I heard Utah a few years back had quietly set up a program that essentially provides free housing to the homeless, since their officials did some kind of arcane set of calculations that determined they were spending the same amount of money on dealing with the chaos and property damage a hoard of hobos will cause anyway. Given where we are, I presume most people in this thread would spam zingers including the word "gibs" at this proposal, but last i heard it seemed to be working. Does anyone know if it crashed and burned later on or if its still happening?
The trouble with roundng these people up and getting them to do useful work is that, obviously, a bunch of them are fucking crazy. A lot of them are also just extremely shy and introverted people. I'm talking the ones that pick out of trash cans and tense up if you say anything to them. Truthfully I'd rather toss a couple of bucks at those people than the panhandlers, who are fucking morally bankrupt opportunists straight to the bone. I have sympathy for the basket cases since, well, its somewhere we could all end up if things take a turn for the worst, especially in an era where the average person's mental health seems to be putrifying for no identifiable reason.
Once they reach that state though, they're effectively not human anymore. They live day to day on instinct and I'd be surprised if anyone of them can even form coherent sentences at that point. I've entertained a lot of ideas in my head about what to do with them, like say electronically tagging them or something, but that kind of thing would feed into their paranoia and make them more erratic. Same with rounding them up, etc. People tolerate Lenny the Neighborhood Bum and hand him a few bucks every now and then because, well, at least he's not breaking into the local drug store or people's homes to get another handle of vodka. At the same time, professional panhandlers are bad for everyone since they get the lion's share of the take, they're annoying, they guilt trip people, and they're taking the easy way out of life. They also make life harder for the real bums who can't tie their shoes without help.
I try to encourage the more coherent ones. One dude would wander up, tell a bunch of raunchy jokes and then ask for money. He'd also plug nights he was going to be at a local comedy club. Shameless, but creative, I'd give him a few bucks for the effort. Of course he was the only one doing that; if there'd have been more of these street comedians my patience would have probably vanished quickly with them.
Just liquidating these people also opens up a lot of ugly possibilities though. You try to avoid cutting the fuckups loose in society because everyone wants that safety net to be there if they hit rock bottom.
