“They did not spend more money on alcohol or drugs, contrary to what people believe, and instead they spent the money on rent, food, housing, transit, furniture, a used car, clothes. It’s entirely the opposite of what people think they’re going to do with the money.”
Unsurprisingly, when people are given enough money to make immediate, material improvements to their life, they do.
If you’re homeless and miserable, suffering psychological and/or physical pain, and someone gives you $20, the most immediate relief for that suffering is often escapism into things like drugs and alcohol. In situations of extreme distress, humans tend to favor solutions that immediately, if only temporarily, remove the stress. We see this behavior all across humanity.
So the thing you spend money on in that situation iis typically the thing that will, in your belief, most improve your short - and medium-term condition. Give them $20, they’ll get alcohol. Give them $500, warm clothes and other durable QOL improvements. $7500? A car. $50,000? A house.
Sadly, this study isn’t telling us anything that psychologists and social workers didn’t already know :/
But not in 100% of cases and therefore it’s not worth trying. /s
It is a difficult problem, because there really are some mentally disturbed people in that population too. You can absolutely tackle the problem slowly and one case at a time lift most people out of that situation. But any solution that treats them as a group will bring along the 10% of them that will literally shit all over everything you’ve tried to build.
I mean, it’s only a difficult problem if you consider helping ninety people improve their lives at the cost of spending taxpayer money to support ten people’s bad habits to be difficult. The real issue here is the number of people (conservative and liberal “centrist” alike) who consider it more important to uphold their personal view of morality than it is to help our fellow humans.
Give them money? But some of them might do the bad thing, so obviously no.
Ya but daddy and his bitches love dunking on the poors and their lack of personal responsibility.
Idea that *mentally ill junkies" are trying to get shelter, food, meds or transport is too painful to accept.
Vast majority of the country are Grade A bootlickers and without them, we ain’t moving forward.
“The study did not include people who are street-entrenched or who have serious addictions or mental health issues”
Seems kind of disingenuous to leave out people who are addicted to alcohol or drugs. No, that’s not most of them, but yes that is some of them.
The study simple ignores them so how can one make conclusions like “contrary to what people believe” and “the opposite of what people think” without actually considering the subject in question
Those need a entirely different type of help.
And probably also money
Yeah but getting them clean and/or the mental healthcare they need should come first.
Actually, no. Giving them money, a personal shelter, and general baselines support goes a massively long way and sets a proper foundation that then later allows people to get clean and improve their mental health much easier.
So, no, first they need to have their independence and dignity respected, and then the other stuff.
Tbf, I work closely with this population and would prefer the money be funneled into public housing that doesn’t evict people for using, and things like that, rather than just handed to people who have no framework to use it and possibly unstable executive function. For one thing, the resources tend to go much further. For another, many of my patients are put in danger by sudden cash windfalls.
However I’d still prefer them to get a wad of cash to the current solution, which is “kick them out of anywhere you find them and hope they eventually just vanish”
Maybe it’s ethics… Giving an addict that much money could cause an overdose or other serious harm.
I mean, a study of how non homeless people spend money would probably be skewed and ignore drug addicts too. Studies ignore outliers that would have an obvious affect on what’s being studied.
Are you wondering what a drug addict spends money on?
It’s basically rule #1 to not give an addict money, but give them things they can’t trade for material value instead.
“unhoused”
LOL yeah, I’m sure this is a nonbiased study.
You could try looking into it at all. Study doesn’t use the term. But sure, create assumptions based on nothing. You know, like the folks that think homeless people will spend the money on something else.
Oh, shit, you think this might be secretly funded by big homeless?
Or big wokeness
Unhoused is a common term used in official documents. It’s a much better definition than homeless.
I was going to post a comment saying how thankful I am we could leave the extreme and unabashed aporophobia over at Reddit but… uh, never mind.
Still pretty tame compared to the gems you’d find there I guess.
