POST SCRIPTS

Patrick is proposing spending $10 million to lay the foundation for placing thousands of homeless people in their own apartments over the next five years. Administration officials say taking homeless people off the street - and out of a cycle through jail and emergency rooms - could lead to better lives and lower costs to care for them. ** In pilot programs, officials reported declines in costs for services from hospitalization to detox and imprisonment.

That’s one heck of a big Band-Aid for taxpayers to apply, and, without much hope that the underlying problems associated with “homelessness” will be solved as part of the bargain. It’s being sold to John Q-Public with the obnoxious claim that it will save money...both private and from tax dollars: “Providing homes for those people, researchers say, will ultimately save money, because agencies spend less on housing and other services than they do now on shelter beds, emergency rooms, and other healthcare costs for the homeless.”

But the article also hints at hidden costs (in addition to the output for intinally buying the housing) :

"There's no question it's more work to keep someone housed." ** "Whatever issues that led them to become homeless, those issues have become magnified," O'Connell said. "They need way more support than we were giving them on the street. Whether the country is ready to support that kind of care worries me a lot."

The manpower to oversee and care for the newly housed homeless apparently isn’t being added to the savings equation…and that is not only a shame, it is deceitful. But, this is how most programs born of tender mercies are justified, by leaving something important out. Logic and reason, which might actually lead to real solutions, are tossed aside as cruel offerings of heartless conservatives…and the waste in money, time and effort is ignored while the project is heralded as a great accomplishment to be repeated again and again!

"We're talking about changing the whole context for how we deal with homelessness," said Joe Finn, executive director of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, which over the past two years has overseen a $1.8 million state-subsidized program to house the chronically homeless. ** He and others point to the alliance's Home & Healthy for Good program - which has placed more than 230 people in apartments around the state - as evidence the effort can succeed on a larger scale.

Yippee…we can give all of them a home....that will fix everything!

If this catches on, in twenty years there’s a good chance that most Americans will be living in government “purchased and maintained” housing. “That’s crazy,” you say...but think about your kids, or yourself, for a minute. What incentive is there to work to purchase a home when government will provide you one? Why go to school or work to improve life…when just holding your hand out, palm up, will do? The feel good big bonus? You can do whatever you want and people will come to make you food and remind you to brush your teeth!

It is pathetic that we even have people living on the streets in America. The problem is not due to the lack of a home (or opportunity) it is a product of societal dysfunction...and the fact that too many of our good citizens scoff at solutions that would actually cause real and lasting change. The tolerant and caring have perpetuated this problem with emotion driven solutions that make them feel good but do little to actually uplift people or inspire them to realize their full potential. As for the truly mentally ill...they should be in hospitals receiving treatment as they once were.