According to these stats Poland has 41% as much homelessness as US.

The way to prevent addiction is to help people before they get addicted (and/or become homeless).

What caused the opioid crisis? Doctors prescribing opioids for no good reason. Why wasn't it happening in EU? Because in EU doctors are paid and controlled by the taxpayers not by the industry. And because in EU doctors have free public education so they aren't 100 000 dollars in debt when they graduate.

Ok but opioids is one way people get addicted/homeless. Another is that they get sick and don't have coverage. Again - in a sane country they get public healthcare so they don't have to default and lose everything - so they have no reason to get addicted.

How about mental sickness? Early childhood is very important. Most EU countries have 6 months or more of mandatory paid maternity leave. On top of 20+ days of paid vacations yearly and unlimited paid health leave. Mandated by the state for all employees. If you don't take them - your company gets fined. HR people force you to take the days off.

Do you see how that would prevent a lot of mental illness/addiction/homelessness?

You can go through most problems in the US, and ultimately they are caused by the insane labour laws, healthcare, or education system.

And the funniest part is - you make all these sacrifices by not having a civilized welfare state, and you still end up paying more for healthcare (yes, including the taxes) and living shorter than people in the EU. You get addictions, homelessness, crime, shorter life spans, AND you pay more :)

I'm from Poland. Homelessness is not solved maybe, but it's nowhere near to the level of US.

The solution seems to be public healthcare, education, transport, safety net and cheap housing.

Addiction and mental illness are excuses. Eastern Europe has more mental ilness (generational trauma from WW2 is still alive) and alcoholism than US and yet it has less homeless people.

In early 90s my parents were earning 20 USD per month each. It was about average. There were still almost no homeless people.

It's a solved problem.

> The left love to imagine that homeless people are just down-on-their-luck people who just missed out on a mortgage payment or a rent payment.

> No. They are 98% drug addicts or mentally ill people.

Drug addicts and mentally ill people can be down-on-their luck. That somebody is mentally ill or have an addiction does not mean that society should discard them.

BTW addiction is very rarely the root cause of a wasted life. It's usually a failed coping strategy.

> It's well known that the money that gets given out attract more homeless people.

Homeless people are not infinite resource. You can solve homelessness on the country level, not only on the state level, and then it doesn't matter which state attracts more homeless people - because there's very few of them in the whole country.

> It's insane that left-wing governments think that spending MORE money will solve the problem when in fact it is the cause of the problem.

Poor countries in Eastern Europe does not have this problem. Maybe instead of pretending US is the whole world and if it can't deal with something - it's impossible to deal with it - try to listen to what people did elsewhere?

> but then, for example, an oppressive government can (physically) take over a subversive website and punish everyone who accesses it.

Already happens. Oppressive governments already punish people for visiting "wrong" websites. They already censor internet.

There are no technological solutions to coordination problems. Ultimately, no matter what you invent, it's politics that will decide how it's used and by whom.