21–30 of 109 posts
L.A. is a place that respects the value of a creative solution. If one cannot force the homeless to leave, how does one positively incentivize people to stop living in the street?
'Just give them housing' seems to work pretty well. https://nationswell.com/one-state-track-become-first-end-hom...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/think-utah-solved-homeles_b_9...
Oh, except Boise has a population of 228000 to LAs 4 million.
So LA is 17 times larger. So basic scaling would be equivalent to 28-35k homeless.
I think the reason Boise is having less difficulty with homelessness is solely because it’s a small city.
What about people who want to be homeless?
Why have we built a society in which anybody who doesn't accept the lifestyle of sleeping in a static, hardened structure, and working to pay rent or a mortgage so as to have the right to do so, is diagnosed with some kind of illness?
Isn't it quite clear that there are some humans that simply aren't built to live with this strange definition of normalcy?
I have lived on a school bus for the past five years (if you are curious about this aspect, I gave a talk at PyCon last year that might interest you[0]) and I have met literally thousands of people like those I'm describing. I'm convinced that there are hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions - in the USA.
Of people that I have met who live on streets, in forests, in mobile vehicles like me, and in all sorts of other configurations that are not "homes" as we typically understand that word, I think that something like 1% are a nuisance to the extent that some kind of intervention is warranted for the public good. And, for what it's worth, that's probably true of about 1% of people who aren't homeless as well.
Now, in the age of smartphones, small-scale solar charging, and remote work, it's easier than ever to be happily homeless.
Let's stop acting like it's such a problem.
Help the people who are homeless and want to stop being homeless. Don't judge the people who are homeless and loving life.
L.A. is a place that respects the value of a creative solution. If one cannot force the homeless to leave, how does one positively incentivize people to stop living in the street?
Maybe.... give them a place to stay... OFF the street? Of course all urban centers are so starved of entry level housing that anything good enough to minimally get a homeless person off the street (bathroom, place to sleep, maybe kitchenette) would also be swamped by everyone from the poor and working, college students, immigrants, etc. Suppressing this housing is all done in the name of maintaining and increasing ho…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless, of course, those women and children are homeless.
Nearly all homeless are adult men.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
'Just give them housing' seems to work pretty well. https://nationswell.com/one-state-track-become-first-end-hom...
IIRC that actually hasn't worked too well for Utah in recent years.
Really solving this will take work at the national level. There's more than enough wealth around to fund it, given how much goes into the pockets of opioid manufacturers alone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless, of course, those women and children are homeless.
Nearly all homeless are adult men.
20% of all homeless are under 18
Source: https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2018-AHAR-P... Page 11.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not true. In San Francisco, 35% of homeless residents in the last point-in-time count identified as female, and another six percent identified as another non-male gender.
Some would say 75% is the majority.