131–140 of 340 posts
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Is that not due to simply not spending?
If you estimate ~20k per homeless person per year * 550,000 homes in the US you get on the order of 11 Billion dollars per year out of something like 7,150 Billion of total government spending. On the other hand if you look at social security as one way to reduce homelessness it’s vastly more expensive.
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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.
how people got there is one thing, the main tools to "fix it" are fairly straightforward: give people housing The solution sounds straightforward, the path to get there looks like a Gordian knot. How do you pay for it? How do you get that funding source to go along with your plans to pay for it? Etc.
You'll be diverting people away from the criminal justice system and away from involuntary mental health hospital stays. Those can be fantastically expensive, and not particularly useful.
> How do you get that funding source to go along with your plans to pay for it?
Yes, that's a problem that seems hard to fix.
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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 Except now you'll just attract homeless folks from outside of your region. The city with the best homeless program will attract the most homeless folks--all paid for by that city's taxpayers. This is why I maintain the only way to address the problem is at the federal levelm. They should at least be the ones who bankroll the whole operation. It shouldn't be the city's responsibility to fund the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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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…
> I'm perfectly happy to give back more If you really feel that way, charitable organizations can effectively distribute donations far more efficiently and effectively than any government organization has ever been able to. I suspect that if all of the people who say they feel the same way did just voluntarily donate what they considered their own fair share to charity, the homeless crisis would be mostly solved.
The hundreds of billions of dollars per year paid out with minimum fuss by Social Security suggest otherwise.
Even if you hold the homeless % constant, the problem got worse.
I stayed a night in LA a few weeks ago at an AirBNB in a condo in a prime location near Little Tokyo and can't stop thinking that society would be better off if this condo were owned and occupied by a family instead of being basically a for-profit hotel. I don't know how to stop this de facto rezoning except by imposing huge taxes on housing that is not the owner's primary residence and closing all the loopholes that…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Except now you'll just attract homeless folks from outside of your region. The city with the best homeless program will attract the most homeless folks--all paid for by that city's taxpayers. This is why I maintain the only way to address the problem is at the federal levelm. They should at least be the ones who bankroll the whole operation. It shouldn't be the city's responsibility to fund the…
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.
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...