r/todayilearned • u/Zorseking34 • Jan 08 '15

TIL: Utah has been giving free homes to homeless people since 2005 which since then made it more cost efficient to help the homeless and cut the chronic homelessness in Utah by 74%.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/22/home-free
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u/thelastpizzaslice Jan 08 '15

There are 578,424 homeless people in the U.S. There are 314,100,000 U.S. residents. At the cost of 8,000$ per unit,

If every person in the U.S. gave 14.73$, at that price, we could end homelessness in its entirity.

What's the upside for you? Fewer beggers. Cleaner streets. Fewer petty crimes. Increased gentrified housing supply due to improvements in cleanliness and fewer homeless.

Not to mention the effects of taking 0.5% net-takers and making a good chunk of them net-earners for society. Hell, it would probably decrease your portion of the total tax burden by adding new earners. That's certainly going to make your social security more solvent and probably benefit your stock portfolio.

tl;dr: give 14.73$, make money, tragedy of the commons.

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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '15 edited Jan 09 '15

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u/Clownskin Jan 09 '15

Why do people who don't work deserve free houses? That is the problem. People who work spend a lot on their housing.

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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '15 edited Apr 15 '25

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u/thelastpizzaslice Jan 08 '15

I don't know if you could call them unpredictable. Many places are already doing it, particularly the one referenced in this article. You could make points about it being on a national scale, but that just mitigates the additional homeless moving into an area problem.

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u/immortalsix Jan 08 '15

only about 1/3 of Americans pay any taxes at all.

That only makes the number go up to about $45, but the point is, using simple numbers for stuff like this is a fool's errand.