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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

#101

Post by prepend »

tehwebguy wrote: post #34
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…

> Some problems though, like healthcare and homelessness don't get better if you spend more money on them. I very much doubt that on both counts! But even still, I have a feeling that there is a very high cap for dollars spent directly helping homeless folks that reduce indirect spending 1:1 on other budget line items.

I think the reasoning is that if you spend more money on healthcare you don’t necessarily get better outcomes, you’ll just spend more. Thus the US’ very high per person spend vs worse health outcomes. The issue isn’t that the US doesn’t spend enough, it’s that it spends on the wrong thing.

Similarly with homelessness, spending $2600/month for temporary tents isn’t improved by adding funds. Doubling the money and providing twice as much tent space won’t help homelessness as much as longer term housing that would cost less. Or changing zoning to allow more housing that would definitely cost less.

These are both important problems and need resources, but in some ways more funds are worse.

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

#102

Post by spaetzleesser »

Stuff like this reminds me of the situation with healthcare, mental health and prisons.

The US is reluctant to set up welfare and social systems in a proactive way but then the situation can't be ignored and they end up spending way more money on some band aids. Probably a lot of people who cost insane amounts of money while in prison could helped be much cheaper with drug addiction treatment and other mental health care. Same with homelessness. No subsidized living spaces so people end up on the street which then costs more than the subsidized living would have cost.

Health care is the same. People believe universal health care is too expensive and somehow the country ends up with by far the most expensive health system per capita in the world with worse results.

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

#103

Post by prepend »

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?

Have you ever lived in Florida? Lots of homeless end up there because it’s warm and nice. It’s kind of interesting talking to folks and learn their stories. I don’t know the percentage, but I literally knew people who would move around cities in the urban sprawl over who had the best food, etc.

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

#104

Post by 0xB31B1B »

systemvoltage wrote: post #72
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.

one area is the "point in time homeless surveys" here: https://hsh.sfgov.org/about/research-and-reports/san-francis... the data can be a little hard to interpret for different categories/parts of the report. For instance, when 10% of the respondents say they have been homeless for 30 days or less, you can extrapolate this and assume that this same number of people is rotating in and out of homelessness frequently and over a year the number of homeless in this bit is 12x the number in the point in time survey. I picked up a lot of this through volunteering and participating in homeless social services and doing housing related activism.

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

#105

Post by belenos46 »

brianwawok wrote: post #15
ahelwer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why people believe NPR to be progressive. The joke name "Nice Polite Republicans" exists for a reason. Liberal news coverage of homeless issues rarely takes a progressive framing, anyway.

> The Pew survey found that the NPR audience tends Democratic (17% Republican, 37% independent, 43% Democratic) and centrist (21% conservative, 39% moderate, 36% liberal). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR_controversies

Yes. And "democrat" != "actually liberal".

The guy in the white house, sending Israel billions of dollars in aid while the Israeli government massacres civilians is a democrat, for fuckssake.

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

#106

Post by onion2k »

dcolkitt wrote: post #78
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 h…

Today's new expensive housing will indirectly create more cheap housing in the pre-existing housing stock, by pulling demand out of the market.

Only if people actually live in those houses, and they're bought by people living in the cheaper houses right now who then move up in to the new housing stock.

If people buy the new houses as investments and leave them empty most of the year then it has no impact on the rest of the housing market, or if people from outside buy them and move to the city then it just increases the population of the city with no effect on the lower social strata. This is precisely what happens in places like London. There's a boom in house building but it's often apartments bought by foreign investors (allegedly for money laundering... ).

Directly building more social housing would have a far greater impact than trying to affect cheap housing stock by 'trickle down' methods.

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

#107

Post by Causality1 »

dcolkitt wrote: post #78
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 h…

Assuming the infrastructure is there to support it. Developers are more than happy to pass costs onto the government/taxpayer while keeping the profit, such as by building enormous neighborhoods with a single access road or in high risk flood zones. My brother's neighborhood is right now dealing with a developer who is building a 500-unit housing project whose only entrance and exist is the two lane road in front of his house. They'd have direct access to the highway except for the fact they're too cheap to bridge a five foot wide creek.

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

#108

Post by throwkeep »

ahelwer wrote: post #10
fortran77 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is NPR reporting. Why would they mislead on an issue like this? I think they're a very credible source, given their progressive bent, to be asking these questions.

I have no idea why people believe NPR to be progressive. The joke name "Nice Polite Republicans" exists for a reason. Liberal news coverage of homeless issues rarely takes a progressive framing, anyway.

Surely you jest.

Source 1: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/01/americans-m...

Source 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-peZ7IeD2w

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

#109

Post by throwaway98797 »

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…

Math does not add up.

1/3 would over time vastly out number the 2/3 group unless the two third group is growing exponentially.

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

#110

Post by tylerhou »

et-al wrote: post #99
dcolkitt wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 h…

I see you've read that CityObservatory article from a few years back [0]. Unfortunately as the Tiktaalik mentioned, we have a housing shortage now . So the trickle-down economics of luxury housing won't work for at least a generation. Also, all the actual luxury housing that ends up being built is bought by wealthy investors buying their third or fourth property. Just look at the housing market in London. > Throughou…

> Unfortunately as the Tiktaalik mentioned, we have a housing shortage now. So the trickle-down economics of luxury housing won't work for at least a generation.

What data are you basing this claim off of? Many people (especially young people in finance and tech) move every few years, and some of them want luxury apartments. That reduces the demand for cheaper housing stock. A 25 y/o moving to SF isn't going to buy an apartment and stay there for their entire life.

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