zlacker

Your premise seems to be that homelessness is caused by mental illness. I think homelessness is very often caused by not being able to afford homes. Chicago has a lot less low-income housing now than it did when I got here. There's some basic arithmetic you can do.

To the extent that your premise is true (and I believe that, for many individuals, it is) that also speaks to our city pulling up the ladder on people. I was living in Logan Square when Rahm shut the mental health clinics down. There was one on Milwaukee. People protested for months. People on the streets obviously being in a very bad place and not getting help became a lot more noticeable after.

>>jordan+(OP)
I'm a zoning reform person. I believe that increasing the supply of housing will reduce homelessness. But I have evidence to support my belief that it won't resolve the problem of people shooting up in the CTA vestibules, because I know many of those people have been offered secure housing and refused it.

>>jordan+(OP)
I’m just not convinced homeless drug addicts are on the street because they’re shy of a house payment. The ones I’ve know have wound up there because they became drug addicts, and that addiction drove them into the abyss, exploiting family and friends and every relationship until they’re under a bridge.

We’ve spent billions and billions on the “homes are the solution to homelessness” crowd. And the problem has only grown worse.

>>hcurti+8e
> We’ve spent billions and billions on the “homes are the solution to homelessness” crowd. And the problem has only grown worse.

The agenda for during my adult life has been cutting services for needy (public housing, mental health, etc). Since we seem to agree that homelessness is getting worse isn't it also rational to agree that cutting these services is, at the very least, not helping.

>>jordan+ZX
I don't think it's true that funding for services for the homeless have been consistently cut in Chicagoland (or San Francisco) during your adult lifetime. In fact, I'm not even sure that would be true for public housing --- again, a different problem than the one we're talking about --- I think if you look you might find that we spend more on housing assistance now, in constant dollars, than we did in 1980.