Money has never been the problem for homelessness. It costs cities more money to deal with homeless people than it does to build public housing if the city provides the will to do so. This has been proven out time and time again.

There are many, many perverse incentives involved in keeping homeless people homeless.

At the general level, for many people witnessing exigent poverty is a calming horror. “I’m doing ok I guess”

Then, the broken healthcare system. We would need to acknowledge that we have an ill society that refuses to provide care for its victims and even its children.

Also, the homeless are a very useful spectacle to keeping people in line, a constant reminder that most people are a couple of bad months from living under a bridge. This prevents people from organizing for better pay, better conditions, better lives…. Facilitating the harvesting of all of the excess value that they can be coerced into providing for their employers.

What UBI does, as proven time and again, is empower people to risk looking for better jobs, better lives. Reduce the stress of daily life by removing the spectacle of losing your family and living in a box down by the park.

That people find the idea of this intolerable speaks volumes about the society we inhabit.