Resolved: The United States ought to guarantee the right to housing
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- Homelessness is directly correlated to increasing crime.
Additional ImpactsPeople being homeless is expensive to taxpayers, and providing housing to the homeless is less expensive.DANIEL KORN, 2015. http://www.theplaidzebra.com/a-city-in-canada-tried-giving-free-housing-to-the-homeless-and-its-working/ People also tend not to realize that it costs a lot of taxpayer money to merely deal with the symptoms of homelessness. Alberta’s Ministry of Human Services estimates that it takes about $100,000 CAD per year to support a single homeless person with the necessary health, emergency, and justice services. By contrast, providing housing to the homeless costs less than $35,000 annually, and is much better at breaking the cycle of homelessness. It’s this simple fact that got Ted Clungston, the Conservative-affiliated Mayor of Medicine Hat, to approve the plan. Homelessness is directly correlated to increasing crime.Roberts 13 (CEO of PATH Partners “Could Housing the Homeless Solve Crime”, August 13, 2013) In Britain, experts believe 20% of their “rough sleepers” (people who are homeless) have committed a crime. The conclusion, however, is that these crimes are usually acts of survival or ways for people to get off the streets. Prostitution, shoplifting, or theft are certainly illegal, but they are acts that some people on the streets perform to try and improve their situations. But there are certainly hardcore, violent criminals on the streets, too. The problem is that our communities have become so numb to homelessness that we allow homeless encampments to be scattered in the hills, beaches, rivers, and parks, so that these havens of homelessness become places where violent criminals can blend in and hide. Most of the time, homelessness is not the source of crime in an area, but the places where people experiencing homelessness gather could become havens of crime. Both crime against innocent people living on the streets and crime against innocent people who are already housed. The real solution is to eliminate these encampments of homelessness by helping people get housed. So, could ending homelessness reduce crime in our neighborhoods? Yes. When there is no more homelessness, there will be no more crimes against people who are homeless. When there is no more homelessness, people living on the streets will no longer have to break laws to try and get off the streets. Download 95.74 Kb. Share with your friends:
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