quixotess:

abbyjean:

so i’m writing this paper about housing chronically homeless people in order of vulnerability, which is an index created based on the level of county costs they incur through hospitalization and/or incarceration and a measure of how likely it is that they’ll die in the next year if they don’t get a housing placement. already soul-crushing, no? and then you read the numbers, that the county paid $80,000 for a pilot project that housed 50 people and they didn’t even have to pay for the actual housing because developers got all these tax breaks and stuff for building it, and then even though they provided these intensive on-site mental health and physical health and substance abuse services, in the one year after these folks were housed, the county saved over $700,000 in service costs to those 50 people alone because they spent so much less time in the hospital or in jail. but of course we’re not expanding the project, because there’s so much moral bullshit about giving “these people” housing without first requiring them to be clean and sober and why are we wasting our tax dollars on people “who have given up on life” even though clearly the problem is that we as a society have given up on them and their response is logical and natural given that inescapable fact.

but it’s not until i look at these photos that i actually start to cry.

It’s crushing to realize just how easy it would be to give EVERY SINGLE homeless person a home.

We have five times as many EMPTY HOMES in America as we do homeless people. We don’t even need to build new structures. It’s shameful that we let people live on the street while McMansions languish.