More heat than light emanating from this discussion, but…maybe that simply reflects that people on “both sides” (if we may simplify, for convenience’s sake, our audience into the binary “Liberal vs. Conservative” labels) not only hold passionate feelings about the issue, but almost inherently ascribe very different causes for it.
To again perhaps oversimplify for discussion’s sake, Liberals tend to mostly blame systemic inequalities: Homelessness is the fault of a hyper-competitive capitalist system, income disparity, pervasive racism, lack of affordable housing, underfunded (or non-existent) mental health resources.
Conservatives tend to mostly blame personal failings: Homelessness is the fault of irresponsible life choices, lack of personal responsibility or financial planning, self-inflicted drug and alcohol addiction, overly “woke” or permissive Blue cities that tolerate these outcasts.
The thing is, I think, that neither side is either fully right or fully wrong. I think, very generally, that Liberals want to address “the system” while looking past the individual responsibility component, and Conservatives want to address “the homeless” (themselves, and their irresponsible personal behavior) while looking past the system.
Finding solutions that don’t inherently outrage the other half of the country is thus an unenviable position to find ourselves in, but…that’s where we are.
A dose of letting go of what “our side” believes, and seeing some of the logic of what “they” believe, would certainly go a long way towards helping solve the problem.
…And would allow for a more centric, compromise approach than either of the wildly polar extremes being bandied about
(“Let’s just gas them all, or make them slaves,” vs. “Let’s give them all money and build them all a free house.”)
In the real world, it’s not a simplistic problem, and there will be no simplistic fix.
Even in the most cooperative and collaborative of environments, it would be an exceptionally thorny issue to solve, with myriad complications and unintended side effects. And we certainly don’t live in that environment now. As a microcosm of that larger society, the pages of this forum are probably a hopelessly misguided place to demand of a member, “So what’s YOUR fix for homelessness, smart guy?”
Unfortunately, “doing nothing” is not a solution either…