• Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      I don’t think it fails, but it does come from a specific cultural perspective.

      Those are “ugly Soviet buildings” built by the government. That already communicates cost and the unwillingness to bear it in the US.

      • MeowZedong
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        1 year ago

        Nonono, it’s unreasonable for taxes to go toward helping the poor. They live on the street and starve by their own choice. No one wants to pay for those wretched people!

        Where are the police when you need them to quickly usher the inconvenient truth of my selfish lifestyle out of my sight?

        • Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          You’re in lemmy.ml, a Marxist instance, reading a meme criticizing capitalism and saying that Soviet apartment buildings are a stretch?

          No, they’re the whole point of the meme. Paying for them is the point, who paid for the Soviet buildings? The message is that the Soviet Union built these and American capitalists allow people to live in tents on the street (while calling those buildings ugly). Housing projects would be a perfect “yeah but” except they are very low priority and not so common.

          Ugly Soviet buildings are themselves a meme. Up there with the hammer and sickle and the color beige when Americans visualize the Soviet Union.

    • kittenbridgeasteroid@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      It’s also forgetting that a significant portion of homeless people are homeless by choice, or are homeless for reasons that just providing housing won’t resolve.

      People have this idea that all homeless people are just regular people who experienced hard times, but that’s just a minority. Most homeless are mentally ill people who won’t take their meds or drug addicts who aren’t willing to quit.

      It sucks, and they shouldn’t have to live on the streets, but you can’t force people to change.

      • Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        I don’t think people have that idea at all, if anything they are more likely to assume a homeless person is mentally ill and drug addicted than they are to think they are experiencing hard times or employed but unable to pay for housing.

        However housing first has been pretty successful, but goes against many people’s values for some reason. The big fear of someone getting something undeserved is strong.

        • Zink@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Some might say the big fear of someone getting something undeserved is strong enough to prop up an entire political party.

          But it is not exclusive to them, of course. Some are just very bad about it.

            • kittenbridgeasteroid@discuss.tchncs.de
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              1 year ago

              You’re more than welcome to look up statistics. ~60% of the chronicly homeless have life long mental health issues, and ~80% have substance abuse issues.

              Pretty much every city/state has resources to help the homeless, but the homeless have to be willing to accept the help. Most shelters are drug free, so addicts don’t want to stay there and they won’t accept people whose mental illness makes them violent.

              You can’t force a person to take their medicine or stop doing drugs unless you want to start building more prisons.

              Again, I was never saying that all homelessness is a choice, but a lot of people choose not to accept the help that’s available.

              Source: My wife has her masters in the field and used to work with these populations as an addiction counselor, in Texas, so I know that resources exist at a state level even in a state that clearly hates it’s citizens.

      • darkdemize@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I believe you are arguing in good faith, so I’m hoping you can provide a source for your claim that the majority suffer from mental illness or drug addiction.