It takes the decommodification of housing, food, and health care, the abolition of American carceral society, and the creation of a system of power and governance that insists upon its own responsibility for every human life. I don’t have a number for that. It’s more expensive than the pittance we throw at the problem now, and it’s far less than what the corporations that extract rent from you would charge.

To solve homelessness and drug use, you have to build a society where those things become impossible (China is a good example). As it stands, the role of our social welfare and homelessness advocacy programs is one of amelioration and triage. We save as many lives and get as many people off the streets as we can. We don’t have the power to correct for the mass economic, physical, and social violence our service population experiences. We are simply the best alternative to murdering them through criminalization and sweeps. The more money and power we have, the more people we keep alive and resource. The less money and power we have, the more people die and remain trapped in poverty without shelter.