adelz7 wrote:We need to engage the homeless and encourage employment. An easy job for them is to recycle! The government will provide them with big plastic bags and they must collect Aluminum cans or other recyclable items.
The homeless will get paid for this. After collecting 10 pounds, they get a gift of some kind.
Reward: A smile.
There's no need for government encouragement, as many homeless people already collect aluminum cans and scrap because the reward at the scrap yard is MONEY.
But the thing is people don't end up homeless because they lack encouragement and engagement. Right now there are simply more people out of work than jobs available. Our technology has made less need for people in a lot of blue collar jobs, which means if you worked all your life as a cashier and your supermarket laid off half the staff because of automated tellers, or you worked as a tax person at H&R block but then everyone started using TurboTax for their taxes, or you worked at some factory job but they all got exported to China... you might end up homeless if there is no family to take you in or social program to pay for you. It's a huge widespread problem. That's how the working class who WANT to work end up being homeless, there is also a lot of homeless people who simply can't work due to mental illness or drug addiction. Once upon a time they were able to live out their lives in state run mental hospitals, then in the 80's they were all shut down and the mentally ill people left to fend for themselves on the street. It's really unfortunate.