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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

#121

Post by michaelchisari »

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?

Are you willing to pay 10, 15% extra of your income

Without hesitation. I want to live in a healthier America.

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

#122

Post by darkarmani »

briandear wrote: post #76
tjr225 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I would rather that the disproportionately rich pay for it, however.

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.

Are you talking about wealth or income?

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

#123

Post by Broken_Hippo »

glangdale wrote: post #101
adventured wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've found one partial solution to homelessness that works extremely effectively. It was enacted during the George W. Bush Administration, and continued + expanded under the Obama Administration, called the housing first program. We put homeless people into permanent housing, taking care of their shelter needs first, and then focus on treating them for things like addiction. It reduced chronic homelessness by 30% in…

Seriously this . What a lot of people don't grasp is that the sort of things that 'housing first' can (fairly expensively) help with are things that are even more expensive if the situations wind up being treated by mechanisms like hospitals, the mental health system or the police or jail/prison systems as crises. Getting people into houses and then helping them clean up their acts, rather than setting a high moral b…

Getting people into houses and then helping them clean up their acts, rather than setting a high moral bar (we won't house you until you clean up your alcohol/drug addiction and take treatment for your mental health issues) is just plain good sense.

I've always thought the "clean up then get help" seemed cruel and from a position of ignorance. I couldn't imagine being homeless and having to clean up to get a dry place to sleep or food to eat. Sobriety would just add another layer of misery: Withdrawal from any substance would add even more layers.

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

#124

Post by Kalium »

evanlivingston wrote: post #110
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #109

How much of homelessness is a result of laws hampering construction, such as zoning laws, building restrictions, rent control, which lead to housing costs significantly higher than what a free market would provide?

I think not a lot.

Some portion of the people experiencing homelessness is due to their being unable to afford housing in the city of their choice. Certainly, being unable to afford housing isn't helping anyone. But, as you so correctly note, it's almost certainly not the dominant factor.

With that said, there's some room for subtlety around land-use questions. For instance, land-use regulation can make it very difficult to build a shelter or a mental health treatment center. When the infrastructure to get people off the streets cannot be built, the most vulnerable among us will tend to stay where they are.

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

#125

Post by yayana »

darawk wrote: post #115
yayana wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rule of having a place to stay in most of the programs causes the counter examples in the article.

Yep, but that still doesn't support the grandparent's point.

Then I'm not sure we are talking about the same things.

Everything in the article and this thread seems consistent with these programs actively running for rich coastal cities to return people or send them to places where their friends have space to spare.. That doesn't sound like Manhattan.

A convergence on rich cities getting more people is a possibility.. But the richer cities are setting precedents, have actual budgets for these things and regulations tend only to increase.

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

#126

Post by conanbatt »

FiveSquared wrote: post #119
conanbatt wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but at the same time I also don't see any clear logical flaw in it. Great example! And I agree. The example you give is one of the reasons I have with progressive taxation, by the definition of %. Someone with 1,000,000 income and someone with 30,000 paying the same rate, the richer pays a lot more than he will use from the state. So in effect, a flat-tax rate is most likely already progressive. I am in favor of a…

But what about the extremely poor?

Aid that comes equally from the rest out of the flat 15%.

Its a different system one where the top 90% each cheap in to help the distressed 10%, another one where the top 10 give to the top 20, the top 20 to the top 30, etc.

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

#127

Post by darawk »

yayana wrote: post #125
darawk wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, but that still doesn't support the grandparent's point.

Then I'm not sure we are talking about the same things. Everything in the article and this thread seems consistent with these programs actively running for rich coastal cities to return people or send them to places where their friends have space to spare.. That doesn't sound like Manhattan. A convergence on rich cities getting more people is a possibility.. But the richer cities are setting precedents, have actual b…

> Everything in the article and this thread seems consistent with these programs actively running for rich coastal cities to return people or send them to places where their friends have space to spare.. That doesn't sound like Manhattan.

It seems just as likely to be a rich coastal city as anywhere else, tbh. The article makes a point of saying that they only do the most cursory of checks anyway, so we can basically assume they're meaningless.

> A convergence on rich cities getting more people is a possibility.. But the richer cities are setting precedents, have actual budgets for these things and regulations tend only to increase.

It's certainly a possibility. But I don't know if you live in a rich coastal city, but I do, and the homeless problem here is out of control. The homeless population in rich coastal cities is empirically growing very quickly, and it is not growing in the same way in other places, consistent with net migration of homeless into rich coastal areas, not the other way around.

These bussing policies have been in place for a while, and there is no epidemic of homeless leaving SF and setting up shop in Des Moines. So while it may theoretically be possible for this to increase flow in the way you describe, despite the policies being in place for a good while, that is empirically not what is happening.

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

#128

Post by Ibethewalrus »

Ibethewalrus wrote: post #72
staticautomatic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They seem to just be relocating to other parts of the city as formerly homeless-heavy areas like parts of SOMA and the mission "gentrify." I walk through the loin twice a day on my way to my office on market st near the post-apocalyptic parts of SOMA and see a higher concentration of homeless in those areas than I used to. Perhaps you're revisiting the parts they've left or my un-scientific observations are wrong.

Ahh the Loin...

Just noticed the downvotes my comment got. To clarify: I lived there and loved every minute.
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