How should we address homelessness?

The homeless must learn to help themselves

Question: How should we address homelessness?
Position‹3 of 3: We shouldn't do anything to help people who are homeless.
Argument1 of 2›: The homeless must learn to help themselves

By offering assistance to homeless people, we prevent them from helping themselves.

The argument

In modern society, homeless people have countless opportunities to improve their situation. The homeless can find a job, gain a stable source of income, and work their own way out of poverty. If we continue lending them outside assistance, the homeless community will never feel compelled to take responsibility for their circumstances. A passerby's independent donation is rarely large enough to provide long-term assistance, and thus only enables their lifestyle. Ultimately, outside assistance transfers responsibility from homeless individuals to the larger community and never encourages them to take responsibility for their lives.

Premises

[P1]Proponents argue that in modern society homeless people have opportunities to find work, earn a stable income and work their own way out of poverty. [P2] They contend that continued outside assistance — such as small independent donations too limited to help long-term — only enables the situation, transferring responsibility from the individual to the community and removing the compulsion to take charge of one's own circumstances. [C] On this reasoning, the homeless must learn to help themselves, so we shouldn't do anything to help them.

Counter-arguments

It is wrong to assume that homeless people have many opportunities to improve their situation. Our job market is competitive and navigating the hiring process is even more difficult for homeless people, who lack the resources to make the best first impressions. If private donations are rarely large enough to support a person's livelihood, this would provide even more incentive to improve one's situation, it would not compel homeless people to rely on charity.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The opportunities are asserted rather than shown, and the premise omits what the ordinary route into work requires: an address, identification, a bank account, somewhere to store belongings and to wash. It also treats homelessness as a single condition, when a substantial share of those affected are managing illness or disability or have fled violence, for whom the described path is not available. [Rejecting P2] The enabling claim is inconsistent with the premise it rests on: if donations are too small to sustain anyone, they are too small to remove the incentive to change circumstances, as the counter observes. Responsibility is also being asked to do two jobs at once — a moral claim about who is answerable and a practical claim about what produces exits from homelessness — and on the practical question the evidence runs the other way, since stable housing generally precedes employment rather than following it. The conclusion is stronger still than the premises: at most they would favour changing the form help takes, not withholding it.