Incentives ought to alter those statistics, however. "If you build it they will come."

This is a logical fallacy called a 'false dilemma,' where to make their suggestion seem more reasonable, the author makes it seem as if there are only two possible choices.

Here, the article claims that our only choices are to give the homeless houses or keep spending as much enforcement money as we do now. Obviously, there are other possible options that should be considered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_modest_prop…

I think it is a good idea, but if we are going to do it might I suggest we pick out the cheapest place to do it. No need to house them in an expensive city, better to place them somewhere with a very low cost of living like New Mexico or Detroit. Detroit is actually a great idea because they could make money by renting their currently unoccupied housing stock to cities looking to get rid of their chronically homeless bums.

Hey, as long as we're going down this line of thinking, has anyone looked into the cost/benefit analysis of shipping the homeless off to a deserted island?

Hitler created Jewish ghettos in Germany. Hawaii had a leper colony on Molokai and Japanese internment camps, same as did Portland.

People on the street might benefit most from Social Workers, who stand on street corners with signs, offering services to reconnect the disenfranchised with their estranged families and educational opportunities, such as the guaranteed student loan program, which provides enough financial aid to cover not just tuition and books, but living most expenses.

I don't see how this compares to reality when you consider that Bud Clark Commons cost $47 million to build and who knows how much to operate annually and it only consists of 130 studios and a 90 bed temporary shelter. At that rate housing a thousand homeless would cost a quarter of a billion dollars just to build barely adequate space for them plus the annual costs of maintenance and administration of the property built. At that rate you could give them all $25,000 dollars a year each for ten years just for the construction costs. At least if you gave them cash the local economy would benefit from increased food, alcohol, and drug sales. You could call it trickle up economics.

Thanks, I was talking about this a day or two ago and saves me digging it up again. We could also, um, decriminalize things like being poor. Not to mention institute rent controls and cap housing costs generally.

If you listen to the City and note its homeless priorities, the impression you get is that if you are chronically homeless, addicted to drugs, or live in an "embarrassing" (to the City) homeless camp like R2D2 or Diginity Village, you will get money, housing, etc. thrown at you to make you go away. If you are simply struggling, on a waiting list for HUD housing, or someone with a low-paying job and a family to support, you can go fish . . . and don't forget to pay your Arts Tax and your Streets Tax. You can drop it in the mailbox as you walk to work.