Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk • Hacker News Board

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#171

Post by oneplane » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

dyingkneepad wrote: post #23

As a non-American person living in the US, I fail to understand one thing about its society. When I walk around town I see tons and tons of places advertising jobs, for simple stuff like kitchen, moving stuff around, etc. I even recently saw a store with a "talk to the manager and start working right now" sign. And then I walk around the streets and see all these homeless. It seems like a paradox to me, but I am obvi…

As far as I know this is mainly because most 'jobs' aren't really jobs in the sense that you can support yourself with it. In the US there isn't much of a requirement to pay people enough to survive.

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#172

Post by 8note » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #105

dralley wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're sleeping in the street or in a homeless shelter, the only thing that amount of money is going to do for you (in California at least) is make you a target for thieves.

Good thing that many employers (typically the ones that employ minimum wage workers) allow you to take your paycheck on a prepaid debit card.

It's still something that can be stolen

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#173

Post by rezendi » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #75

dyingkneepad wrote: post #23

As a non-American person living in the US, I fail to understand one thing about its society. When I walk around town I see tons and tons of places advertising jobs, for simple stuff like kitchen, moving stuff around, etc. I even recently saw a store with a "talk to the manager and start working right now" sign. And then I walk around the streets and see all these homeless. It seems like a paradox to me, but I am obvi…

First please note that America has fewer homeless people than many European nations or Canada. Per 10K: Germany......79 UK...........46 Sweden.......36 Canada.......36 Netherlands..23 France.......21 USA..........17 (via Wikipedia, stats for differing years unfortunately but gives a sense of magnitude) It's mostly that the US homeless population concentrates in very few areas. > How do you reconcile that with the fac…

This is wildly incorrect. As of Dec 2019, there were 5,000 "unsheltered" / "sleeping rough" people in the UK, population ~65,000,000, according to The Economist (cite: https://www.economist.com/britain/2019/12/18/on-any-one-wint...) which was fewer than the number in San Francisco, population ~800,000 (cite: https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/ExecutiveSu... ).

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#174

Post by NonContro » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

If you want to solve homelessness in the USA, then properly enforce border security of the country (including walls) and halt the refugee intake. The same low-income housing and entry-level work which is needed for homeless americans is being taken up by these immigrants.

In my homeland of Ukraine, incomes are a fraction of the USA but still there is no homelessness because the country's population is not growing due to mass immigration, and so the existing housing stock is sufficient to cover everyone's needs.

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#175

Post by foxpurple » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

legitster wrote: post #109

This is becoming such a frustrating issue. As an advocate of public spaces and parks, it's kind of heartbreaking that maybe 1/3 of public spaces in our town are no longer usable for all - they have more or less become private spaces for the homeless. I don't have much respect for communities that solve the issue by just "kicking them out" and passing the problem onto others, but it is almost becoming unacceptably com…

IMO the city should provide enough homeless shelters for everyone and then just make homelessness illegal. So if you are found sleeping in a tent you get referred to the nearest shelter and if you refuse you get arrested.

We can not allow homelessness to exist because it makes public spaces unsafe like you mention. Homeless shelters can also help by making it hard for them to continue their drug addictions.

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#176

Post by AngryData » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

goshx wrote: post #67

sudosysgen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the incentive to get a job if you're still going to be homeless? If you stay homeless you're eventually going to get fired too.

I don't know, maybe being able to buy food is an incentive?

But food is so abundant and cheap here that even pocket change can get you enough calories to live on. Yeah eventually you might develop deficiencies, but that is likely years down the road, cheap food is fortified to prevent common deficiencies. That discounted day old box of donuts costs almost nothing and that cheap cereal lasts near forever if it is kept dry.

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#177

Post by fn-mote » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

backtoyoujim wrote: post #128

Gimpei wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think wikipedia is a good source of data in this case. For one German homelessness includes Syrian refugees. Second, it appears as if the definition of homelessness varies wildly across countries, making these numbers not really useful for cross-country comparison. https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC3-1-Homeless-population.pd...

What ethic background can the United States subtract from its total homeless population ? Because that reads _to_me_ like you are saying "homeless Syrians don't count". To which I would ask you, "Why not ?"

I do feel like immigrants (refugees, not citizens) living in official refugee camps should be accounted for differently than citizen homeless living in the streets of (say) Berlin.

Now perhaps this is not how the statistics were made, but I think some consideration or further investigation should be made.

For reference: Syria is the #1 source of people displaced due to violence, and Germany is the #5 host of such people. https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/

[I see a sibling comment makes the same point.]

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#178

Post by Overton-Window » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

fabian2k wrote: post #114

simonsarris wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First please note that America has fewer homeless people than many European nations or Canada. Per 10K: Germany......79 UK...........46 Sweden.......36 Canada.......36 Netherlands..23 France.......21 USA..........17 (via Wikipedia, stats for differing years unfortunately but gives a sense of magnitude) It's mostly that the US homeless population concentrates in very few areas. > How do you reconcile that with the fac…

Are you sure those stats are right? It does not seem plausible to me that Germany has 4-5 times as many homeless as the US. I looked a bit, and the numbers really don't match my expectations, I'm pretty sure they're not counting the same things. I found one paper that compares the US and Germany and they got a lifetime prevalence of homelesness of 6.2% in the US and 2.4% in Germany ( https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.or…

They are misleading as they include hundreds of thousands of unsheltered refugees.

Anyone who has ever walked around SF or LA and Berlin knows this implicitly. The US cooks the books.

https://www.feantsaresearch.org/download/germany241169298614...

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#179

Post by paulddraper » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:53 PM UTC

dyingkneepad wrote: post #23

As a non-American person living in the US, I fail to understand one thing about its society. When I walk around town I see tons and tons of places advertising jobs, for simple stuff like kitchen, moving stuff around, etc. I even recently saw a store with a "talk to the manager and start working right now" sign. And then I walk around the streets and see all these homeless. It seems like a paradox to me, but I am obvi…

> How do you reconcile that with the fact that there are so many simple jobs with open positions everywhere?

A lot of people simply don't want to work.

Would rather spend the day on the sidewalk than have obligations.

A lot of homeless have mental illness (bipolar, depression, drug addiction, etc.).

This isn't necessarily more common in the US than any other country; the US in general provides fewer public services. So you'll see more of them on the street.

(And of course SoCal has excellent weather; there's more homeless there than in Maine. LA is kinda extreme.)

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#180

Post by asteroidbelt » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:53 PM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #75

dyingkneepad wrote: post #23

As a non-American person living in the US, I fail to understand one thing about its society. When I walk around town I see tons and tons of places advertising jobs, for simple stuff like kitchen, moving stuff around, etc. I even recently saw a store with a "talk to the manager and start working right now" sign. And then I walk around the streets and see all these homeless. It seems like a paradox to me, but I am obvi…

First please note that America has fewer homeless people than many European nations or Canada. Per 10K: Germany......79 UK...........46 Sweden.......36 Canada.......36 Netherlands..23 France.......21 USA..........17 (via Wikipedia, stats for differing years unfortunately but gives a sense of magnitude) It's mostly that the US homeless population concentrates in very few areas. > How do you reconcile that with the fac…

For UK the statistics is skewed.

Their definition of homeless people include people in temporary accommodations (like in council houses).

From wikipedia:

> The UK homeless charity Shelter estimated in 2019 that the number of people in the UK who were entirely homeless or in temporary accommodation was 280,000. Rough sleepers are only a small proportion of the homeless.

Note the last sentence.

280K / 66M gives roughly 46 per 10K.

So, don't just to conclusions too quickly when reading statistics.