> Patrick McConlogue, for all intents and purposes, did not "solve homelessness."
The result seems to echo the statements made by the project's biggest critics — not everyone wants to be saved. Fixing homelessness is a lot more complicated than everyone thinks.
If you try to help a homeless person, then you must also end all homelessness or accept that you're just a naive failure, apparently.
If you try to help a homeless person, then you must also end all homelessness or accept that you're just a naive failure, apparently.
Not at all. But when you (to some extent) and others (to a much, much greater extent) hold up a project or strategy as being a solution to a problem, it is important for the outcome to be publicized, whether that outcome is success or failure (or some of both).
This situation got a lot of attention when it started, so it needs just as much, if not more, attention now that it has (more or less) concluded. I recall there being a lot of implicit, and some explicit, suggestions that this sort of thing could "scale". Turns out it can't. That's an important piece of knowledge to have for the future.
Indeed, the experiment is very skewed because he only managed to make 10 grand because he was homeless and the whole story got publicized.
His app is fairly common, and without the "media story" around it he would probably have made a bit more than $20 over the same span of time. Just like most app developers.
Maybe black or homeless people only exist as symbols, and not people. This can't be about Patrick helping Leo, but has to be about society helping the abandoned.
I'm usually really critical about the tone-deafness when it comes to tech people and poverty, but I'm not sure what there is to criticize about a friendship between two people that has been so obviously mutually beneficial. Instead of being a symbol of middle-class people reaching out to marginal minorities without society bothering to strengthen the 'safety net' or attempting to mitigate the effects of racism in society, it can be a example of how intercultural friendships can greatly improve your quality of life.
But possibly he made this particular homeless man happier. Not being homeless is, in my opinion, a good goal, but it shouldn't be seen as an end unto itself.
The result seems to echo the statements made by the project's biggest critics — not everyone wants to be saved. Fixing homelessness is a lot more complicated than everyone thinks.
If you try to help a homeless person, then you must also end all homelessness or accept that you're just a naive failure, apparently.