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Should one give money directly to homeless people? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 weeks ago by mistahbenny@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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just wondering

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[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 5 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

most redirect less than 10% of what they receive towards the homeless

this is a very very bad way to think about charitable giving. if your aim is to get as much money to solving homelessness as possible, you want advertising and marketing campaigns, you want efficiency (but people working on a problem is “overhead” whilst their solutions to make things cheaper mean less money that “makes it to” solving the problem at hand)

this video does an excellent job at describing the problem

https://youtu.be/bfAzi6D5FpM

[–] finderscult@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

That's nice, but there is no excuse for higher overhead than the amount of money actually spent on the problem, when the problem objectively can be solved by direct expenditure.

We know how to eliminate homelessness and the causes behind it even in a capitalist society. It doesn't cost a billion per 100 transitional housing units.

[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 1 points 4 weeks ago

and that all requires organisation, and organisation isn’t free - in fact the structures required to organise things like that are more expensive than the cost actually spent on the problem … you don’t just up and build houses - that’s not how any of this works… ask anyone that’s built a house, and they’re not even doing it on a large scale where complexity goes up significantly, or dealing with distributing money in a manner that they have to makes sure their expenditures are justified rather than just being able to make decisions for themselves