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.

I know many people who worked in the capital but lived outside of it and, since traffic makes it basically impossible to get into the city between 8 and 9am, they would arrive at ~7 and just nap for an hour or two in their cars. I can't, for the life of me, even fathom why that would be wrong in the eyes of a copper. Truly ACAB.

I often sleep in my car while traveling for work. It doesn't make sense to pay $100 plus, when I'm only going to be in it for 6 hours.

I ALWAYS park in a rest area or a truck stop, and I've never had an issue.

We have sunk to the point where living in your car is an acceptable living option, and the government would rather have that, than address the basic problem of housing affordability.

To exacerbate the issue, many communities and states are "banning" and criminalizing homelessness, arresting people for the crime of being so poor you can't afford any sort of roof.

The beatings will continue until we learn to enjoy it.

Paraphrasing a quote I head years ago: Americans will always do the right thing, after exhausting all other possibilities.

Don't call it a crisis, sell it as a new hip lifestyle on social media! #vanlife

yeah this is their solution. not the 'least worst stopgap while we build student affordable housing', this is it.

College costs are ridiculous.

Student loans are extortionate.

The ROI on the investment is shitty. IOW you get an expensive degree for a job field that doesn’t pay enough to pay for the degree and living expenses.

There’s a big social media anti-college push. Don’t know whether that’s politically motivated/propaganda, just get rich being a tiktokker or something, or a combination of that and all of the above.

They already do. Paid parking is a thing in pretty much every city in America. In many places, parking lots are wildly profitable. Each parking spot can often earn upwards of $50 per hour during surges.

Paid parking lots in Dallas average somewhere around $8 per hour. That’s with some people paying like $30 for three hours, or $60 for all-day parking. Assuming a ~50% occupancy (busy during the day, emptier overnight) will have a 100 spot lot taking home around $9600 per day.

That’s a number that many coffee shops and convenience stores could only dream of… And the lot doesn’t even need to worry about things like maintaining inventory or hiring cashiers. Their overhead costs are basically nonexistent. They just plop a sign with a QR code at the entrance for people with Apple/Google Pay, and have an automated card reader for the people who don’t have phones. A pair of minimum wage attendants can watch multiple lots in a few city blocks, golf carting between them every ~20 minutes as they make the rounds to scan license plates and make sure people are paid up. Maybe give the attendant who calls in the most tows an extra vacation day each quarter to keep them “motivated”.

Security cameras make limiting your security liability easy. Hell, in many cases tow truck companies will even pay the owner to be allowed to tow from their lots. Because the tow company makes money every single time they snag a car, so they’ll pay a percentage of that to be allowed to tow cars from their lots. So towing enforcement actually makes you money instead of being an expense.

They already do this? Where do you live with free parking?

A parking spot makes more than I do...

Honestly, a Japanese-style capsule hotel and net cafe would probably do very well in a university environment.

Granted, that's still charging people for homelessness, which doesn't help any of the underlying problems. It's just slightly less dystopian since it's cheap.

I mean yeah, the poverty line is unrealistically low. It’s tied to the average annual price of food, even though food is not a major expense in most impoverished households. Truly broke people are spending like five dollars a day on food, with beans, rice, lentils, bouillon, spices, and whatever else they happen to have available/find on sale in a 20 year old crockpot. Food is a negligible expense when you take the time to prep, and truly impoverished people don’t have a choice. They’re forced to prep, or else they’ll starve.

The other costs, like rent, car payments, utilities, etc., have all massively ballooned in comparison to the price of food. Rent only used to account for ~20% of expenses, but now it often accounts for over 50%… But since the poverty line is tied directly to food, it hasn’t adjusted to maintain a realistic measure of expenses.