than providing free housing?
Along with the reply which I claim states mental health assistance must accompany housing assistance:
I can: The solution to homelessness is a combination…
Logically, this is a proposition which attempts to be a counterpoint to another logical argument. The original logical argument is that the solution to homelessness is to provide houses. The counterpoint is that providing houses is not enough of a solution, and that in order to actually solve the problems that homeless people face, they must also receive the other assistances listed.
ETA: Actually, if you’re familiar with Boolean algebra, all three of these arguments are well-defined logical functions that can be written out. The second argument is a tautology stating if the first argument is true, then adding additional assistance (or functions in a logical expression) will continue to be true so long as those additional assistances are beneficial. The third argument simply accuses the second argument of being false and uses flawed logic to “prove” it, because their theoretical person who is struggling with a mental illness but has a house does not satisfy the truth table for the “if” portion of the second argument. In other words, the theoretical person is not receiving the necessary aid that is proposed by the second argument and therefore by the logic of the second argument, assuming the argument is true, then that person is not be helped enough and cannot be adequately represented by that system
This where we disagree and the communication broke down.
It seems we do disagree because even in this reply you provide no justification for assigning a must to an argument that is provided as a should.
The original logical argument is that the solution to homelessness is to provide houses.
Agreed.
Though technically™, and for a very literal definition of homelessness, that is correct.
The arguments that followed look like they are providing counterarguments using a less literal definition, like “modern day homelessness and the causes thereof”
The counterpoint is that providing houses is not enough of a solution
Agreed, emphasis on the not enough, meaning, still partially enough.
and that in order to actually solve the problems that homeless people face, they must also receive the other assistances listed.
This is where our interpretations differ.
I’m reading this as :
and that in order to solve more of the problems that homeless people face, they shouldmust also receive the other assistances listed.
They were providing a possible suggestion to increase the effectiveness of the solution, that’s not a must that’s a should also
Less of a “It won’t work at all without this” vs “yeah, ok, but we should also do this as well”
I’ll concede it is a very strong should but it’s not close enough to a must to come to “So, if giving both mental health assistance as well as housing assistance is antithetical to housing-first research” as a conclusion.
ETA: Actually, if you’re familiar with Boolean algebra…
I am familiar with it, boolean algebra doesn’t help if the values you are using are faulty.
At this point, I’ll stress I’m not arguing for or against any of the points raised in the actual discussion, my original reply consisted of: “housing-first” doesn’t mean “housing only”
The only thing i’ve been doing is taking the examples you’ve provided (and in the original case, the request you made) and pointed out where they seem to rely on faulty interpretations or information not provided.
I never understood this. How can anyone say with a straight face that the solution to homelessness is anything other than providing free housing?
I can…
So you’re telling me that this first reply does not state “I can tell you with a straight face that the solution homeless is something other than providing houses. The solution is to provide houses AND assistance”
Or you’re telling me that “The solution is to provide houses AND assistance” means “providing a house without providing assistance solves the problem” ETA: which then implies that this reply states “I can tell you with a straight that the solution to homelessness is something other than providing houses. Providing houses is sufficient.”
Granted, I did say “not enough” I should have clearly stated that “not enough” is equivalent to “not at all”. Keep in mind this is a generalized statement, so in order for it to be true it must be true across the entire domain. Our domain is homeless people, therefore if adequately helping some but not all homeless people is accomplished then “solving the homeless problem” has not been accomplished; the only thing that accomplishes this goal is to put every person in a home, and the second argument implies that the first one will inevitably cause some of those who do not receive mental health assistance to go homeless again therefore failing to put every person in a home.
If the first argument is true, that putting people into homes solves the homeless problem, then it is also true that putting people into homes and adequately assisting them also solves the homeless problem. The third argument finally states that the second is false because putting people into homes without help is adequate, as they are in a home. This fails to satisfy the predicate of the second argument, making it an invalid counterpoint. If the predicate is not true, the argument cannot be evaluated therefore the counterpoint is invalid. However, if the predicate of the third argument is true then the second argument is invalid. Hence, I asked for sources.
The first comment wasn’t saying that mental health care has to be provided alongside housing, they’re saying that without it a significant portion of the homeless won’t be getting all of the help they need. They’re saying that homelessness isn’t only an issue of available housing.
The second person misunderstood that to mean that housing the homeless is pointless. But ultimately they’re arguing for the same thing.
One problem I see often in discussions of the homeless issue is that people refuse to acknowledge that there are two main demographics of homeless, and each has a very different approach that needs to be taken.
The first group is people who are temporarily down on their luck and just need a hand up. Like people who lost their job in a bad market. These are people that free housing will benefit the most.
The second group is the chronically homeless. They have an issue, whether it be mental illness, drugs, or both, that makes them incompatible with functioning in society. They need a lot more help than just a free apartment. In fact, that help is often an option for them free of charge, but they choose not to utilize it (frequently because it comes with the stipulation of no drugs).
But when discussing the homeless issue, if you claim that everything will be fixed with more housing, you’re leaving out the people who need the most help.
I see this floated over and over again, with the expectation that people with chronic psychological conditions just “get better” one day and go off to land cushy office jobs making six figures in an upper-middle class part of town.
If you just provide free housing, there will be a significant proportion of people who would not be able to fully benefit from it
So, this is where things get really sticky. Because we do have examples of governments with these very rigorously managed programs that host large workforces dedicated to identifying, rounding up, and rehabilitating people who get flagged as “having mental health issues”.
The problem is that “mental health” often gets mixed in with “gender non-conformity”, “neuro-atypical behavior”, and “religious/ideological heresy”. Whether you’re looking at British Gender Clinics or Iranian Religious Police or Chinese Cultural apparatchiks or the American War on Woke, you have bureaucratic institutions mix the politics of the moment with the industrial scale machinery of the state.
You also run into the problem of mental health sciences being relatively new, medications carrying a host of dubious side effects, and public policymakers having very different ideas as to what a “successful” program looks like.
A lot of times, the “just give people free housing” faction sees these services as an extension of the police state that’s undesirable.
I’m not advocating for “rounding up” of anyone, even though that’s happening in the comments here too.
What I am primarily advocating for is:
free & non-judgemental mental health support (incl. medication), free addiction recovery programs
I’ve spent some (short) time volunteering for homeless people, and from my limited interactions it seemed to me that at least some of them would be open to some kind of mental health/addiction support, but it was either humiliating or impossible for them to get it. And because of that, there were some people who “chose” to be on the streets in the same way as someone “chooses” to be depressed - there’s no choice involved, it’s a situation the society forces the individual in by not providing the required support.
My time volunteering was in a second-world country which didn’t have any government-supported free mental health services. Like, at all. If you wanted mental health support, you had to pay for it, or get really lucky (there was one NGO offering a “lottery”-type support system, and even that was just for a couple therapy sessions) - the former is impossible for a homeless person even if they had a place to sleep, the latter is really humiliating and sketchy.
Back in russia there were in theory free mental health services, but it had a terrible catch-22: in order to enroll, you needed a permanent residence, and none of the homeless shelters provide that. And then if by some miracle you managed to get on, you’d have to pay for any medications that were required, which is pretty much a non-starter.
And even in countries which do provide mental health services for the homeless, there is often stigma and judgement associated with it. The medical professionals themselves might be kind and understanding (and even then not always so), but the bureaucratic procedures required to get there can be humiliating as hell.
All this means that if you’re coming from a position of homelessness, which makes it really difficult to do anything already, getting to the help can be an insurmountable challenge, either physically or mentally.
Also, after you get help and a warm place to sleep, it can feel disorienting in many ways after the street. There needs to be a robust network for helping people get up their feet (with basic supplies like food and meds provided for free at least for some time), getting people back into their local communities, and helping them find a job. It doesn’t have to be a 6-figure white collar one, but even entry-level jobs can be difficult to get for an ex-homeless person for many reasons (stigma around homelessness, lack of a resume, degradation of social skills, or some really basic shit like lack of appropriate clothing) - there needs to be help associated with that, like agreements with local workplaces and support during interviews/trial periods.
Just providing housing is a good first step but it’s definitely not enough. Combining it with other help multiplies the effectiveness.
Ok, I see your point. Mental health support, free housing, however, they come from the same place of wanting to actually reduce suffering. I fail to see how saying homeless people are criminals helps at all.
they come from the same place of wanting to actually reduce suffering
I think there is a selfish argument to be made for fully supporting the homeless. Giving them housing and mental health/addiction support reduces crime. It also allows many of them to work and contribute to the economy, which also means paying taxes
Housing is also much cheaper than jail or mental institutions where many homeless end up eventually, saving tax payers money
The altruistic argument is enough for me, but not for others. It’s those people we need to convince, and a selfish argument would be far more effective on them. Show someone they can benefit from it, and few will disagree
The impossible ones to convince are the ones that benefit from high homeless populations, such as billionaires. Homeless make a nice distraction for them to scapegoat as the cause of societal issues
I can: the solution to homelessness is a combination of mental health ed in schools, free & non-judgemental mental health support (incl. medication), free addiction recovery programs, free food, job & community support, and free housing.
If you just provide free housing, there will be a significant proportion of people who would not be able to fully benefit from it due to mental health issues, addictions, and lack of purpose in life.
“That sounds like a lot of work. Can’t we just harass them into going somewhere we can’t see them?” -Society
We can’t have the poors, the homeless, and the unhoused dirtying up our beautiful city. - Society
Your speculation doesn’t trump the massive real-world success and scientific evidence behind a housing-first approach.
You know the difference between a homeless person with mental health issues and a housed person with mental health issues? The latter has housing.
Housing is a good & necessary first step, but housing alone won’t alleviate the issue entirely. I’m not sure that there’s any disagreement between us.
I don’t know why you worded that as if you disagree with him. He described housing-first. That’s what the “first” implies - other things to support them as well as housing
Your sentence doesn’t make sense as written.
Check your browser extensions. 🤣
I’m interested, do you have sources on this? I remember reading about some places providing homes to the homeless, but I can’t think of any examples where they didn’t provide mental health support alongside it
Not me you’re replying to, but I assume “housing-first” doesn’t mean “housing only”
First reply states that mental health assistance must accompany housing assistance 1.2;
Next reply states that this goes against the findings of a housing-first approach 2.1:
Their next statement makes little sense to me 2.2:
Because the initial reply said to give both, not one or the other 1.1:
So, if giving both mental health assistance as well as housing assistance is antithetical to housing-first research, then there must be a study which shows that mental health assistance is either unnecessary or detrimental.
Which portion am I interpreting incorrectly?
ETA: If they’re arguing for the same thing, then why did the second person imply that the first one was wrong?
The portion contained in the reply you were responding to.
You were asking for sources in response to a specific reply, sources that included only housing and not accompanying mental health support.
i was just saying that the reply you responded to mentioned “housing-first” not “housing-only”, so it seemed like you were asking for sources for something that was never mentioned ( in that reply ).
But i’ll respond to your reply , point by point.
It does not, it posits that mental health support will help a greater proportion of people, there is no must in there.
So i’ll concede that this person does seem a bit confused, given that they seem to be arguing the same point as the person they were responding to in what seems to be a fairly hostile manner.
But they still seem to be championing a housing-first approach.
Those two statements aren’t mutually exclusive.
One is a proposed solution, the other is a somewhat pointless statement, but it’s not contradictory.
I’m not sure how you’re getting from "I think these two things would solve the problem " to “Only thing one is required, thing two is useless and possibly detrimental to the goal”.
Confusion or misunderstanding probably.
This where we disagree and the communication broke down. Let’s look at the whole context, starting with the original comment that started the reply chain:
Along with the reply which I claim states mental health assistance must accompany housing assistance:
Logically, this is a proposition which attempts to be a counterpoint to another logical argument. The original logical argument is that the solution to homelessness is to provide houses. The counterpoint is that providing houses is not enough of a solution, and that in order to actually solve the problems that homeless people face, they must also receive the other assistances listed.
ETA: Actually, if you’re familiar with Boolean algebra, all three of these arguments are well-defined logical functions that can be written out. The second argument is a tautology stating if the first argument is true, then adding additional assistance (or functions in a logical expression) will continue to be true so long as those additional assistances are beneficial. The third argument simply accuses the second argument of being false and uses flawed logic to “prove” it, because their theoretical person who is struggling with a mental illness but has a house does not satisfy the truth table for the “if” portion of the second argument. In other words, the theoretical person is not receiving the necessary aid that is proposed by the second argument and therefore by the logic of the second argument, assuming the argument is true, then that person is not be helped enough and cannot be adequately represented by that system
It seems we do disagree because even in this reply you provide no justification for assigning a must to an argument that is provided as a should.
Agreed.
Though technically™, and for a very literal definition of homelessness, that is correct.
The arguments that followed look like they are providing counterarguments using a less literal definition, like “modern day homelessness and the causes thereof”
Agreed, emphasis on the not enough, meaning, still partially enough.
This is where our interpretations differ.
I’m reading this as :
They were providing a possible suggestion to increase the effectiveness of the solution, that’s not a must that’s a should also
Less of a “It won’t work at all without this” vs “yeah, ok, but we should also do this as well”
I’ll concede it is a very strong should but it’s not close enough to a must to come to “So, if giving both mental health assistance as well as housing assistance is antithetical to housing-first research” as a conclusion.
I am familiar with it, boolean algebra doesn’t help if the values you are using are faulty.
At this point, I’ll stress I’m not arguing for or against any of the points raised in the actual discussion, my original reply consisted of: “housing-first” doesn’t mean “housing only”
The only thing i’ve been doing is taking the examples you’ve provided (and in the original case, the request you made) and pointed out where they seem to rely on faulty interpretations or information not provided.
So you’re telling me that this first reply does not state “I can tell you with a straight face that the solution homeless is something other than providing houses. The solution is to provide houses AND assistance”
Or you’re telling me that “The solution is to provide houses AND assistance” means “providing a house without providing assistance solves the problem” ETA: which then implies that this reply states “I can tell you with a straight that the solution to homelessness is something other than providing houses. Providing houses is sufficient.”
Granted, I did say “not enough” I should have clearly stated that “not enough” is equivalent to “not at all”. Keep in mind this is a generalized statement, so in order for it to be true it must be true across the entire domain. Our domain is homeless people, therefore if adequately helping some but not all homeless people is accomplished then “solving the homeless problem” has not been accomplished; the only thing that accomplishes this goal is to put every person in a home, and the second argument implies that the first one will inevitably cause some of those who do not receive mental health assistance to go homeless again therefore failing to put every person in a home.
If the first argument is true, that putting people into homes solves the homeless problem, then it is also true that putting people into homes and adequately assisting them also solves the homeless problem. The third argument finally states that the second is false because putting people into homes without help is adequate, as they are in a home. This fails to satisfy the predicate of the second argument, making it an invalid counterpoint. If the predicate is not true, the argument cannot be evaluated therefore the counterpoint is invalid. However, if the predicate of the third argument is true then the second argument is invalid. Hence, I asked for sources.
The first comment wasn’t saying that mental health care has to be provided alongside housing, they’re saying that without it a significant portion of the homeless won’t be getting all of the help they need. They’re saying that homelessness isn’t only an issue of available housing.
The second person misunderstood that to mean that housing the homeless is pointless. But ultimately they’re arguing for the same thing.
One problem I see often in discussions of the homeless issue is that people refuse to acknowledge that there are two main demographics of homeless, and each has a very different approach that needs to be taken.
The first group is people who are temporarily down on their luck and just need a hand up. Like people who lost their job in a bad market. These are people that free housing will benefit the most.
The second group is the chronically homeless. They have an issue, whether it be mental illness, drugs, or both, that makes them incompatible with functioning in society. They need a lot more help than just a free apartment. In fact, that help is often an option for them free of charge, but they choose not to utilize it (frequently because it comes with the stipulation of no drugs).
But when discussing the homeless issue, if you claim that everything will be fixed with more housing, you’re leaving out the people who need the most help.
I see this floated over and over again, with the expectation that people with chronic psychological conditions just “get better” one day and go off to land cushy office jobs making six figures in an upper-middle class part of town.
So, this is where things get really sticky. Because we do have examples of governments with these very rigorously managed programs that host large workforces dedicated to identifying, rounding up, and rehabilitating people who get flagged as “having mental health issues”.
The problem is that “mental health” often gets mixed in with “gender non-conformity”, “neuro-atypical behavior”, and “religious/ideological heresy”. Whether you’re looking at British Gender Clinics or Iranian Religious Police or Chinese Cultural apparatchiks or the American War on Woke, you have bureaucratic institutions mix the politics of the moment with the industrial scale machinery of the state.
You also run into the problem of mental health sciences being relatively new, medications carrying a host of dubious side effects, and public policymakers having very different ideas as to what a “successful” program looks like.
A lot of times, the “just give people free housing” faction sees these services as an extension of the police state that’s undesirable.
I’m not advocating for “rounding up” of anyone, even though that’s happening in the comments here too.
What I am primarily advocating for is:
I’ve spent some (short) time volunteering for homeless people, and from my limited interactions it seemed to me that at least some of them would be open to some kind of mental health/addiction support, but it was either humiliating or impossible for them to get it. And because of that, there were some people who “chose” to be on the streets in the same way as someone “chooses” to be depressed - there’s no choice involved, it’s a situation the society forces the individual in by not providing the required support.
My time volunteering was in a second-world country which didn’t have any government-supported free mental health services. Like, at all. If you wanted mental health support, you had to pay for it, or get really lucky (there was one NGO offering a “lottery”-type support system, and even that was just for a couple therapy sessions) - the former is impossible for a homeless person even if they had a place to sleep, the latter is really humiliating and sketchy.
Back in russia there were in theory free mental health services, but it had a terrible catch-22: in order to enroll, you needed a permanent residence, and none of the homeless shelters provide that. And then if by some miracle you managed to get on, you’d have to pay for any medications that were required, which is pretty much a non-starter.
And even in countries which do provide mental health services for the homeless, there is often stigma and judgement associated with it. The medical professionals themselves might be kind and understanding (and even then not always so), but the bureaucratic procedures required to get there can be humiliating as hell.
All this means that if you’re coming from a position of homelessness, which makes it really difficult to do anything already, getting to the help can be an insurmountable challenge, either physically or mentally.
Also, after you get help and a warm place to sleep, it can feel disorienting in many ways after the street. There needs to be a robust network for helping people get up their feet (with basic supplies like food and meds provided for free at least for some time), getting people back into their local communities, and helping them find a job. It doesn’t have to be a 6-figure white collar one, but even entry-level jobs can be difficult to get for an ex-homeless person for many reasons (stigma around homelessness, lack of a resume, degradation of social skills, or some really basic shit like lack of appropriate clothing) - there needs to be help associated with that, like agreements with local workplaces and support during interviews/trial periods.
Just providing housing is a good first step but it’s definitely not enough. Combining it with other help multiplies the effectiveness.
Ok, I see your point. Mental health support, free housing, however, they come from the same place of wanting to actually reduce suffering. I fail to see how saying homeless people are criminals helps at all.
I think there is a selfish argument to be made for fully supporting the homeless. Giving them housing and mental health/addiction support reduces crime. It also allows many of them to work and contribute to the economy, which also means paying taxes
Housing is also much cheaper than jail or mental institutions where many homeless end up eventually, saving tax payers money
The altruistic argument is enough for me, but not for others. It’s those people we need to convince, and a selfish argument would be far more effective on them. Show someone they can benefit from it, and few will disagree
The impossible ones to convince are the ones that benefit from high homeless populations, such as billionaires. Homeless make a nice distraction for them to scapegoat as the cause of societal issues
I agree fully here.