Homeless people to be given cash in first major UK trial to reduce poverty

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/nov/24/homeless-people-to-be-given-cash-in-first-major-uk-trial-to-reduce-poverty

by helsinkiandrew • 2 years ago

22 79 2 years ago

theguardian.com

cranberryturkey2• 2 years ago

Gavin Newsom did this when he was Mayor of San Francisco and the city got flooded with homeless from all over the country

anovikov3• 2 years ago

Maybe if it's done on a national level, and cash will only be distributed to the homeless who can prove they are citizens, that won't be an issue. Moreover they might move to areas with lower cost of living if payments do not depend on the place (a homeless does not have a fixed address by definition), thus becoming less of an issue.

viraptor3• 2 years ago

Homelessness creates society issues regardless of citizenship. Also, obtaining any reliable ID for many homeless is a non-trivial and costly task on its own. It seems like you're interested in something more limited than simply helping with the homelessness issue.

dazc• 2 years ago

This kind of happened in the UK already. For instance, Bournmouth, a town on the South Coast, attracted homeless people for the obvious reason that the climate is typically warmer than most other places. I assume SF held a similar initial attraction?

In response to this small influx, local authorities encouraged charities to set up shop offering help to these people with drink/drug/social problems with a view to getting them back into regular housing.

Some years later, the problems have become much worse although the number of charities operating in the area has grown exponentially.

Speaking as someone who has experienced homelessness, for a short while, I believe the only practical solution is to give people housing at the outset before the desire/need to move elsewhere takes root.

The obvious response is that it is not that easy and would be unaffordable but my retort is that the current situation is likely costing a lot more while, at the same time, not fixing anything - other than creating multiple charity jobs.

cassianoleal• 2 years ago

There should be a rule whereby charities are required to have a large percentage of their jobs given to the class they're trying to help.

This could help make the size and number of said charities to be self-regulating with the problem they're trying to solve. They will grow in number whilst the problem is large, but as it subsides they naturally go down. All at the same time giving those people who are in need, money that would be otherwise given to people who don't necessarily need it from that source.

IanCal• 2 years ago

Speaking as someone who has experienced homelessness, for a short while, I believe the only practical solution is to give people housing at the outset before the desire/need to move elsewhere takes root.

Also national support not local. While there are some local issues with homelessness I feel lots of the problems are going to be the same across the country. If it was the same provision everywhere there wouldn't be the same draw towards certain locations.

segfaltnh2• 2 years ago

I've never understood how a homeless person with no resources would move across the country for better handouts. Like I'd buy some anecdotal cases but most homeless I see aren't saving enough for a bus ticket.

ndsipa_pomu• 2 years ago

I would think that it might be easier for them to relocate as they'll have limited possessions to transport. I'd guess they'd either hitch a lift with friends or strangers or they might have a vehicle themselves (e.g. a van that they live in).

alistairSH3• 2 years ago

There’s a massive number of “functioning homeless” - living in cars, couch surfing, etc. They might have low-pay jobs. Or once had white collar jobs but lost almost everything due to medical problems. These are the ones who might be capable of moving.

But yeah, the stereotypical crazy junkie, probably not. But that’s just a stereotype.

viraptor3• 2 years ago

Sometimes it's pushed by programs interested in changing the statistics in the most direct way possible - giving people a bus ticket. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/... also "greyhound therapy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_homeless_relocation_pr...

pizza234• 2 years ago

I've read an interview with a man who panhandled for a period of his life, and his hourly income was higher than that of an average waiter.

Although I don't have official sources, when I observe panhandlers in my city, it seems plausible (even evident) to me that with enough persistence, a homeless person can earn more than a waiter.

Of course, I presume that such money is readily wasted, but I wouldn't dismiss a homeless' income as nonexistent.

inemesitaffia• 2 years ago

Cities that don't want them ship them to cities that "want" them

guappa• 2 years ago

Board a train. That's it. What can they do to you for having no ticket? Literally nothing.

bdangubic3• 2 years ago

get on a train… 1/2/3 stations later they check your ticket, you ain’t got one, you get kicked off… wait for the next train, 1/2/3 stations later they check your ticket, you ain’t got one, you get kicked off. week or two or three later you made it from Augusta Maine to San Diego :)

cranberryturkey2• 2 years ago

i have a friend who helps the local homeless population out (around 5-10) and they are all on government subsidies. like disability or whatever.

bryan0• 2 years ago

I think you have this reversed. The city was already giving out money to homeless and it led to a bunch of problems. Newsom proposed the opposite a “Care not cash” initiative where instead of receiving cash, homeless would receive services.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Proposition_N_...

hckevrythng9• 2 years ago

Honestly by the time you hear these stories the people these stories are about have traveled vast distances through the phases of their homeless experience and you hearing this tale is well past all the results of said attempt to curtail the issue such that it is no longer in present moment a possible solution having run its course. Frankly people who have mismanaged their lives to the point their day to day choices no longer resemble rational thinking cannot be expected to put hard cash to best use at the moment. Eventually there are habits that enevitably become adopted whereby seeking immediate relief by any means that can be had becomes more of a priority than anything else. To someone who sees no end in sight to the nightmare this and only this makes life bareable anymore.

corinroyal3• 2 years ago

The overwhelming majority of homeless people in CA are homeless near where they were last housed. The program you're remembering was called Care NOT Cash. Nothing you said was true. Why not?

beretguy• 2 years ago

Instead of giving cash maybe give them jobs and mental/recovery/etc help?

fragmede2• 2 years ago

why not both?

bell-cot3• 2 years ago

With the current cost of housing in the UK, how many of the homeless already have a job (or few) - but ones that don't pay well enough for them to afford housing?

segfaltnh2• 2 years ago

We certainly see this in the US as well, employed homelessness.

throawayonthe• 2 years ago

mental/recovery help isn't any good if your genuine material conditions are shit

Cumpiler693• 2 years ago

Giving people little money when they're too mentally ill to find gainful employment and financial independence won't help either.

numbers_guy4• 2 years ago

We keep going in circles on this. Give them cash and suddenly you have lots of people cheating the system to get the cash, like all the beggar gangs that hangout outside supermarkets. Do means testing and you build a whole wasteful bureaucracy that costs 2x as the actual cash given to the people in need.

IMHO, just setup a public day labour program. One day of honest work for one day's worth of wages. Show up in the morning, don a uniform and do your assigned task, no questions asked.

Cumpiler693• 2 years ago

People need education and job opportunities that fit their level of education/intelect and pay a living wage, not handouts that don't even cover the cost of living. Believe it or not most people would rather work a meaningful job and be part of a productive community rather than bum around on welfare doing nothing.

But when most low-skill/unskilled jobs have been sent off to Asia, a lot of people have been left out of the economy and the community if they didn't upskill themselves into well paying jobs early on in life. "Just learn to code bro" /s

It's a self inflicted problem the post-industrial west has created for the sake of privatizing corporate profits while socializing the losses to society leaving it for the state to fix, which they haven't.

numbers_guy4• 2 years ago

Let's not confuse demographics. There is a struggling working class who are employed but barely getting by. Then there are people who for various reasons have completely given up on life and actively avoid work, probably getting by on some subsistence from government security programs like disability and the dole.

thrance• 2 years ago

Most fraud comes from the top, not the bottom. What if there's no work to be done? What about those that can't do physical work? Should the sick ones still have to work just to eat today?

It wouldn't cost that much to give a small roof and food to every homeless person in my country, and becoming a productive member of society is vastly easier when you don't have to worry about your next meal.

But no, "some might cheat the system", or "it's not fair to give money to lazy bums", etc.

We could basically eradicate homelessness at small economic cost, which I believe would be a net positive on the long term, but we don't because of an irrational fear of the poorest members of society cheating the system.

numbers_guy4• 2 years ago

I am not trying to demonize any demographic. Everyone tries to cheat the system especially when you have a system that is easy to game. Yes, the most severe corruption is at the very top. Doesn't mean we should ignore other problems.

When you create perverse incentives you attract systematic cheaters. We literally conducted this experiment in Germany. Now the government is trying to roll out a restricted benefits card instead of giving out cash, because people come from overseas just to get on the benefits system and send the cash back home.

hckevrythng9• 2 years ago

The wealthiest use issues like this to cheat the system. Solutions would involve WORK, plenty are still able, also temporarily assigning empty spaces in office buildings or other such reintegrative convergence points whereby reassuming ALL the lost habits and behaviors expected of productive members of society can find a place to be redonned much like release from prison. Reintegration is what needs to occur when the civilised suit is required to be worn again and the animal skin donned merely for survival can be retired. When conditions on the outside of a person are met it is within the grasp of that person to meet them internally as well. I will act civilised when im given the same respect afforded to people for whom the idea its ok to not have a home WOULD BE RIDICULOUS. In falling beneath all this contempt i wore the dirt i was considered sononymous with PROUDLY. If no one could thereafter imagine me clean, i too forgot the image. Thus i became my disgusting environment. Seeing as how in a moments flash of judgement i was seen less than human, how could i ever hope to regain a position so imaginary to begin with when i watched it die like a light in a strange mans eye. Because immediately he could ascertain i held less possessions, owned less property, wore dirtier clothing, slept god knew where. For those reasons i was immediately upon sight cast down into a place i was NOT EXPECTED TO RETURN FROM EVER.By everyone who looked at me. And i stayed exactly where i was expected to down there in the dirt. Because i no longer held any more faith in THAT MAN and his fragile petty conclusions than he held of me. His suit was too pretty for me to desire its false presumptive lies.. and my dirt was to ugly and real for him to understand how i could be a man when soap is so readily available. What had i done so terribly wrong that i couldnt at least MIMIC the simple act of civilised proper upbringing? My response? I no longer freakin want to. The eventual chain of personal deevolution was thereafter embraced where i saw a certain enlightenment in the adoption of more profound truths than being merely poor. At some point with the dropping of crumbs of concern for what people thought of me i unwittingly entered into a state of raw hostile savagery decorated with the accoutrements and badges of REAL SURVIVAL. Only others like me understood me and i passed a place from which without outside intervention i couldnt possibly hope to return. And this isnt my story alone. It is what you see written on thousands of faces when you look into the incomprehensible visage and life of the homeless person. Staring back at you is the return of incomprehensive shock at what theyve become from what looking at you they once were. And...the dread hopeless certainty theres no return. What do you think it does to the soul who sees the ship sailing away without him never to return, in a land that is not home and from which theres no escape? Inside, he dies. So there is youre burdon the desire you swear you wish to understand and heal. How to bring all these dead folks back to life?

Simon_ORourke2• 2 years ago

How is this not open to corruption and worse too. Folks doing "favors" to supervisors who then get marked as doing a day's work. Or some other favorites getting preferred work over others.

It's not that simple, and it's why a free market would probably work better over the long run than some proto-communist jobs for everyone scenario.

numbers_guy4• 2 years ago

The free market is also full of corruption. It's called wage theft. It's very prevalent and especially in such situations where the workers are so vulnerable.

And please refrain from using catch-all phrases like "free market" and "communist". That's the mark of a very stupid person.

criddell• 2 years ago

What do you think about the program discussed in the article:

support workers will discuss their financial problems then pay for items such as rent deposits, outstanding debts, work equipment, white goods, furniture or new clothes. They do not make direct transfers

alistairSH3• 2 years ago

Utah had a similar program once. Focused on housing first, but with support in other areas as well. It was largely successful, but complex and expensive. So they’ve since moved funding around and lost ground…

https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2020/05/11/utah-was-onc...

alistairSH3• 2 years ago

My last town tried a day labor center. Just a spot at a town maintenance yard where day labor could wait to get picked up for work. It worked well. But got shut down by NIMBYs and conservatives who saw mostly brown faces.

It wasn’t just to help homeless. But any similar program is going to run headlong into the same criminalization of poverty issues we always see in the US.

hckevrythng9• 2 years ago

Lmao...i wish. Dont u realize this kind of solution would go a long ways towards solving the problem? Good luck with real solutions. Its more profitable to pretend. But thank you for still believing in us. Most stopped long ago.

corinroyal3• 2 years ago

Seriously. This thread is a bunch of people who have never been homeless, who never bothered once to learn anything about the mechanics of homelessness, yet feel compelled to share their utterly wrong opinions anyway. It's still a sin to tell a lie.

trompetenaccoun• 2 years ago

Like straight out of a Mitchell and Webb sketch.

I bet there will be people on this site as well who don't understand why you can't solve poverty by simply giving out cash. Although cash is what humans crave, it's got purchasing power.

mikeodds• 2 years ago

For anyone looking for the Mitchell and Webb reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_4J4uor3JE

Y_Y• 2 years ago

https://youtube.com/watch?v=dfwnjO9o8OU

Funnily enough the GP comment made me think of this sketch instead (an absolute masterpiece of microeconomic theory).

See also the classic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

typicalset• 2 years ago

This is not an argument, and you have provided no evidence for your claims.

There are numerous studies, and indeed meta-analyses of these[1][2] indicating that cash transfers can have a positive outcome for recipients. These interventions are broadly positive, so why oppose them?

Whether or not it "solves" poverty is a different question to whether the effect is positive or not. There are a number of extremely different arguments as to why poverty can't be solved by cash transfers e.g. essentialising poverty as a moral failing (I strongly disagree), or a critique of the system which creates poverty in the first place (I broadly agree). I can understand why belief in the first kind would lead to opposition of interventions, but engaging with evidence is important in reaching a conclusion.

[1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32779/w327...

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01252-z

hckevrythng9• 2 years ago

I can tell you right now handing out straight cash will NOT go well for anyone.

Havoc• 2 years ago

you can't solve poverty by simply giving out cash

Not directly, but it can solve some of the barriers people in challenging situations have.

e.g. someone has skills but can't pass interviews because they look like a hobo...there a bit of money for a haircut may help.

So I don't think we should drop the entire just because its not a comprehensive & complete solution

archagon• 2 years ago

Charities like GiveDirectly empirically disagree. At least in some situations, giving money directly seems to be effective. Poor people are poor, not stupid.

ZeroGravitas• 2 years ago

half will get additional help from Greater Change, whose support workers will discuss their financial problems then pay for items such as rent deposits, outstanding debts, work equipment, white goods, furniture or new clothes. They do not make direct transfers to avoid benefits being stopped due to a cash influx.

Vital paragraph, due to people not reading past the misleading headline.

Oras2• 2 years ago

Misleading title

From the article:

whose support workers will discuss their financial problems then pay for items such as rent deposits, outstanding debts, work equipment, white goods, furniture or new clothes. They do not make direct transfers to avoid benefits being stopped due to a cash influx.

So it’s not cash, it’s paying for items.

krisoft3• 2 years ago

Yeah. How did this even pass editing? Is it the article who is misrepresenting what is happening, or the researchers?

bell-cot3• 2 years ago

Very few online news sources can be trusted to fact-optimize their headlines these days. Vs. click-, revenue-, or similar metrics. Less-bad sources often put fact-centric subtitles on their articles...but that's not the case here.

hckevrythng9• 2 years ago

Having been homeless for a few years now i am intimately familiar with the nuances, missing pieces, and plain incorrect thinking regarding that way of life. Im always amused in a sad way at how far off base these radical attempts to reign in the situation always are. The disconnect is flabbergasting. There appears to be a genuine confusion as to why the situation is this bad, and what can be done about it. Obviously in many cases the major causes are evident such as drug use or mental illness. But beyond these obvious causes one would think we were attempting to understand the inner workings of an alien virus and feverishly working to bring it to heel. Heres the problem: Once a person actually becomes so destitute that they no longer are certain where their next meal is coming from or where they are going to sleep that night their connectedness to society as a whole also becomes broken. The psychological impact of transitioning from the greater whole to a fringe lower caste involves a fracturing of their self and the self worth they had up to that point relied on their entire life. To fall to such depths, where " down" is no longer an option, as when one is literally already at the bottom, is to face the utter condemning fact of failure. Failure to society to parents to perhaps children and to self. The devastation to the psyche in the realization of this marks DAY ONE for such an individual. And it marks us All just so. Returning from the wasteland of loss of self sufficiency and control of ones life cannot begin until the shock has settled in and worn off enough to understand that overcoming the circumstances means beating THAT original denigrating fact. From there one begins the remaking of of ones very identity. Because clearly the original one was insufficient and grossly ill equipped.Yet not all who share the experience share also the wherewithal to achieve success via such mental feats. Indeed a large number were barely glued to the whole before lifes jostling effects shrugged them off in the first place. The cataclysmic event alone wiped out a fortitude they never had and introspective achievements may as well be the philosophy of kant insofar as it is relateable. The savage fall teaches such a one a library of lessons. And they are to be applied moving forward in this new world. Not as cognition for escape. Yes to someone perhaps educated, whos fall was unfortunate circumstance only, this is merely the beginning, step one, if you will, of a comprehensible logical process of extraction. Graspable as a goal. But everyone whos circumstances mirror do not necessarily recover in the same way. Sure " if it were me" you might say. But it isnt, is it? And therefore your self applied mental construct or plan isnt easily so applied to someone NOT YOU. Isnt in fact resolveable as a mere midnight cure at all, the way some things can be when logic or money is applied to them. The misunderstanding all of you( who are not broken this way but who care) continue to struggle with when attempting to understand us, who ARE broken, is simply the abject refusal to consider the complex individual human element inherent in the case by case basis that IS the homeless epidemic. Refusal to put the grimy faces you attempt to hide or ban upon the problem. And in that negligent act you strip the problem of its human identity. Without that identity the characteristics that define human humane resolution are wiped as well. So here we are. Still confused still lost still homeless. All of us. To a degree. Indeed how can anyone call home a place where shadows hide what we refuse to acknowledge, where silence is demanded of those screaming in pain, where the shiny contrived surfaces are called reality and the blood everywhere behind all the closed doors is never cleaned never taken seriously. Someone here is hurt, bleeding, ignored. This is what you call home? How very telling that in the same house we all share, your contribution oftentimes to the survival of its more embarrassing members and their sad issues is to blindly desperately coldly hope and wish we would just disappear.

codemonkey-zeta• 2 years ago

This is why asylums should not have been closed in the US. An asylum, when carefully and humanely run, is exactly the kind of place where the self can heal, or where the incurable can find respite.

hckevrythng9• 2 years ago

Not necessarily. For one its simply impractical to offer free services in a society that isnt based on such a concept of free. This is a capitalist society. Whether one likes it or is against it, the design of things here prevents altruism for altruisms sake. Someone MUST pay, the flow of capital expects a return. Also nursing homes have no better of a reputation as the asylums except where the most obvious most heinous offenses are ommitted. But to be honest the institutional setting carries pitfalls as well which do not lend themselves towards cure or resolution but other issues further compounding the probem.

corinroyal3• 2 years ago

I pray you get the healing you need there.

southernplaces7• 2 years ago

As much as I appreciate the complexity of your comment and its unique view, oh my god, paragraph breaks! They exist for a very good reason. That was damn hard to follow line by dense line.

hckevrythng9• 2 years ago

I sincerely apologize...im an audodidact and with respect to certain subjects such as grammar i fall short. Thank you otherwise for yur kind words.

sabbaticaldev• 2 years ago

It started so well that I asked claude to break it in paragraphs for me. What a great read. I also experienced some homelessness time and that changed my life in multiple ways, all of them for the better, I think.

marojejian• 2 years ago

That touched me. Do you have any advice for us to better support people like you?

tetrakhan• 2 years ago

As others have pointed out, the title is misleading. If they gave money directly out, I have zero doubt it'd end up in heroin dealers hands. I live in east London but still pretty central and I would say almost all the homeless here are junkies, almost without exception. I know this because you see them near big supermarkets begging but I happen to live right next to an estate where I see almost every single one of them coming to pick up. The dealing also just happens more or less in plain site as well. The police and everyone around are well aware of it but nothing gets done to prevent it.

Homelessness is a massive issue in the UK and I hope the test outlined in the article gives us some answers as to how to tackle it. However, I'm skeptical that even paying for essentials and housing will work at this point. I think it's almost impossible to detach from the reality that a huge portion, if not the overwhelming majority have also become pretty severe junkies. I'm not saying this as someone totally unsympathetic to the affliction, my best friend also fell down that rabbit hole but addressing the homelessness aspect without addressing the addictions that result from being homeless or lead it feels like a recipe for not solving the problem.

I really hope I'm wrong and this works, it's insane that first world countries like the UK have these massive problems with homelessness, there are enough resources around to solve these problems, they just aren't distributed evenly and the support systems of this country have been in a state of ongoing collapse since 2008 and the austerity and chaos that followed

derelicta2• 2 years ago

We know how to address homelessness, its just the oligarchs that rule over us don't want to, for capitalism requires a pool of desperate workers to keep functioning. Besides it acts as a good reminder that if workers try to address the situation themselves, they will be annihilated.

therealdrag0• 2 years ago

The solution to homelessness is abundant housing. And that’s not caused my oligarchs but nimbies.

derelicta2• 2 years ago

Oh absolutely! I totally agree, but nimbies sharing the same interests as oligarchs, they will never command their minions aka politicians to allow this lmao. If it happens, it's just that the capitalist class has found itself new sources of revenue

Homeless people to be given cash in first major UK trial to reduce poverty

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