Comment by tetrakhan

As others have pointed out, the title is misleading. If they gave money directly out, I have zero doubt it'd end up in heroin dealers hands. I live in east London but still pretty central and I would say almost all the homeless here are junkies, almost without exception. I know this because you see them near big supermarkets begging but I happen to live right next to an estate where I see almost every single one of them coming to pick up. The dealing also just happens more or less in plain site as well. The police and everyone around are well aware of it but nothing gets done to prevent it.

Homelessness is a massive issue in the UK and I hope the test outlined in the article gives us some answers as to how to tackle it. However, I'm skeptical that even paying for essentials and housing will work at this point. I think it's almost impossible to detach from the reality that a huge portion, if not the overwhelming majority have also become pretty severe junkies. I'm not saying this as someone totally unsympathetic to the affliction, my best friend also fell down that rabbit hole but addressing the homelessness aspect without addressing the addictions that result from being homeless or lead it feels like a recipe for not solving the problem.

I really hope I'm wrong and this works, it's insane that first world countries like the UK have these massive problems with homelessness, there are enough resources around to solve these problems, they just aren't distributed evenly and the support systems of this country have been in a state of ongoing collapse since 2008 and the austerity and chaos that followed