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LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

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Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#71

Post by coryrc »

visualradio wrote: post #64
vineyardmike wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>more homeless people show up to take advantage of the great services. I've never heard of homeless searching for the best place too be homeless! Is there a source for this?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-population.ht... "Where Does California’s Homeless Population Come From?" > As the data shows us, most of the homeless people you pass on the streets every day are in fact Californians. Some may have rented an apartment or once owned a home in your neighborhood. > Several years ago, L.A.H.S.A. added a question to its homeless survey that captured how long a person had be…

"fell into homelessness in L.A. "

Total weasel words. You move to LA with one week of money for hotel = "fell into homelessness in L.A.".

In Seattle, the local group did a survey like this. About a quarter put their last housing zip code as the one with the shelter, in Pioneer Square, an expensive area if you aren't homeless. GIGO

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#72

Post by systemvoltage »

0xB31B1B wrote: post #57

Posting this because most people in HN have a warped view of what homelessness is, especially in california. First of all, when most people think homeless they think "fentanyl addict out of his mind living in squalor" and while there are certainly a bunch of those people in the homeless population, they aren't even a majority of the homeless. In general, about 2/3 of the homeless are transiently homeless. They will b…

Would you mind posting the sources? Even if its anedotal or not authoritative, it would be good to inform where you learned about the 1/3-2/3 breakdown.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#73

Post by laurencerowe »

vineyardmike wrote: post #58
narrator wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the local government has tons of money doing nothing in their budget, they are going to find a way to spend it, and they're not going to care if they overpay because what else are they going to spend it on? In coastal California, the rule is never ever give that money back by lowering taxes. Taxes only go up. If there's too much money being generated by the taxes to spend, start spending it on homelessness…

>more homeless people show up to take advantage of the great services. I've never heard of homeless searching for the best place too be homeless! Is there a source for this?

It seems to be more that in cold climates governments are compelled to provide shelter for homeless people so they don't die on the street, whereas in warmer climates governments are okay with leaving them on the street.

Both San Francisco and New York have similar proportions of homeless people, but New York has shelter beds for almost all of them whereas San Francisco has shelter beds for only 40%.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#74

Post by fastball »

0xB31B1B wrote: post #57

Posting this because most people in HN have a warped view of what homelessness is, especially in california. First of all, when most people think homeless they think "fentanyl addict out of his mind living in squalor" and while there are certainly a bunch of those people in the homeless population, they aren't even a majority of the homeless. In general, about 2/3 of the homeless are transiently homeless. They will b…

That is well and all, but seems like a bit of a distraction from the OP. While 2/3 of homeless may be transient homeless, it seems incredibly unlikely that most of the people living in tents fall into that category rather than into the chronically homeless camp.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#75

Post by jdavis703 »

vineyardmike wrote: post #58
narrator wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the local government has tons of money doing nothing in their budget, they are going to find a way to spend it, and they're not going to care if they overpay because what else are they going to spend it on? In coastal California, the rule is never ever give that money back by lowering taxes. Taxes only go up. If there's too much money being generated by the taxes to spend, start spending it on homelessness…

>more homeless people show up to take advantage of the great services. I've never heard of homeless searching for the best place too be homeless! Is there a source for this?

San Francisco has some of the best services available out of all California cities. And yet 70% of homeless people lived in SF for at least a year before becoming homeless while 55% lived in SF for a decade or more. Another 14% lived in the Bay Area. Only 8% came from out of state.

Source: https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDRep... (page 18).

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#76

Post by kiba »

darth_avocado wrote: post #35

I think the main takeaway here is government, as usual, thinking short term and spending more money on bandaid solutions. Yes, the $2600 gets you services, meals, sanitation and staffing. But in reality, you can get a decent 1BR apartment for $1500 that is waaay bigger than a tent, sanitation for free since it is an apartment, and have almost $1000 for groceries left over. And, you can fit more people in the apartmen…

The government is not thinking short term. They are turning that mostly useless parking lot into affordable apartments.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#77

Post by Thorentis »

sida wrote: post #46
darth_avocado wrote: post #35

I think the main takeaway here is government, as usual, thinking short term and spending more money on bandaid solutions. Yes, the $2600 gets you services, meals, sanitation and staffing. But in reality, you can get a decent 1BR apartment for $1500 that is waaay bigger than a tent, sanitation for free since it is an apartment, and have almost $1000 for groceries left over. And, you can fit more people in the apartmen…

As a landlord, I would definitely not rent to this program though. I mean, would you? But yes looking at this, the program cost is indeed insanely high

Which is why the money going to this program would be far better spent going towards the building of public housing. Tax payers get real estate assets, homeless people get homes.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#78

Post by dcolkitt »

0xB31B1B wrote: post #57

Posting this because most people in HN have a warped view of what homelessness is, especially in california. First of all, when most people think homeless they think "fentanyl addict out of his mind living in squalor" and while there are certainly a bunch of those people in the homeless population, they aren't even a majority of the homeless. In general, about 2/3 of the homeless are transiently homeless. They will b…

> one big way to prevent this downward trend in quality of life is to build more cheap housing

One pedantic quibble. It's not necessary to build cheap housing specifically. It's perfectly fine simply to build more housing of any type. Today's new expensive housing will indirectly create more cheap housing in the pre-existing housing stock, by pulling demand out of the market.

Throughout all of American history, new housing has almost exclusively been relatively expensive housing. The rich prefer to live in new housing stock, and the poor prefer to get discounts on old housing stock. The same way that a robust new car market creates a secondary market for cheap used cars.

A lot of people with good intentions will try to block any type of development that doesn't specifically include affordable housing. But this is the exact opposite of what's needed. The best way to lower the cost of housing is to increase the supply of housing. And the best way to do that is to unleash developers whatever is most profitable whenever and whoever they want without government regulation and NIMBY activists getting in their way.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#79

Post by beervirus »

ravenstine wrote: post #44

Won't these programs just expand ad infinitum if we don't address the root causes of homelessness? I'm glad we're helping the homeless, but the lack of housing is a symptom and less so a cause. LA has way more homeless people than it used to. Why don't we address that?

What are you saying the cause is?

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#80

Post by aidenn0 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #59

So digging into the report that is linked from the article and other commenters here (link below, search for "Pilot Safe Sleep Site" in that article), some relevant points: 1. The "$2600" number is calculated from the $1,491,410 total cost / 70 spaces / 8 months. 2. Regarding staffing, "The staffing plan Urban Alchemy recommends for a successful program is a minimum staff-to-participant ratio of one (1) to 12." So in…

The mental hospitals were bad. When something is known to be bad in California, it is made illegal, thus solving the problem completely (/s).

There was a similar thing with the foster care system; I'm not sure if it was state-wide or just my county, but they banned foster care group homes (which had worse outcomes than typical foster families[1]). Of course everyeone already knew that it was better to place these kids in a typical foster family, but there was nowhere else to place them. Now there are plenty of "Theraputic residential treatment centers" which seem to be roughly the same thing, just with a different name.

(Side note: if you can, become a foster family; there aren't enough)

1: Even the whole "outcomes are worse" is a bit dubious since usually kids don't end up in group homes until they've been kicked out of one or more foster families, so these kids were already being failed by the system before ending up in group homes.

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