If churches are going to be a tax free non-profit, we need to see ‘services done’ at roughly a similar order of magnitude as their receipts would allow. And no, a couple of cots is not the answer. Perhaps a small apartment building with 8 units that the church owns and operates, and provides permanent residency for a small local population of the unhoused.
Other wise I think they church should be disbanded and its organizers held liable for tax fraud.
Well I don’t think you should go trying to disband someone’s religion. In my area Churches usually donate people and money to organizations that help the homeless. I’ve worked in the soup kitchens serving hundreds
I mean if they’ve got the receipts of how the money is spent like any other non-profit has to provide, I have no issue with it. If they can’t provide the receipts, that’s a for-profit institution, and should be taxed as such.
By definition of non profit they should not be making profit
If I run a 501-3c (and I have), I have to provide what amounts to a complete budget of where my organizations income came from, where it went to, and how much was spent on things like overhead, office expenses, executive pay, travel, etc. My board is responsible for me getting those numbers right, otherwise we run afoul of the IRS.
Churches are not held to the same standard. A church is effectively granted tax free status on its receipts (income) and is not required to provide any charitable services as a product of those receipts. They are fundamentally different legal entities, however, I’m arguing that they shouldn’t be, and that churches and “faith based” institutions should be held to the same standards as any other charitable organization under the 501c3 definition of a non-profit.
If your church or faith based organization doesn’t exist to provide a charitable mission, then it shouldn’t be free from taxation (or it should not exist).
Churches don’t make money. That wouldn’t make any sense unless someone is embezzling
There are more empty homes in the US than homeless.
While churches taking extreme advantage of tax exemption is a concern, a concern that should be addressed, this situation pales in comparison to the hoarding, lobbying and zoning that goes into keeping the illusion that housing is a scarce resource up, and prices intentionally high.
You have no clue wtf you’re talking about
Ever lived near a significant homeless population?
some homeless people got there by making bad choices.
But, you know what I’ll say it, making a few bad choices shouldn’t convict you to a life on the street and being treated as subhuman by people around you
I agree.
But you also can’t help someone unless they want to be helped. There are people out there who will take every advantage of any resources available while making absolutely no effort to change the pattern of behavior that led them there.
Not only do I live pretty close to a tent city of homeless people, I’ve spent a lot of time in San Francisco interviewing homeless people there back when I was in high school working for the school paper.
You have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.
I too live near the San Francisco and know there is no linear answer. Odd how even in an anecdote we still corroborate that there are more factors to why homeless people cannot find housing. Odd. Does that mean we have confirmation bias? Or does that mean facts support our theories?
*Anecdote.
accidental double post
Motherfucker, I’ve been homeless a lot in my life and I live/work downtown, surrounded by all types of homeless.
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Want to know how I became homeless? I turned 18, and my parents said, “Alright have a nice life, you’re 18 now don’t be home when I get back.” After 18 years of teaching me zero life skills. Took me until my late 20s to find stability, meanwhile being constantly harassed by police for looking for a place to rest between time at school and work.
And before you go to the obvious speculation that lazy commenters always do. I didn’t and don’t drink alcohol, don’t do drugs, spent all of my time building computers. My parents just didn’t like having to spend money on someone that wasn’t them. I was always in advanced classes in school and most always was a solid B student even with zero home support. If it wasn’t for me winning the genetic lottery with my mind, I’d likely be dead or in prison like most of my childhood friends.
But you know, this is an anecdote and has no value in the vast scheme of things. Data driven results are all that matter, and yet, they still disagree with your lazy assessment that people are the source of their own situation. Believe it or not, these questions have been asked and answered, yet you remain unaware of them. The safety and support systems in the society you live in dictate homelessness, and I can tell you first hand, we have none in my country.
But that’s all the energy I can send to you, its not useful trying to teach chess to a pigeon, at the end of the day you’re going to spread your shit around and knock over the board anyway (a summary of your comments in this thread).
Hope you open your eyes and your mind some day.
Footnote, if anyone cares about the ending to the homeless part of my story, I became a home owner in my 30s after living in rented rooms with Craigslist randoms for about a decade. Interesting times, most people are great.
Mic drop.
Sometimes I feed the trolls.
Hope your belly is full.
But my story is what I said it was.
Pigeons do what pigeons do.No one reading this thread is surprised that 21 words is the limit of your cognition. I sincerely believe that you are doing your best.
I can’t even imagine someone being this tone-deaf, and yet, here we are.
A good friend of mine had the audacity to develop a chronic health condition in America. He should’ve known better.
It was cancer.
A lot of them have severe mental health issues
Most of these people got to where they are by choices.
Objectively false. Huge majorities of homeless individuals face chronic illness, disability, untreated mental illness, or have been abused.
The numbers vary, but most homeless people have a job and still can’t get housing due to overwhelming unaffordability, a factor which is manipulated against them by zoning laws and corporate ownership.
