https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/we-gave-homeless-people-cash-they
"On any given night in the United States, over half a million people have no
place to call home. They sleep in shelters, in cars, under bridges, and on
sidewalks. We spend billions trying to address this crisis through a labyrinth
of programs, vouchers, case managers, and bureaucratic systems — and yet the
number of people experiencing homelessness has been climbing. What if we’ve
been approaching this problem backwards?
In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. offered a different vision:
“We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead
of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if
poverty is first abolished. The poor transformed into purchasers will do a
great deal on their own to alter housing decay.”
King understood something that policymakers have been slow to grasp: poverty is
the root, and homelessness is the branch. We’ve spent decades trying to prune
the branches while ignoring the roots. But a growing body of rigorous
scientific evidence now points to a deceptively simple solution that works far
better than our current approaches.
Provide basic income.
Not vouchers. Not services. Not case management alone. Cash. Unconditional cash
directly into the hands of people experiencing or at risk of homelessness. And
the results aren’t just good — they’re transformative."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
