I don't know why we don't just have a single state where all homeless people can live. Where homeless people from all over can be bussed into. Where all homelessness resources can be directed. Where a majority of caseworkers can go, where lots and lots of housing can be built and no NIMBYs can complain. A state that is already basically this kind of place. Like West Virginia.
* Corporations would only ever hire there for cheap labor, if they hire there at all. Now these people are never going to escape poverty.
* The state would raise little tax revenue, and it will be easy for other states to reduce funding (and thus offering their own voters tax cuts). So no services there could be funded.
* The people there would be moved away from any remaining support network they do have. Again, this worsens poverty but also seriously hurts mental health.
* Why would the doctors, nurses, case workers, engineers, tradespeople and other non-homeless people your plan depends on move to a place being filled with the worst conditions and inevitably starved of funding?
* Likely many homeless people would not voluntarily join this program, so you're also going to require criminalizing vagrancy and forced relocation. This is a huge violation of their rights.
There's a reason homeless people aren't moving to West Virginia on their own.
I think this is a challenging concept for homeless as it becomes hard to re-integrate them into society and also it's a bit Gestapo sounding. I'm not sure homeless would opt-in, so we'd be plucking them off the streets and shipping them to camps? You can't seek assistance at a shelter/kitchen for fear of entrapment?
However, I have this same idea for how prisons could more value additive to society and those incarcerated. Especially, for non-violent offenders. Would need some guardrails, but I like to think it could be turned into a positive experience where inmates help each other build homes and small businesses, grow their own food, etc. If we eliminated most fiat currency and just provided some basic raw materials for building and perhaps some light manufacturing I could see it working. It'd be a wonderful outcome even if we just were able to reduce recidivism for this group. A dumb choice when you're 18, shouldn't put you on a path of a lifetime of gangs, crime, incarceration, etc. but that's how the current system works and it's very expensive to maintain for taxpayers not to mention the generational impact it has to the family.
