• Soggy@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Most college students are, functionally if not legally, still children. And dormitories are an efficient way to provide housing for a large group in a concentrated area. Neither case can or should apply broadly to the unhoused.

    Sharing space with a stranger is a great way to get robbed or just made uncomfortable with no recourse. Students have RAs and can apply to live alone, off-campus, or swap dorms. Your theoretical slumblock going to have that flexibility? Nevermind that a single-purpose housing complex is just an instant ghetto. Best outcomes come from integration, not segregation.

    The current American political climate is fucking hostile and watering down any movement to try and fit in is the wrong call. It’s like haggling by starting with concessions. And why couldn’t it be viable? It isn’t luxury housing I support. Most people have some amount of personal pride and don’t want to subsist on welfare if they have another option, and I’m perfectly happy to let some people permanently use those properties if it lessens the strain on public resources for everyone else.

    Letting people suffer just to get (re)elected is intolerable.

    Reources are artificially limited. There are more vacant houses in this country than homeless people. We don’t need to build new complexes to sweep the problem into one neat pile, just start seizing vacant lots held by absent investors. It wouod be cheaper than the police and medical costs we’re currently paying. Ideally pair this radical housing initiative with job training programs, optional rehab/drug counseling, mental healthcare, and other slightly-left-of-global-center communist ideas.