r/NoStupidQuestions • u/Garey_Coleman • 10d ago

Where are the homeless supposed to go?

Cities have been cracking down on homeless people so they can’t have encampments or stay on sidewalks. At the same time usually the shelters are full. So those who are unable to get into a shelter, where are they supposed to go?

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u/whatugonnadowhenthey 10d ago edited 10d ago

Since no one is answering the question in good faith, I’ll give it a shot. Honestly, most cities don’t give a shit if a homeless guy is sleeping on a stoop or in a alley or something, it’s been part of living in a city for thousands of years. They care when dozens of them set up tent cities in public areas and start trashing them. That’s when it becomes a real problem because once a tent city is established, less regular folk go to the area, which leads to more homeless, which leads to less regular folk, which leads to businesses leaving, etc. etc.

So the answer to your question is out of open air drug dens and into more individual spaces that are less of an eye sore and quite frankly a danger to the community. Literally “disperse”.

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u/Conscious-Strawberry 10d ago

"Literally disperse" to where?

A tent community got busted up in my local area not too long ago. For years after that, it wasn't uncommon for me to find unhoused folks IN MY YARD. One of them broke into the stairwell of our apartment building. Do you know how scary it is to be flying out the door to get to work, just to find a sleeping unhoused person in your stairwell behind a door that's supposed to be locked?

So you've done a good job explaining why these laws are made (eyesore, unsafe conditions, etc). But you really haven't answered OPs question at all of where are they supposed to go after they "disperse"?

And when folks make these laws without giving these humans a place to go, conditions can become much less safe. I can avoid a tent city. A sleeping homeless man who broke into my apartment building bc he had no where else to go when that tent city was broken up? Harder to avoid.

And no, my story is not some one-off thing. Many others who live near tent cities that were broken up have had similar experiences

These people need somewhere to go and sleep at night, just like you and me. That's why I support affordable housing laws and local support programs for the chronically homeless folks

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u/MissDisplaced 10d ago

No one is answering because there is no answer. At the highest levels of government, they never answer where homeless people (who aren’t, say mentally ill or criminals) should go. There is no actual resource for that.

The US had this problem during the Great Depression and the answer was the WPA for public works (how lots of bridges and roads and national parks got built), or the military.

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u/pikashroom 10d ago

There is no answer from this administration (or any others) but there is clearly a solution. Not a fool proof one, just the first couple of steps.

Fund social programs that help homeless get housing and jobs and maybe medication and put them back on a track to living a good life.

When I was in the mental ward, quite a few of those people didn’t have housing. There’s a vicious cycle between mental illness and not living a life worth living. And Substance Abuse Disorder is a mental illness. These people need assistance. And when we have this infrastructure in place, we could build shelters with police preventing crime for the people who don’t want assistance

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u/lizerlfunk 10d ago

My late husband was a mental health technician at a Baker Act receiving facility from 2006-2007. (Baker Act = the law in Florida permitting involuntary hospitalization for people whose mental health is making them a danger to themselves or others.) He saw the same unhoused people over and over and over again. They’d get arrested, get Baker Acted, held for 72 hours, get back on their meds, be stable, be released once the 72 hours was up, and they don’t have anywhere to go or any way of staying on their meds. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Maybe if they had help with achieving a stable living situation it would be easier to break the cycle.

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u/MissDisplaced 10d ago

I had an uncle who was mentally unwell and he ended up in a halfway house (not sure if they still have those). It seems these resources are shrinking.

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u/MikeWise1618 10d ago

Not only would the cost be immense, but it doesn't tackle the root cause, which is probably rising income inequality. So no matter how much money you throw at it, it would eventually not be enough.

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u/MissDisplaced 9d ago

The only thing I could see are some sort of dormitory style temporary housing, combined with job training and social programs designed to get people back into regular apartments and jobs.

But you’re right it looks bleak, as income inequality keeps rising plus those programs get cut. And what do you do with people too sick to work?