There is a stark need to look at alternatives to the real estate market and to revisit and renew public funding for co-op housing, co-housing, community land trusts, supportive housing for people in need, and affordable social housing. If we had a participatory approach to a National Housing Strategy, instead of a top-down one, we could encourage experimentation with non-profit models. We could promote housing alternatives and make NHS funds available for community initiatives. We could strive for true public ownership of social housing, while making housing management democratic and community-based.

Neoliberalism has taken such a hold on our governments that true solutions are not even considered. “Public funding”, “social housing” and “non-profit” are all treated as dirty words. We absolutely need publicly owned social housing, and a lot of it. Nothing else will make a real dent in the problem.

“Where are we supposed to go?” This kind of question, carefully considered, does a good job of exposing the problem people face and with our response to homelessness. We are all born involuntarily into this world, into a country, and we are told that almost everything around us already belongs to someone else. If you can’t afford those things, well too bad for you. Those that were here before you have ensured there are laws to stop you from simply walking into a field and setting up shelter. How can we justify telling someone without economic means, who didn’t ask to be here, that they must forgo what would otherwise be natural? To forgo establishing shelter and a permanent home? If society and the government that represents it are going to restrict self- sufficiency in doing what is natural to us in this case, I feel the government then has an obligation to provide other options. Where else are people supposed to go?