How dare these people wanting to improve the life of the poors by giving them handouts. For shame.

*I’m a “poor” and I approve this sarcasm.

Housing without kitchens has come up in modern history multiple times: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-frankfurt-kitchen/

their designs just had single family homes with kitchens. But Marie Howland convinced them to sketch in small groups of kitchen-free houses, each with access to a shared kitchen, where residents would take turns working.

Austin thought it could be a city of kitchen-less houses. And she thought that the food could to each house on a system of underground trains. She drew maps upon maps, and tons of floor plans. She published her ideas in a journal called ‘The Western Comrade’ and even applied to patent her underground food train idea.

But the kitchen-less house movement still didn’t die. In England, the urban planner Ebenezer Howard actually incorporated kitchen-less homes into some of his “garden city” communities. He called these homes “cooperative quadrangles.” They had a shared courtyard and shared kitchen, surrounded by smaller kitchen-less dwellings.

Wat, why? What is the idea here?

Isn’t that just a hotel room?

Then we’ll have to give them more pie, and they’ll just eat the pie! Eventually they’ll eat all of the pie and the poor rich folks won’t have any pie :(

Yeah, I’m still salty about that vile skit.

I almost thought this was going a different way. I’m happy to be wrong.

I imagine some capitalist, right-wing fucker is screaming at their screen going “nu-uhhh” and furiously typing that you’re wrong despite having done zero research.

I’m employed, and I live like I’m in poverty. As much as I want to lift up the homeless, I would also appreciate fair wages for the employed.

Since rent/housing has gone insane, I’m having a hard time making things work on the money I’m making. I’m well over the “poverty” line and I can’t afford to put fuel in my car and buy name brand products, even if I wanted to. Products like… Idk, Campbell’s.

But I’m using these bootstraps, they can go find their own!

Next you’re going to tell me you can solve homelessness by giving people housing

Most people who are homeless were a paycheck or two away from homelessness.

It’s easier for the housed to become homeless, than for the homeless to become housed. It’s systemic, and a good chunk of it is employers mistreating employees.

Research seems to show that a lot of people just need a small step up to get back on track.

We can choose to either provide for those who lack food, housing, and other things, or we can choose not to. We often choose not to despite having both sufficient food and shelter.

We can also choose to pursue the goal of making the poor independent.

But if we choose not to leave people unprovided for, that is just what we have chosen. There is no way around that.

Making the poor independent is a separate project, in the same vein as making people stop being violent, or unhealthy, or depressed, or sick. Except in that case, if the population of dependent poor die off while the newly made Independent population remains, it would be a success. No more dependants is the goal, quite literally.

There’s also the matter that we’ve chosen very explicitly to disallow the poor any power to simply leave the city and establish their of towns of rejects with the materials that exist in nature, as harvesting huge quantities of wood and clay without permissions – unlikely to be obtained – is expressly illegal. Apparently we have to, to protect the environment from people. But it’s not civilization’s responsibility to rectify that injustice, is it? It can just disallow you your shelter and leave it at that. Civilization does not have to compensate a man for the option it has taken away from him.

Thing is, the research into direct cash transfusions and other straight basic income has shown that poor people generally have a very good idea of what they specifically need to do to get out of poverty, be that a gym membership to shower, good clothes, a bike or car, an apartment, someplace to keep documents and medications where they won’t be thrown out by cops, getting a GED after their parents threw them out for being gay, or other prerequisite to getting a job / a job that pays well enough for an apartment, they just don’t have the money to actually do any of it.

A person have a good community kitchen they can go to and get free food, and as such food stamps are worthless to them, but they can’t spend that same pittance on something that would actually help them get out of poverty like clothes and a gym membership or saving up for a small car where they can store their stuff and get to jobs, all because a government commite of people and lobbyists who have never lived outside of a gated community have decided what each poor persons budget should look like and coincidentally they all look the same.

I’m not convinced that just cash will solve homelessness or poverty. It may help, but it seems like a “give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime” kinda situation. Give people the fish so they can eat, but if you want them to actually be independent, then you gotta make sure they have the tools they need to do so.

I think the reason you’ve taken so much flak is that money isn’t fish. Money can be converted into tools. Yes, of course you’re right that some people won’t use the money in a way which will end their homelessness, and may benefit from ‘other programs’. But the meme was specifically about people objecting to the idea of giving poor people money so that they can solve their own problems. Rolling out ‘other programs’ is great, but the ‘other programs’ will be much more effective if they’re not clogged with people that can solve their own problems with a bit of cash.

bUt SoMeTiMeS

I’d say with those people you just need to give the money to a care giver instead of directly to the person… But it’s still just giving money without making them jump through all kinds of dehumanizing hoops

Theres a difference between homelessness and poverty.

And most cases of substance abuse come from people living in a society with no community and no safety nets. Even if you give everyone a thousand bucks a month but society is stil hell, it solves very little.

9 times out of 10, people are poor simply because they are poor, not because of some moral failing on their part. But instead we tell ourselves comforting lies that they must have done something wrong. We tell ourselves this because as long as we don’t do those wrong things, we don’t end up poor or homeless.

In truth, all that is necessary to be homeless is for the cost of housing to rise above the market value of your skill set. That is all. Or a severe illness is all that’s really required.

No. UBI studies have shown that unconditional cash both reduces poverty levels and improves mental and physical health. Recipients of that money were actually drinking less and spent more on basic needs. Employment went up, not down. And so what if some people end up spending it on drugs? Providing them free access to healthcare, education, and housing as well instead of stigmatizing them is infinitely better than living in fear of an imaginary problem. Besides, I’m less worried about someone spending like $50 or whatever on weed than I am of them spending obscene hundreds or thousands on necessary prescription drugs.

Amazingly shitty.

Idk… Maybe he knew he sucks with money so couldn’t offer his own wisdom on the topic, but wanted to help his kid avoid his mistakes however he could

Guillotines have a way of loosening one’s grip.

There have been hundreds of UBI studies at this point. Most of them with headlines in major papers. They all say the same thing.

Here’s one local to me. Slightly old but quite relevant.

Assuming the link works, this is a great resource of research papers on the topic - https://www.givedirectly.org/cash-evidence-explorer/

There are a bunch of interacting factors, too. Something like 10% of the homeless are chronically homeless and don’t really have good prospects of being able to give themselves housing stability even if given money. This population in particular seems to be better served by the “Housing First” movement where they are given homes and supervised so that they can then get the treatment they need relating to substance abuse, mental health, etc., from a position of at least having a place to go home to. Here is a summary with citations to studies.

But for the housing insecure people who are at risk of becoming part of the 80% of the homeless experiencing transient homelessness, or the already homeless in that category, dropping money in their lap might be an effective way to improve their lives permanently, putting them on a better trajectory. From what I’ve seen of the reporting of very recent studies, many of which were complicated by the fact that a pandemic happened right in the middle of the experiments, there is some evidence that giving money directly is helpful. But there’s open questions about whether it should be a lump sum, whether big numbers ($500+/month) result in something different from small numbers ($25/month), etc.

So yeah, I think even if we start from the assumption that giving directly is more effective than in-kind support like free/subsidized food or healthcare or housing or childcare, or treatment for mental health or substance abuse, we have to figure out which populations are best served by which intervention, and whether temporary/time limited programs are as cost effective as long term commitments, etc.