Kipp,

I don't doubt that a very high percentage of people in homeless shelters are there primarily as a consequence of their own bad choices. And as long as we live in a society that values the right of the individual to make many of their own choices, social programs targeted at that population are going to have low success rates.   I don't think that means those social programs should not exist, but expectations regarding what constitutes success should be realistic.

I also don't think homeless shelters should be eliminated by virtue of the fact that many, if not most of their inhabitants, have mostly brought their own hard luck upon themselves.

My position on this is purely value based.

There are places in the world, and there have always been cultures living in environments where basic resources are scarce, and insufficient, or barely sufficient, to meet the needs of the population. There may come a time when the resources of this country are not sufficient to meet the basic needs of our population. when that time comes, it will then be necessary to consider who deserves to eat, and who does not. However, as long as this society has the resources to meet the basic needs of every man, woman and child living in this society, then everyone deserves access to enough food to eat and access to shelter, whether or not that person is an addict, a thief, an antisocial scumbag, or a freeloader.

Janie