In connection with the direction of this thread, I would like to hear what people say is a solution to homelessness, if both funding is cut for shelters, and it is illegal to sleep in public spaces:
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=137146&page=1#
If sufficient amount of people don't donate for shelter space, then what do you do with the homeless? There was a belief that mentally ill people needed to be deinstitutionalized, so they were just let out into society, with the belief that somehow, society would find a way to deal with them. That didn't happen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation
Government's desire to reduce cost and spending on hospitalisation
As hospitalisation costs increased, both the federal and state governments were motivated to find less expensive alternatives to hospitalisation.[1] The 1965 amendments to Social Security shifted about 50 percent of the mental health care costs from state to the federal government.[1] This motivated the government to promote deinstitutionalization.
A number of factors led to an increase in homelessness, including macroeconomic shifts, but observers also saw a change related to deinstitutionalization.[22][23][24] Studies from the late 1980's indicated that one-third to one-half of homeless people had severe psychiatric disorders, often co-occurring with substance abuse.[25][26]
A process of indirect cost-shifting may have led to a form of "re-institutionalisation" through the increased use of jail detention for those with mental disorders deemed unmanageable and noncompliant.[27][28] When laws were enacted requiring communities to take more responsibility for mental health care, needed funding often was absent, therefore resulting in jail becoming the default option,[29] with jails long documented as cheaper than psychiatric care.[27] In Summer 2009, author and columnist Heather Mac Donald stated in City Journal, "jails have become society's primary mental institutions, though few have the funding or expertise to carry out that role properly... at Rikers, 28 percent of the inmates require mental health services, a number that rises each year."[30]
In short, there is no "away" you can magically suddenly make a social problem, like poverty, vanish by believing somehow the "goodness of people's hearts" if you give them more money, will end up taking care of the situation.
