How to deal with the issue of homelessness

I was reading an article that @Feenicks posted on IRC, about how the US state of Utah is giving away homes to the homeless because they found that it cost less to give them an apartment and a social worker than to arrest them and treat them for health issues that one acquires living on the streets.

We haven’t had any in depth discussions about the state of homelessness in Australia and how as a Party we might deal with it (if we choose to deal with it), so I thought it might be fun to provoke the discussion a little and see where we get. :smile:

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Our problem is partly high rents and hard-to-access welfare payments.

This kind of thing: http://www.vancouverfoundation.ca/stories/dec-17-2009/place-unpack

– is a good way to go. An all-in-one service that represents the homeless to landlords, case-manages them, insures them, and subsidises rent. We sometimes get it wrong by requiring homeless people to clean up, be drug tested and whatnot as a pre-condition for being housed. It works better the other way - roof first and then work on mental health.

We really need more crisis accommodation too. That could be done in the community- people with the right certifications could get a minimal stipend in exchange for periodically offering emergency accommodation in their homes.

Sorry for the necro. Give the homeless homes. I saw this a few months ago. Simple (yeah, i know). Great idea.

edit: also solved with universal income. nice.

High Density / Low Cost accommodation similar to those Japanese Sleep Pods (except not so fancy) with room to share with family, onsite kennels for pets (for some people their pet is all they got), focus on access to Social Workers, Mental Health, General Health. Incentives to move to country/regional towns to get better living conditions, continued health treatment and jobs