Solving Homelessness

A question came up on a classmate Zoom call recently: “How do we cure homelessness?”  Here are my thoughts:

Years ago, my wife worked for a charity called “Friends of [Boston’s] Ling Island Shelter.” This was an attempt to solve male homelessness in Bean Town. (Rosie’s Place tackled the female problem,)

Basically, the Long Island Shelter was city-owned and run ... but supported by this charity. Homeless men were picked up outside the New England Medical Center ... where they were looked over by a medical team ... every day at 4PM and bussed to the shelter.

There they had beds for each client, lockers, showers and laundry facilities. The homeless were given dinner, a safe warm place to sleep and breakfast the next morning. Then the were bussed back to Boston where they were on their own until that afternoon.  There was also an AIDS unit at the shelter where the afflicted could stay all day.

This was a pro-active solution ... pragmatic and effective ... not an answer that would work everywhere ... but spawned by a “can-do” attitude ... as opposed to a prevailing “can’t-do” attitude that now prevails in many American cities.

Mayors and city managers are paid quite a bit to manage things ... not to wring their  hands in frozen wokeness. Yes, treating their homeless population with such  control might seem authoritarian ... but, it is really, in the end, humanitarian.

Afterward: This solution was a lot cheaper than expensive warehousing of the homeless in hotels.

 Later on, Boston and this charity started a “transition program” to move some homeless men into more normal circumstances. Cheap properties were acquired, rehabbed and offered to more promising men who often had entry-level jobs and were functional. They paid what they could for this “half-way” housing ... and were given a hand up ... not, as they say, a hand out.

To me, makes all the sense in the world.

STAND UP FOR MANAGING PROBLEMS!