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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

#181

Post by DoreenMichele »

flaque wrote: post #166
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…

> 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. This is just provably false. Utah solved it's homelessness problem by just giving people homes. And it was pretty effective.

From what I have read, Utah's ability to pull that off is tied to the strong influence of the Mormon church there and its institutions. So it's probably not readily replicable in other US states.

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

#182

Post by invalidOrTaken »

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.

>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.

But you can turn this around as well: just move "homelessness" to the list, and mark something else as fundamental:

>Dealing with everything else (mental health issues, homelessness, etc.) can be dealt with separately, and will be vastly easier without having the fundamental problem of drug addiction.

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

#183

Post by reading-at-work »

exogeny wrote: post #2

I will go to my grave not understanding why this is so complex and difficult for people to understand and politicians to fix. Wages are stagnant, save for a handful of sectors, in which they're growing quickly. Housing prices are rising due to limited supply and backward policies towards new construction. Inequality therefore expands exponentially, creating a city of haves-and-have nots. Either reduce inequality thro…

> It’s not bad everywhere. Houston, the fourth-most-populous city in the nation, has cut its homeless population in half since 2011, in part by creating more housing for them. That’s dampened the effect of rising rents, Zillow found.

It's not just intuition, there's evidence to support it. I think building more housing is the quickest and more bipartisan solution, since tax and spending changes are magnets for political drama.

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

#184

Post by dr_dshiv »

Living in Amsterdam, it is very rare to encounter homeless people or panhandlers. It wasn't always this way -- so I really credit the policy designers. They build these really cute social housing centers for a range of subsidized apartments -- and always include a petting zoo in the middle because, I guess, it saves money in the end. Doing nothing is way more expensive.

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

#185

Post by apo »

In the late 1980s I attended a talk at a political gathering in San Francisco. The speaker asked the audience members to think about the scores of homeless people they saw walking to the event. The speaker then made a statement that I'll never forget:

"This is what a modern depression looks like."

When most people think of a Depression, the image that comes to mind is black-and-white photos of mobs of people standing in bread lines.

What if 1930s-style depressions are no longer possible? Central banks intervene in every crisis no matter how small, handing out freebies to banks and financial institutions. However, these groups can only spend so much money on themselves. A little gets spent on frivolous crap like vacations, boats, and watches, a lot gets spent on ridiculous startup ideas and other terrible speculations, and the vast majority gets parked in the stock and bond markets where it grows and grows with each new infusion of fake money.

What if modern central banking has made a repeat of the Great Depression impossible?

Consider the possibility that the US has been in the modern equivalent of a Depression since the 1980s. It doesn't feel like a Depression because most people have housing and jobs, and GDP goes up. But focusing on these metrics ignores three very annoying pieces of information:

1. wages have been flat for many years

2. inflation for essential goods/services (housing, health care, child care) has outpaces inflation year after year

3. the homeless problem just keeps getting worse

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

#186

Post by williesleg »

According to leading economists, the elite Hollywood stars, sports stars, politicians and Silicon Valley elites can all solve this by donating roughly 10% of their wealth, nothing more, nothing less. But they won't. Instead they polarize the masses by continuing this cancer.

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

#187

Post by ArchTypical »

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.

The population of the tent city in Santa Ana california was an unmitigated disaster for those who took the vouchers and residents. That did not work because the population of people living on the street in Southern California are doing it by choice (be it for the freedom to do drugs, mental illness or other defect). People who want help, generally don't get turned away in high income areas - every single church in the wealthiest areas, have a program and members willing to help those in need.

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

#188

Post by vkou »

crooked-v wrote: post #71
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…

> 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.

> without noticeable results.

To make an analogy, consider that hospitals dump millions of dollars, and physician hours into their trauma wards. Yet, so many of the patients in them keep dying!

Clearly, the rational thing to do is to declare that trauma treatment is a waste of time and money, and is not achieving meaningful results. We should cut physician hours, and re-allocate them to some other area of the hospital, that has a better survival rate. /s

Or, alternatively, consider all the efforts you put into testing and code reviewing your code - yet bugs still slip through to release. If all you do is count the number of bugs that make it to release, with no baseline, you may conclude that all that testing effort is not having noticeable results. We should shut down the Jenkins server, and just let any dev submit whatever we want, without any review.

The problem is that as long as you see homeless people in your city, you will think that there are no noticeable results to these programs. That the situation might be twice as bad if those programs weren't in place... Doesn't really cross the mind.

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

#189

Post by tropo »

spookthesunset wrote: post #107
InclinedPlane wrote: post #46

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…

They can move around the world too, so "federal" isn't going to do the job, at least without adding an effective deterrent to crossing borders.

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

#190

Post by claydavisss »

commandlinefan wrote: post #57
claydavisss wrote: post #48

Better title: Income Inequality Reaches Death Spiral In Democrat-run Cities LA SF NYC Seattle - please dispute my claim with facts... California is ground zero for homelessness in the industrialized world and has a veto-proof Democrat majority

I keep noticing that, too. I'm not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg, though - do regions become left-leaning because they start to experience poverty (and people start to vote in left-leaning politicians who promise wealth redistribution) or do they become poor because they vote in left-leaning politicians who impose wealth redistribution policies?

In typical HN fashion, my comment was "flagged" but cannot be refuted.

The point stands: California is a Democrat monopoly while having the worst infrastructure, homelessness, and the nation's highest poverty rate.

But not one HN reader can respond factually.

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