Dealing with a community problem, not a bunch of criminals!

For me, it would only be appropriate to begin my response by asking a pending question, what’s keeping cities from creating more programs that could benefit those who are currently unable to pay for a home. Just like expressed in the reading, “communities have the choice of turning the homeless into criminals or attempting to address homelessness as a community problem”, why can’t we do the latter, if it only takes charging 1% tax on restaurant meals to raise $6 million a year to provide supportive services for the homeless. Little changes like that can be made to have a greater impact in the end. I think one major factor that can perhaps change the way things are being dealt with is by changing out way of thinking about the problem. As I was reading the part that describes the way officials are criminalizing these people, I had to stop and think—what if the legislators or the officials, the people that propose and enforce the different “types of approaches”, put themselves in the shoes of those that have nothing, but that are willing to escape their misery? Would things be different then? Would our mentality as a society be altered at all? But, again, the problem is a lot more complex than that…

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