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A new ‘solution’ to student homelessness: a parking lot where students can sleep safely in their cars
(hechingerreport.org)
this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2025
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"We have the money to fix the problem, we really just don't want to."
Everyone always says homelessness is a complicated issue due to addiction and mental health and then that's it. full stop. in many peoples heads those TWO groups are the ONLY groups that make up the homeless population. but after volunteering I know better. you have students, you have women escaping domestic abuse, you have the elderly who can no longer afford rent, you have kids who are LGBTQ+ that have been disowned by their families, you have refugees, and you have people who simply lost their jobs and fell through the cracks.
allowing students to sleep in their cars is not a solution. it's another band aid applied to a massive gaping wound. And this isn't just an America issue, several countries are guilty of band aid "solutions". I mean hell here in Canada the government is talking about investing $1billion into AI for fucks sake. That $1billion could be better served in providing people with homes. There's never any long term planning here, always short term "solutions". Wouldn't it be advantageous to governments to ensure people have homes in order to get them back into the workforce thus paying taxes.
Call me a heart on the sleeve soft liberal all you want but I'm of the firm belief that EVERYONE deserves and has the right to a home and food and if they can't provide either of those things for themselves than we as a society, as a community, need to provide it for them. And I firmly believe that the majority of our society feel the same and wouldn't mind their tax dollars going towards that. It's just that the powers that be don't want that.
One of the most humane solutions is also the most economically efficient. Early intervention programs like rent/utility assistance are significantly cheaper in the long run than trying to rehabilitate people who have already lost everything and have a litany of health issues because of it. If conservatives really want to save money, they should be embracing "an ounce of prevention saves a pound of cure." Instead, they're stuck in wanting to SEE the desperation before even considering helping. Safety nets are major economic stimulus in the long run because it's much easier to attempt entrepeneurship if you aren't making a life and death gamble. But something tells me the currently wealthy know this and don't want competition popping up.
Then of course we also need to fix affordability issues, because unaffordable necessities put everyone at risk.
My point is that even if you mostly just care about efficient government and economic growth, you should still come to similar conclusions as "bleeding heart liberals." Conservatives don't come to those conclusions not by economic arguments, but because they fail to see the merit of collective problem solving. They want to have their own little castle with all their stuff that they can defend under penalty of death. We pretend the argument is about feasability and cost effectiveness, but the real issue is that they don't think that any proposal that would take anything from them or require giving is an option. That's why you see the economically destitute and ultra wealthy in an unholy alliance. Both of those groups are prone to wanting to circle the wagons and consider only the wellbeing of people in their little circle -- the poor out of desperation, and the wealthy out of possessiveness. Everyone not in their little circle is someone else's problem.
Even efficiency takes a back seat to the[ir] real top priority: Hurting the right people and being seen to do so.
it's not politically viable though. even liberal voters will revolt at this because it is 'unfair' or seem as rewarding laziness.
I've seen liberal voters only revolt when it's in their back yard.
"I want to help house the homeless, but I don't want to see them."
i live in boston area. every single person here is like this. they love the homeless, but if they have to see them in public the sudden they start talking about how they need to be 'removed' because it makes them feel uncomfortable.
same with schools, housing, healthcare. they support it, until it affects them. Then they are against it.
anf i you say you are for it, they call you evil and heartless and inconsiderate of 'real people who work for a living'. because homeless people aren't real people if they don't have six figure office jobs.
NYMBYs is why politicians don't have the balls to do anything progressive. Unless you have a wide swelling of support, which thanks to our two party system we never will, Democrats are often stuck keeping the status quo.
most democrats benefit from the status quo and that's why they want it.
the democrat base is wealthy educated professionals who are making a killing in this economy. it's not working-class people.
It's not a solution, but as someone who slept in her car in a college parking lot because her father got pissed at her being around his house while queer, it's better than we'd had. I was afraid I would get in trouble for sleeping like that. Mind you, the main reason I couldn't sleep that night was that it was really fucking cold and it's really hard to sleep in a car.
Housing first is the best solution, but we also need humane solutions for short term homelessness. The "I left in the middle of the night and need a few days to get my bearings because things could go any humber of ways" type stuff. Shelters are so intimidating and have a reputation for being hostile to those that need them.
My college had a food bank, and as I think of this, they really could've had a shelter for students as well. Just a few dorm rooms done simple with literature on resources where if you need to stay there a few days you can. Instead I wasn't allowed to sleep on a student's couch for more than two consecutive nights.
That last paragraph hits really close to home for me. I'm like super privileged currently, but have been homeless while I was going to college. Sleeping in my car or any friend who would let me crash on their couch or closet floor. It really sucks and it's taxing physically & mentally.
Like a small jail cell would've been preferable to my car on cold nights. And yet I see so many people that have never experienced it properly claim that people need to earn it to feel better about themselves. Like fucking no they don't Trevor! Tell you what, you go try and sleep in the cold for a few nights and tell me how productive you are the next day!
You are totally correct, but there is something else: There are limits to everybodies agency. If you're somewhere in a college administration, you can't reroute those AI billions into housing for students. That's not going to happen. But you can try to help struggling students with the tools and powers you have and if it's a parking lot where they can sleep without fear that robbers or police will harass them, that's good! If you find a way to give leftover food from the cafeteria to hungry students, that's also great - even if there shouldn't be hungry students at all.
This college doesn’t have the power to fix homelessness at the societal level, but they did have the power to do this. It’s a pretty awesome story.
The problem that no one talks about with this is there are no rules limiting procreation and there are limited resources. Because of religion's lies, which say "be fruitful and multiply" and things like fundamental rights to procreation in the US, in most countries anyone can procreate as much as they want in most countries.
What happens when really poor people procreate? Children go hungry and don't have adequate resources and then programs need to be established to help them. When you give people sufficient space and food, procreation is one of the first things that happens.
If you take everyone who is poor and give them a house, you are looking at a group of people who can't take care of themself and/or come from families that don't support their children, and those people will have children who may also not be able to or want to take care of their children.
I am not saying we should have homeless people. We absolutely should give homeless people housing, but we also need to have a rule that if the government takes care of you and you are in government housing, then it is a crime to reproduce while on government resources. Unfortunately, a rule like that is not politically feasible. People are taught in religions to be nice to poor people but also to be fruitful and multiply. Taking parents to prisons for procreating might lead to abortions, which people find morally wrong. It could increase birth control, which a select group of complete fucking morons also thinks is wrong.
The problem comes down to religion.
Even if someone becomes homeless through no fault of their own, for example they come from a family of alcoholics who never save anything and they personally are very careful and went to high school and suddenly at 18 have nothing and couldn't get a scholarship that pays for everything for school and can't get a job, it's still a tricky situation. If the government gives a male heterosexual 18 year old a home, soon a woman moves in and then in a year there's a kid. Two years later there are two kids. And at that point, with the government taking care of that male, does he want to work or does he become an alcoholic too?
Before society existed, women didn't always have enough food and when resources were low they wouldn't get pregnant. Infanticide would also take care of sick or damaged infants or be used in times of scarcity. Men would also sometimes kill the other men in tribal warfare and rape the women not killed in the war, which still left more resources for everyone.
So now, society has said that killing sick babies is bad, in times of scarcity we will help sick babies and poor families with food, and men only occasionally go to war over border disputes and things like that. The population has also gone up exponentially and the environment is changing in ways that are already a disaster.
So given this problem, how do you deal with things and keep people from being homeless and also not reproducing while they are on government welfare? Do you create laws that directly contradict all the religious lies people have been told? Is it politically feasible to create laws that contradict the irrational religious myths of people? The problem isn't a lack of money for housing or an inability to make it. The government prints the money. They can just print some more money and build some houses. The problem is what happens in 20 years, 50 years. Should there just be free housing indefinitely? Who takes care of the children of the people who are unlucky or irresponsible?
One of the things about homeless shelters is that because there is no space and people sleep on mats, people don't usually have sex in them (since there is no privacy) and so people don't have children. A man also can't trick a woman into saying he's doing well when he actually sleeps on the floor and with government housing, he may be able to do that. Someone sleeping in a car is much less likely to procreate.
I am not trying to be unsympathetic. Homelessness is a horrible evil of modern society. But there are resource implications for making choices in modern society and the fact is that people do not function well without religious myths. The world is harsh, atheism is a luxury that tends to increase when society is less harsh.
In a smaller society like Finland, housing first works. Does such a policy also work in a country like America? I could also be wrong about all of this and housing first can be duplicated everywhere with no impact on resource allocation or even a positive impact. It may be that this is less of a resource management issue (if housing first works in any society) and more about keeping the poor in line.
Ew, your hatred of people and desire for others to be suffering or non-existent is showing and it's gross.
according to OP we should apparently murder the homeless because nobody below a certain income level should be allowed to live or have kids. i've seen this argument before... mostly from people who had wealthy parents and feel like nobody should have kids unless their parents have millions in the bank to pave an easy life path for their children... just like theirs did.
It's such a 19th century-ass take that it's on the verge of proposing eugenics and Magdaline laundries.
Only the wealthy should be allowed to procreate, huh?
yes. it's a popular view among the wealthy in particular.
i've met many people who have told me i should never have been born because my parents weren't rich and I had to pay for my college education with loans and scholarships. they argued that people like me are a 'drain' and that i 'stole' my position uni from a more deserving rich person. they don't believe in class mobility, just class punishment.
When I was younger i took credit for intelligence and hard work getting a full scholarship to a good school. That’s part of it, but l realize I started in a good place
As I get older I believe everyone who wants to should have a free college education because we desperately need a more knowledgeable and capable society. And it better be ready by the time I’m ready to sit back