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Bussed out: how America moves thousands of homeless people around the country

theguardian.com

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Re: Bussed out: how America moves thousands of homeless people around the country

#91

Post by lsc »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #34
jakelarkin wrote: post #16

this is the Nash Equilibrium type problem that exists with US federalism and extreme poverty. Cities just ship people around hoping to reduce their share of cost, while the homeless just become more physically sick or addicted, and mentally traumatized, so they become more costly to care for in aggregate over a lifetime. Everyone is worse off. It would be so much simpler, cheaper if society just got people back on th…

It would be so much simpler, cheaper if society just got people back on their feet as quickly as possible with focused care & rapid re-housing. I think everyone can agree that it would greatly benefit society to get "people back on their feet". But how? There's a virtually unlimited stream of drugs coming into this country. There are many people who have mental illness. In many places, The Rent Is Too Damn High. IMO…

>IMO solving this problem is by no means "simple".

I think providing people housing is simple. It's just expensive.

Re: Bussed out: how America moves thousands of homeless people around the country

#92

Post by Bahamut »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #89
briandear wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would rather someone else pay for your beliefs? The disproportionately rich already pay a disproportionate share of taxes. The top 1% earn 19% of the income but pay 35% of the taxes in the US. I’m not sure that’s fair. Rich people also create the jobs: if they pay more, they have less incentive to invest more which means fewer businesses being funded and fewer jobs.

I generally agree with you here, but as an aside there is one nuance you have to consider. And that's taxation vs disposable income. Imagine somebody earns $50k and spends $30k on their living expenses and pays a 30% tax rate. They have $20k left after their basic living expenses, but $15k of that is eaten up by taxes. Looking at their disposable income, they're paying a ridiculous tax rate of 75%. I think it's more…

There's more to it here - the wealthy generally are able to better play long games to further save more, better able to handle unexpected life events that could devastate the less prepared, and have better alignment with the government fighting/optimizing for their use cases.

There are a lot more reasons as to the exponential advantages the wealthy generally enjoy suggest that the wealthy should indeed get taxed more, but it's probably better suited for discussion elsewhere than HN.

Re: Bussed out: how America moves thousands of homeless people around the country

#93

Post by darawk »

fzeroracer wrote: post #45
darawk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The city that they reside in is effectively denying them care. The tickets are an excuse to push them out of the city so that they don't actually have to give them proper care. If they weren't being denied care for whatever reasons, then there wouldn't be a reason to bus them out to other cities, now would there? What? How is giving them a free ticket pushing them anywhere? They're not being forced to take it. > Th…

No, let's get one thing straight here. These situations occur when we encourage the movement of homeless or mentally ill populations between states because they don't want to bother fixing the core problem. As for the people in the Nevada case they were offered a choice by the hospital: They could be discharged early if they took a bus ticket to another state, and could leave even earlier if they had family/friends t…

> No, let's get one thing straight here. These situations occur when we encourage the movement of homeless or mentally ill populations between states because they don't want to bother fixing the core problem.

I think they, and I, would argue that a big part of the problem is that people become stuck in places that don't have opportunity or support networks for them. Helping them go to those places is an important step in fixing the problem in an organic way.

> As for the people in the Nevada case they were offered a choice by the hospital: They could be discharged early if they took a bus ticket to another state, and could leave even earlier if they had family/friends there. These were people given a choice, something that you mention as being incredibly important. Their autonomy was increased, was it not? They were not forced into taking the ticket.

I don't know the details of that case, but if they were said "hey you can leave early if you take this bus ticket", I see no problem with that.

> Of course they were coerced, naturally.

Erm, what? Where, exactly is the coercion? Here's the situation: I am walking down the street and come across a homeless man. I say "Hey man, if you need a bus ticket somewhere, i'd be happy to buy it for you". Where exactly does the coercion happen? Is buying someone a bus ticket that they ask for coercive when the state does it? Does that make food stamps coercion?

Re: Bussed out: how America moves thousands of homeless people around the country

#94

Post by darawk »

shard972 wrote: post #86
darawk wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's entirely incorrect. We track all of these layers in fact. No....it is entirely correct. The unemployment rate that was quoted was exactly as I described. I didn't say the other statistics weren't tracked , I said the statistic quoted above, and the thing commonly referred to as "the unemployment rate" does not count it.

Stop being obtuse, it's not like the first guy specifically said "The U3 unemployment rate". The point he was making though can be made even if the OP was referencing U3 which is if the fundamentals are looking better for employees (Which can be inferred from improving U3 numbers) then why are we seeing higher homelessness?

> Stop being obtuse, it's not like the first guy specifically said "The U3 unemployment rate".

Are you seriously trying to insist that he could possibly have meant anything other than U3? The common meaning of 'unemployment rate' is U3. Google 'current unemployment rate' right now, and Google will tell you 3.7. Aka U3.

> The point he was making though can be made even if the OP was referencing U3 which is if the fundamentals are looking better for employees (Which can be inferred from improving U3 numbers) then why are we seeing higher homelessness?

Because the population looking for work and the population falling into homelessness are not the same population! Which is exactly the point I was making about U3. There is a massive population that has left the workforce completely, many of them are subsisting on disability or some other unknown way. It is highly likely that those people are the ones primarily falling into homelessness.

Re: Bussed out: how America moves thousands of homeless people around the country

#95

Post by flyGuyOnTheSly »

briandear wrote: post #71
flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #50

>But he maintained the policy was justified to discourage abuse – a point echoed by his former deputy, Mike Tolbert, who said it was the only way to prevent the shelter from being used as a “travel agency”. Why not simply restrict the free travel ticket a second time? Instead of the basic necessities like food and shelter? Writing that out makes even less sense once you think it through, however. If the goal of the c…

So taxpayers just keep paying for tickets until the person figures things out? If they know it’s a one way ticket and returning could result in an arrest for vagrancy, that seems to be a pretty strong incentive to stay away. The Key West man in the story admitted that he didn’t think they were serious. Well, they were. I am not arguing other points of the story, only saying that as a taxpayer, unlimited free bus tick…

A lot of "homeless" people are actually "people suffering mental illness who haven't had adequate treatment".

It seems crazy to you to think that somebody giving you a free bus ticket out of town isn't serious about your not being able to return... but to a mentally ill human being it's not so cut and dry.

Re: Bussed out: how America moves thousands of homeless people around the country

#96

Post by jshevek »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #85
pound wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a little nit: while article says they lived in SF and !had homes! survey linked says they were just SF residents prior to becoming homeless (though it mentions that 49% of them were living in SF at least 10 years, but don't forget that ~65% of SF residents are renters). Residency usually just based on any bill with city address within last 30 days. I can easy imagine case when someone moved to SF with hope that…

There's an even bigger problem. There was no validation at all. It was based on self reporting which, in turn, was based on asking [ideally] random homeless individuals, and then extrapolating that outward. There is an incentive for individuals to lie here if they believe that 'native' homeless might be subject to preferential treatment, or if reporting 'native' homeless increases could result in more favorable incen…

Absolutely. Self reported data like this is nearly worthless in a serious discussion about policies and their consequences.

Re: Bussed out: how America moves thousands of homeless people around the country

#97

Post by [deleted] »

conanbatt wrote: post #67
michaelchisari wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a virtually unlimited stream of drugs coming into this country. There are many people who have mental illness. Anybody with a drug problem should be able to walk into a hospital, say "I'm addicted to X" and get into treatment immediately, free of charge. Anybody with a mental illness should be able to walk into a hospital, say "I can't take care of myself because X keeps happening in my brain" and get into tr…

> free of charge. I think you should understand what this really means. Are you willing to pay 10, 15% extra of your income to sustain 10~25k a month bills for mentally ill people?

[deleted]

Re: Bussed out: how America moves thousands of homeless people around the country

#98

Post by have_faith »

marmshallow wrote: post #90
losteric wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also seasonally relocate, heading south in the winter and spreading out in the summer. Seattle's transient homeless population is largely gone by mid-December

Well now it barely seems like we are talking about human people.

How would you prefer that sentence be written?

Re: Bussed out: how America moves thousands of homeless people around the country

#99

Post by TangoTrotFox »

Bahamut wrote: post #92
TangoTrotFox wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree with you here, but as an aside there is one nuance you have to consider. And that's taxation vs disposable income. Imagine somebody earns $50k and spends $30k on their living expenses and pays a 30% tax rate. They have $20k left after their basic living expenses, but $15k of that is eaten up by taxes. Looking at their disposable income, they're paying a ridiculous tax rate of 75%. I think it's more…

There's more to it here - the wealthy generally are able to better play long games to further save more, better able to handle unexpected life events that could devastate the less prepared, and have better alignment with the government fighting/optimizing for their use cases. There are a lot more reasons as to the exponential advantages the wealthy generally enjoy suggest that the wealthy should indeed get taxed more…

Sure, but I think this starts getting into ideology. I think people should be taxed rates that, in a vacuum, can be considered fair. I pay 15% of what I can, you pay 15% of what you can is about as fair as you can get. The reason I'm not fond of going beyond this is because you start getting into very subjective territory.

For instance while I agree with all you've said, excepting your conclusion, I'm sure you'd also agree that lower income individuals would also be much more likely to end up as the direct beneficiaries of where lots of government money goes to such medicaid/medicare and various social programs. Since these lower income individuals are going to be disproportionately more likely to utilize the benefits of these government programs, would it then not make more sense for them to shoulder a greater percent of the costs to account for this? I absolutely do not agree with this conclusion, but at the same time I also don't see any clear logical flaw in it.

So you can do an ideological tug of war, one way or the other, to no end on these issues. One ideology might have the wealthy give nearly all of their income away to help the rest of the population. The other end of ideology might have people give none away and rely entirely on market dynamics. I think a fixed and fair sum is one of the more reasonable ways to step outside of ideology and try to create a system that nobody really loves, but also nobody can create rational arguments suggesting is, in and of itself, unreasonably biased towards one group or another.

Re: Bussed out: how America moves thousands of homeless people around the country

#100

Post by abricot »

blondie9x wrote: post #87

Homelessness and lack of sufficient housing supply which drives the affordability problem is a national crisis. We need national solutions. We need to build more transit and more housing near that transit. We need to build denser and more towards the core. We need to not neglect the inner cities. America has the power to build better cities and solve this problem together. Affordability and skyrocketing rent costs wi…

Lack of housing is one reason, but don't think it is the only one.

In Denmark there is no reason for anyone to be homeless by purely economic reasons, but we still have about 6500 out of a pop. of 5.77M

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