kengr

Reliable, ready access to free showers (complete with soap and shampoo) and free laundry. It's hard to get or keep a job when you smell like piss, or other unpleasant things. With enough income, laundry isn't so much an issue, but showers? Right now the options for showers are, AFAIK, paying for a hostel or hotel for a night, which is a lot of money to spend for a shower, and... well the only other thing I can think of is showering at a friend's house, but I think if they had that, they'd probably have somewhere to stay. So... yeah. Free showers are necessary. And free laundry, for anyone not making enough money to afford laundry.

Pads and/or tampons for the women and girls. Toilet paper. Somewhere reliable to take a shit where you don't have to buy something first. (Seriously, if I ever became ruler of Oregon, that law would go straight in the garbage where it belongs.) I recently saw a homeless guy, on Christmas day, taking a shit right outside a pizza place. Thankfully it was from a moving bus that I saw this.

Free hot meals are necessary as well. Income isn't going to handle that as well if they don't have an actual apartment or house, because they have nothing to cook with, and restaurants are expensive either money wise or health wise. Non-perishable foods can also be hard to transport, due to weight and volume.

An address for their mail, that is an actual address and not a PO box. If all you have is a PO box and no street address, employers aren't going to want to hire you. (Also, an address that doesn't go to a homeless shelter or hotel, because of job discrimination.)

Free cell phone if they don't already have a cell phone, because having a phone number they can be reliably reached as is also necessary for jobs.

New clothes to replace old ones. Again, hard to get or keep a job if your clothes are shit and falling apart. Especially free nice clothes, the kind that's expensive but necessary for getting jobs, including stuff like black slacks for uniforms.

SOCKS. Shoes! Both of those are very important. Even released prisoners used to get new shoes. Dunno if they still do or not. But good shoes are very important. I know some people who save what little money they get towards more expensive shoes just because they last longer, and it's easier to save money for a while and buy shoes once that will last for years than it is to keep buying cheap and shitty shoes every few months.

I would argue as well that access to a pro bono civil rights lawyer would be necessary for many homeless people, due to ordinary job and/or housing discrimination for reasons that amount to "they're homeless" as well as people of color, LGBT people, autistic people, disabled people, and anyone else who get discriminated against by employers and landlords.

Adult education, too. Teach the illiterate how to read, train jobless people new skills so they can get a job, that kind of thing. Education is the great equalizer.

For the people who are addicted to drugs, they need somewhere safe to do their drugs, attended by medics who can stabilize them if they OD, until the ambulance arrives. For heroin users, they need free, clean needles and something like clean spoons to cook the heroin in. Kinda hard to get your life together if you die first from an overdose or AIDS or whatever. Give them that foundation, and they're more likely to seek help getting sober. (Some countries have started doing this very thing, and it works!)

I would also argue that finding a way to get drug addicts free drugs would help a lot, too. If the drugs are free, they don't have to steal, prostitute themselves, or whatever else to afford the drugs. Giving free drugs to drug addicts would make the crime rates go down as a result.

I had an idea a few months ago for a place that's just basically a shit-ton of simple rooms, just large enough for a cot, a shower, and a toilet, like seriously as small as you can get and fit most people in them. Or just room for the cot, and have the toilets and showers being down the hall or something. It would be like an ultra economy hotel kind of thing, useful for anyone from visitors from out of town who just need somewhere to sleep for a night, nothing fancy. And also for homeless people.

Sure, there are some potential problems, like families needing more space and then the issue of people having sex in them. But if the bugs could be worked out, it might be a good idea. Give people in need somewhere cheap as shit to sleep for the night, with a locking door so their shit doesn't get stolen. Maybe even a locking closet so thieves would have to get through two locks to get their stuff, even.

Ultimately, though, the cheapest and easiest thing to do towards ending homelessness would be to JUST. GIVE. PEOPLE. HOUSING. All those houses the banks own that aren't doing anything? Give those to homeless people. Empty apartments? Favor the homeless. Seriously, giving homeless people housing is the cheapest, easiest, and most reliable way to get people permanently out of homelessness. Give them a place to live, and everything else in their life has a chance to fall into place. Having housing is literally the foundation of a stable human life. Without housing, no amount of assistance from others is going to be much help.