> Everyone wants that solution. [Just building more houses]
I'm not sure I completely agree with that.
Suppose you wanted to build the maximum amount of free housing as quickly as possible. What would you do?
You'd pick someplace rural (where land is cheap, and there are fewer people to raise objections), buy a bunch of land and just build the homes (and services needed by the people who would live in them). You would then invite anyone who needed shelter to come live there for free.
But if you actually try to do that, "homeless advocates" will say all sorts of mean things about you and block the project. So I would argue that not everyone wants the solution of just building enough homes for everyone.
They want homes built in specific places, and those specific places happen to be highly desirable and very expensive places to build acquire land and build homes.
A year ago, there was a study about Denver spending anywhere from 42K to 102K per homeless individual. If I remember correctly, that was only a partial amount because they couldn't get all of the financial information. I think we all need to ask how much of this money actually reaches the intended population and how much is administrative overhead. It never pays to fix a problem. If the issue is an impossible scenario, the cash spigot is always running.
Yes, well spotted. The US on average likely has enough housing. It's certain specific areas do not have sufficient housing. If you live somewhere with high land prices, property values, etc, the low wage jobs in the area still need to be filled and those people still need somewhere to live.
can you point to an example where they built homes and the infrastructure to support those homes where people blocked the project for reasons other than 'not in my neighborhood, or 'not with my tax dollars', but more of what you seem to imply "It's not good enough?"
