Welcome to The Debate. Today we're dissecting
a crisis that's, well, it's everywhere and nowhere
at the same time. Homelessness. It is visible
on every major street corner in the developed
world, yet the solutions seem permanently out
of reach. We need to look past the tents and
the cardboard signs to understand the machinery
behind this, the interplay of definition, economic
policy, and human physiology. It's one of those
topics, isn't it? It really forces society to
take a hard look at itself. We tend to view this
as a logistics issue, a crisis of rooflessness,
as you might call it. But looking at the source
material, I don't think we're just dealing with
a housing shortage. I think we're dealing with
a fracture in social identity. We're asking what
it means to actually belong to a community. And
that really is the friction point. Is homelessness
primarily a structural economic failure, you
know, a lack of inventory best solved by unconditional
housing, the housing first model? Or is it a
symptom of deeper individual fractures, trauma,
mental health, addiction, that requires a more
conditional treatment -based approach? I'm taking
the stance that the economic view is, well, it's
dangerously reductive. Homelessness to me is
a manifestation of a loss of identity. And if
we simply provide four walls without addressing
the trauma or the social disconnection, we're
not solving the problem. We're just hiding the
symptom behind a door. And I'm going to argue
that homelessness is fundamentally a math problem.
It is an economic failure. I'll show that housing
first isn't just a slogan. It is the only evidence
-based solution we have that actually saves taxpayer
money and keeps people alive. Viewing housing
as a fundamental human right is really the only
fiscal path forward. Fiscal efficiency is a cold
comfort if the human inside the house is still
broken. But let's look at your math. All right.
Let's start with the scale. Because to understand
the urgency, we have to look at the numbers.
As far back as 2005, global estimates put the
homeless population at around 100 million. But
looking specifically at the United States, the
situation is actively deteriorated. In 2024,
the count rose to approximately 771 ,400 individuals.
That is a staggering figure. It's actually surpassed
the levels we saw during the Great Recession.
It is a massive number, but I do want to caution
against treating that population as a monolith.
Sure. But the drivers, if you look at the drivers,
they're remarkably consistent. We are seeing
the brutal mechanics of gentrification. Formerly
affordable neighborhoods become popular. The
wealthy move in. Prices skyrocket. And the working
poor are just pushed out. You combine that with
the stagnation in living wages and the legal
ease of eviction, and you get a real distortion
in the market. It's not a mystery. It's a ledger
sheet. When rent burdens exceed income, people
fall out of the bottom of the economy. OK. I
don't deny the rent burden, of course. But if
it were purely economic, then why do we see such
a high prevalence of these very specific pathologies
among the homeless population? You're describing
a resource problem. I'm looking at a capability
problem. Because a solution to the resource problem
actually helps fix the capability problem. This
is where the federal government's Interagency
Council on Homelessness landed with the Housing
First initiative. The logic is, give people independent
housing immediately. No hoops to jump through.
No sobriety tests first. Which sounds, you know,
pretty counterintuitive to a lot of people. It
might, until you look at the ROI. A 2013 study
by the Central Florida Commission on Homelessness
is really the gold standard here. They broke
down the cost of not housing people. The cost
of the status quo. Exactly. It costs that region
$31 ,000 per year to manage a homeless person
on the street. That's policing, jail time, emergency
room visits for exposure or violence. In contrast,
providing permanent supportive housing, so paying
their rent and providing a caseworker, costs
just $10 ,051. So you're saying it's cheaper
to give them a house than to arrest them. Regions
chronically homeless would save taxpayers $149
million over a decade. This proves that the moral
choice is also the greedy choice. We are spending
three times as much to criminalize poverty as
it would cost to end it. Okay, that's a compelling
spreadsheet. I'll give you that. But you're defining
the problem very narrowly to make the mouth work.
You're treating home as a commodity, a physical
structure to be supplied. But scholars like Tippel
and Speak, they offer a much more nuanced definition.
They define homelessness as the antithesis of
home. That sounds a bit academic when we're talking
about people literally freezing on concrete.
It's diagnostic, though. Home isn't just shelter.
It's a base for nurturing human relationships.
For the development of identity, homelessness
is a loss of belonging. So if you treat it only
as a logistics issue, you know, shipping container
apartments for everyone, you completely miss
the pathology. And this is where Housing First,
I think, fails the human test. How does giving
someone a secure lock on their door fail the
human test? Because Housing First offers that
door without asking for any accountability regarding
substance abuse. It prioritizes the roof over
the rehabilitation. So while housing retention
numbers might look good on paper, critics argue,
and I tend to agree, that it essentially encourages
rent -seeking behavior without addressing the
trauma that put the person on the street in the
first place. But how can you possibly address
trauma when you were sleep -deprived and terrified
every night? By acknowledging that the trauma
often predates the homelessness. Look at the
prevalence of brain injuries. There's a Canadian
survey that found that traumatic brain injury,
TBI, is incredibly widespread among homeless
populations. And crucially, for 70 % of those
respondents, the brain injury happened before
they became homeless. That is a significant correlation,
yes. Well, it changes the causality, doesn't
it? If you have a population where the majority
are dealing with severe TBI, or as a study in
Hong Kong found, where 56 % have some degree
of mental illness, just handing them a set of
keys is not a solution. It's abandonment. You're
putting a person with diminished executive function
in a room alone and just saying, good luck. I
think abandonment is a very strong word for providing
shelter. I call it the platform for stability.
You seem to be advocating for treatment first.
You know, prove you're sober, prove you're taking
your meds, then you get a bed. That approach
uses an all or nothing standard. It demands that
people solve their most complex psychological
problems while living in a tent. I'm not suggesting
they stay in the tent. I'm suggesting the housing
must be conditional on treatment. Otherwise,
it just enables the addiction. But the data shows
the conditional approach fails. People can't
comply. Look at Boston, Massachusetts. In 2010,
they reported that the Housing First initiative
significantly reduced the chronic homeless single
-person population. It was so effective they
were actually able to close emergency shelter
facilities like the Boston Night Center. That
isn't theoretical. That is a functional reduction
in the need for emergency services because people
stayed housed. I'm just wary of equating the
closing of a shelter with the solving of a problem.
You might have reduced the visible count, but
have you reintegrated those people? Without addressing
what some scholars call the loss of usual relationships
with the mainstream, just placing someone in
an apartment doesn't solve social exclusion.
It's what Moore described back in 2007 as the
loss of identity. You are, in effect, warehousing
people. They are out of sight, so the public
assumes the problem is fixed. Warehousing implies
we're just storing them. I'd argue we're keeping
them alive so they can reintegrate because the
alternative is what we're seeing right now, the
active criminalization of existence. I mean,
if we don't provide housing and we don't allow
them on the street, where do they go? The legal
landscape is certainly shifting toward enforcement.
Shifting is a polite word for it. It's a crackdown.
In June 2024, the U .S. Supreme Court ruled 6
-3 to permit cities to criminalize homeless camps.
This ruling allows bans on public camping to
be enforced even when there's no government -provided
shelter available. Then Florida followed this
up in October 2024 with HB 1365, prohibiting
sleeping on public property. We're legally mandating
that people just disappear into thin air. It
is harsh. I agree. But we have to look at why
that sentiment is so popular. It's not just cruelty
for cruelty's sake. It's a reaction to the clash
over public space. Municipalities are trying
to manage public safety. You see this in so -called
hostile architecture, the spikes in London doorways
or the low overpasses Robert Moses designed in
New York to prevent buses and therefore the poor
from accessing certain beach areas. But those
are aggressive tactics designed to make human
beings feel unwelcome in their own cities. They're
defensive tactics. The housed population often
views the homeless as safety threats or even,
as some sociological literature suggests, as
pathogens. It's a very primal psychological reaction
to disorder. Cities are trying to reclaim public
space for the taxpaying majority. But that stigma
is lethal. It drives depression and victimization.
A 2007 study showed that violent crimes against
homeless people are on the rise. When you use
hostile architecture or pass laws like those
in Hungary or Russia, where there were reports
in 2022 of homeless people being targeted for
conscription into the war in Ukraine, you are
stripping them of humanity. You're saying their
lives are currency to be spent or trash to be
swept away. I agree that the stigma is incredibly
damaging. But I think your defense of the homeless
is too Western -centric. You're picturing a specific
type of person, likely the American model of
the single male on a park bench. If we want to
solve this, we have to look at the global diversity
of the issue. The very definition of home and
homeless shifts radically when you cross borders.
Poverty is poverty, isn't it? Not necessarily.
Look at Japan. Homelessness there is primarily
a phenomenon among middle -aged and elderly men.
This demographic shift peaked in the 90s due
to the collapse of the asset price bubble. It's
a specific generation left behind by an economic
crash. Now compare that to China, where homelessness
is tied to the hukou system. The household registration
system. Right. Migrant workers move to Beijing
or Shanghai for labor, but because their registration
is rural, they have no rights to social services
in the city. The massive evictions in Beijing
in 2017 weren't just about housing shortages.
They were about managing population flow. Those
people aren't necessarily addicts or mentally
ill in the way you might characterize the US
population. They are legally excluded laborers.
But the result is the same. No roof. But the
result is different forms of exclusion. In India,
you don't just see isolated individuals. You
see entire families, five generations deep, living
on the streets. This isn't the social isolation
we talk about in the West. It's a different form
of community survival. Or consider the net cafe
refugees in Japan. Right. I've read about them
living in 24 -hour internet cafes. Exactly. So
they have a roof, technically. They have internet.
They have a reclining chair, but they lack a
home. They represent a continuum of homelessness.
A policy like housing first, just giving them
a permanent apartment key, doesn't necessarily
fix the complex legal exclusion of a migrant
worker in Beijing or the social nuance of a net
cafe refugee. That's a fair point on cultural
nuance, but I would argue that biology overrides
culture. Regardless of whether it's China, India
or the U .S., the physiological toll of not having
a private secure space is universal. You can
debate the definition of home, but the definition
of hypothermia doesn't change. Biology is universal,
sure. The United Nations defines the problem
as a lack of adequate housing. And we have to
look at the health impacts. We are talking about
conditions like street feet, immersion foot syndrome
from wet socks, scabies, the increased vulnerability
to the heat island effect in urban areas. The
physical toll is undeniable. It's catastrophic.
A report from the charity Crisis in 2011 found
that homeless people in the UK have a life expectancy
of just 47 years. That's 30 years lower than
the average population. 30 years! So whether
you're a migrant laborer in Beijing or a rough
sleeper in London, the lack of physical shelter
is killing you. And that necessitates a physical
solution, housing, over a theoretical one about
belonging. We can't build a sense of identity
for a corpse. See, I'm just not convinced by
that line of reasoning because it creates a false
dichotomy. You're prioritizing survival, keeping
the heart beating, which is valid, of course,
but you're ignoring what makes that life sustainable
long -term. If we house people but ignore the
lack of belonging, we are merely keeping them
alive in isolation. Reintegration starts with
survival. You cannot reintegrate a dead person.
But let's look at the predictors. If we want
to actually stop homelessness, not just manage
it, we have to look way upstream. We have to
look at childhood. The literature shows such
a strong link to foster care transitions. Youth
leaving the system often have no support, no
income. We see physical and sexual abuse in childhood
as major predictors. These experiences stunt
the development of relationship -building skills.
I don't deny those causes. But we have to deal
with the adults standing in front of us today.
But if you simply provide a house at age 40,
you're not fixing the developmental trauma from
age 4. We need to address the definition of home
as a base for nurturing human relationships.
If the person cannot form those relationships
due to untreated schizophrenia or TBI, the housing
will eventually fail. They'll be evicted again
or they'll abandon the unit. The housing -first
model might save money in the short term. But
does it feel the person? It saves money and lives.
And frankly, in a world where we are facing a
cost of living crisis, where U .S. numbers have
surpassed 2007 levels in 2023, we need efficiency.
We need solutions that scale. We don't have enough
psychiatrists to treat every trauma before we
hand out a key. And I argue that efficient solutions
that ignore human complexity aren't solutions
at all. They're stopgaps. So as we wrap up, I
want to reaffirm my position. Homelessness is
a violation of the right to an adequate standard
of living, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. Whether the cause is the lingering
effects of the Great Recession, the 2023 cost
of living crisis, or expiring COVID -era protections,
the data is clear. Housing first and rapid rehousing
are not just the most humane paths, they are
the most fiscally responsible. We could save
$149 million in a decade in one region alone.
The numbers just don't lie. And I'll conclude
by saying that while housing is necessary, It
is woefully insufficient. If we focus only on
the economics, we miss the human being. We must
look at the childhood predictors, the abuse,
the foster care system. We must look at the neurological
reality of traumatic brain injuries. We have
to view home not as a structure, but as a place
of identity and relationship. If we don't address
the lack of belonging, we're just treating the
symptom. and ignoring the disease. It's a tension,
isn't it, between the immediate need for survival
and the long -term need for community. Exactly.
And despite all our global wealth, the fact that
these numbers are rising, that we're seeing U
.S. numbers climb back past 2007 levels, it suggests
that our current understanding, or perhaps our
current compassion, is falling short. There are
certainly more to explore in the material. Thank
you for joining The Debate.