Utah giving homes to the homeless

[killersheep]

Thought this was an interesting idea. Utah has done the math that the cost of jail and ER exceeds the cost of providing a home and a social worker.
This is their solution to the problem of homelessness.

Housing Works

Does this lead to an increased likelyhood of people abusing the system?
Is this a path to ending homelessness in a definitive way?
Is it sustainable?
Does it actually save the state money?

Personally, I am interested to see how this experiment plays out.

[El Kabong]

The large majority of homeless have mental issues, are the social workers going to help them with their meds?

Who will maintain the properties?

Who pays for this to happen? The banks? The taxpayers?

[Spicoli]

The guidelines say very little about job training or educational courses. You cannot house people like its a pet boarding facility but I see an alternative in skill requirements and possibly a streamline to the homeless into a workforce of sometime. Just as the people who have a routine of the 9-5 grind, a learned practiced behavior, homelessness is a routine also. It's a drastic reversal in day to day living to be handed a new surrounding. People condition themselves accordingly and need to be willing to change as with anything. Or simple existing in the case of homeless. Homelessness is no longer a stereotype of nutty unshaven man trying to squeegee your windows. It's families, generational and in the hardest circumstance a family member who refuses to get help and course correct. It's hard man.

[killersheep]

The guidelines say very little about job training or educational courses. You cannot house people like its a pet boarding facility but I see an alternative in skill requirements and possibly a streamline to the homeless into a workforce of sometime. Just as the people who have a routine of the 9-5 grind, a learned practiced behavior, homelessness is a routine also. It's a drastic reversal in day to day living to be handed a new surrounding. People condition themselves accordingly and need to be willing to change as with anything. Or simple existing in the case of homeless. Homelessness is no longer a stereotype of nutty unshaven man trying to squeegee your windows. It's families, generational and in the hardest circumstance a family member who refuses to get help and course correct. It's hard man.

I applaud Utah for trying this, regardless if it works or not we will learn something from it.
There is indeed an issue with generational homelessness and if the means aren't there, the cycle will never be broken.

[Kirkland Laing]

Hopefully this works and other states actually follow suit. Unfortunately a lot of states seem to be going in the other direction :


It works like this: say you get a $200 speeding ticket, and you don't have the money to pay it. You are placed on probation, and for a monthly supervisory fee you can pay the fine off in instalments over the course of your probation term. The devil, as ever, is in the details, as a great Sunday story from the Atlanta Journal Constitution makes clear. Those supervisory fees vary markedly: in Cobb County, for instance, just north of Atlanta, the government charges a $22 monthly fee. Private companies charge $39, and often add extra costs on top of that to cover drug testing, electronic monitoring and even classes they decide offenders need. Fees often rise and even multiply when probationers cannot pay—and remember, these are people, for the most part, who could not come up with a hundred bucks and change to pay the initial fee; you have to expect they'll have some trouble paying.
Even worse, people who fail to pay the fines imposed by these private companies can find warrants for their arrests sworn out and the period of their probation extended. I spoke with an attorney for a couple in Alabama who say they were threatened with Tasers and the removal of their children if they did not pay the company what they owed. In 2012 a court found that the fees levied by private-probation companies in Harpersville, Alabama, could turn a $200 fine and a year's probation into $2,100 in fees and fines stretched over 41 months.

Private probation: A judicially sanctioned extortion racket | The Economist



Here's Washington DC :


On the day Bennie Coleman lost his house, the day armed U.S. marshals came to his door and ordered him off the property, he slumped in a folding chair across the street and watched the vestiges of his 76 years hauled to the curb.
Movers carted out his easy chair, his clothes, his television. Next came the things that were closest to his heart: his Marine Corps medals and photographs of his dead wife, Martha. The duplex in Northeast Washington that Coleman bought with cash two decades earlier was emptied and shuttered. By sundown, he had nowhere to go.


All because he didn’t pay a $134 property tax bill




The retired Marine sergeant lost his house on that summer day two years ago through a tax lien sale — an obscure program run by D.C. government that enlists private investors to help the city recover unpaid taxes.................




Left with nothing | The Washington Post

[killersheep]

Hopefully this works and other states actually follow suit. Unfortunately a lot of states seem to be going in the other direction :


It works like this: say you get a $200 speeding ticket, and you don't have the money to pay it. You are placed on probation, and for a monthly supervisory fee you can pay the fine off in instalments over the course of your probation term. The devil, as ever, is in the details, as a great Sunday story from the Atlanta Journal Constitution makes clear. Those supervisory fees vary markedly: in Cobb County, for instance, just north of Atlanta, the government charges a $22 monthly fee. Private companies charge $39, and often add extra costs on top of that to cover drug testing, electronic monitoring and even classes they decide offenders need. Fees often rise and even multiply when probationers cannot pay—and remember, these are people, for the most part, who could not come up with a hundred bucks and change to pay the initial fee; you have to expect they'll have some trouble paying.
Even worse, people who fail to pay the fines imposed by these private companies can find warrants for their arrests sworn out and the period of their probation extended. I spoke with an attorney for a couple in Alabama who say they were threatened with Tasers and the removal of their children if they did not pay the company what they owed. In 2012 a court found that the fees levied by private-probation companies in Harpersville, Alabama, could turn a $200 fine and a year's probation into $2,100 in fees and fines stretched over 41 months.

Private probation: A judicially sanctioned extortion racket | The Economist



Here's Washington DC :


On the day Bennie Coleman lost his house, the day armed U.S. marshals came to his door and ordered him off the property, he slumped in a folding chair across the street and watched the vestiges of his 76 years hauled to the curb.
Movers carted out his easy chair, his clothes, his television. Next came the things that were closest to his heart: his Marine Corps medals and photographs of his dead wife, Martha. The duplex in Northeast Washington that Coleman bought with cash two decades earlier was emptied and shuttered. By sundown, he had nowhere to go.


All because he didn’t pay a $134 property tax bill




The retired Marine sergeant lost his house on that summer day two years ago through a tax lien sale — an obscure program run by D.C. government that enlists private investors to help the city recover unpaid taxes.................




Left with nothing | The Washington Post

The Tom Brower approach

[killersheep]

The large majority of homeless have mental issues, are the social workers going to help them with their meds?
I don't know

Who will maintain the properties?
I don't know

Who pays for this to happen? The banks? The taxpayers?
The taxpayers of Utah and by donation.

I don't know the answers. Except for it's paid for by the taxpayers of Utah, as mentioned in the article, their model shows the state spends more on incarcerating and doing ER treatment than they would spend on Board and a social worker.

As I said, I am interested to see how this works out. One thing that is interesting is that they are leaving it up to the individual cities on how to administer their programs.