The Oakland homeless problem is beyond belief

But we (San Francisco, Oakland, etc) can't build ourselves out of the homeless problem. Our problems and their causes are multifaceted. In 2004 Mayor Newsom committed San Francisco to that very solution with a 10-year plan, and by 2014 it had acquired or built a long-term residence for every chronically homeless person in 2004. Approximately 3,000 units for 3,000 people. See https://sfmayor.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documents... Chronic homelessness was near a nadir. However, over the next several years homelessness exploded even though in terms of economic inhospitableness nothing had appreciably changed since 2014.

As a child we moved all over the place, town to town, state to state, chasing better jobs and cheaper living, with varying degrees of success. Poor people, even with empty pockets, are resourceful and somehow manage to get around. Some are better at it than others. This phenomenon is especially stark in accounts of genocide, where some people are seemingly unable to fathom relocating even when they have the economic and physical means and despite knowing their death is imminent. But the operative word is some; some can't, but some can. (Neither the poor nor even the homeless are a homogenous group, and much is lost in our--including my own--reductive aggregations.) It would be patently inhumane and unreasonable to pick any homeless person on the street and demand that they move away. On the other hand, policies that assume as a general matter that the poor or homeless can't, won't, or shouldn't relocate in search of better opportunities or conditions are sorely misguided, not to mention doomed to failure when adhered to at such a local level.

Moreover, from a purely accounting perspective, neither San Francisco nor Oakland have the resources to mitigate all the economic pressures for housing. For definitions of "affordable" bandied about by many on the far left, if you crunch the numbers (e.g. $500k per unit, which is somewhat conservative) San Francisco would need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build enough subsidized housing, and that's if the situation remained static. That's not remotely realistic even though the City of San Francisco already enjoys the highest revenue per capita of any major American city. To think Oakland, a far less wealthy city, could merely build its way out of the current problem using public funds and without displacing anybody is even less realistic, to say the least.

Now we have a multifaceted problem for sure. The people who own homes don't want their homes losing value. We need to build new homes without destroying the value of the older homes.

_THAT_ is the problem. A neighborhood that currently is filled with $700k to $2mm homes attracts a certain clientele. Filling it up with a trailer park is going to be rejected by the local boards / NIMBYism.

For good measure. I personally wouldn't want my $1mm investment to go down the drain to fix the housing issue.

--------------

But that doesn't change the fundamental problem at play here. The price of current homes is too high, and that's largely because the bay area doesn't have enough homes. Either now, nor being built.

> To think Oakland, a far less wealthy city, could merely build its way out of the current problem using public funds and without displacing anybody is even less realistic, to say the least.

A trailer park is cheap as hell. The issue isn't about building it. Its about the NIMBYism revolving around home prices, and how that kind of addition would lower the value of properties.

I'm not demonizing NIMBYism. I understand it. But you gotta understand that political issue as well to see how it affects the greater region.

> Most researchers agree that the connection between homelessness and mental illness is a complicated, two-way relationship. An individual’s mental illness may lead to cognitive and behavioral problems that make it difficult to earn a stable income or to carry out daily activities in ways that encourage stable housing. Several studies have shown, however, that individuals with mental illnesses often find themselves homeless primarily as the result of poverty and a lack of low-income housing.

That was a summary article that lists some sources at the bottom.

Aside from the research, it makes intuitive sense to me as well. Even high severity mental illness is not exclusive or close to exclusive to homeless populations. For every mental illness you find in a homeless person, you can usually find a non-homeless person who has managed it with social support and/or medication. It doesn't make sense to portray homelessness as a causal outcome of mental illness that won't be affected by social & economic policy.

Many people voluntarily seek out birth control. Its difficult for homeless people to manage that long-term. Vasagel is also a solution for homeless men. Long-term implants can be used for women.

The former doesn't have to be endemic, and not the default option for the latter.