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Breakdown of data on homeless populations across the U.S.

dynomight.net

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Re: Breakdown of data on homeless populations across the U.S.

#81

Post by sdenton4 »

mulmen wrote: post #72
klyrs wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you do if someone wants to sleep on the street? This describes an incredibly miniscule number of people. There are a lot of problems with existing shelters (as mentioned quite a few times in thia thread) so currently it's hard to disentangle "wants to sleep on the streets" from "doesn't want the available alternatives." Yeah, there probably are a few folks like this. Having an oversupply of 1% isn't going t…

That doesn’t answer the question. I’m not opposed to building more shelter space. But what do you do with the people who don’t want to stay there? Do you make it non-optional? Do you just accept that there will always be some people living on the street? At what point can a camping ban in public parks be reinstated and enforced? Can it ever be? Should it?

You're on hacker news. The first rule of optimization is to /benchmark and profile first/ and then work on the part of the problem that will give you the biggest wins. Don't just work on the imagined problem, because you will usually be working on the wrong thing.

Re: Breakdown of data on homeless populations across the U.S.

#82

Post by throwaway0a5e »

b9a2cab5 wrote: post #40
crowbahr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In NYC, a homeless person getting in your subway car ruins the entire ride I've ridden with homeless in the same car as me plenty of times and only occasionally will they be disruptive. I'm far more irked with showtime than with the occasional sleeping down-on-his-luck guy.

Not sure what your meaning of disruptive is but I would define "ruins the entire ride" as making the entire car smell like urine and feces. I've also gotten on buses where it is plainly apparent someone peed on the bus floor.

I'm sure you can find a few anecdotal counter examples but generally speaking people don't behave that way on the east coast, homeless or not. And when they do it's more likely to be a drunk on game day than a homeless person.

Re: Breakdown of data on homeless populations across the U.S.

#84

Post by trinovantes »

AlexandrB wrote: post #47
jseliger wrote: post #6

There is mostly a housing crisis, with homelessness downstream of housing. I originally left this comment a few months ago, but: CA especially has been underbuilding housing for close to 50 years ( https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ ) and now has a severe housing shortage, to the point where a parodic response, like "California will try absolutely anything to reduce homelessness, except build more housing"…

I don't buy it. In Toronto, there are new condo buildings going up seemingly on every block, but there are still 10,000 homeless[1]. The inconvenient truth is that building low-income housing is not very profitable and no entity driven by the profit motive wants to do it. The margins on luxury condos are much better. [1] https://www.fredvictor.org/facts-about-homelessness-in-toron...

When you're severely constrained by where you can build thanks to NIMBY, you always build whatever has the highest margins i.e. luxury 1bd condos

Re: Breakdown of data on homeless populations across the U.S.

#85

Post by boc »

cheriot wrote: post #37
nradov wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We absolutely should build more homeless shelters. However many homeless people refuse to stay in current dorm style shelters because they don't allow drug use, or pets, or the other residents are dangerous.

This is a debate that comes up and I'm only familiar with the specifics in San Francisco. I won't claim it's the same anywhere else. The shelters are full so the obvious problem is not people refusing to sleep in them. At the same time, many of the "offers" of going inside are disingenuous. People giving up all of their belongings (specifically tent and camping stove), leaving loved ones, and the promised shelter is…

You're describing SROs and they've been disappearing from cities like SF, despite being a decent option (on paper) for transition housing.

Here's a primer: https://thebolditalic.com/life-inside-sf-s-vanishing-single-...

Re: Breakdown of data on homeless populations across the U.S.

#86

Post by [deleted] »

paxys wrote: post #22

> There are some exceptions. For one thing, despite being close to California, Nevada and some of the Montana-esque states saw big decreases in certain categories. Someone people would look at this and go wow, Nevada and the rest did a great job providing shelters and help to their homeless. I think a more realistic answer is that they just shipped them to California.

[deleted]

Re: Breakdown of data on homeless populations across the U.S.

#87

Post by agumonkey »

cheriot wrote: post #9

We're a country of 350,000,000 people. Leaving 500,000 outside simply because municipalities don't want them around is inexcusable. Solution in two parts 1. Make it legal to build homes where people live (looking at you California, specifically LA, SF, SV) 2. Build dorm style shelters for anyone that would otherwise sleep outside There's complicating issues like not enough addiction treatment and mental health facili…

Hygiene service vans with showers for the rest

Re: Breakdown of data on homeless populations across the U.S.

#88

Post by mulmen »

sdenton4 wrote: post #81
mulmen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t answer the question. I’m not opposed to building more shelter space. But what do you do with the people who don’t want to stay there? Do you make it non-optional? Do you just accept that there will always be some people living on the street? At what point can a camping ban in public parks be reinstated and enforced? Can it ever be? Should it?

You're on hacker news. The first rule of optimization is to /benchmark and profile first/ and then work on the part of the problem that will give you the biggest wins. Don't just work on the imagined problem, because you will usually be working on the wrong thing.

I thought hackernews was a place for thoughtful conversation.

How should we optimize solutions to homelessness? Is there some ideal amount of homelessness? Have we already reached it?

Recall that this thread started with a comment offering a two part solution that does not address an unwillingness to stay in shelters.

Re: Breakdown of data on homeless populations across the U.S.

#89

Post by dynm »

zwieback wrote: post #57

This is great work, data I've been very interested in. It would be really fascinating to get to county and city level, where I live there's been a crazy increase in people living in tents with severe mental and/or substance abuse problems. It does reflect at the state (Oregon) level but I think it's a bit misleading because it feels like there are magnet areas where all the increase happens in one spot.

Hey, I do have plots at the city and county level, 387 of them! Go to https://dynomight.net/homeless-crisis/#all-plots and click on the second triangle thing.

Re: Breakdown of data on homeless populations across the U.S.

#90

Post by throwaway19937 »

nostrebored wrote: post #24
cheriot wrote: post #9

We're a country of 350,000,000 people. Leaving 500,000 outside simply because municipalities don't want them around is inexcusable. Solution in two parts 1. Make it legal to build homes where people live (looking at you California, specifically LA, SF, SV) 2. Build dorm style shelters for anyone that would otherwise sleep outside There's complicating issues like not enough addiction treatment and mental health facili…

The problem is that people in the U.S. so often only see homelessness through the lens of where they live. Homelessness is a unique problem in each city. For example, the west coast has favorable weather and a history of being a destination for people after they are released from prisons or mental facilities. In cities on the east coast there is more leftist-narrative style homelessness: people who were depending on…

The west coast also has the 9th circuit's Martin v. Boise decision (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_v._Boise). It prevents criminalizing public camping unless there's shelter space for everyone. This is impossible given the number of homeless people so we're stuck with encampments everywhere.
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