New study gave $7,500 to 50 unhoused people

sv1sjp@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 343 points –
fediscience.org

"They did not spend more money on alcohol or drugs, contrary to what people believe, and instead they spent the money on rent, food, housing, transit, furniture, a used car, clothes. It's entirely the opposite of what people think they're going to do with the money."

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I'm wondering what is the percentage of homeless that are addicts or have mental health issues. You seem to be confident they are outliers, but what is the percentage? Is it 1%? 25%? 50%?

Seems like a logical fallacy to me without knowing that stat.

"According to SAMHSA, 38% of homeless people abused alcohol while 26% abused other drugs." (These are overlapping statistics)

"Most research shows that around 1/3 of people who are homeless have problems with alcohol and/or drugs, and around 2/3 of these people have lifetime histories of drug or alcohol use disorders"

This means roughly 11% of homeless people started their abuse as a consequence of becoming homeless, while 22% of homeless people may have become homeless due to their substance abuse.

So you'd essentially be proposing that we don't help 78% of all homeless people because the other 22% of them would misuse the money.

And that's without even discussing the fact that many of those 22% could be rehabilitated if they're provide with appropriate healthcare on top of the monetary benefits

So you'd essentially be proposing that we don't help

Excuse me? I haven't proposed anything. I'm simply asking questions because the headline/description seemed misleading to me and not adequately conveying the full story/situation. Purely from a math/stats/logic point of view