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- cross-posted to:
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- [email protected]
The new study, funded by the government and carried out by King’s College London (KCL) and the homelessness charity Greater Change, will recruit 360 people in England and Wales. Half will continue to get help from frontline charities. The other half will get additional help from Greater Change, whose support workers will discuss their financial problems then pay for items such as rent deposits, outstanding debts, work equipment, white goods, furniture or new clothes. They do not make direct transfers to avoid benefits being stopped due to a cash influx.
Professor Michael Sanders, who runs KCL’s experimental government unit, said: “What we’re trying to understand is the boundary conditions for cash transfers. When does it work? For whom does it work? What are the amounts you need to give people in order to make it work?”
One of the first cash transfer schemes was in Mexico in 1997 and since then they have been used around the world. But most evidence is from low and middle-income countries, and there has been opposition from politicians and the public, who often believe people will spend the money unwisely. Last year researchers in Canada found that giving CA$7,500 (£4,285) to 50 homeless people in Vancouver was more effective than spending money housing them in shelters, and saved around CA$777 (£443) per person.
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there has been opposition from politicians and the public, who often believe people will spend the money unwisely
Aye, there’s the rub: people disregarding evidence in favor of their beliefs unsupported by reality.
I don’t think it’s unfounded, but it depends on the situation of the person. If they are there through addiction any money will feed the addiction first. If the person doesn’t have that issue, then money can be the first step on the road back into society.
Also, key point in the article. The scheme doesn’t give them cash. It pays for things on their behalf. They say it’s to avoid benefits being stopped, and I’m sure that’s true but I expect it’s also so they can control what it’s being spent on.
Money and shelter is always the first step.
Kicking an addiction is hard. Kicking an addiction without your basic needs met, is even harder.
People like to think that the homeless should solve the reasons for their homelessness first, and only then be helped. Because otherwise the help will just go to waste.
In reality, it should happen the other way around. The help makes it more likely they’ll solve their problems at all, and hence actually leads to less homelessness overrall.
Agree with what everything you wrote, except somebody with an addiction doesn’t act rationally. If an addict has an opportunity to do something constructive with money, or can satisfy the addiction just one more time… The addiction wins.
This is why addiction is so awful. It becomes the most important thing, and you will destroy anything else in your life to satisfy it. Then when everything is gone it still holds you down.
I agree the order of things needs to be basic needs first, but an addict is unlikely to make that choice and needs help doing it. Not just the money to do it.
Obviusly.
But you can’t ask an addict to start resisting their addiction, if the have nothing else.
They need something to resist it for. If they don’t have that, their next high IS the most important thing to them.
And this whole thing where we keep saying “the addiction will win every time” promotes a defeatist attidue towards helping these people that has lead to policies that are literally killing them.
The addiction doesn’t win every time. If that were true there wouldn’t be any saving any addict ever.
Addicts can and will turn anything and everything of value given to them into money, that can then buy them another high, but that CANNOT be used as an excuse to refuse to help them.
Institutionlize, maybe, but that’s a healthcare problem, not a homeless problem. And that kind of help should be available to a person before they are ever put out of a home.
This has been tried multiple times across numerous jurisdictions. Consistently it’s been found that giving poor people money makes them less poor in the long run. This seems to be an unsavory result, however, so politicians let the experiment retire never to actually learn from the results and draft policy.
This experiment is going to work and then nothing will come of it only for another jurisdiction to try exactly the same thing again and find exactly the same results.
The myth of meritocracy is still too prevalent a belief.
George Carlin hit this on the head. If you don’t have the homeless there’s no one to scare the poor into working.
who often believe people will spend the money unwisely
But if they spend that money “unwisely,” it’s fine. Sure, you can buy a $50 bottle of wine to get drunk with friends at dinner, but they get drunk on some cheap malt liquor because they’re fucking homeless and it sucks- or, heaven forbid, get addicted to opiates because they’re in pain and live in a country with a for-profit health care system- and they’re the problem.
Giving them cash is nice. Giving them homes would be nicer. If you house the homeless and also offer them addiction counseling and mental health care, most of them don’t end up back on the streets. Sure, some people will always be homeless, but most homeless people just need help to get out of that situation.
But money helps too. You can’t afford a phone or new clothes that don’t stink and look presentable? Or just basic toiletries? Good luck getting a job.
