It's just like communism in that it entirely ignores the needs and capacity of an individual and makes them slaves to the idealism of the state.
They're no better than a homeless encampment because you can't give people a house and then expect them to act like a homeowner overnight. It was the wrong problem to solve, and I think people rush to solve it out of self conscious guilt and a desire to quickly make the apparent parts of the problem disappear from common view.
It's a cruel and ridiculous strategy.
I have found that many people who receive housing benefits are very poor stewards of their personal resources.
The first thing someone does when they get housed is to invite all their homeless friends over, to shower, to eat, to crash, to do drugs, to play games, whatever.
So your typical Section 8 housing recipient is not just a single person/family benefiting from housing, they're dragging in their entire circle of loser friends who don't have those benefits, and so now you've got a cluster of mooches who aren't invested nor responsible for disruption or damage in that community.
It's really an unfortunate thing, and I just saw it over and over again. So many people lose their benefits very quickly because they can't resist helping other folks out, but that's not what you do with welfare and entitlements.
hacker news really is the cryptocurrency of tech sites: incredibly poorly implemented (dang begs folks to log out when threads get popular), controlled by technofascists, enabled by an extremely mediocre but remarkably fanatical fanbase, and everybody’s abusing ~~amphetamines~~ nootropics. but any day now, they’ll come up with something that solves all of its problems! it’s only been 16 years!
why in fuck is tech like this