[galimalint]

In australia, they put the people with mental illness or addiction in their own apartment and give them pills, and check in with them regularly. Definitely costs less than 50k/year. Most of them do end up getting better after several years.

It seems US has a system that extracts maximumly from their tax payers and just keeps things in (bad) status quo as long as they can. A babying system if you well.

[bombcar]

So shipping homeless from SF to Australia and paying $100k/yr per would be a win/win?

[typewithrhythm]

I have some insight into this, and it might be possible that with good intervention the ongoing costs are low... That being said, in our current system the cases that are severe enough to be in public housing easily cost 10 times that...

[teaearlgraycold]

I believe the homeless are kept around as a threat to the poor housed Americans. On top of that, those poor people are struggling so greatly that they too don't want to see the homeless helped too much. They don't want to see someone without any job live an easier life than they do with 3.

[ltbarcly3]

Do you honestly believe this or are you just being snarky?