Helping the Homeless

Yesterday's Pioneer Press newspaper published a small news item entitled, "Study finds 744,000 homeless in US", reporting on a study released by the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) . The study went on to note that a majority of the homeless were single adults.

Most people reading this story would probably say, "well that is bad, nearly 1 million people are homeless, so what is the government going to do about it?" By contrast, my first thought was a reminder of "homeless advocate" Mitch Snyder's claims in the 1980's that "millions of people are homeless so if a homeless advocacy group like NAEH claims only 744,000 homeless today then clearly we have made progress!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2001/06/28/lying_statistics

Even at 1 million out of a population of 280 million in the USA that is not too bad since that is around 0.3 %! No I am not heartless, I don't want people to be homeless which is why I have been a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, www.habitat.org but clearly homelessness in America is not a "crisis" in statistical terms.

So why don't we end homelessness simply by using the new Massachusetts health care model which REQUIRES people to purchase health insurance? We could simply mandate that homeless people need to purchase homes!!! :-) Not only would we end homelessness we would help clear the market of the excess homes for sale today.

Wow, public policy is so easy -- no government hearings are needed -- we simply need to mandate everything which will save consumers time deciding how to spend their money.

Utopia is closer,

Todd