š§Ŗ Once-homeless, Ray thrived after a $7,500 grant from a UBC study. Those polled about the study thought grant recipients would increase their drug and alcohol spending. Recipients spent wisely on essentials, debunking poverty stereotypes.
Itās amazing how often people get the usual causality confused between homelessness/poverty and substance abuse. People arenāt usually immiserated because they like to use drugs; they get dependent on drugs because theyāre miserable and have no plausible means for getting out of it.
Saw this tweet once [I wish I had saved it, but of course I didn't] that talked about how treating addiction was really about fixing trauma, house insecurity, unemployment, poverty, being from marginalized minorities, etc. When society doesn't offer solutions, people have to self-medicate
I've seen op-eds trying to debunk this because the recipients weren't "the right kind of homeless" and I'm just shaking my head at the professional head-ass class.
And then we set up systems that force people to give up the 0.5% of the time that their life isnāt 10000% shit if they even want a *chance* at help, are startled when they decline, and it feeds back into the āthey want to be homelessā societal delusion
I saw something recently showing that the rates for substance abuse and mental health issues among people who are homeless is about the same as in the general population. Itās just more visible.
Like they donāt understand that the drugs is oftentimes the only solace for them and they take them to help self medicate for various issues that all come extreme poverty and homelessness
This study is great but it must be noted āpeople with severe mental health or substance use issues were screened out of the initiativeā. We have to be careful chow we extrapolate from it.
This is because people who know better have convinced the incurious amongst us that the poor are poor because they are worthless human beings and a waste of tax dollars.
Anyone who thought they wouldn't use significant amounts of money towards their own wellbeing is an idiot. Turns out if you create safety nets, you reduce homelessness and poverty. Capitalism still sucks, but with help and non commodified housing, people can actually live comfortably and thrive.
This is not a new experiment, but has produced better measured (and supporting) results. The "Mincome experiment" took place in Dauphin, Manitoba in the 70s. The Wikipedia report isn't as comprehensive as other reports I'd read years ago, but the conclusions are similar.
