How should we address homelessness?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: How should we address homelessness?
Position‹3 of 3: We shouldn't do anything to help people who are homeless.
Argument‹2 of 2: People are homeless by choice

Homeless people do not want to change their circumstances.

The argument

With the help of social services like government housing and food stamps, the homeless have ample opportunity to leave the streets. Despite these resources, many individuals continue to embrace this lifestyle, making it fair to assume that homelessness is a personal choice. It is pointless to try to help people who willfully reject a traditional lifestyle. For this reason, helping the homeless is a waste of precious personal and government resources.

Premises

[P1]Social services like government housing and food stamps give homeless people ample opportunity to leave the streets. [P2] Many remain homeless despite these resources, which the argument takes to mean it is a personal choice to reject a traditional lifestyle. [P3] It is pointless to expend resources helping people who willfully reject that help. [C] Therefore, on this view, since people are homeless by choice, we shouldn't do anything to help them.

Counter-arguments

If a person chooses to remain homeless, the choice itself is indicative of serious emotional, mental, and relational problems. We should not interpret a person's embrace of a homeless lifestyle as an expression of their freedom, but as a cry for help with deeper issues.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise assumes the services described are actually available. Public housing programmes in most jurisdictions carry waiting lists measured in years, and food assistance addresses hunger rather than shelter. 'Ample opportunity to leave the streets' is asserted, not shown, and the argument offers no figure for how many applicants those programmes can accommodate. [Rejecting P2] The inference from 'remains homeless' to 'chooses homelessness' is the argument's weakest step. It rules out by construction every alternative explanation — eligibility rules, lost documentation, criminal records that bar tenancy, untreated illness, addiction, domestic violence, discharge from care or custody — and treats an outcome as though it were a preference. [Rejecting P3] The counter-argument on record grants the appearance of choice and draws the opposite conclusion: where someone does refuse available help, that refusal is itself evidence of serious emotional, mental or relational difficulty, and so a reason to intervene rather than a reason to withdraw. Read that way, the premise counts against the position it is offered to support. [Rejecting C] Since neither the availability of the services nor the voluntariness of remaining homeless is established, the conclusion that assistance is a waste of resources does not follow.