A Bit of Cash Can Keep Someone Off the Streets For 2 Years or More (sciencemag.org)

An anonymous reader writes: If someone is about to become homeless, giving them a single cash infusion, averaging about $1000, may be enough to keep them off the streets for at least 2 years. That's the conclusion of a new study, which finds that programs that proactively assist those in need don't just help the victims -- they may benefit society as a whole. "I think this is a really important study, and it's really well done," says Beth Shinn, a community psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville who specializes in homelessness but was not involved in the work. Homelessness isn't just bad for its sufferers -- it shortens life span and hurts kids in school -- it's a burden on everyone else. Previous studies have concluded that a single period of homelessness can cost taxpayers $20,000 or more, in the form of welfare, policing, health care, maintaining homeless shelters, and other expenses. To combat homelessness, philanthropic organizations have either tried to prevent people from losing their homes in the first place or help them regain housing after they are already destitute. But there aren't many data on whether giving cash to people on the brink of becoming homeless actually prevents them from living on the street.

Comments

Very Basic Income

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd favor a basic income. A very basic income. Something like the following.

For citizens and permanent residents (Green Card holders).
$500/month 21+ years old
$250/month for 21 and younger
Add $200/month/person if we get rid of S.N.A.P.

Increase progressive income taxes. Institute a 10% Universal Basic Income tax on AGI on citizens and permanent residents.

Not an addition to social security payments. More like an "expanded social security", except this is below the special minimum or wharever it is called.
I estimate it would cost $1.2 trillion to do the idea above.

Re:Very Basic Income

[tlambert]

... they want to make us have to work.

And the problem with that is??????

Through technology, Republicans are destroying jobs. They're going to leave most of humanity starving and homeless.

Funny; at almost every technology company I've ever worked at, the CEO or one of the other executives has taken it upon themselves to send an email to all employees urging them to vote for the Democratic candidate.

I saved the ones I received from Steve Jobs, while working at Apple.

These same companies tend to donate to the specific Democratic campaign or party in general as well, to the limits allowed by law.

Personally, I'd happily work for free to build the technology to put every man, woman, and child on the planet out of work. In fact, I currently do.

Re: Very Basic Income

[Stan92057]

http://gizmodo.com/study-peopl...

Re: Very Basic Income

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite. In the US, they bid on roads that are already speced. USDOT, the state DOT or local municipality write specs on what they want people to bid on. They then bid on them and build the road. There may be some issues with crap work, but 99% of the time it's the people who spec the road are trying to cut corners and save money on the project. Short-term thinking vs. long-term thinking.

In Germany, they spec the roads to last 25 years. They have a higher quality requirement of the raw materials and they build the road to outpace the expected traffic weight. They are also have very strict limits for weight restrictions, which are much less than the roads are built for.

In Michigan, they spec the roads for the 80% of expected weight. Up to 20% of the trucks on the road are expected to exceed what the road is built for. The specs are also based on a 10 year lifespan, of which they may only get 5 years. We use less concrete, have thinner underpavement, and lower quality standards for the raw materials. Consequently, it costs ~50% less to build a road in Michigan than it does in Germany, even if account for labor being more expensive there.

Re:Very Basic Income

[Falos]

Are you another six-figure dumbfuck who thinks he has "money" and doesn't realize he'd GAIN from a genuine redistribution?

Y'know, I've been pondering why you guys think you're wealthy, and it seems your simple minds have been deluded by quantity.

Sneering aside, it makes a lot of sense. It happens when you look around you, at your city, and you see that your car is nicer, your house is bigger, your clothes are more expensive than ninety-eight peasants, and only lesser to one upper class person. Clearly, you are a person who is rich! This is plain to see, you only need a moment's glance! You live comfortably, and have access to leisures so many people don't!

Wrong, dipshit. That one guy makes a thousand times more than you and the peasants combined. For all your cars, clothes, and houses, the title that the factual numbers would assign you is, at best, "not as poor".

I consider overpopulation a problem the way climate change is a problem. Something I hope gets fixed, but not by a clusterfuck of self-interested agendas. That said? Earth has the resources to support far, far more humans than now.

Re: Very Basic Income

[Gussington]

And now your average home costs $10 million, and a salad costs $100.

But hey, you paid half price for gas!

Yay!

My 80 year old house was built from bricks made in the kilns at the end of my street. It closed down 30 years ago because you could order in bricks interstate for 10cents less.
So yeah, a house will cost more, but likely 10%-20% more not twenty times as much. But for your 10%-20% increase, more local people will have jobs. Same goes for your salad.

Re:Very Basic Income

[Gussington]

No company I've worked for (at least 20) has ever sent any email of any political nature ever. But then I'm not American.

In fact I'm doing a govt contract right now, and the only political messages we get say that as govt workers we must remain neutral in the process. No-one is permitted to show any preference for any political party because the process has to be as impartial as possible.
The American system seems so corrupt by comparison.

Re: Very Basic Income

[silentcoder]

You'll end right back with the same problem that led to 'socialised' roads in the first place since this tech will do nothing to fix that. Roads in the US were all privately built until the 1920s - it changed because it was a disaster.
Big business owner wants to be next to busy road, does not want to relocate - bribes roads builder to run road past his business. There were roads between nearby towns that took so many detours they were 6 to 8 times longer than the socialised roads that replaced them because it was just too lucrative to accept money from existing locations for running a detour past them.
Competition also didn't fix them since roads are a classic example of a natural monoply industry. Whoever builds the first road is impossible to ever profitably compete with no matter how badly they did it.

Re:Very Basic Income

[Jon Peterson]

I've known homeless people, and they were indeed refused support by their family. Family in this case was dad, who was a ornery SOB and disowned his son for going to university instead of working on the farm. Nice.

The son was a slightly geeky maths student. He screwed up some paperwork and didn't get any housing allocated by the university one term. He slept on a mate's floor while trying to sort it out. Then he felt the mate might be getting fed up with him, so he lied and pretended he had somewhere.

Then he started sleeping during the day in the computer lab (how I met him) and just wandering around at night. This didn't do his grades much good, and he dropped off the course.

Once you've been sleeping rough for a very short space of time your mental health nosedives. Asking anyone for help becomes very hard - it's a challenge just keeping basically clean and fed. Note that he had some money (unemployment benefit), just nowhere to live. He could afford to eat, but without access to a kitchen he either ate only cold food, or had to buy (relatively expensive) take-away food. As a single young male you are not on the top of the queue to be housed by the state.

In the end he escaped, and last I met him he had a job, house and girlfriend. But I've seen how someone can become homeless, it doesn't take much, and once it begins it's very hard to stop.

Skeptical

[emzee]

My first impression upon reading the summary on /. was: "Wow! I find it hard to believe $1,000 could prevent homelessness for two years, but I want to know more." My second impression, after reading the article was: "Why did the author offer so few details? There's no link to the study and no mention of the sample size." These are red flags. And the study itself is apparently pay to view.

Re:I believe it

[rmdingler]

We offered food to someone who said they NEEDED money for food. They rejected the kindness with cursing.

We have daily beggars that we've pretty much made a sport of trying to circumvent. It's difficult to be a rock every day, and they eventually wear you down into some ill-advised stray-feeding.

Our running joke is that if one of them holds up a sign that says I need a drink! he gets a twenty.

We have a one-legged gal who Sharpied On My Last Leg as her cardboard plea.

Welfare as lump-sum

[Anonymous Coward]

There has also been experiments done with lump-sum welfare and monitoring how people are after a period.
There was even a TV show in the UK that generally tends to have way too many TV shows about benefits abuse.

Basic idea is give a years worth of welfare payments all at once.
A large percentage of these people, expectedly, had a once-off celebration before starting to get to work in order to actually get a stable income going, start their own business or find a job without having to worry their asses off about trying to make it to the next payment.
The psychology behind this torture of living from wage to wage is well understood and it is horribly detrimental to said people.
It's not like paying a year at a time would mean money would be lost, you DO have checks for when people have wage-paid jobs, when they get a job, they give you the money back, problem solved.

Of course, places like the UK and America just like to punish people on welfare, instead of using it to self-regulate the job sector by preventing employers from creating jobs so shitty and underpaid that nobody does them.
It works very well in Nordic countries. They have the strongest job sectors, best overall health, most stable economies on the planet.
The 2008 recession barely dented most of them, but in particular Norway who probably has the best model since they have a very nice buffering system to prevent all hell breaking loose in the event of the global economy shitting itself to any significant extent. :Punishing Welfare doesn't work. Punishing Prisons don't work. They've never worked. They never will work.
Stop it already.
These people WANT to be in jobs, these people want to make a decent living, but society throws them under the bus for being poor and unlucky. Even someone with a decent job could make one simple mistake and end up bankrupt, homeless and down the shitter in the space of a year.
The amount of people that want to abuse welfare and be lazy all day are an extremely small minority.
Even people that abuse drugs WANT a job so they can continue their habit. Very few of them want to turn to crime.

Re:I believe it

[ajlisows]

Because i'm a little bit insane myself, I've taken in four homeless people in the last three years. I give them a place to stay and make sure they are fed. In exchange they clean up around the house and help me prepare meals. I also give them each a (barely functioning) laptop of their own so they could look for jobs. One oft hem took quickly to repairing computers and did side jobs (Mostly virus cleanup/backup and wipe type stuff. It took 4 to 7 months for the first three to get on their feet and get a job and get their own place. Not everyone has friends and family that have it within their means to help them out.....the people i took in came from poor families. I took in women and the common thread was that they did have places to stay....at the cost of being taken advantage of sexually. It is amazing how much easier it is to get your shit together when you don't have to worry about finding your next meal. It's amazing how much fewer drugs you need to abuse to get yourself to sleep on a futon in a warm house than on cold rock under a bridge. its' amazing how much trust, friendship, and loyalty (and an occasional bit of advice.....where to get help for depression....how to make a resume) mean just as much as financial help. My latest one took a bit longer....it's been 9 months and she is working part time and got enough some financial aid/grants to get into school. Shes' going to stay here a few more months and pay me a very modest rent. Her goali s to get her own place by the end of the year. They have turned out to be good, well adjusted people i am proud to call my friends. It cost me some money (and some sleepless nights), but damn it feels good to truly help someone out and see the results. i think my days of altruism to this extreme are over for awhile though!

It's precisely the same logic for either

[raymorris]

I fully understand the feelings behind your comment. I've been homeless, I've seen a lot of things. It's annoying to see people waste money while you're struggling.

The correct logic is the same in either case. If you create an strong economic incentive for poor people to come to a country, they'll try to do so; if you create a strong economic incentive for rich people to come to a country (or send their money there), they'll try to do so.

A guy with $100 to his name probably has it in his wallet, or in his checking account. A billionaire doesn't have a millions of $20 bills in his a wallet, a billionaire owns Tesla, Amazon, or some other company. The "billion dollars" isn't actual dollars, it's a company or two. Sending his billion dollars to some other company means sending the company there. It is indeed bad for the economy when a company moves their operations away - see Detroit for an example.