Inspired by Pynchon's Vineland, I'm going to leap through a window of a social worker's office once a year so I can get a free downtown apartment.

Interesting experiment. I'm curious to see how it works out.

But first you have to build enough apartment units for about $80k to $100k apiece, THEN you can operate them for $11,000 a year.

@Blabby, If Utah is still happy with the cost/benefit after eight years, isn't the experiment's theory basically proven?

I've done some research into new development recently. I don't think you can build new units in Portland for that little - more like $150,000 per unit and up. You can buy older units for even less, though - down to $60,000 per unit, although they won't be centrally located.

Possibly. I'm genuinely curious to see how it works.

You can't actually "end" homelessness of course. Very strange that people within the social services use that language when they know better than anyone it can't be delivered on.

They don't have to build new apartments. For every single homeless person in the US there are 24 empty houses! This is a product of pure greed. Try having a little humanity.

If all homeless people were hired as 24 hour a day on-call professional cuddlers who booked their services in 3 hour blocks they would pretty much always have a little money in their pocket and a roof over their heads.

Even the chronically mentally ill can be trained to be big spoons.

Hope they'll be ready for the new influx of homeless to take advantage of free housing.

WE still need mental health care. Some of these people probably don't have to be either homeless or in a subsidized depressing government apartment.

Let Utah worry about who needs mental health care. Just put all Portland's bums on a Greyhound to Salt Lake City.

Want to see what real change looks like? Watch this video Faces of Hope - A Personal Look at Solving Homelessness:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqoQd2epR1c

Granted that there are many who are not actively in their addictions or committing crimes, BUT there are MANY who are. Tell me that putting these folks into a free home, with free food, and free everything while hoping that they suddenly and magically stop committing crimes, slamming dope and terrorizing your community will work. Each one of them, along with hundreds more who were homeless, rebuilt their lives through doing it the good ole fashioned American way (you all remember that way?) - Hard work, accountability, caring for each other, looking in the mirror and then serving others. All of them were on welfare and food stamps and are now working and OFF welfare and guess what...they all pay their own rent! How could that possibly happen? Is it magic? No, its called creating an environment of hope, opportunity, compassion and accountability and then empowering people to reach their potential. Somewhere in my memory banks I recall that there used to be a place like that in history. We need to get back there, and quick.