First, Homeless Individuals Raise the Crime Rate, Housing Them or Providing a Solution is the way to Lower it.
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. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/05/27/3441772/floridahomelessfinancialstudy/
Second, Homelessness increases socioeconomic discrepancies. Increases the rate of the poverty cycle.
Anderson 14 (Lane Anderson “Americans Blame Homeless for Poverty” 2014) When it comes to the question of how poor people got that way, Americans often blame the poor themselves, researchers found. Less than half of those surveyed said that people became poor through circumstances beyond their control, such as lack of jobs and lowpaying wages. A majority of Republicans, and almost onethird of Democrats, believe that if a person is poor the main reason is “lack of effort on his or her part.”
