If 100 homeless people were given $750 per month for a year, no questions asked, what would they spend it on?

That question was at the core of a controlled study conducted by a San Francisco-based nonprofit and the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work.

The results were so promising that the researchers decided to publish results after only six months. The answer: food, 36.6%; housing, 19.5%; transportation, 12.7%; clothing, 11.5%; and healthcare, 6.2%, leaving only 13.6% uncategorized.

Those who got the stipend were less likely to be unsheltered after six months and able to meet more of their basic needs than a control group that got no money, and half as likely as the control group to have an episode of being unsheltered.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20231221131158/https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-12-19/750-a-month-no-questions-asked-improved-the-lives-of-homeless-people

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    There’s also been a lot of success with providing housing to the homeless. When they have stability, they use it to create a better life for themselves, and that translates to lower costs in terms of enforcement, ER visits, legal aid, and incarceration.

    The US doesn’t provide for this in federal policy because we like our laws to reflect the cruelty and malice we have in our hearts for perceived undesirables.