The people out there on the street, the people that make the cut in those YouTube montage videos about homelessness/drug addiction, those people are in trouble, no doubt about it. Maybe it’s mental illness, maybe it’s drug addiction, maybe it’s just a run of bad luck, who knows. It’s very much an open question regarding how best to help those people though, and I don’t think it’s a good thing to not look at how other countries have effectively dealt with the problem
A HR policy that’s tolerant of drug use (key words “drug use”, not armed robbery or assault or murder, etc) isn’t going to work, ultimately, if it’s not included within a broader program…otherwise it has the potential to turn into another “needle park” situation, only on a much larger scale.
A lot of countries have very admirable public housing policies that the USA could learn from on this particular issue imo, either on a state or federal level…Austria for example is a good, previously-mentioned Finland, some others in Europe and South America…the USA itself had a very impressive public works/public housing project at one point in its history. Is there nothing that can be learned from those programs? We’re definitely not doing a good job with it at the moment, that’s obvious
One solution I don’t like is giving all those people new homes with bars and armed guards tho, I don’t think that’s a great solution ultimately