by AStonesThrow | 2025-04-10 06:14:28+00:00
Native Americans may be the best modern example of a group who's poorly habituated to urban living settings.

For centuries, White Man has tried to assimilate the indigeneous into cityfolk and teach them our languages and our ways, and there's been so much resistance to that. In fact, I propose that most human beings don't like being corralled into individualistic "cells" and so far removed from "nature" or subsistence farming/shepherding that we completely lose touch with other living things. Urban living was such a moral affront to indigeneous cultures, and even the Irish were sort of upset by the imposition, y'know?

Many homeless people on the streets simply don't know how to live. They don't know how to care for a home, how to run a kitchen, how to keep their clothes clean, how to do medical care, how to run household finances and pay bills. They're feral, essentially: how many people adopt feral cats or wild animals? They're nightmares.

Anyone who simply says "housing first" or "UBI" will solve poverty and homelessness, you're in an ivory tower and you've never been on-the-ground with actual people who can't be housed. Look at a population of 100 and you'll discern 100 reasons for that homelessness and poverty.

I'm lucky and privileged that I got independent living situation under control and was able to rehabilitate and habituate to a sort of ordinary middle-class lifestyle, because it was essentially reverting to my childhood environment. Other people came from abuse, addiction, and shitty circumstances, and they have no idea what it's like to be clean and clear-headed.

The reason that entitlements are this way currently is to ensure that qualified people can get and keep their benefits. Section 8 HUD housing has a lot of strict rules around the owners, landlords, and the tenants, and learning those rules helped me know what a decent and well-maintained household looks like. Maintaining HUD standards was paramount to me keeping that assistance.

Likewise food stamps (SNAP) can't be used for liquor or non-nutritious goods and other food programs deliver wholesome stuff you can use and eat, so it sets good examples to otherwise feral humans that it's important not to live on Doritos and beer, because they will try!

UBI is absurd to me where if you're just handing me fistfuls of cash I can do anything I want, and people will run with that, I guarantee ya. UBI is no solution to the symptoms or root causes of poverty.

Personally, I believe we need a return to collectivism, an end to rugged individuality, and more communal-style housing situations. Independent living is a real grind, because of so many responsibilities, and I have tons of neighbors but no friends. Many people would do better with shared spaces like kitchens, bathrooms, cafeterias, but those types of residences are essentially illegal in the US by means of zoning, except in unique circumstances like a special work-train-live program. And placing feral or mentally ill people into shared spaces can be a recipe for disaster, unless it's a professional institutional setting, and that's precisely what the Reagan administration eliminated from the "bad old days".