“They did not spend more money on alcohol or drugs, contrary to what people believe, and instead they spent the money on rent, food, housing, transit, furniture, a used car, clothes. It’s entirely the opposite of what people think they’re going to do with the money.”

  • pjhenry1216@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I mean, a study of how non homeless people spend money would probably be skewed and ignore drug addicts too. Studies ignore outliers that would have an obvious affect on what’s being studied.

    Are you wondering what a drug addict spends money on?

    • eeltech@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m wondering what is the percentage of homeless that are addicts or have mental health issues. You seem to be confident they are outliers, but what is the percentage? Is it 1%? 25%? 50%?

      Seems like a logical fallacy to me without knowing that stat.

      • neatchee@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        “According to SAMHSA, 38% of homeless people abused alcohol while 26% abused other drugs.” (These are overlapping statistics)

        “Most research shows that around 1/3 of people who are homeless have problems with alcohol and/or drugs, and around 2/3 of these people have lifetime histories of drug or alcohol use disorders”

        This means roughly 11% of homeless people started their abuse as a consequence of becoming homeless, while 22% of homeless people may have become homeless due to their substance abuse.

        So you’d essentially be proposing that we don’t help 78% of all homeless people because the other 22% of them would misuse the money.

        And that’s without even discussing the fact that many of those 22% could be rehabilitated if they’re provide with appropriate healthcare on top of the monetary benefits

        • eeltech@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          So you’d essentially be proposing that we don’t help

          Excuse me? I haven’t proposed anything. I’m simply asking questions because the headline/description seemed misleading to me and not adequately conveying the full story/situation. Purely from a math/stats/logic point of view

          • neatchee@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Didn’t mean that to come off as a personal attack. More of the “royal you”. Like saying “if you were to do something, you’d want to do this.”

    • Jamie@jamie.moe
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      1 year ago

      It’s basically rule #1 to not give an addict money, but give them things they can’t trade for material value instead.

      • neatchee@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Sure, but a properly administered program would identify those with substance abuse problems and send them to (free) healthcare facilities