I know of a writing service that works well for handicapped people (or single parents, etc) to make money flexibly. The service profitable and working for them helped me get off the street and back into housing.

They have no goal of "solving homelessness." They are just looking to be a successful writing service. People who sign up are 1099 contract workers. I am not the only homeless person who ever worked for them.

I am currently in the process of trying to figure out how to foster more of this locally. I would like to help people with the kinds of barriers to employment who are at high risk of homelessness to figure out how to make money online. I am going to public meetings and talking with folks. So far, I have been well received. It has not been a discouraging experience.

What I have to show so far from the little amount of time I have invested up to this point is a new website aimed at becoming a resource for Independent Digital Workers:

http://independentdigitalworkers.blogspot.com/

The cheap rental I currently live in that got me off the street is market based housing. It is a for profit thing. It is not part of some homeless services program or other charity. My landlord is making money off getting me off the street.

I have also applied for a job where I have proposed developing Independent Digital Workers further as part of that job. So I find myself sitting here wondering if there is any way to "take your bet."

If I get the job and some local organization pays me to help reduce homelessness locally, would that count in your eyes as profiting from my solutions? Or would you find some new excuse to simply be dismissive?

I suspect the answer is the latter. I am pretty appalled at hearing you say that some people don't have positive unit economics. Pronouncements like that tend to be self fulfilling prophecies. There are myriad ways to sabotage someone's efforts to make their life work and see to it that they are incapable of having positive unit economics.

People with such attitudes in online forums were the bane of my existence while I was homeless. They not only would not give me useful answers to my questions about "How does one make money online?" they also were contemptuous, dismissive and actively did what they could to undermine my efforts to figure out how to make money online. I firmly believe that if I had gotten genuine support instead of this nonsense, it would have taken me less time to build my online income and I would be in better shape financially.

If you are on Hackernews posting well written comments then I think you don't fall into this category of people who I would say have negative unit economics. But consider people with down's syndrome or severe mental disorders. Should we leave these people out to dry? I certainly don't think so. However, are they ever going to be able to contribute more to society than society contributes to them? Probably not. This might not be politically correct but I think the more we can accept reality the better we can do to improve it. There are no safety nets in the US, you are always a few disasters away from being homeless, this is a real problem that needs to be fixed, even if solving this problem costs more dollars than it generates.

Most people on the street do not fall into the categories you list here.

When I was homeless, my comments on the internet were full of typos and other problems. People dismissed me as a delusional lunatic. Etc.

If anything, I am absolute proof of how wrong you are, yet you will not acknowledge it.

My claim that there are solutions that can be both profitable and effective is not an assertion that we should abandon people with Down's Syndrome.

I think the best I can say is that you and I are talking past each other. That still doesn't make it a positive experience for me to have my ideas so completely dismissed, but I don't really expect that engaging you further will go anywhere good.