Would cheap habitable structures for anyone end homelessness world wide, or not?

[SpyderEdgeForever]

I was reading something about 3d printing of housing structures, and how in the not too distant future it will be possible to literally fabricate, cheaply, weather-proof interlocking boards and structures made from say, carbon-fiber based polymers that are stronger than steel, water and rust-proof, lighter than concrete and steel, and can take different color shades. One person said this will "End homelessness forever" because then anyone can print their own house and can even print a mobile house that has solar panels for power, and that has built in plumbing or a portapotty like thing, and then they can also eat printed 3d pizzas (they recently made three d printed pizza).

But are there other reality factors of life that could interfer with this idea to end homelessness this way, that have nothing to do with the technological aspects? How would governments and other people react if people started printing houses and setting them up and living in them rent free?

[The Deacon]

I severely doubt it, at least not in the USA. For one thing, there are those for whom being homeless is a freely made lifestyle choice rather than something imposed on them by circumstance. For another, there are those who are both incurably lazy and prefer living in filth to keeping a decent home, so no matter what you gave them, they would turn it from a habitable dwelling into a garbage dump not fit for pigs within a year.

[JBE]

Who would pay for such a project?

[noseoil]

Ending "homelessness" is like ending poverty. People make choices with their lives, habits, money & lifestyle. There will always be people who make poor choices, therefore there will always be poverty, homelessness and the things which go with it. It's sort of like the "war on poverty" and people who think we just haven't spent enough money to eliminate it. In Africa there will always be hunger, due to life choices made by the people who live there. Sorry, but I spend my time providing for my own family, don't ask me to do more to support other people who refuse to take care of theirs.

[O,just,O]

:cool: Koool, I want one of those houses, you make them sound so good & maintenance free. Can we reprint instead of clean?
Can we print a water & sewage system for it as well? Surely we can just print a cheque for rates & utilities, what?
I would like it on a high block, flood free & overlooking the better part of town. Can we print that?
Hey we could print a Caddy for the driveway, a big dog to keep undesirables away & half a dozen laying hens; free eggs forever. Yahoo! what a life, & it only gets better. Print a vegetable patch. Print a little man to pick them & bring them inside. Print a house keeper to cook them & print a silver spoon to eat our eggs & veg with. A platinum plated Spydie steak knife for the big juicy steaks we print................
O.

[Evil D]

First off, being homeless is not always a simple choice. I have an older brother with severe paranoid schizophrenia who was homeless for 7 years prior to being diagnosed and getting help. He may have "made" that choice, but he wasn't mentally capable of making the right choices to get out of the situation he was in, and he isn't homeless now that he's had therapy. Of course, for every person like my brother there are 1000 others standing on street corners panhandling while texting someone who have given up and are looking for a handout. I once got in a fight with a couple because I busted the girl for walking to a street corner a couple hundred yards from where her boyfriend parked their car, while he sat in the car on a tablet surfing the internet, and they would take turns on the corner panhandling. If you have a car and that kind of time on your hand, and are obviously capable of paying a mobile bill, then get a **** job. Anyway...

As for the shelter thing, I have spent enough time with my brother while he was homeless to know that there is a larger problem that would need to be "fixed" before free housing would solve anything, and that's why are they homeless in the first place? For a long time after getting therapy, my brother would still hang out on the streets with people he met while being homeless. He would still eat out of dumpsters, even though he has a source of income. Once a person has learned to survive on the street, it changes their outlook on the whole situation. My brother once told me about eating pizza out of the dumpster, he said the person who threw that away threw out a perfectly edible pizza, in a box, that didn't get "dirty" on the way into the dumpster, it wasn't rotten or diseased, so why shouldn't everyone want to eat it and why didn't the person who bought it eat it? The standard of living is changed in such a way that what you or I would consider crazy is perfectly normal.

Basically, look at almost any segment of life on the planet, and you will find hunters and scavengers. In our society, the hunters are represented by the working masses, and the homeless are the scavengers. A lion does not wonder why a hyena eats the scraps that he leaves behind instead of hunting for itself. The hyena only sees these scraps as a free meal and sees no reason not to take the free meal instead of hunting for themselves. Until we live in a world where the lions stop leaving scraps for the hyenas, there won't be a reason for the hyenas to hunt for themselves.

In other words, the cold hard truth of how to fix homelessness is to not give a handout whatsoever. No panhandling, no homeless shelters, no soup kitchens, and surely no free housing. With the exception of people like my brother (and believe me when I say there are plenty of victims out there), the vast majority of them will get off their *** and do something if the rest of us would stop giving them handouts and making it possible for them to survive in the lifestyle they lead. The rest have a legit need for help, so the challenge is how to separate them and give the needy the help they need while forcing the capable to get off their *** and do it themselves.

[SolidState]

In other words, the cold hard truth of how to fix homelessness is to not give a handout whatsoever. No panhandling, no homeless shelters, no soup kitchens, and surely no free housing. With the exception of people like my brother (and believe me when I say there are plenty of victims out there), the vast majority of them will get off their *** and do something if the rest of us would stop giving them handouts and making it possible for them to survive in the lifestyle they lead. The rest have a legit need for help, so the challenge is how to separate them and give the needy the help they need while forcing the capable to get off their *** and do it themselves.

Or, they will just turn to crime. They could also die, and so could their children. Childhood mortality skyrockets under such circumstances. It's not like irresponsibility stops at the reproductive organs. The question is: "Are you okay watching their children die due to the accident of being born to such people?"
Different people have different answers to that question, and further, the logic can be stretched pretty far once the ball is rolling in either direction.
We cannot print our way out of the problem.

[bdblue]

I severely doubt it, at least not in the USA. For one thing, there are those for whom being homeless is a freely made lifestyle choice rather than something imposed on them by circumstance. For another, there are those who are both incurably lazy and prefer living in filth to keeping a decent home, so no matter what you gave them, they would turn it from a habitable dwelling into a garbage dump not fit for pigs within a year.

I agree, including the qualification to the USA. I think there are other countries where people are homeless or live in slums because they don't have as much opportunity to improve their situation but they would improve if they could. Those people could benefit from better housing.

I'm not sure that 3D printing is the way to achieve better housing though. 3D printing is a way to create a complex item without complex manufacturing steps. The part of a house that was discussed is the part that already can be manufactured easily and cheaply by other means. In areas that have plentiful materials, what can be cheaper than boards and plywood, or simple bricks? Those are manufactured now in large quantities without much labor or high tech equipment. If you are 3D printing something it still is going to require raw materials, and a whole lot of them to print an entire house.

[Pinetreebbs]

First off, being homeless is not always a simple choice. I have an older brother with severe paranoid schizophrenia who was homeless for 7 years prior to being diagnosed and getting help. He may have "made" that choice, but he wasn't mentally capable of making the right choices to get out of the situation he was in, and he isn't homeless now that he's had therapy. Of course, for every person like my brother there are 1000 others standing on street corners panhandling while texting someone who have given up and are looking for a handout. I once got in a fight with a couple because I busted the girl for walking to a street corner a couple hundred yards from where her boyfriend parked their car, while he sat in the car on a tablet surfing the internet, and they would take turns on the corner panhandling. If you have a car and that kind of time on your hand, and are obviously capable of paying a mobile bill, then get a **** job. Anyway...

As for the shelter thing, I have spent enough time with my brother while he was homeless to know that there is a larger problem that would need to be "fixed" before free housing would solve anything, and that's why are they homeless in the first place? For a long time after getting therapy, my brother would still hang out on the streets with people he met while being homeless. He would still eat out of dumpsters, even though he has a source of income. Once a person has learned to survive on the street, it changes their outlook on the whole situation. My brother once told me about eating pizza out of the dumpster, he said the person who threw that away threw out a perfectly edible pizza, in a box, that didn't get "dirty" on the way into the dumpster, it wasn't rotten or diseased, so why shouldn't everyone want to eat it and why didn't the person who bought it eat it? The standard of living is changed in such a way that what you or I would consider crazy is perfectly normal.

Basically, look at almost any segment of life on the planet, and you will find hunters and scavengers. In our society, the hunters are represented by the working masses, and the homeless are the scavengers. A lion does not wonder why a hyena eats the scraps that he leaves behind instead of hunting for itself. The hyena only sees these scraps as a free meal and sees no reason not to take the free meal instead of hunting for themselves. Until we live in a world where the lions stop leaving scraps for the hyenas, there won't be a reason for the hyenas to hunt for themselves.

In other words, the cold hard truth of how to fix homelessness is to not give a handout whatsoever. No panhandling, no homeless shelters, no soup kitchens, and surely no free housing. With the exception of people like my brother (and believe me when I say there are plenty of victims out there), the vast majority of them will get off their *** and do something if the rest of us would stop giving them handouts and making it possible for them to survive in the lifestyle they lead. The rest have a legit need for help, so the challenge is how to separate them and give the needy the help they need while forcing the capable to get off their *** and do it themselves.

So spoke the man of experience. Well intentioned people wanting to do good always seem to ignore the law of unintended consequences. Handouts keep the helpless helpless, work feeds the human sole and bring hope.

There is a large population of people loving on the street that in past times would have been institutionalized. Well intentioned proponents for (mental) patients rights and the ACLU conspired to set them free and economic problems took away their support and left them on the street.

I am glad your brother is getting help.

[Evil D]

Or, they will just turn to crime. They could also die, and so could their children. Childhood mortality skyrockets under such circumstances. It's not like irresponsibility stops at the reproductive organs. The question is: "Are you okay watching their children die due to the accident of being born to such people?"
Different people have different answers to that question, and further, the logic can be stretched pretty far once the ball is rolling in either direction.
We cannot print our way out of the problem.

So if they turn to crime, that is just another poor choice they have made for themselves, and if they have children then in my book that's neglect and child endangerment which forfeits their right to raise those kids in my book. There's no reason the kids should suffer along with their mistakes. Everyday is a new day and a new chance to make the right choices. Those people could easily get off their *** and take the first job they can find, turn over custody of their kids so they're properly cared for until they get their finances back in line, and get their lives back together. Instead they use their kids to leverage the sympathy of society into caring for them and they continue to do nothing for themselves.

I may not be a religious man but there is one religious belief that I support 100%, and that is that God helps those who help themselves. I truly believe that if there is a God, he would come down and put a harsh judgement on the man and woman who lets their kids suffer while they panhandle instead of getting off their *** and doing everything in their power to take care of their kids. The only exception is if the parents have a legit reason for not being able to work, like my brother had, and then those people should get the help they need, and again the kids need taken into custody and given a chance to grow up properly and not on the streets.

Like the saying goes, give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. The homeless don't need handouts, they need JOBS. That in turn takes this discussion further into the problems in our country, like how there are hundreds of thousands of jobless Americans, and likely hundreds of thousands more employed illegal immigrants. Then again, that takes us back to the fact that those same homeless people would rather panhandle than do those dirty jobs that the illegals are doing, so again people are making choices for themselves and need to take accountability for their lives.

And for the record since I mentioned it, I'm not some "illegal immigrant hater". I do believe this is the land of opportunity and I fully support legal immigration, but if you don't have and are not trying to get your citizenship, GTFO. It's a disgrace to those who came before you and earned their citizenship. But...we'll save that for another thread

[SolidState]

Those are nice platitudes Evil, they just don't come close to solving where to put the kids, or how to stop them from making more if you take them. Social workers deal with this fact all the time. You can take someone's kids because they're unfit, but they can make another in a year. Heck, you can be lazy and pop out children. People do it all the time. Often, the kids have kids too.

Welfare isn't for people to be lazy, it exists because Americans got sick of having a pauper class of children and the elderly: it's nowhere near as fun as Oliver Twist. Guess who lazy people make do their begging for them... their kids. I see it all the time out here.

We can pretend that the problem doesn't come from people who shouldn't have kids, or can't handle the kids they do have in a way as to keep them off the streets, but we're just fooling ourselves. Cutting welfare doesn't turn people into sane, productive members of society just as giving welfare doesn't do either of those things.

Aphorisms and platitudes are great, but until people start living more like the Deacon, we're not going to get rid of homelessness with printers or otherwise.

[Pinetreebbs]

Easy, offer a large cash bonus for vasectomies and tubal ligation. Much less costly than welfare.

[Evil D]

Those are nice platitudes Evil, they just don't come close to solving where to put the kids, or how to stop them from making more if you take them. Social workers deal with this fact all the time. You can take someone's kids because they're unfit, but they can make another in a year. Heck, you can be lazy and pop out children. People do it all the time. Often, the kids have kids too.

Welfare isn't for people to be lazy, it exists because Americans got sick of having a pauper class of children and the elderly: it's nowhere near as fun as Oliver Twist. Guess who lazy people make do their begging for them... their kids. I see it all the time out here.

We can pretend that the problem doesn't come from people who shouldn't have kids, or can't handle the kids they do have in a way as to keep them off the streets, but we're just fooling ourselves. Cutting welfare doesn't turn people into sane, productive members of society just as giving welfare doesn't do either of those things.

Aphorisms and platitudes are great, but until people start living more like the Deacon, we're not going to get rid of homelessness with printers or otherwise.

Right it has to start somewhere, and if a large part of the problem is that people are content living off the system how do you expect to change that mindset without taking away the handouts? The standard of living has changed and they have no incentive to do anything but leech the system. You can't make people self sufficient by holding them up. Somewhere there has to be some tough love.

[eric m.]

I cannot remark to this thread because the BIBLE(the most hated book on this planet) cannot be referred to on this forum, without someone going spastic and the thread being deleted! Suffice it to say, teach people they are animals and they will act like animals! Destroy the family, destroy the nation! If a man doesn't work he shouldn't eat! :)

[yablanowitz]

Simple answer to the original question: No. A house is not the same thing as a home. Even if you gave every homeless person a house, they wouldn't have real estate to put it on or utilities to support it. In many cases, they don't want those things.

[TheRaven]

It would be nice but no. I think a lot of people have dreams of a utopian world, but the fact is, the world is inherently imperfect.

[SkullBouncer]

Great discussion. Some points I agree with... some not so much. David, your brother's plight particularly touched me.

I will put my $0.02 in with this: Disabled Veterans, of which I am one. A charity I actively support is Fisher House; check them out @ http://www.fisherhouse.org. Continuing the Legacy for 24 years' running.

I as well am very active on many ranking levels within the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States -- the world's oldest and largest combat veteran's organization, and almost completely self- supported. If it weren't for the VFW, there would be no VA system in America, certainly not as we know it. LOTS of work yet to be done, within D.C. and without. I don't take in one thin dime from the VFW; never have. It's all about Honoring the Dead by Serving the Living.
Here's another link I recommend: http://www.vfw.org.

And wayyy too many folks just think it's a private canteen in a post filled with war stories. :D



:spyder: :spyder: Stay Sharp --
-- SB /Bruce :cool: :cool:

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Thank you for your service and for giving your all, Skull Bouncer. I think one of the most horrible things in today's world is when veterans are homeless and not cared for.

[wrdwrght]

Picking on the poor is certainly fashionable, but doesn't make it any less shameful.

[SkullBouncer]

S.E.F. -- Thank you for your support, as well for that of so many others here on this fine forum. We don't take it lightly, we do consider it an honor. It is certainly an honor and privilege to have served, and to continue in civilian life has in turn enriched the lives of so many, including my own -- very therapeutic. From that service on the individual level, on up through service to community and to Our National Home.

Folks here especially 'get it', by and large. For such as this, we are especially grateful.


-- SB / Bruce :cool: :cool: