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I Used to Be Homeless

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Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#81

Post by dsfyu404ed »

codydh wrote: post #53
megaman8 wrote: post #48

To live in, In SF. your choices are a 1.5 million dollar condo or a 50$ dollar tent. Seriously people, we need to allow for more choices than that. I'm sure builders and entrepreneurs would line up around the block to build solutions that are cheaper and more cost effective, but you first have to make it legal (get rid of the mountains of regulations and zoning headaches that make this problem so insurmountable), wit…

The cost of your "regulation free zone" will likely be measured in human lives. Does that seem like an acceptable risk?

It's possible that innovations established in the the area that is absent of regulation may save lives, possibly more lives than would be saved by applying the preexisting regulation to that area.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#82

Post by toasterlovin »

yters wrote: post #3

I wonder if the high minimum wage makes it harder to employ people who tend to be homeless. I ask because I see many young people homeless these days, and it isn't clear why they are homeless.

> I ask because I see many young people homeless these days, and it isn't clear why they are homeless.

The people you see on the street have drug abuse and mental health issues.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#83

Post by gpm »

wolfgang42 wrote: post #49
dumbfoundded wrote: post #37

In San Francisco, nearly $40K is spent per homeless person. How much money do we need to spend and how should we spend it?

Measuring "dollars per homeless person" is, IMO, worse than useless. The problem is that the better you do the job, the worse the number looks. If you manage to house all but 1 person, suddenly it rockets into millions of dollars per remaining homeless person!

If there's one homeless person and you're spending millions of dollars on them, perhaps you should stop?

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#84

Post by nradov »

ska wrote: post #74
deckar01 wrote: post #70

> I was overqualified for most minimum wage jobs. The author lost me here. I have taken jobs way below my expectations to make ends meet. I got startlingly close to not making rent, but I took a job that barely got me by and rode it out until I was able to move to a company that understood the value of my experience.

The author may just have meant that he was rejected from such jobs due to being honest about his education when asked, which is a fairly common practice.

There's nothing dishonest about omitting irrelevant qualifications and experience from a job application.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#85

Post by Aloha »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #75
sam0x17 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are often turned away for being overqualified at such jobs.

So go through a temp agency. They don't care how over-qualified you are. You're just another body on their call list. If they don't like you they won't call you with any work. Edit: I worked for temp agencies for through college. At the time I probably would have been more useful to them automating some parts of their workflow. They stored everything in spreadsheets but manually copy pasting everything around for the…

Even temp agencies will not take you for the same reasons often - you're too qualified for an entry level role, but no one will hire you because of a lack of recent experience - the min wage, and temp places dont want you, because they assume you will leave as soon as you find a better role.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#86

Post by mabbo »

diablerouge wrote: post #59
megaman8 wrote: post #48

To live in, In SF. your choices are a 1.5 million dollar condo or a 50$ dollar tent. Seriously people, we need to allow for more choices than that. I'm sure builders and entrepreneurs would line up around the block to build solutions that are cheaper and more cost effective, but you first have to make it legal (get rid of the mountains of regulations and zoning headaches that make this problem so insurmountable), wit…

I think you're underestimating the real estate market. A significant reason new developments cost so much is that the land they are built upon costs so much. For example, in Portland Oregon, where I live, most new developments are being built on expensive real estate in central areas. As a result the apartments built there, even if they aren't particularly nice, end up going for high amounts. This is due to non-physi…

> the land they are built upon costs so much

The land costs so much because so many people want it. So many people want it because they want a place to live. If you build up, you provide places to live with less land, reducing demand on lane. It doesn't matter if it's high value condos being built, you're still providing an increase in the housing supply, which reduces prices for the entire market. If the high end market gets more supply, prices fall there, allowing more people access to that market- which reduces demand in the next-lowest band of prices, repeating the process.

I'm desperately trying to find the article I read on it but Portland is actually a shining example of this working. (Someone tell me I didn't make that story up in my head, because I swear I saw it here!). Portland allowed high end condos to go up and low-end rentals went down in price.

The problem is that NIMBYs elect politicians who won't allow real development, because they want their houses to be "investments". But you can't have housing be a "good investment" vs the market, with prices of housing constantly increasing faster than inflation, while also having your children buy houses at the same price (inflation adjusted) that you did.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#87

Post by alistairSH »

megaman8 wrote: post #79
closeparen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may work when the concentration is low. I’d estimate 15-20 homeless people on the daily walk between my front door in SOMA and the Muni Metro. Often in relatively dense tent encampments. I’d feel pretty weird giving to one and not the others on the same block. Especially since it’s probably the same people day in and day out. It’d take some serious preparation before going out the door to pack enough for everyon…

SF just passed 300 million/year measure that's supposed to help the homeless and that's in addition to the 240 million/year of funding that's already there. Both of those combined exceeds the budgets of most cities. First I would say, let's figure out how to use that money so that it's actually working. 540 million/year is enough to give the 7000 homeless in SF 77,000$ per year. Let's put that to good use and make su…

Are those numbers correct? If so, that's insane. For $77k/year, SF should be able to house every single one of them with money to spare.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#88

Post by ryanmercer »

DarkTree wrote: post #34
ryanmercer wrote: post #22

>You can start by not judging the homeless. Instead of flying out the gate accusing people of judging homeless, consider this: Not everywhere is like San Francisco where you have actual homeless people living in tent/tarp hovels on sidewalks in busy neighborhoods, come to downtown Indy and many of the 'homeless' people you find randomly around are absolutely not homeless and simply know they can make much easier mone…

> If there isn't a big event downtown, or it's a slow bar/restaurant night, you'll notice there's considerably fewer of them. If the weather is harsh, you'll notice there's considerably fewer of them. You observe this and the conclusion you make is that, 'many of the 'homeless' people are absolutely not homeless and simply know they can make much easier money off of people coming/going from bars and restaurants.' or…

>You observe this and the conclusion you make is that, 'many of the 'homeless' people are absolutely not homeless and simply know they can make much easier money off of people coming/going from bars and restaurants.'

The homeless population in Indianapolis congregates around the homeless shelters, not around businesses where police will tell them to keep it moving. As such most people here never witness the real homeless, where San Francisco you have tents alongside billion dollar businesses and police walking around people asleep on the sidewalk.

My point is, this article is shaming people for 'judging homeless' and that in some cities, the visible 'homeless' are often not homeless and are in fact con artists.

"Hey how dare you judge someone" well, when the ones many people are exposed to are scammers and not legit you get conditioned to be extremely wary of any person presenting as homeless.

Again, we passed a LAW here to discourage these scammers from making money by making it a crime to panhandle at intersections https://www.wthr.com/article/panhandling-law-loophole-lets-r...

And they are working on legislation to go after the panhandling downtown as well https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2018/09/14/indy...

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#89

Post by deckar01 »

ska wrote: post #74
deckar01 wrote: post #70

> I was overqualified for most minimum wage jobs. The author lost me here. I have taken jobs way below my expectations to make ends meet. I got startlingly close to not making rent, but I took a job that barely got me by and rode it out until I was able to move to a company that understood the value of my experience.

The author may just have meant that he was rejected from such jobs due to being honest about his education when asked, which is a fairly common practice.

I omit irrelevant info from my resume to taylor it towards it's intended audience. I would downplay and even flat out lie to an employer to avoid becoming homeless.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#90

Post by dumbfoundded »

bluetidepro wrote: post #39
dumbfoundded wrote: post #37

In San Francisco, nearly $40K is spent per homeless person. How much money do we need to spend and how should we spend it?

Where did you get that stat? Not debating it, just curious about this data and what else it has.

The budget is ~$270M: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-incre...

The number of homeless people is around 7,500.

This also doesn't include medical emergency services, private organizations, federal & state programs and many other sources of money. This is just the budget for the city program.

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