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I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

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Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#241

Post by vinay427 »

ffggvv wrote: post #121
jefftk wrote: post #12

"Dumping ground" implies other places did this to CA, which isn't substantiated by the article. As it says, the vast majority of CA homeless are from within the state. In the cities of CA, as in other rich cities, homelessness and high housing prices come from the same problem: prohibitive regulations on housing construction.

there are many other high cost cities in the world and yet only american liberal ones are in a state of decay and allow homelessness and crime

Honest question: Are you claiming that "liberal" has something to do with it?

If not, feel free to ignore the rest of this. If so, maybe you can elaborate on what you mean. Are there non-liberal high-cost cities in the US in a better state? Furthermore, it's worth noting that the other high-cost cities worldwide almost universally seem to have more left-leaning (or US liberal) policies on most issues than most high-cost cities in the US. I'm not sure I see the connection between the political alignment and the state of decay, homelessness, and crime in high-cost cities.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#242

Post by bequanna »

bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #235
archibaldJ wrote: post #229

I've spent my life mostly in the East (in places where housing is expensive (e.g. Singapore, Sydney, Hong Kong, Shanghai), as well as places with low cost of living in Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia ). I have not been to CA so this may be a silly question: What if there are joint initiatives/collaborations between US and its Eastnern allies to sponsor and help people who are struggling on the street due to homelessn…

Have you ever been approached by someone in a city saying they need money to get back to their town? Moving even temporarily is a great barrier to entry for a lot.

Are you talking about the panhandling gas can scam? They aren’t actually moving, out of gas, or whatever.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#243

Post by aazaa »

Maybe a shift of perspective is in order. What if the homeless "problem" is merely the most visible symptom of a modern depression that has been underway for many years?

You expect a homeless problem in a depression. You expect drug use to cripple large segments of society in a depression. You don't expect the problems that come with a depression to be fixable. And you expect those with means to jealously guard them from expropriation during a depression.

The thing that separates a modern depression from those that came before is that central banks have pulled out the stops to try to prevent the slide into depression. Their toolbox is limited, so many problems (such as housing) become worse as prices spiral higher out of range of working people, and as jobs continue to flood overseas on cargo ships. Wealth inequality blossoms as the haves keep it (thanks to QE and stock market machinations) and the have-nots lose it. Certain sectors (technology) continue to thrive while everything else (manufacturing, services) spiral downwards. It's easy to blame yourself if the depression is so unevenly distributed.

In following this path, central banks have obliterated cues (massive unemployment, bread lines, collective action) that would otherwise make it obvious that a depression was underway. Kind of like what might happen if you could not smell rot or feces, but could still smell food. Things might seem just fine, but only if you willfully ignored certain non-olfactory clues.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#244

Post by dragonwriter »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #85
dragonwriter wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you only have one home, real estate appreciation only makes you money if it’s higher for your house relative to others, since if you sell your house and buy another house of comparable quality that’s also appreciated to a similar degree, you wouldn’t come out ahead. Equity can be leveraged meaningfully without selling, so that's not true.

Besides HELOCs, what are you referring to? A HELOC is just a tool for getting lower interest rates on another loan, which only would make you wealthier if you happened to invest it in some other appreciating asset with an extremely high ROI.

> A HELOC is just a tool for getting lower interest rates on another loan

Yes, paying less money if you have to borrow to meet the same emergent need or opportunity as another person makes you richer than the one who pays more.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#245

Post by dragonwriter »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #176
issa wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sort of at a loss for understanding the misunderstanding here. Someone without equity in their home probably cannot get a loan of any sort. Access to capital, as a loan or any other form, is a huge thing. So if your home gives you access to that loan, this is important.

There is no misunderstanding. Most people don't have a use for a line of credit other than to spend it on things that don't make them any money. Everyone I know that did this used it to say, pay off a bunch of credit card debt, or build a new kitchen that will be worthless by the time they sell their house anyways.

> Most people don't have a use for a line of credit other than to spend it on things that don't make them any money.

Even if that were true (it's really not—it may be at any one moment but over a substantial period of years people tend to have emergent needs and opportunities that not having access to capital, or higher cost access to capital, either misses with real costs or pays more with, quite obvious, real costs) people tend to borrow and spend money on things that don't make money fro time to time; if you have a lower financing costs for such frivolous purchases, you are richer than someone who has the same spending pattern with higher financing costs.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#246

Post by archibaldJ »

LurkingPenguin wrote: post #233
archibaldJ wrote: post #229

I've spent my life mostly in the East (in places where housing is expensive (e.g. Singapore, Sydney, Hong Kong, Shanghai), as well as places with low cost of living in Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia ). I have not been to CA so this may be a silly question: What if there are joint initiatives/collaborations between US and its Eastnern allies to sponsor and help people who are struggling on the street due to homelessn…

The US has a history of sending waste to other countries[1]. Obviously, homeless people are not "trash", but there is a similarity in your thinking: take something that is seen as a scourge and send it to other countries so that it's out of sight and the largest costs of dealing with it are borne by others (usually poor people). Why should countries like Indonesia, which has a per capita GDP of under $5,000 USD and n…

> ...homeless people are not "trash", but there is a similarity in your thinking...

Nope. No similiarity here. We can only solve the problem when we treat people with dignity.

We shouldn't alienate them. They are people just like you and me. The idea is to lower the cost while improving living standard for them.

> Why should countries like Indonesia, which has a per capita GDP of under $5,000 USD and no shortage of its own problems...

GDP is irrelevant here. Indonesia, Thailand, etc have many cities popular with backpackers and westerners living a nomadic lifestyle. Fresh fruits and fish. Great outdoor. Nice beach. Cheap motorbike. Great landscape and nature. Low-stress.

It can be a joint social venture set up by NGOs. We will need really smart founders to structure things in a way that will benefit the local economy there, while giving a decent life to those who were originally living on the street. A life with diginity e.g. where they do volunteer work in rehab (eg cooking), or as a craftman, an English teacher, a botanist, an entheogenesis research assistant, etc.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#247

Post by paul_f »

Robotbeat wrote: post #237
postalrat wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you favor blaming rent for homelessness instead of lack of jobs that pay well enough? Why can some people afford the rent while others can't? If you are after a single root cause of homelessness you will be disappointed. Unless you only care to push an agenda.

Link local minimum wage to three times median rent for a 2 bedroom apartment, then. Solve both problems! :) (EDIT: assuming you have policy to maintain full employment…)

Perfect! :-) Too many people forget that if you are incapable of working, the minimum wage is zero

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#248

Post by tony0x02 »

scruple wrote: post #159
jefftk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The piece mentions Single-Room Occupancies (SROs), which used to be where a lot of people in similar situations would live. I agree that this doesn't solve the problem for everyone, and there's also a place for publicly funded mental health hospitals. But I also don't think everyone who is currently homeless in CA is in as bad shape as the ones you most notice.

> But I also don't think everyone who is currently homeless in CA is in as bad shape as the ones you most notice. I beg to differ. I've spent significant time around what could be broadly categorized as "the homeless" in California, specifically in LA and OC, over the last 13 years. As recently as 3 days ago, I was searching for a mentally ill and homeless family member in LA. Last I heard he was on the coast, but I…

> If you offered an SRO to most of the people that I've come across in the last 10 years, they'd tell you to go fuck yourself.

Why? Sorry if question is dumb..

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#249

Post by paul_f »

addicted wrote: post #225
devoutsalsa wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every place does this. I was homeless in San Francisco & applied for assistance. They made sure to let everyone know they'd buy you a one way ticket to pretty much any place you wanted to go.

The difference is that they will return to places like SF, LA and NYC, because they are treated much worse in other places. Basically, take your one way bus ride to Dallas, where you then take a 1 way ride back to SF, from where you’re unlikely to go back to Dallas.

You might be on to something. Make it easy to be homeless and you should be surprised when you have more homeless.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#250

Post by pydry »

postalrat wrote: post #234
pydry wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Every year it seems like many millions of dollars more are spent on this issue but it keeps getting visibly worse. Because home prices and rents keep going up. Homelessness is an inevitable side effect of that. Funneling money on rehab rather than providing places to actually live cant fix that. It's attacking a symptom not the cause. However, attacking the cause (property prices/rents) would make a lot of very rich…

Why do you favor blaming rent for homelessness instead of lack of jobs that pay well enough? Why can some people afford the rent while others can't? If you are after a single root cause of homelessness you will be disappointed. Unless you only care to push an agenda.

>Why do you favor blaming rent for homelessness instead of lack of jobs that pay well enough?

Two sides of the same coin.

>Unless you only care to push an agenda.

Some people prefer to prevaricate and show only faux concern for the homeless, I guess.

It's understandable - there are a lot of people who while they dont want to be seen to be outright hostile to the plight of the homeless, will react negatively to the idea of seeing the value of their assets decline.

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