So I'll bite ....let's say he's right and they're "not" homeless they're suffering from mental illness, drug addiction or a combination of both WHILE being homess.
Wouldn't it make more sense to actually fucking help those in need especially now we know they're struggling with homeless AND other incapacitating issues.
Society should be judged on how they treat the weak, struggling members of society. They are not a burden but real people hurting, and we are all closer to homeless than we think.
There is also a cynical neoliberal argument that one could make. By helping those homeless people, they are reintroduced to the economy. They will produce value, consume products, and not dedicate on the sidewalk. In other words it's a good investment.
So if I'm being honest, after reading Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, I see absolutely no need to ever embrace anything from the Chicago School of Economics or any bullshit Neoliberal ideology, it only serves to transfer wealth to private hands.
Even when my objective and a Neoliberal objective inadvertently line up, they are not the good guys.
Yeah, I'm addicted.
Addicted to the good old outdoors.
When it comes to the homeless, some are forced into that situation (see: tent cities coming up around metros during COVID, 2020-2023 ish, some are ongoing), while others, mostly long term homeless, are either there because of mental illness or drugs, or stay there because of mental issues/drugs.
It can be both cause and effect.
Dehumanizing the homeless as all drug addicts and mentally ill people is unnecessarily cruel. A lot of them simply need help and support, whether that support is stable and affordable (cheap/free) housing, and food banks, or more broad social services like drug rehab, and mental health assistance.
Some mental health conditions are difficult to treat, like those with paranoid schizophrenia, who are constantly fighting with voices telling them that any medication to alleviate the symptoms is poison or something like that. This is just one example of many; but the majority of mental health conditions are very easily treatable.
However, with the US healthcare system in such a wretched condition as it is, though it has improved somewhat, it is not built for the people who need the most help, or need help more significantly or urgently, such as those who are homeless.
IMO, the watermark of how "good" a society is, in no small part, is demonstrated by how we regard and "deal with" homelessness. Needless to say, America ranks pretty low on that list.
Compared to something like the National defense budget, making even the smallest move towards helping the homeless would be a massive help, for a relatively small cost. In no small part because everyone would ask where the money is coming from.
Where does any money come from? When a society issues bonds for more currency from the "global banks", and gets, say $100M to spend, then in a year, they owe $103M on that debt, but only have $100M in total currency, what then? This "debt" will never be paid. Also, for an international superpower, who do they owe this money to? Who are you in debt to?
The Fiat money system is a sham and the currency has no value at all. It's simply the worthless material we use as a middle man for the barter system. I trade my effort/labor for this worthless paper, and this worthless paper grants me the ability to feed and house myself. Rather than my labor being paid for in... I dunno, coal? Wheat? Coffee beans? Then me having to trade that for something the grocer wants, and something my landlord wants. It's stupid.
Even if that is true, does it somehow invalidate the fact that they are also homeless?! Are they less deserving to be out of the elements because they have an addiction?
That's what I find so disgusting about this statement. It's just an excuse and doesn't address anything at all.
Using his own "argument", it would seem to me that a path to less addiction and violence would involve having a place to live and sleep.
Lots of people feel this way about homelessness and addiction. It's very easy to dehumanized people. My cousin interrupted me, when I said something about it, and told me "when you have people shooting up outside your house, then you can complain". As if i couldnt have an opinion until i experience the issue that is homelessness, the war on drugs, and our failure to address mental health issues in this country with my very own eyes. She's a bit snooty, and she doesn't even realize it.
Nevermind that once you become homeless, it becomes much harder to dig yourself out of that hole (probably by design).
It’s such a self-centered point of view. They can’t even conceive of themselves ever being in a similar situation so they assume the person inconveniencing them must be fully to blame for their homelessness. Then they can ignore those degenerates without feeling guilty about it.
If you are homeless, it’s because supply side Jesus doesn’t love you, obviously
Yeah wonder what could drive someone to addiction and desperation? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm couldn't be not having a stable food supply and a place to live?
Yeah the whole correlation causation thing is going to be very mixed up here. Like lets look at it another way:
Oh no I become disabled > Can’t work anymore shit I got no money > Try to apply for disability benefits oh fuck its a million forms and I need a lawyer oh fuck I’m broke > Crash at friends to apply for disability, first try fails after 1 year (this is pretty standard usually takes 2-3 trys), oh fuck friend kicks me out > go to homeless camp struggling to feed yourself, no time to think about applying for benefits anymore > The pain is too much I don’t have my medicine anymore its fucking freezing oh shit that guys selling drugs > get addicted
Boom, you’re homeless and addicted. That story could happen to literally anyone without generational wealth and an exceptionally strong support network.
Are they less deserving to be out of the elements because they have an addiction?
That's not what's being said. He is criticizing the fact that so many people assume that 'just give them a place to live' is the solution, when it's much, much more complicated than that. In that way, "homeless" is very reductive, and masks those other issues, in favor of making it look like it's a simple problem with a simple solution.
Very few long-term homeless people are homeless simply because they can't afford a place to live.
So we shouldn't house them unless and until we figure out all of the complex issues? They're not going to benefit any at all, or have any possibility of getting on their feet, until we have a perfect solution?
That's what's being said there: homelessness is not something we should do anything about, because of reasons. So let's do nothing.
That's a fucking cop out.
Homelessness encompasses far more than rough sleeping. I agree that there are issues that many homeless people may face that wouldn't be resolved just by giving them a roof over their head. But it'd be a great start. And don't forget, a lot of homelessness is people and families in temporary or crisis housing, or couch surfing with friends and family, because they can't afford a place of their own.
Giving them a house is the shortest route to address all the other problems. But no, let's a Neo-Nazi junkie address the issue of deviance.
So-called genius can't fathom that in many cases the mental illness and drug addiction came from the homelessness.
Zero is the amount of drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers that Elon has built. Zero is the amount of mental health facilities.
Zero is also the amount of mental health therapy Musk probably had, unfortunately.
Fucking dumbass. 25% of them are kids. Dude is a fucking loser.
As a broad statement it's dumb, but depending on the city addiction can be a major contribution to the cycle of "homelessness", especially the more visible populations who have reached peak "fuck it" and have no more cares for societal values or laws.. Even if 25% of them are kids, yeah some of those may be hooked on drugs at an early age or be affected by parental/guardian drug abuse.
But ok then... he's still a billionaire who could definitely spare a good portion of his wealth to improve both situations (homelessness and addiction) but would rather just leverage it to make more and more wealth while pushing policies that actually make life for the average person worse.
At the same time, homelessness and addiction are very much NOT just a throw-money-at-it problem and fucking both would require systemic change over time.
For Elon socially, how much of his wealth is liquid enough to make a difference I don't know, but I haven't really heard of him doing ANYTHING particularly altruistic with his money and Id say the changes/logistics required to make this world a better place are probably still a lot more feasible than building a colony on fucking Mars....
I have anxiety and likely some deep seated depression that would rise up with a vengeance if I didn't have a warm home and access to food. I also love drinking wine, and while I do have access to said home and fridge, this wine hobby is cute and socially acceptable.
Make me homeless and I'd very much represent a mentally ill substance abusing human like Elmo is describing there. They're not 'them'; they're just us in a different reality.
If Elon suddenly became "homeless" he would have a sign begging for ketamine & screaming "put I never went to therapy on my tombstone".
I cannot explain how disgustingly evil it is to witness the suffering of individuals, whether due to substance abuse, illness, or homelessness, and dismiss it as untruthful.
The numbers to fix homelessness may be controversial, with some sites saying it was 20 billion in 2010 and that's just to provide vouchers for a year, and some fact checking sites saying it can cost $60 billion in a year.
The primary concern is the actions of a South African billionaire, whose net worth is $350 billion. Instead of recognizing the complexities of a significant social issue, he appears to dehumanize those affected and assigns blame, rather than offering assistance.
What a fucking evil take.
Those numbers all take into account existing housing assistance programs, which are used by mostly non-homeless people.
There are 250k homeless people in the US. For $20B, you could spend $80k per each person. Since many of the homeless are families, that's enough to buy a small house for each family.
But you still have to keep paying into the existing programs, or more people will become homeless. Compared to a quarter million homeless people, there are 4.5M households using the existing programs.
While the word is “homeless” the problem is generally not just “lacking a home”. It usually stems from things like inability to work due to severe disability or psychiatric illness, unofficial immigrants struggling to find employment, addiction, abandonment from family, not enough money to retire but unable to work etc.
Like don’t get me wrong giving everyone a home is great. But it won’t magically solve all the problems. And they might not be able to afford maintinance, property tax etc. Also if it’s homelessness due to lack of employment I question whether the 80k home will be anywhere useful for someone to find a job they qualify for, and if it will have any transportation links or anything
They are drug addicts and mentally ill because usa has no safety nets for such people
We were supposed to take care of these people after de-institutionalization. We didn't.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/special/excerpt.html
We broke the promise and now it is their fault. What a bizarre world we live in.
Republican playbook. Cheat, be an asshole and don't ever care for anyone else than yourself. Classy and on Brand
Aside from the fact that having a safe place to live alone helps both mental illness and substance abuse in most individuals, a major cause of homelessness is domestic abuse and being disowned. Having a safe place to live will absolutely help the over a third of domestic abuse victims who become homeless, and would help those who cannot afford to get away from their abusers due to lack of ability to find a safe haven.
Home the homeless, then we can start working on the harder parts.
A huge portion of the homeless population are orphans who age out of the system.
The word “homeless” (without a home) literally as descriptive and neutral as possible. Elon Musk: Propaganda
I was homeless for 6 years because billionaires fucked with America's housing market. I'm not even American.
I was 15 years old when that happened. My teenage years got robbed by billionaires.
There's full time employees that are homeless. Go out to a bridge, find a homeless person, ask how many homeless people they know that are working 40hrs a week. An alarming number. Looking forward to the violent end to elon musk. His violent games, have very violent ends.
The guy who is so addicted with twitter engagement boostingbhis ego he bought it for himself just to go full fascist. Is calling homeless people addicts lol.
Is this older or does his wealth just fluctuate +-100 billion as stocks fluctuate? Recently read he was at 450 billion.
What's crazy is losing or gaining 100 billion doesn't really affect him, he's still the richest person in the world and it wouldn't change his life any.
In short, yes.
See this graph: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-stock-spacex-valuation-xai-neuralink-trump-charts-2024-12
Ketamine pot, calling the mentally ill kettle black.
I wonder if they use drugs to cope with the mental illness they got from being forced to live on the streets?
Naw, that's pseudoscience. We all know that it's proven that poverty is a character trait that you actively choose. Not rich? Obviously you don't want it hard enough. /s
Funny. So less public health would do what exactly to benefit the homeless/insane?
Funny because elon is a drug addict who's showing he has some affective disorder because his daddy didn't love him and is a malignant narcissist.
pretty sure you can't end homelessness with $20b unless we're talking about absolute homelessness or something..
That could be the cost to house people who are otherwise unhoused, aka “homeless”
pretty sure you can’t end homelessness with $20b
The math is straightforward: Cost of a housing unit * number of unhoused people. Even assuming the extraordinarily inflated market rate for housing in 2024, $20B is more than enough to house 650k people.
Now, will the institutional actors that produced homelessness stop existing? Will we see an end to predatory lenders, robo-signed foreclosures, police harassment and civil asset forfeiture of the working poor, and unregulated real estate scammers targeting our most vulnerable neighbors? Probably not.
But we wouldn't have so many billionaires running about squandering our national wealth on vanity projects like Twitter without billions to be fleeced from the public to begin with.
$20B is more than enough to house 650k people
I got curious, so I whipped out my phone's calculator. $20B/650k = $30,800, give or take. I truly don't know if that's enough to break the cycle of homelessness, but if it is that seems like a pretty low number. We spend 40x that number on the defense budget, which is totally a jobs program but it seems like fighting homelessness would also ultimately be a jobs program.
Completely ignoring that addiction is an illness.
Doesn't matter. We have the resources available to house, feed, educate, provide health care, and community for every American but don't out of greed. The US won't survive unless we mobilize every American to achieve their best self.
Homeless folks are generally no more violent than homed folks. Drug addiction and mental illness or not.
About a year ago a homeless woman had a miscarriage in my city and a couple local media outlets jumped on it, reporting that 'police had found a dead fetus in an encampment'. Ya know, after she called 911 because she had a miscarriage. Really helped solidify my belief that a lot of people would rather just stigmatize them than do anything else
I know someone with moderate substance abuse issues and diagnosed severe mental illness - basically as bad as it gets if left untreated. But she also lives independently and holds down a solid middle class desk job. How? She has rich parents who pay for treatment (individualized psychiatry) and care (housekeeping mostly), as well as an array of friends who help oversee her.
Homelessness is not necessary, even in the most desperate cases. It's just a question of what we're willing to pay and how much we're willing to care.
YES. Anyone reposting Kyle's daily eviscerations on Lemmy is fine by me. Kyle's consistency through my years of watching Secular Talk has always been admirable, especially in this age of soulless online grifters
Somehow I actually yearn for the days of robber barons. At least they found socially productive ways to build monuments to their own vanity. If Musk wants to spend $20 billion to build social housing in cities across the US, I'm not going to complain if he slaps his name on the buildings. At least Carnegie built libraries.
It's because the modern day wealth disparity has no equivalent in human history, at least to my knowledge. Maybe slavery - but they were at least valuable enough to shelter and feed.
Elon Musk shows in this just how much worse he is than robber barons.
At least Carnegie built libraries.
Who pays for these libraries now?
These owners also build idiotic mansions then taxpayer has to figure how to maintain them.
These are not a win for working class.
I came to say something like this. wow that is it to have the musk centers for american dignity or something.
Fuck Elon, but also there's absolutely zero chance you can solve homelessness with $20b unless you're just building tent cities with no other resources available there.
That assumtion is an annual cost. Although doing it for one year only would still probably reduce the homeless numbers considerably.
https://www.sciotoanalysis.com/news/2024/1/16/what-would-it-cost-to-end-homelessness-in-america
What til you find out about the number of unoccupied houses in the USA. Zero chance anybody is getting rich solving homelessness so we ain't doing it.
20 billion could house and feed our entire homeless population for twenty years. While that would not solve the problem, it would drastically improve their lives.
I don't really believe that. It cost us $10 billion just to provide free lunches to kids for a year during covid. I think we should spend that every year. But the cost of housing is much higher unless you're planning housing with no HVAC or energy costs. Even if that number were theoretically real, it clearly isn't accounting for inflation, or the potential increase in homeless population when they start providing free housing.
I mean...you could really build rather modest dormitories outside of cities for not much money. Throw free bus rides into and out of the city (where jobs and social resources are) at it, and you've got not a solution, but a pretty damn good bandage to help people and families get (back) on their feet.
Hell, rent them on a sliding scale if so inclined. But the scale has to be $0 up until a decent income, like at least the first quintile.
Where's the mental health care then? Oh, slashed to ribbons by the department of government "efficiency". Fancy that.
slashed to ribbons by the department of government "efficiency
It never exist in the US... There is nothing to slash.
“Worth” = “cash”
Musk is a moron, but if you think $20 billion could end homelessness, so are you
He isn't a moron, he's just a narcissistic sociopath. Musk is no different than you at the yolk of a WWII bomber. He has no idea what he's doing.
But in his element, he's dangerous and does very well know what he's doing.
Musk doesn't care about the homeless. He cares about their labor and how much he and his buddies can get it for free. If being homeless and sleeping in your car is suddenly illegal nationwide, then many of us will be forced into rents we don't want to pay or end up in Musk's labor camp with the rest of their undesirables.
It was never about helping anyone.
People with addiction and mental health issues don't deserve help or a home then?
Elmo Husk. A puppet and a shell of a man.
How would they end homelessness with 20b? I doubt that's even remotely true
I don't think we'll ever really end homelessness, but we could absolutely get close if the money we spend on all these piecemeal measures was put to better use. No idea what the total spent is (probably more than that) but we're basically dumping tons of money into half measures that only really help a handful of people. Supportive housing works for a much larger percentage of people experiencing homelessness, but no one wants to fund it because they hate the idea of giving someone housing without requiring something of them first. If Americans could get past the attitude of, "if I had to suffer, so should everyone else," we'd all be a lot better off.
I may have missed it when I was skimming the article, but I didn't see any stats to back up the $20b figure. They threw out a lot of stats on homelessness, but not a plan to end homelessness on a $20b budget.
It is in fact not remotely true. You're being downvoted by gullible fools who will believe anything that helps keep their rage boner going, no matter how ridiculous.
Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.
The point of the tweet is to show the egregious "take" of Elon Musk has while leeching on society and being a raging drug abuser himself while being a nazi-loving piece of shit that got rich off of daddy's apartheid emeralds on top of that. Doesn't matter if it costed $20bn or $200bn, Musk still has more.
I think you are confused how much 20 billion is. That could pay rent for our entire homeless population and feed them for 20 years. I would agree this may not actually solve the problem but housing first is a proven effective strategy.
Homelessnes is not a problem you can solve with any amount of money.
Buying everyone a home wouldn't end homelessness? Weird.
There are some people who that wouldn't help, therefore we shouldn't help anybody.
Ironically, no, it wouldn't. At least not longterm. I know many people on lemmy don't want to hear that because capitalism bad or something, but it's the reality. Do you unironically think you can just give every homeless person a home and it would all magically sort itself out? Most likely not. Homes need to be maintained, which cost money.
In order to "solve" homelessness, you need to give people the ability to fix their lives themselves. It reminds me a lot of the attempts to help africa back in the early 2000s when europe would send a lot of heavy machinery to africa to help them improve farming, but they couldn't properly maintain or use the machinery because they didn't have the technical knowledge or the machinery simply wasn't suitable, so they just left them to rust or dismantled them for parts and quick money. Instead, europe moved to an approach that would enable those people to help themselves by providing better education etc.
Just giving people free housing will not work unless you also come up with a plan to maintain said housing, which costs money, which has to be paid for. If you don't have a plan like that in place, you will probably create a highly criminal slum within a couple of months, if not weeks.
I dislike musk and most stock-market-billionaires as much as most people on here, but pretending we can just take all their wealth away and the entire world would be a beautiful place where everyone can live happy and it smells like butterscotch-pie everywhere is just an extremely immature take.
It would cost significantly more than $20b to end homelessness in the US.
No, 20 billion is a pretty good estimate In the future, cite your sources.
It would cost $20 billion to end homelessness in America.
Bullshit. Hope you guys don't seriously believe this.
Edit: it really underscores the mentality of the community when a straightforward debunking of a false statement has a negative score, lol.
What does it matter about the exact dollar amount? The top 3 wealthiest people in the US could provide housing, sanitation and food for every single homeless person in the US and still be multi-billionaires. It doesn't matter if the cost of tackling homelessness is $20bn or $200bn, it's still a fact that a handful of people hoarde enough wealth that they could actually pay to house every single homeless person, and still have millions (if not billions) left over.
Yes, this is a trite example and doesn't address the systemic failures in healthcare and education that are a major factor in people becoming homeless. But the wealth the ultra-rich hoarde could help with that too.
What does it matter about the exact dollar amount?
If it's an amount that exceeds the means of the person you're complaining isn't paying for it, it's pretty relevant, don't you think?
The top 3 wealthiest people in the US could provide housing, sanitation and food for every single homeless person in the US and still be multi-billionaires.
This is literally false. The combined total net worth of the three richest in the US (~$800 billion) is less than the US government spends on welfare EVERY YEAR (over $1 TRILLION), lol.
Hell, even that nonsensical $20 billion figure put forth was ANNUAL, not one-time, so even IF we used that figure for the sake of argument, and even IF you could wave a magic wand and convert all of Musk's net worth straight into cash 1:1, it STILL would barely last 10 years. Then what?
You have no idea of the magnitude of the cost of solving this problem. Stop writing as if you know what you're talking about when you obviously don't.
The billionaires of this country could spend 20B a year, every year of their lives, and never run out of money.
Politifact isn't the end all of fact checking. 20B is in fact the widely cited figure for yearly housing costs if we just paid rent for all homeless people.
We could build social housing to cover the lower end of sector!
It ain't never gonna happen but that's purely ruling class decision.
Lemmy dogpiles ad nauseum.
San Francisco spends (very roughly) $100,000 a year per homeless person and that doesn't "end homelessness" there. It doesn't even come close. These dollar estimates are all unrealistic because the issue is generally not that there's insufficient funding. It's that the sort of person who is homeless long-term is often not the sort of person who would want to be housed in any housing that the government could reasonably provide.
Here in NYC there was controversy because the city government was telling some homeless people that they could choose between going to a shelter or being arrested but they couldn't remain camped where they were. If you want to end homelessness, you can't just build housing. You have to force these homeless people to live in it. Are you willing to do that?
Shelters are not housing. Shelters are routinely abusive to homeless people. It is not at all surprising that they would resist going there instead of being able to camp near services or jobs.
the sort of housing that government could relatively provide.
The sort of housing the government is willing to provide.
choose between going to a shelter or being arrested but they couldn't remain camping
Given the a choice between restricted temporary housing or imprisonment, it’s no wonder someone would choose independent living on one’s own terms. People need support for independent living not being forced into a soulless shelter room shared with strangers and a dictated schedule, where they can’t bring their children, pets, or dependent substances. It’s the same reason folks dread being shuttled off to a nursing home.
Be careful. Lemmy hates it when you point out that not all homeless people are those temporarily down on their luck.
