A study by USC and a San Francisco-based nonprofit has found that a $750 monthly stipend improves the lives of homeless people.
If 100 homeless people were given $750 per month for a year, no questions asked, what would they spend it on?
That question was at the core of a controlled study conducted by a San Francisco-based nonprofit and the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work.
The results were so promising that the researchers decided to publish results after only six months. The answer: food, 36.6%; housing, 19.5%; transportation, 12.7%; clothing, 11.5%; and healthcare, 6.2%, leaving only 13.6% uncategorized.
Those who got the stipend were less likely to be unsheltered after six months and able to meet more of their basic needs than a control group that got no money, and half as likely as the control group to have an episode of being unsheltered.
Studies that test obvious expectations are actually super important. Sometimes the results are not what you expect, and the rest of the time, you have a study to point to whenever someone tries to say there's no evidence of that outcome.
The problem is this is the umpteenth study in the US alone. We know it works. It's just a bunch of rich people crying because they'd lose leverage over their "workers".
Well, there is an opinion that homeless people would use all money for booze, tobacco and drugs, etc. A study like this helps to contradict such opinion.