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How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness

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211–220 of 285 posts

Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness

#211
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not "false facts". We're interested in the change of the metric from year to year. Unless there are other factors gaming the statistics, the change over time is valid and useful.

> Unless there are other factors gaming the statistics Would you not consider people who gave up looking for work because they cannot find employment as unemployed?

No because I'm familiar with the definitions the BLS uses. There are plenty of technical definitions that contradict the laypersons gut understanding of something which is why they have published 6 (formerly 7) different measures of unemployment/underemployment for 40 years and have grappled with defining the terms for at least twice that long. There are dozens of shades of gray in the categories of "discouraged workers" and other people "marginally attached to the workforce" and in the practice of counting them, they had a hard time categorizing these people consistently which is where these definitions come from. Maybe familiarizing yourself with why these measures are used instead of pretending they don't exist or exist as part of some grand conspiracy is a better way forward.

Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness

#212
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing in that analysis that suggests that the reductions aren't real. Quoting in "The Data" portion: > Figure 2 shows that, measured by its point-in-time counts, Utah experienced a less dramatic, but still impressive 71 percent decrease in chronic homelessness since 2005. Yet should we trust even the point-in-time counts? Yes. If you want to challenge them, go out and do point in time counts rather than su…

They're not saying "reductions appeared during specific time periods, therefore they weren't real." Reductions appeared during specific years, and Utah also changed the way it measured chronic homelessness in those specific years, in ways that we'd expect to reduce measured chronic homelessness. Specifically: - in 2010, Utah stopped counting people in "transitional housing" as chronically homeless. - in 2015, the Sal…

But this is what the AEI does. It produces op-ed information dolled up to look like research. I personally believe that the motives of the "think"-tank AEI should be held up first and foremost when discussing 'articles' that they produce.

They have an end goal in mind: uphold or attack research to support conservative ideologies.

Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nevada has been caught shipping theirs to CA, so that's still shipping them to CA, just less directly.

Really? Do you have a reference?

Specifically, mentally ill homeless:

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-Nevada-reach-tenta...

Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness

#214
post #112
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> . The US has known for at least a decade that spending more on IRS agents would earn more money than it would cost. Isn't that proven to be a mostly false notion? Lower taxes tend to bring in more revenue and create more employment.

> Lower taxes tend to bring in more revenue and create more employment. Got some examples where this actually worked?

Tax haven countries that have no other economic drivers, but these are essentially parasitic economies and it wouldn't work in large countries.

Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness

#215
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn't worked for single payer healthcare yet. Nobody brings up that almost every other country's government pays less than the US.

If you're a wealthy person anywhere in the world and you have a really terrible disease you're probably going to come to the US to get care. Why? Because we have the highest quality healthcare in the world. There's a reason why there was some mild drama over Danny Williams (Premier of Canadian province) hopped the border to have heart surgery in the US. We're the best. What we lack is healthcare access for the poor.…

"We're the best for the 1%" != "We're the best", and it's incredibly disingenuous to argue that.

Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness

#216
post #42

The 'Housing First' model was really pushed hard by Stephen Harper as Prime Minister of Canada. It was weird because he is such a staunch right-wing kind of guy, yet here he was putting money towards what seems like a very left-wing socialist idea. But he, like Lloyd Pendleton in this article, apparently figured out that it saves a lot of money, ideology be damned. Maybe that's a good example of how to get right-wing…

Homelessness is a problem easily solved with political will. It is just like health care, we need to spend on prevention not recovery. There are lots of costs, including things like health care. [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/02/13/million-dollar-...] The hardest problem is preventing a mass migration of homeless once someone institutes a reasonable program. Additionally it is an issue that people generally don't care about. It doesn't resonate in polling compared to jobs and health care so no one invests any effort.

Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness

#217
This will sound hostile. It is not meant to.

Didn't we do the "housing first" thing decades ago? The Projects in the Bronx? Cabrini Green in Chicago? Now most of those places are torn down or being gentrified or are miserable black holes of chaos and crime.

It seems to me that it's really important that residents have some skin in the game, which may be the difference in the Utah program. It is also notable that the Mormon church has such deep involvement. Here in Seattle the Union Gospel Mission has been infinitely at dealing with homeless than the bureaucracy.

Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I'm done debating this with you. You seem to have an unfalisfiable belief that our mediocre health outcomes are due to problems in our general culture. In other words, all of the good outcomes are due to us having the highest quality healthcare, and all of the bad outcomes are due to culture. I disagree. I believe that a) our healthcare system is part of our general culture and b) deficiencies in our healthcare s…

US obesity rate: 36% Swedish obesity rate: 18% US life expectancy: 79 years Sweden life expectancy: 81 years It is falsifiable. When I talk about culture I'm talking about things like smoking rates, obesity rates, etc. These things are totally unrelated to whether or not you pay a copay to go to a doctor. If you think our relative life expectancy has nothing to do with our obesity rates, then I'm sorry but you just d…

It's weird that you're so fixated on obesity as the only driver of poor healthcare outcomes.

Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Do you have a reference?

Specifically, mentally ill homeless: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-Nevada-reach-tenta...

That's pretty funny because Nevada accused Utah of shipping their homeless there in the run up to the 2002 Olympics.

Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness

#220

I have no doubt that this program works, even if the success has been overstated [0]. What we really need to think critically about is how exportable the concept is. And really, it comes down to one singular reason, housing costs[1]. High housing costs like those in most coastal cities contribute to higher inflows into homelessness and lower outflows out of homelessness, which means that higher housing costs increase…

>High housing costs like those in most coastal cities contribute to higher inflows into homelessness and lower outflows out of homelessness

Citation needed. Because another reason the homeless migrate to these places is that they spend massive sums on homeless outreach, which draws people in from other areas.

I don't know what percentage of homelessness is due to either cause, but I don't see that you do either (not trying to be mean).

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