rowing the boat

Some friends and I were talking today about the human services profession and whether or not our interventions matter. We all agreed that they matter on the individual level, helping that one person with their crisis alleviates that one person's suffering. But what about global suffering? Or influencing the people that are driving it?

J thinks it's a brilliant strategy. Get all of us bleeding hearters together and promise we can MAKE A DIFFERENCE. And then we go and spend our entire lives bailing out the ocean with a thimble and wonder why we are frustrated. We work and work and work and everyone is still homeless. For every one person housed another two walk in the door. So we work harder and more people still walk in the door. And one day we pull our head out of our asses and wonder what has happened, why NO DIFFERENCE HAS BEEN MADE.

This isn't me feeling sorry for myself. I think this sort of work is important on a human level, but it does give The Policy Smucks an excuse. As long as they keep allocating funding to treat the problem then we never have to actually solve the problem.

I often wonder what it would really cost to provide affordable housing to 90% of the homeless people in our country and I wonder if it would indeed be cheaper than supporting the thousands of service agencies that provide an array of services needed to treat homelessness from shelter to short term housing to food to free clinics to detox facilities to counseling agencies to vocational centers. Sure, some of those places would still need to exist, a house isn't a magic pill that makes all other issues disappear. But there have been studies on the costs of homelessness and about the high costs/utilization of these support services that might not need to exist should people have more stability.

So then I wonder what is in it for them. What would be the incentive to enable rather than solve. There can't be much of a sense of accomplishment, at least not akin to the one they (note how I pretend to think for them) should feel should homelessness cease to exist. Or maybe they just don't care. So it begs the question: what does keeping people homeless do for our country? What benefits exist by choosing to allow this to continue? Is it simply economic, that providing adequate resources isn't financially viable? (but don't tell me we couldn't pony up because bringing all that freedom to Iraq could have solved a host of domestic crises if that 12 billion a month price tag is accurate). And what about all the money we throw at managing the crisis rather than solving it?

I just can't fathom it. So instead I go back to a common notion that we need to keep people sick and tired and scared in order to have some measure of control over them. And if we control them they will not revolt or vote or change the system. But I acknowledge that I lead so far to the left that I see things diagonally so I welcome your thoughts on the matter. Because if we can get to the root of it it might help us learn where to start.