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The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

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Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#121

Post by DoreenMichele »

51lver wrote: post #109
DoreenMichele wrote: post #44

I fairly often comment on the topic of homelessness. I am routinely told on HN that the high cost of housing is unrelated to the rise in homelessness. This article states otherwise and I quoted it here: https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-clear-c... Some things I routinely talk about: This country tore down up to 80 percent of SROs over the course of a couple of decades, probably because the Baby Boo…

Maybe they should call it something more real like "Rent you can afford with two weeks of minimum wage work".

I have no idea. But I welcome suggestions, no matter how silly sounding, as a means to help me mentally sort this out. So thank you for replying.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#122

Post by EpicEng »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #116
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the other problem is that the more one city spends to "fix" its homeless problems, the more other areas ship their homeless to these cities with more resources. It's certainly the case in Texas, where many smaller cities and rural areas give homeless people a one-way bus ticket to Austin, Dallas or San Antonio.

Why is it a problem when poor people want to move in but not rich people? Does some homeless dude from Boise degrade Austin any more or less than some programmer from SF? Both are seeking what they think is a going to be a better life. Both are ever so slightly changing the character of their destination by showing up.

>Why is it a problem when poor people want to move in but not rich people?

Because they are a drain on the local economy, often have mental and/or substance abuse issues, and live outside. Is that a real question? You can't honestly protray most homeless people as free spirits painting on the sidewalk and "living their best life".

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#123

Post by majormajor »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #84
crooked-v wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> suddenly we get very "every person for themselves" the second homelessness has a price tag. A confounding factor involved here is that many government strategies for dealing with the homeless are endless money pits without noticeable results. I think a lot of people would be more comfortable with their tax dollars going to that purpose if they didn't feel like nothing was actually happening from it.

I think the other problem is that the more one city spends to "fix" its homeless problems, the more other areas ship their homeless to these cities with more resources. It's certainly the case in Texas, where many smaller cities and rural areas give homeless people a one-way bus ticket to Austin, Dallas or San Antonio.

Homelessness has recently risen rapidly in cities where the cost of rent has also recently risen rapidly.

So is it that other cities are suddenly shipping over way more people, or is it a predominantly local problem caused by rapidly rising rent that can no longer be afforded?

We have cities where existing residents can no longer afford housing that are actively seeking to attract more business to move in, and with that create more competition for housing and higher population. You can't fix the results of housing cost inflation if you keep the upward pressure on the cost - you just will be spending more of your money chasing the upwardly-moving property prices your other policies are causing!

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#124

Post by _ah »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #46
sharkweek wrote: post #9

Long-time Seattle resident here who volunteered for several years in the homeless community. Homelessness has always been a thing in Seattle, but has definitely become a much larger issue in the past five years. I'll spare my thoughts on any number of reasons as to why we got here as a city, but will say I think we are doing a terrible disservice to actually finding a solution by lumping "anyone who doesn't have a ho…

There's some merit to this but I'd say it's still a little off the mark. Homelessness is a condition, how people got there is one thing, the main tools to "fix it" are fairly straightforward: give people housing. Dealing with everything else (mental health issues, drug addiction, etc.) can be dealt with separately, and will be vastly easier without having the fundamental problem of homelessness.

I disagree. The inability or unwillingness to provide for one's self is the condition, and there are many constraints which may force a person into that condition. Homelessness is a side effect and consequence of the condition.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#125

Post by harlanji »

Alex63 wrote: post #104
spookthesunset wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> endless money pits The reason they are money pits is because they aren't something that will be solved by a city or even a state. Any attempt to solve the problem locally in a "humane" way has a high risk of just attracting more folks in the same circumstance to the area. The most effective way for a city or state to "solve" the local homeless problem is to simply pay for one-way bus tickets to somewhere else. But…

I'd be interested to hear how homelessness can be meaningfully addressed in a humane way by the federal government (especially if it is constitutional).

I’ve been in SF for about 7 years and became homeless in June. The #1 thing that helps me is cash in my pocket, from day labor (odd jobs) and boosters from family and friends who know I’m not a drug addict/alcoholic. Obviously the latter can’t be offered by a gov because it would be abused, but work for cash saved my life. IME cash in hand is the biggest help.

#2 by far is bathroom access... followed by water and food. Anything beyond that feels too permanent for a healthy able bodied person.

The way people treat me when showered is night and day. And then going to places with opportunity/wealthy people and away from homeless populations is essential.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#126

Post by DoreenMichele »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #46
sharkweek wrote: post #9

Long-time Seattle resident here who volunteered for several years in the homeless community. Homelessness has always been a thing in Seattle, but has definitely become a much larger issue in the past five years. I'll spare my thoughts on any number of reasons as to why we got here as a city, but will say I think we are doing a terrible disservice to actually finding a solution by lumping "anyone who doesn't have a ho…

There's some merit to this but I'd say it's still a little off the mark. Homelessness is a condition, how people got there is one thing, the main tools to "fix it" are fairly straightforward: give people housing. Dealing with everything else (mental health issues, drug addiction, etc.) can be dealt with separately, and will be vastly easier without having the fundamental problem of homelessness.

give people housing.

Unfortunately, this is likely to be a solution with adverse consequences and likely won't fix anything. I am for diversifying our housing stock in a way that better serves our needs, as I commented on at length elsewhere in this discussion. But this is a problem space I have studied, and I don't think this works, for a long list of reasons.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#127

Post by ip26 »

exogeny wrote: post #20
DanHulton wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I think you're missing a key factor here: politicians require money to be elected. The poor (the folks most affected by these issues) don't have the money to donate. The rich (the ones you propose taxing) do. Thus, the only ones who can get elected are catering to an audience that does not want this problems solved in this way (and indeed, one could argue, does not care to have it solved at all). Until the pr…

Sure, makes sense. Thank you for the reply. Where it's personally frustrating for me: I've sold two companies in my life, and saw my tax rate jump from the lowest to the highest. I'm fine with that. I did well and despite all the work I put in, I recognize the amount of good fortune that was involved - and I'm perfectly happy to give back more because it affects me less, and because it's my fair share. I recognize th…

There's probably not a lot of outright malevolent actors out there. Just a lot of people slightly favoring things which are in their own interest. Which, we should say, is generally understood to be what's supposed to happen.

People with school age kids probably vote to approve new funding for school districts at a higher rate than people without kids. Even if the difference is only a couple percent. Is that a scandal? No. Indeed, if nobody had kids, there probably shouldn't be a school. If everybody had kids, why, a good school is an the very heart of the community.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#128

Post by omegaworks »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #117
omegaworks wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common enough misrepresentation of the sources of homelessness that it's imperative that you stop spreading it. 71% of San Francisco's homeless used to have homes in the city, it is likely a similar proportion elsewhere. http://sfist.com/2016/02/11/71_of_sf_homeless_once_had_homes...

These studies always sound dubious, just like the misrepresentations that you are pointing out. First, they are just surveying a population that is incredibly difficult to survey. Second, they don't look into what they meant by having a home, was it just crashing at a friend's house? Were they ever employed at all in the city? Where were they born, where did they grow up? Cities act as a catchment for the rural areas…

>These studies always sound dubious, just like the misrepresentations that you are pointing out.

So are you suggesting we base our understanding of this problem on anecdotes?

The problem I have with that is that the anecdotes that you present are constructed to support the idea that there is nothing to be done, that we must simply accept that homelessness is too big a problem to be solved or even quantified. I refuse to accept that conclusion, and support efforts to understand the problem rationally.

http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/San-Francisc...

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#129

Post by llamataboot »

Just paying for housing is a surprisingly cost effective and simple solution that is empirically backed as more cost effective and better outcomes for the individuals involved in nearly every study.

Housing first, then figure out what support looks like for other issues.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#130

Post by docker_up »

md224 wrote: post #118
Alex63 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested to hear how homelessness can be meaningfully addressed in a humane way by the federal government (especially if it is constitutional).

Noah Smith's perspective on the necessity of a federal approach to homelessness: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-21/ending... Key graf: > About 3.5 million Americans will experience homelessness at some point in time, but only about a half-million are homeless at any given time, and roughly 87,000 of these are chronically homeless. By some estimates, housing a homeless person and providing them wit…

This is poppycock.

$10,000 a person is a lie unless maybe if you moved all the homeless from the West Coast to the middle of nowhere in Midwest, but then you would have homeless activists and Midwest NIMBY activists saying that the government is shipping people out to solve the problem.

The activists have politicized every direction of this issue to the point where it's easier to just forget about the homeless rather than try to solve the problem. Most homeless need mental health care and should be forced into mental wards but then you have mental health activists that will protest against this. Other activists would complain that they are gentrifying SF and kicking out all the poor people.

Basically anyone who tries to solve this problem politically can't win because there will be some activist that protests against it to make a name for themselves and it turns into a hotbed issue by the media.

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