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You could go a step further and ask why we don't just build cheap, temporary, no-cost housing for the same purpose. The answer is that we absolutely could (financially), we just choose not to (politically).
Our society has collectively decided that there is some acceptable number of preventable deaths due to lack of housing/food/medicine. Those in power choose not to address these problems, and those who would address them don't have the power.
It is actually worse. Homeless people remind us serfs what will happen to us if we are not obedient enough. The cruelty is on purpose.
It's not even that, society has joined the war against poverty, on the side of the rich against the poor. We hate the poor, we want them to be hurt. Thank Fox for that bullshit.
I don't think most people want to see poor people hurt, I think they're just apathetic, especially to problems that are far enough away to ignore. Raise my taxes to help someone a thousand miles away? Hell No! Donate to the local Salvation Army? Here's $20.
The poor have been demonized for 4 decades plus in rw media, and it's bled through to the controlled opposition long since. While many people you know might not openly endorse fucking the poor, that is neither here nor there. How do you not already know this?
I do actually think most people want to see poor people hurt, just in very passive detached ways.
They want poor people to not be allowed to have fun, to be forced into borderline slave labour, etc.
Because that would cost money, when it is more profitable to fine them for being homeless and then saddle them in debt after putting them in jail for not being able to pay the fine.
Because the prison industrial complex would like a word. Won't you think of the poor shareholders who wouldn't be paid for this free hotel service?
Also, if we're going to do that,.we may as well build actual shelters, give free mental healthcare, etc, and actually fix the problem
That's why the always raise taxes not bonds for new jails/prisons, That way the can keep reaping money forever, instead of come up with a way to fund themselves.
Aside from the other issues here, there's no guarantee that homeless people would use them. That's already an issue in some places where there is enough shelter for them but they choose not to use it for a variety of reasons.
This is a good example that a lot of people don't realize. Like for example, my uncle is a massive schizophrenic and has been homeless a couple of times. He repeatedly refuses to go to any type of shelter because he doesn't trust anyone there.
Then my cousin got into drugs and refuses to go to any type of shelter because of their strict no-drug policy. So he would rather be on the street than get help because when he's on the street he can at least get drugs. he would rather jump from friends place to friends place or sleep in a vehicle than try to better his life and use the shelter as a jump point.
Of course these are niche cases. I do think the majority of the people who are homeless would rather have it as a jump point or a place to get started. But there are definitely cases of people who aren't going to go regardless.
I worked homeless services for 10 years. Most homeless people are "normal" and get help and get off the street. The chronically homeless are like the people you described.
My feeling is that for both the substance users and the mentally ill the only thing that really works is being ready to help them when they finally are ready. Sometimes that happens in jail or the hospital. Sometimes they get fed up and want to try to change. Either way, forcing them to change doesn't really work.
In some areas, they do open up community service buildings for the homeless in times of severe cold and heat. However, I have never seen a jail or prison do it.
I couldn't imagine it would be worth the security risk since we're talking a building that's supposed to be pretty secure, and you can't just have people entering and leaving it willy-nilly. That requires upkeep costs and staffing to be able to control and that doesn't come free.
I guess they could convert visitation areas if it has it, but that's going to restrict actual prison operation. But it's not like they can just have them go in the empty cells because those cell blocks are still going to be inhabited by other prisoners. And they can't just have civilians wandering a secure facility like that.
Because fuck you that's why. Not you in particular. You asked why they don't, that's what they would say in private.
It is an unwritten social rule that prison is a place of punishment for transgression, and as such separate from the free population. Opening spare prison cells to free people in need of shelter (whether the unhoused, or paying tourists/seasonal labourers, or low-income tenants), with some residents having different privileges than others, would violate this separation and the symbolic significance of prison.
A similar policy would be to make housing double as a low-security prison: have the locks be configurable so that apartments can be reconfigured as cells. This would make it too easy to go between freedom and imprisonment, though: in a free society, this process is meant to have a lot of friction. Of course, there is currently due process meaning that your leaving-the-house privileges can’t be revoked summarily over, say, unpaid bills, though they are now a matter of policy and can be changed as such.
idk about your county jail but I'm pretty sure ours is either full, privatized in some way, or both.
There's no way a for-profit prison is giving away real estate for free. Instead they'll attempt to incentivize sending more people prison so they keep their cells full and are able to achieve that coveted capitalist "growth".