We should really do something similar to what Finland did. They created homes for their homeless, many were able to find jobs and stop using the services because having a place to eat, sleep and shower greatly increases your abilities to get employed and stay employed.

Finland also noticed that it was cheaper to house and feed their homeless thn keep paying emergency services, court costs and other finances related to how we currently treat homeless people. Even if we house them and none of them get jobs, we are still going to save more tax dollars which can support more social programs.

The only thing stopping us from providing homes for all is someone’s priority to profit off us.

But when we’ve failed to deal with that problem by providing food and shelter for those people, we’ve tried to deal with it by further limiting the number of places they can go seeking temporary comfort. And in doing that — treating the symptom while the underlying disease has gotten worse — we’ve slowly been making Toronto a less comfortable, less convenient, less welcoming place for everyone in it.

Yep trying to inconvenience the homeless inconveniences all of us. What’s more insidious is that the places that remain “more friendly” to the un-housed then become known and well-frequented which puts immense pressure to following suit. Why can’t we give ourselves places we can just chill and forget our problems for a bit?

I don’t know how well it’s studied, but I’d wager that inhospitable architecture and infrastructure leads more homeless people to drugs to numb the pain of sleeping in uncomfortable spots.

This is an issue even in the smallest of cities … like Dryden, ON - population about 7000 - and exactly zero services for the homeless who live there.

And in a surprising/not surprising turn of events not one of the 12 religious worship locations fund a shelter either.