(1) and (2) form the sort of classical belief spectrum on the value of social-welfare programs. (2) just doesn't support these programs, for the reasons stated above. But (1), although supporting such programs generally, doesn't seem to support the kind of programs that would properly line up with their professed beliefs.
If the problem with a lot of homeless people is that they have "poor work ethic"... well, we've medicalized that, it's called ADHD and you can throw medications at it. But there are no social-welfare programs to get homeless people into psychiatrist's offices where they can be given free Vyvanse samples.
Instead, such programs seemingly only ever consist of 1. paying the homeless person's basic living costs—through free housing, or free meals; or 2. giving the homeless the opportunity to work and job skills training to potentially begin earn money for themselves.
Programs in the first category might indeed help people who are stuck in a temporary rut, and just need the details of "where food will come from" and "where they will sleep at night" handled for them until they escape it. People who are homeless because they are in the depths of a major depressive episode might find value in these, for example.
But the programs in the second category seem to serve nobody effectively. If you don't have any work ethic, teaching you how to do some particular job isn't going to make you start doing it; nor is lining up interviews; nor is even shoving you forcibly into employment.
The people who have some level of work-ethic escape homelessness eventually whether they receive any social assistance or not. The people who have a persistent lack of work-ethic will not escape homelessness no matter how many "free things"-style and "work opportunity"-style solutions you throw at them.
Those claims sound oddly more like what people on the (1) side of the argument claim, doesn't it? But this is the "steel-manned" version of (2): that people who fail to attempt to gain employment do not do so because they're irredeemably flawed; but rather because they need solutions to a work-ethic problem they're having, before any solutions to their poverty problem would have any potential to stick.
3) "This person is struggling, we can't help them in ways that are too paternalistic or agency-denying, because that will ultimately just end up harming them".
E.g. You wouldn't tell your child that his economic outcomes are completely unconnected to his own choices or work ethic.
If a kid has trouble at a task, we don't just tell them that the task is stacked against them and that they can do nothing to alleviate their failure. Telling a kid that over and over would border on child abuse.
Yet some people seem to think that telling the poor this overall - that they have no control, that their choices mean nothing, that the locus of control is 100% external to them - is somehow good. It's bizarre.
See also my other comment here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14590486
Your remarks are incredibly ignorant and are being downvoted because it is the sort of attitude that allows privileged peoples to wash their hands of dealing with very real systemic problems that are an excess burden for the people whose lives come so unraveled that they wind up homeless.
This is flatly, verifiably wrong, as well as reprehensibly paternalistic and self-indulgent.
And all this after I specifically talked about mental illness in my original post.
I don't disagree with some of your assertions that we should treat such people as if they have agency and can make choices. But your framing is incredibly hostile and in the vein of "We don't need to do anything for such people because they made these choices and did this to themselves."
No one makes choices in a vacuum and, currently, an awful lot of people have no good choices available to them. Blaming them so you can wash your hands of responsibility is rather ugly behavior. You don't personally have to do anything for someone like me, but posting comments on a forum where you are basically publically advocating that no one should do anything for them -- well, I feel pretty well entitled to rebut that. Feel free to do nothing and feel that my problems are all my fault and I am just not trying hard enough. But if you post that to HN, I can rebut it, and likely will if I see it.
1) "This person is struggling, and part of the problem is their work ethic and poor executive functioning."
and
2) "This is a moral failing and thus we can't help them too much, as they will take advantage of it."
I think some people automatically associate the second idea with people who express the first, when in reality they don't have to be tightly coupled. I personally think that (1) is a legitimate dynamic in some cases (I have no idea the exact extent).
On the other hand, (2), while touching on a worthwhile consideration (any help given should be effective, etc), frames things in an inflammatory and unproductive way, and on the net implies an inaccurate and harmful overly pessimistic sentiment.
Another huge reason for the trickiness is that the concept of "work ethic" is fairly nebulous and complex. For example, sometimes people can have a huge change in work ethic with a small change in perspective (of course, perspective changes are difficult in and of themselves) or environment.