It’s absolutely insane that western countries have homelessness.
We can solve homelessness and affordably.
First, the real reason we have homelessness is because the state blocks poor people from building homes.
It’s not that people want to be homeless or choose to be homeless or make bad choices. The wealthy make bad choices and they aren’t homeless.
It’s that the society we are part of values people that have money and devalues people that don’t have money.
Homes aren’t supposed to cost $200k.
In the most natural state a home is the cost of materials and as the video shows that can cost nothing but what the Earth already provides.
Our society is so messed up that it will give millions of dollars to a billionaire and nothing to homeless families.
“In the US it’s more important that Bezos is given $48k an hour he doesn’t need than a family get a single penny for the food, shelter or medicine they do need.”
Home, food and medicine are under the umbrella of survival goods and services. These things shouldn’t be for profit while there is housing and food insecurity.
What did people do for shelter in the past? What do they do in other societies?
Besides the traditional home where else did people live? Do we have to build a traditional home for someone to survive? What about these:
- Cabin
- Hut
- Lodge
- Tent
- TP
- Igloo
- Shed
- Shack
- Shelters
- Trailers
- Recreational Vehicles
- Single Room Occupancy
- Studios
- Warehouse
- Motor homes
- Pods
- Tiny homes
They may not provide all the amenities but all of these are better than the vulnerability in unsheltered homelessness.
What I suggest is some organized people set up Go Fund Me or Kickstarter projects for housing. Raise as much as you can.
Buy housing or lands outright with part of the money raised. Even if it’s out in nowhere.
Then use the other part on materials. Let the homeless build the homes. Have a foreman leading the construction. There are many who will help.
They don’t have to spectacular. They can be cabins or lodges. The same that people stay in every year on vacation.
They can even be existing camp grounds.
Then have a recreation center with computers with resources and self learning and programs. Staff it or don’t with volunteers. Have skill sharing where people train each other. Give everyone passes to Lynda.com.
Announce it so that the charities and community can come together to support it.
“Where would you do this? There’s no land?”
Have you ever gone on a plane before? Look out the window. After a mile or two of city there is land… everywhere.
“That’s farm land.”
Some of it. Depends where it is. There’s vast open range across much of the west.
Besides that we create a surplus of food. The state tell farmers to stop farming so that there isn’t a surplus so that prices won’t go down. In addition, we waste 40% of the food we do produce.
We can use some of what they would throw out to support the residents.
We can also setup green houses and have the residents tend to them or have robots tend to them. It can be self sufficient.
“Aren’t all homeless addicts or mentally ill?”
No. The media smears the poor so they don’t have to do anything about it. Because of the lack of rent control, low wages and deaf politicians over 250 families are evicted per hour in the US. Where are they going? Many of the poor are living out of their cars.
“Why don’t you have the state pay for it when you know they can cover it or create the money?”
They don’t care about the homeless. They think that they don’t want to work or that they made poor choices or many other reasons I wrote about here.
However, some municipalities do have support for these type of projects. They are given grants specifically for this and they often don’t use it. Or they are block grants that can be used for multiple reasons.
There are the commons, that’s public land, that is specifically dedicated for public use.
The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. These resources are held in common, not owned privately. Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people (communities, user groups) manage for individual and collective benefit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons
Some even suggested expropriating land (unused or otherwise) for use for housing projects. Again, there are volunteers and the homeless themselves who will help build it.
In Vienna, the people setup amazing affordable housing that only cost citizens 4% of their income.
In 1919, the federal parliament passed the Housing Requirement Act (Wohnanforderungsgesetz) to enhance the efficiency of existing housing structures.
Low private demand for building land and low building costs proved favorable for the city administration’s extensive public housing planning.
From 1925 to 1934, more than 60,000 new flats were built in so-called Gemeindebau (“community construction”) buildings.
Large blocks were situated around green courts, for instance at the Karl-Marx-Hof (one of the hot spots in the civil war of 1934) and the George-Washington-Hof.
The US has setup public housing in the past.
Levittown is the name of seven large suburban housing developments created in the United States by William Levitt and his company Levitt & Sons. Built after World War II for returning veterans and their new families, the communities offered attractive alternatives to cramped central city locations and apartments.
The Veterans Administration and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) guaranteed builders that qualified veterans could buy housing for a fraction of rental costs.
Production was modeled on assembly lines in 27 steps with construction workers trained to perform one step. A house could be built in one day when effectively scheduled. This enabled quick and economical production of similar or identical homes with rapid recovery of costs. Standard Levittown houses included a white picket fence, green lawns, and modern appliances.
“What will people do?”
What everyone does now. Play on their phones. Or educate themselves, or look for what work there is. Or go and help build more homes and housing.
They will do anything besides being miserable or feeling the despair or hopeless or betrayal that they feel now.
They will benefit from all of the technological progress we’ve made over the years. They will educate themselves and relearn and grow.
I work in technology. I didn’t agree to work on it to make a few privileged people money.
My ancestors and many of everyone else ancestors didn’t come to the US to work to the bone for their grandchildren to be homeless or poor because of technological unemployment or global outsourcing.
The people have built a vast infrastructure. The people support it and keep it going.
Where are we now in history?
There’s a good message in the first story of the Bible that people often miss.
The story goes that God spent six days creating the world. It then says,
“Thus the heavens and the earth and all the host of them were finished.
And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.
Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.”
If mankind has built a vast infrastructure, and we have, where automation and AI are doing most of the work then it’s time to recognize that “the work” is done.
It’s time to rest from survival work. Why build robots if you want everyone to continue to work?
It’s time to benefit from the work that was done by the entire human family of the past.
And if you believe in God great but he isn’t working anymore. He was working for himself. He’s unemployed. Not unemployed but He finished his job.
With automation we’ve finished our job.
Whatever the case we are co-creators of the world around us.
If we or others create a world with homelessness, poverty, war and suffering we’re lousy creators. So we need to educate people about the causes and solutions to homelessness.
What wealthy country has the working homeless?
What wealthy country creates parking lots for homeless instead of homes?
In conclusion we do two things:
- Create Kickstarters or Go Fund Me’s for housing, land and materials
- Travel to cities and educate the cities on causes and solutions to poverty and homelessness
Thank you for listening to me rant.
My other posts cover on homelessness, poverty, the job market and more.
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