This article showing that giving homeless people cash reduces homelessness is crossing my timeline a lot recently. A lot of well intentioned comments about how our current ways of addressing homelessness -- shelters, social workers, sweeps, cops,  arrests -- cost more than just giving people the money directly would and aren't as effective at housing people as direct cash transfers would be.

But the popular conclusion -- that the government should see this as a reason to switch to this more effective strategy -- relies on the unsupported assumption that the government is actually trying to house people. To me the study suggests that housing people isn't their goal rather than just that they want to house people but just don't know how. 

To me the more interesting question raised by this research is to ask what the government's policies are actually aiming at if it's not housing people. Here in Los Angeles the current policies end up funnelling tons of public money to cops, contractors, lawyers, nonprofits, and commercial property owners. The homeless themselves serve as an excuse that the electorate will accept as an explanation of the spending. They're the raw material processed by the homeless industrial complex. Giving money directly to the homeless would not only end the current grift but housing them would cut off the grift for all time. Why would they do that?

#LosAngeles #Housing #UBI #Homelessness #HomelessIndustrialComplex

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2222103120