Not sure why you'd think OP is saying 1 church per town. Just that there are ~380k churches in the United States, and less than twice as many homeless people.
I agree, far too many people are left out in the cold at night when we have many public, climate-controlled buildings with working bathrooms and possibly even showers that are empty after a certain hour. If the homeless were able to regularly get a good night's sleep and a shower in, they might be more able to hold down jobs and become contributing members of society again.
Schools certainly would be great as a shelter after hours, most have gyms with showers, possibly laundry machines, and certainly ample space for someone to sleep with a sleeping bag. If we could just figure out a way to make sure everything stays clean for students to use the next day, no left-behind drugs, no vandalism, etc. that could be a wonderful solution.
My guess is that in most places the homeless population would easily fit within the gymnasium alone.
lemming934@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
I think OP believes every town in the US has twice as many homeless people as churches, it doesnt need to be exactly 1 church and 2 homeless people.
But either way, that’s probably not true. Since homeless people tend to be in larger cities.
But then again, lots of people become homless in the suburbs and then move to the city to get the social services. If churches in the suburbs housed a few people as they become homeless, it would probably help. It’s better to keep people in their communities so they have a better chance of returning to housefullness.
But probably not that much, since homelessness rates are strongly correlated with housing prices, so expensive cities create more homelessness than cheap suburbs.