Homeless in America

I thought this opinion piece in the Washington Post, criticising advocates for the homeless as often letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, was well worth reading.  Los Angeles is about to try to end one particular encampment by offering them "tiny homes", but that doesn't keep everyone happy:

Despite the obvious benefits of getting people out of the cold (or heat), some homeless advocates want to hold out. This temporary housing, they say, distracts attention and funds away from long-term solutions. The city shouldn’t take apart encampments, some argue, but do more to make them sanitary. Critics also fear the portable homes will turn into slum-like housing, a modular twist on single-room occupancy units that once dotted urban skid rows, temporary in name only.

Several advocates have interrupted events such as mayoral forums and civic ribbon-cutting ceremonies in recent weeks, sometimes even cursing and hurling insults. Some have claimed — ridiculously — that because the temporary shelters enforce curfews and other rules, they amount to “carceral” conditions.

 The scale of the problem:

More than 40,000 people live on the streets of Los Angeles, according to data from January 2020, with another 25,000 or so in Los Angeles County as a whole. They are a sizable chunk of California’s more than 160,000 homeless people, a segment of the population whose struggles became more visible with the pandemic. Most desperately need some kind of help. A 2019 Los Angeles Times analysis of county data found that two-thirds suffered from mental illness or addiction. Others, such as Ramirez, are unable to keep up with L.A.’s soaring housing costs.

Yes, how you are supposed to deal with homeless folk while they are in the grip of chronic drug addiction/mental illness does seem quite the challenge: but surely just letting them live on the street in shanty encampments, whether or not they have a toilet to poop in, is wildly unlikely to be the solution.

Someone in comments makes the point that that is has long been the problem with homelessness in the US:

A 2019 Los Angeles Times analysis of county data found that two-thirds suffered from mental illness or addiction. Others, such as Ramirez, are unable to keep up with L.A.’s soaring housing costs.

It has pretty much always been thus. In the 1970s, those studying the issue of homelessness found that (roughly) a third of the homeless were mentally ill, about a third were operating with chronic drug/alcohol impairment, and and about a third were folks who were basically stable but something had come up that knocked them out of balance.

Obviously there's some cross-over among the groups, but that last group is by far the easiest to deal with. With some targeted assistance, they can generally get themselves back onto a fairly even keel. The first two groups need MUCH more active support systems.