This statement might be true, but we're not taxing him. Should he just donate his money to the government?

Sure there are lots of failures to the way we govern ourselves. This shouldn't be a need. The reality is that it is a need and that person did what he could. Have you?

If every billionaire did this and ended homelessness perhaps they would have a point about their wealth hoarding. I won't be holding my breath for this to happen though. Tax the rich!

This is obviously way better, come on. Why involve middle men in something like this? Add more layers and it becomes less efficient. Less of the money goes to helping people and it gets spread around to different agencies, or even worse goes to government contractors who can charge ridiculous rates because they know someone and didn't have to compete for the contract. I worked at a place once where we got a couple hundred thousand dollars for a useless study because if the money didn't get used it would make their budget smaller for next year. That kind of thing happens all the time.

Absolutely. We don’t need kings making decisions like this. The downside is the difficulty in forcing government and the anti-help-anyone segment of our society to spend such taxation correctly to actually help people.

They didn't become billionaires by being charitable.

Quite the contrary. You CAN'T accumulate that much money except by exploiting others, creating issues like homelessness.

They're probably parking spaces. It doesn't look like a bad set up. Parking is behind your little studio apartment style trailer.

Not nearly enough? How many homeless people were in this guy's town?!

If you give a homeless person a home, then by definition, they are no longer homeless.

On a less pedantic note, yes, it should. Some countries (like mine) provide a secure place to live as step one, when helping the homeless. Having somewhere safe to sleep, keep your property, etc. makes all the other steps involved in solving your problems much easier, leading to a better success rate in getting people back on their feet.

My city does something like this as part of our homeless program and we're at "net-zero" homeless. It doesn't work on it's own, but the tiny homes give people a stable place to keep their stuff safe and the elements off their bodies, it gives them an address they can use for things like mail and applications, and it gives social workers a place to find them reliably. It's the start of a long process to help them back to their feet.

Here's one article about it.

https://macleans.ca/society/tiny-homes-fredericton/

I don't remember where I saw this the first time, but it did mention that this had become a thing in a few American cities too (this story was from Fredericton, Canada)

I used to live in a town that did something very similar to this. It sorta worked but mostly did not. But as another commenter pointed out you need more than just homes. Obviously they help a ton but a lot of people need more help than just a roof over their head. Financially, medically, mentally, employment... It's a bigger, more complicated problem.

But it goes without saying that this is a step in the right direction and absolutely better than collectively shrugging our shoulders and walking away.