11-22-2018, 08:15 AM
(11-21-2018, 11:42 PM)tomh009 Wrote: And yet I suspect that the vast majority of people in income-geared housing do NOT destroy their units. The ones that do are yet another problem that we need to work on a solution for.
Indeed. The few ruin things for the others. I think there are two difficult points that should not be ignored:
1) We need to emphasize helping those who don’t resist the help. So for example, if people destroy their subsidized apartment, they should be blacklisted in favour of people who won’t destroy their apartment. Even if there are psychological or other issues that make the destruction not really their fault, it’s just not fair to those who only need an apartment for scarce apartments to be occupied by people who destroy them. But see point (2).
2) Some people aren’t really grownups and cannot be treated as such. I’m not sure what the proper arrangement is, but in the described case, it sounds like if they are to be given housing it needs to be more like an old-fashioned dormitory, with strict rules, monitoring, and instruction in proper behaviour; maybe even curfews. If they don’t like it, they can live on the street. We don’t have infinite resources to keep cleaning up after people. The trick is that the rules and procedures need to be designed to support as well as possible people who are difficult to help, not with the goal of shaming anybody. For example, I mentioned curfews. But if those would not help achieve the actual goals, they would not be used.