I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by settrans » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

settrans wrote: post #27

rubicon33 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really not convinced that high housing costs accurately depict the source of the homelessness problem in CA. If it does, it certainly isn't describing the homeless people I see. Most of the homeless people I see, the ones who are literally pitching tents on the side walks, sleeping on boxes, defecating anywhere and everywhere, passed out on park benches at 3 in the afternoon, are almost certainly not going to be…

California already has a 1% income tax allocated just to mental health, and has collected $7.4 billion so far just from this tax[0]. How is that working? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Mental_Health_Servi...

Correcting myself: California has corrected $7.4 billion _as of 2011_, after only six years of operation.

Note that the tax is not indexed to inflation: already, the million-dollar threshold is worth only $715k in 2005 dollars. After another ~17 years at 2% inflation, the same tax will be charged on earners of $500k+ in 2005 dollars.

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

#322

Post by sershe » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

kory wrote: post #281

sershe wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blight and crime. And as I mentioned in the other fork, I grew up in Russia during the 90ies collapse, so my standards for lack of blight and crime are relatively low ;)

Do you live close to ballard or bitter lake then? That’s the only part of Seattle getting that bad from my understanding.

Relatively close to Woodland park, for an example. It's not as bad there but it's still basically taken over, with e.g. sporting events canceled due to safety concerns. I just don't want to wait until it spreads.

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

#323

Post by sershe » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #279

sershe wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing is cheap in much of the country though, and really cheap in some areas. Also, there are warm states that are not CA that don't have the problem (relatively speaking), and there are far colder states like NY or WA that do (ditto for locations within states). Why don't NY homeless move to e.g. Detroit? Far cheaper housing, comparable climate. The only people who wouldn't benefit from this under nationwide housi…

It tends to be cheap where there's no grocery stores, no jobs, etc. If you have to drive a long way for everything you need, it's not a cheap lifestyle, even if your rent is relatively low. Nationwide walkable housing would, in fact, fix it for some people, in part by bringing down the cost of housing and transit to a level they could reach.

No jobs? The salary differential in entry level jobs is much smaller than in high paying jobs between Detroit in NY, and rent differential is vast. If you take many of the homeless who cannot take any realistic job, the difference in salaries is 0.

Even including driving (which you don't need to do much more in declining/stably cheap, but still dense, older cities) it's still cheaper.

Walkable housing would fix it for a very small slice of the people, as far as I can tell.

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

#324

Post by sershe » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

838812052807016 wrote: post #294

finfinfin wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure people complain about the tents. There is a lot more that comes with that. Tents block public areas and sidewalks. There is a lot of trash accumulated around tents. There are usually no bathrooms or showers around which leads to urine and poop, unpleasant smells, dangerous trash like needles, etc.

We need a socially acceptable mode of habitation which is less expensive than renting a room. Tents seem like the obvious and established answer. What I had in mind is that we need to solve those accompanying problems in order to make living in tents socially acceptable. Tents show up on public areas and sidewalks because there are no better established places for them. Trash accumulates around tents because there is…

Do we? I don't think we do anything cheaper than an SRO. At the very least, tents in public areas (or on private land!) are not the answer. In any case, we have these campground solutions already. They are called "campgrounds". They are just not an efficient use of urban land, although sometimes they also exist close to cities, e.g. some in Hawaii iirc.

Mainly though, this is a strawman. Tents themselves are not the biggest problem when they don't e.g. block a sidewalk, piece of public infrastructure, or a road. The problem is piles of garbage, needles, dumping sewage into lakes and streams, increase in crime, not-yet-criminal or never-prosecuted safety concerns (e.g. someone I know can no longer take an obvious bike trail to where they're going because of some close calls with aggressive barely human campers).

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

#325

Post by scruple » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 5:44 AM UTC

mbrodersen wrote: post #304

scruple wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of them prefer their perceived freedom living on the street vs. being placed into a living situation they didn't chose. In the handful of cases I am familiar with, including my brother in law, it's owed to untreated/neglected/self-medicated mental illness that manifests itself as a deep paranoia and distrust of authority types.

Other countries (Finland I think?) have had success getting 80% of the homeless population off the street. 80% is a lot better than 0%.

I agree with you, and I love what the Finnish are doing on multiple fronts, but I don't think you're going to learn too much by comparing Finland to the United States.