Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Used to Be Homeless

yahoo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 320 posts

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#131

Post by ryanmercer »

scabarott wrote: post #36
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…

Holy smoke, talk about reinforcing stereotypes about Indiana

> talk about reinforcing stereotypes about Indiana

Because I think the author is unfairly JUDGING people claiming they're 'judging' homeless people? I imagine most of the population of the United States has never had an interaction with someone they would describe as homeless.

Not everyone is judging people for being homeless, most just don't have context for actual homelesness. The bulk of their encounters are people hanging outside of gas stations "hey man, ran out of gas, laid off, kids and wife back in car, dog died, trying to get to dying grandma, could you spare 20$" or the people with a cardboard sign "homeless need money" working traffic lights day after day after day after day.

People judge what they see, most people don't see the kind of homelessness that downtown San Francisco has, or NYC has. Most of the country is suburban or rural.

What I'm saying in this thread is, the author seems to be incredibly myopic using his own limited experience as a way to judge others for judging.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#132

Post by gpm »

nkurz wrote: post #104
gpm wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How do you distinguish between A) unnecessarily spending millions of dollars on a single homeless person and B) spending millions of dollars to reduce the otherwise large homeless population to only one? The best approach is probably not to cut spending to zero and then wait to see what happens. But perhaps it's reasonable to cut spending by 10-25% and then monitor the results?

By distinguishing between funding to homeless people, and funding to at risk but still homed people? Also by making sure we are counting people correctly (if 10 people are all temporarily homeless at some point during the use of the funding, and then homed, we had 10 homeless people not 0).

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#133

Post by jaredklewis »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #101
jaredklewis wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have friends in Tokyo renting 1 bedrooms in the city center for $500 ~ $900 month. Those buildings were not built as affordable housing. They became affordable housing when other developers built newer, nicer buildings somewhere else in Tokyo. Older buildings had to lower prices to keep tenants coming. Unless there is a literally infinite supply of rich people, I don’t see how increasing supply cannot create more a…

How big is a Tokyo 1 bedroom renting for $500/month? Are you sure it isn’t a < 50sqm micro-studio with shared bathrooms?

Re the $500 per month friend; 1 kitchen/dining, bathroom, 1 separate bedroom, no living room. So nothing shared. Not sure the exact square meters, but it is very small.

The secret to the cheap price is simple: the building was built in the 1970s (ancient by Tokyo standards).

Edit: no need to take my word for it. A quick search on suumo.jp will show the abundance of Tokyo apartments available for under $900 (~¥100k).

Tokyo housing is very affordable.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#134

Post by technobabble »

nyghtly wrote: post #113
TallGuyShort wrote: post #76

Question for the author or anyone else with similar background: I've previously done a lot of work with homeless and poverty-stricken people, and one of my biggest remaining difficulties is people who won't accept help, or are offended when people only do little things to help. Part of that certainly could come from any drug or mental issue that contributed to their homelessness in the first place, but I'm sure it's…

When you say that they won't accept help, what do you mean? What did you try to offer that they didn't accept?

I can't speek for the parent poster. I don't feel comfortable giving money, so instead I offer to get them something at a local restaraunt, or try to give them some of my food if I have it on me.

In some (but not all) circumstances, I've been told to "f!ck off" and "suck a c!ck" becaue they want money, presumably for drugs/alcohol/etc.

Again this is my experience. Your mileage may vary.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#135

Post by jki275 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #112
jki275 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50 square meters would be very large for a 1 bedroom in Tokyo. My 3 bedroom two hours outside Tokyo was 85m^2 and cost around 2500/month.

Ya, they would be much smaller. Rents in Tokyo appear cheap, until you look at them on a square meter basis.

Never tried to rent in Tokyo, but I can imagine the prices are astronomical in any decent areas.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#136

Post by elliekelly »

PSZD wrote: post #64
elliekelly wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you live in a state with no income tax, work full-time at your minimum wage job, and live as you describe (which is homeless) your take home pay would only barely cover your $30/day budget. What happens when you get sick and have to miss a shift? Or need to see a doctor? What happens if your job is in New England where it's well below freezing at night for a significant portion of the year? It's disingenuous…

I live on less than 30/day (including rent) working a poorly paid manual labor part time job in a state with income tax. No, I don't own a car. Yes, I split housing costs with other people. > What happens when you get sick and have to miss a shift? As mandated by state law, I get paid for my normal hours. > It's disingenuous to perpetuate the notion that "discipline" is all that's needed to survive on minimum wage It…

>As mandated by sate law, I get paid for my normal hours.

Paid sick time is not mandated by law in most states. http://www.paidsickdays.org/research-resources/current-sick-...

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#137

Post by bryanlarsen »

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…

The divisor should be 7000 people + however many people are not homeless because of the money SF spends reducing homelessness. I certainly hope that's a number much larger than 7000.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#138

Post by troydavis »

For anyone who wants to better understand homelessness, check out Seattle’s 2018 survey: http://allhomekc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/FINALDRAFT-C...

The first section is a one-night count. Scroll past it to page 23 for the the survey results, which are incredibly informative. n=1056, margin of error +- 2.9%.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#139

Post by 2RTZZSro »

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…

The vast majority of that 300 million per year will go to bureaucrats for group meetings to discuss how to solve the homeless problem. San Francisco voters have no say in the matter and they are unable to influence change because these organizations are run by unelected bureaucrats. If you vote for another figurehead they will keep the same bureaucrats.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#140

Post by wolfgang42 »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #110
wolfgang42 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

This $40K doesn't include emergency medical services, private programs, federal & state programs. It's just the city budget for the homeless. Any project should have metrics to judge its success and a reasonable budget to accomplish the goal. If you were given a budget of nearly $300M for 7,500 homeless, how would you decrease the number of homeless? If you really think outliers take up the majority of the cost, how…

You have completely misunderstood my point: if I housed 7,498 homeless with a budget of $300M, leaving just two homeless people on the streets, I would have then spent $150M per homeless person. You also have to keep spending money on someone for some amount of time after they stop being homeless, to keep them from becoming homeless again.

I agree that metrics are useful, but using a terribly flawed metric just because it's the only one we have seems like a bad idea.

(I will not respond to your other points about budgets because I don't have any easy answers for them--this subject is not my main area of expertise. I will leave it to others who are more informed than I to provide actual statistics and actionable suggestions elsewhere in these comments.)

Post reply on HN