Homebase: providing homes by creating homeless citizens

Homebase is a program in New York city, United States. The program aims to ease the homelessness problems present in the city by providing families with the necessary tools and aid.

The video states how they use certain data to determine which individuals qualify to receive the program’s assistance. Nevertheles, when it comes to their data collection methods is when the ethical problems arise.

In word of experimental economist Esther Duflo, the program uses similar techniques as those of the drug testing industry. They do so by denying their assistance to certain subjects and then tracking them for two years checking if they become homeless or  not.

I personally applaud the initiative of the program to seek for solutions to the homeless problem. Nonetheless, I disagree with their methods which  I believe are unethical, since by denying assistance to certain people who truly need it they are contradicting  their entire mission and vision. Even though, data is necessary for an efficient allocation of the resources they have available to offer, the end doesn’t justify the means. Their mean is pushing people in need towards homelessness.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/12/social_science.