And by housing homeless people and giving them shelter and security, you keep them off the streets! In turn, they'd be less likely to commit acts of violence. This is the idea behind housing first... essentially, by housing the homeless, most are going to have happier, healthier lives and, in turn, be more tolerable to be around.

If somehow you think incorporating photos in an opinion piece with no statistical data somehow informs how efficacious housing first interventions are, then you are completely deluded. If you were at least university educated, you should know the value of statistical data, but alas, I don't see any on your end, nor any that are related to the success (or lackthereof) of housing first interventions.

>I'm not writing a 10 page research paper for a diluted fool on Reddit.

What a pathetic deflection. I can see right through it.

>If real world evidence isn't enough for your hopeless.

You haven't provided any. Only shitty op-eds. You are only making a fool of yourself here.

If that were true, then you would easily be able to find actual, statistical data supporting your argument, but alas, you cannot.

Another op-ed? Yeah, try harder. Give me an actual study. Not a shitty op-ed that has nothing to do with housing first interventions.

I live in a world of hard data. You live in a world of deflections. In other words, you are so many abstractions away from base reality that you cannot engage real world trends in any meaningful way. You make a lot of noise but no substance. Get lost.

Okay, so you linked a reddit comment section? Are these experts on housing who had conducted evidence-based, statistical research on the subject, or just residents who think they know everything about homelessness because they live in Seattle? If it is the latter, I am not interested.

Everything you have listed is an op-ed, a news article opinion piece, not an actual study. It's all anecdotal data, nothing that is indicative of larger trends. As I have already discussed, this can all be dismissed on these pretenses, as it wasn't up to par with my terms of evidence that I had already laid out. Additionally, none of the links refer to housing first interventions in any capacity, so I have no idea what you are even trying to prove here.

What about the study I linked from Seattle, a city on the West Coast? You know, the study I linked using statistical data? It doesn't seem like you have read anything about the impacts of housing first interventions outside of op-eds with frivolous anecdotes. Until you bring in hard, quantitative data, you aren't making a compelling point.

>The people you see everyday on the street are mentally ill. That's who we are talking about here. A normal person doesnt scream randomly or attack people for no reason.

And 30% of Americans suffer from depression alone. There is a range of mental illnesses, some of which fully incapacitate people and some of which don't. Additionally, the impacts of mental illness are exacerbated by homelessness. Not everyone who is mentally ill screams randomly or attacks others. This is a gross exaggeration. Plenty of mentally ill people are productive, non-violent members of society.

Many countries do, but Finland is more stringent around the circumstances that one can actually be institutionalized. And, no, it's not the case that the majority of homeless people were institutionalized. Most were re-housed. Your point here is moot.

au contraire, u/Bison256. The quantitative evidence from housing first interventions suggests otherwise. In Seattle, a housing first intervention saved taxpayers over $4 million within a single year of operation. It also led to reduced alcohol consumption amongst rehoused people. In Charlotte, housing first had saved the county $2.4 million. Outside of the US, housing first has led to a decline in homlessness by 35% in Helsinki. 80% of homeless families in Brno, Czech Republic were able to sustain their flats after two years. Housing first has also been successful in reducing homelessness in Canada. The evidence in favor of housing first suggest that (a) once you put a roof over people's heads, pro-social behaviors are selected for, with decreases in crime, addiction, etc. as people are more eager to utilize social services, (b) taxpayer fees on shelters, jails, and hospitals are reduced, and (c) homelessness is reduced overall, with few people returning to the street.

>So when they ripe the housing up, or turn it into a drug and prostitution den the what you going do. You live on a Fantasyland.

Okay, so you are talking in hypotheticals. I am talking in hard data, and quantitative evidence. So, tell me, who is that is living in a fantasyland?

This is a false dichotomy. I prefer housing over homelessness or institutionalization, and there is an amassing body of evidence that favors the efficacy of housing first interventions.

>Housing's just a symptom, a lot of the homeless have underlying addiction and mental issues that need to be addressed otherwise even if you give them an apartment they'll just wreck it.

The problem is that a lot of these articles that talk about things such as homeless people tearing copper out of walls and selling them to get drugs, for example, are purely anecdotal. Do these things happen? Yes. Does everyone involved in housing first become a functioning, working member of society? No.

What focusing on these instances totally misses is the bigger picture... how much money is saved in housing first interventions? How much is homelessness, and pathologies related to homelessness, reduced overall? For these questions, we need hard quantitative data, not qualitative case instances.

So far, the data that I have looked at has implied housing first (a) saves taxpayer money, (b) reduces significantly, with housed individuals less likely to return to the streets, and (c) reduces health pathologies, including addiction, that are related to homelessness. This is the discussion we should be having.... in other words, what does the data say?

If I am not mistaken, hasn't housing first basically saved money that would be spent on ambulances, hospital visits, shelters, jail visits, etc. that would be spent on homeless people?

I know in Seattle, for example, housing first ultimately cost taxpayers less money. It also saved money in North Carolina. I can try to look into more studies from the United States on cost reduction as it relates to housing first interventions, but it has certainly saved money in other nations it has been piloted in. I can continue doing research on this if you want exact figures, but it seems that a lot of the data is still being interpreted in many pilots.

> article about how Los Angeles is spending $1,000,000.00 (per fucking unit!)

I am not going to make a case for housing in this particular instance, or weigh in on if $1,000,000 is worth it, because, frankly, I am not equipped to discuss what the reasonable cost for a housing unit should be in LA.

However, what I do find in a lot of these discussions is that the money spent on an intervention is discussed in isolation. Articles will always emphasize how much money is spent in a given intervention, and not how much is spent otherwise, and in turn, saved via the intervention. This is why I am EXTREMELY skeptical when people push back against housing first.