A modest proposal to solve the homeless problem in America....

[Kasz216]

Mr Khan said:

Kasz216 said:

Did you totally not read my long extensive comments about the homeless in the other thread?

There isn't really a homeless problem that can be solved by anyone without revoking someones right to refuse treatment.

The problem with what your suggesting is, of course the problem that's already happening now.

Mass crime, sexual assaults and the like.

In general there is plenty in place to help the homeless, it's just a matter of getting the chronic homeless to use the services.  Everyone else is homeless for less then 2 months, 80% less then 3 weeks.

Truth is, it's extremly hard to be homeless in the US, which is why chronic homless people tend to moslty tend to have some sort of mental problem. (See HUD reports on homelessness).

Exactly. Those who have the wherewithal to seek help can find it in not necessarily ample, but at least adequate supply from private, public, or semi-private institutions. The rest are just diseased, though my argument would be that the mentally unfit lack the right to refuse treatment even if they do not pose any sort of threat to themselves or others, because they are by their nature legally unfit to make these decisions.

Yeah, personally i'm not sure where I feel on the matter.

On the one hand I agree with you,

but on the otherhand I think back to things like homosexuality being considered a disease, and why the law was made that way to begin with.  (Unfit, unsafe places that could treat you like crap because you had no choice and no right to check yourself out.)

And that's not even getting to the deeper philosophical issues.