When did homelessness become a problem?

That's interesting. The 1870s? Not what I expected. But the artificial intelligence never hesitates to provide a date when I ask for one.

You can click the Google snippet image to get to the source page. I recommend it: It could make you cry:

The HUD Rule on Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, authorized in 1968, was not published until 2016. Perhaps not surprising insofar as it took 50 years to issue the rule, enforcement of its provisions has been lackluster and inconsistent...

And then there is, um,

The Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 (P.L. 97-35) ... created the Housing Choice Voucher program, also known as the Section 8 program, to provide low-income housing through rental subsidies paid to the private sector. The “tenant-based” form of these rent subsidies, whereby families with a voucher choose and lease safe, decent, and affordable privately owned rental housing, is the mainstay of today's federal housing assistance programs for homeless and low-income individuals and families. The program serves more than 2.1 million households (Congressional Budget Office, 2015).

Okay, I need to go over this one. They provide "low-income housing" through "subsidies paid to the private sector." It's better than nothing, probably, if you are homeless. But it is not my idea of a solution to the problem. The fact that people are homeless does not mean "homelessness" is the problem. The problem, the real problem here, is that our economy generates homelessness. That's what needs to be fixed.

Bottom line: The Housing Choice Voucher program is just another way the government can give money to rich people.

Hey, I dunno, homelessness is not my specialty. I'm just reading the link. But if you want to fix the problem of homelessness, you don't do it by giving money to the people that own (and rent out) the homes. I understand that it helps the homeless. That's not the issue. The issue is that if you don't solve the problem that causes the increase in homelessness, there will be more and increasingly more people who need to take advantage of coping mechanisms like the "tenant-based" subsidies.

Coping mechanisms implemented as policy are not the way to solve the problem. They are a way to encourage the problem. In our policies you will find such encouragements in everything that is done to help those in need of help.

Republicans understand the principles of economics, but apply them only to improving the lot of the wealthy. Democrats are best understood as not understanding the principles of economics, and creating in policy only coping mechanisms that, on the surface, appease the concerns of recipients but in fact appease the greed of those who will be the lords of the manors when the next Dark Age comes.

Proofreading this post, I had to look up the Housing Choice Voucher thing. 

At the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: the Housing Choice Vouchers Fact Sheet. I quote:

What are housing choice vouchers?

The housing choice voucher program is the federal government's major program for assisting very low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled to afford decent, safe, and sanitary housing in the private market. Since housing assistance is provided on behalf of the family or individual, participants are able to find their own housing...

A family that is issued a housing voucher is responsible for finding a suitable housing unit of the family's choice where the owner agrees to rent under the program.

A housing subsidy is paid to the landlord directly by the PHA on behalf of the participating family...

Poor people get a place to live. Rich people get paid by the government for allowing it.

If the homelessness problem is that people don't have a place to live, then the Housing Choice Voucher program does help to solve the problem.

But if the homelessness problem is that a large and growing number of people don't have a place to live, then the Housing Choice Voucher program does nothing to solve the problem.

This is the typical solution, the kind everybody loves. Democrats love it because they get a place to live. Republicans love it because they get the money. That may be a crude way of putting things, but maybe you get the picture.