Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person • Hacker News Board

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#251

Post by renewiltord » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 7:31 PM UTC

Haha, this is normal among so-called progressive circles. They subscribe universally to the "if it's not good enough, it's better to have nothing". So you can't provide crappy housing, it's better for people to be on the street. You can't provide crappy jobs, it's better for people to have no jobs. You can't provide crappy healthcare, it's better for people to die.

The secondary aspect of this is that these people will fight tooth and nail to ensure that crappy things don't exist but will put up some token "We should have X" to get the good thing built. Progressives...

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#252

Post by dionidium » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 7:32 PM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #238

dionidium wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you're just back to where you began -- a situation where government is going to need to takeover, because nobody can make a profit selling flophouses to indigent single men if they're required by law to make them as nice as middle-class apartments. What modern Westerners seem entirely unwilling to acknowledge or accept is that if you require by decree that all accommodations look like middle-class accommodations…

> nobody can make a profit selling flophouses to indigent single men if they're required by law to make them as nice as middle-class apartments. What exactly do you mean when you say "as nice as middle-class apartments"? Are you talking about how nice the carpeting and hardwood flooring is? How nice the building looks from the outside? How likely the roof is to leak or collapse? How safe the electrical wiring and fir…

What if it's closer to the latter? Like, what if the building doesn't have GFCI outlets in the kitchens? And maybe the roof in one of the bathrooms leaks and there's been a bucket under it for the last few months? And maybe the heat was out for 12 days last month? What then? What if the price of saying, "sorry, that's unacceptable" is that those men sleep on the street, instead?

In the West that's exactly what we've done. We've said, sorry, no, you can't provide housing that looks like that, so the operators of those establishments said, OK, then, I won't. And now those men sleep on the street.

We seem to think that we can demand of proprietors whatever we want and they'll have no choice but to comply. But it's simply not true. At some threshold they'll just shut down. And then I guess we can celebrate the elimination of "substandard" housing and declare ourselves morally cleansed.

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#253

Post by pinephoneguy » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #197

legitster wrote: post #66

In the last 50 years, cities across the country closed down over 1 million SROs ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy ) in an effort to remove slums or just neglect at increasing property value. There are now over half of a million homeless. It's honestly impressive the number is not more. For the 1.2 billion dollars they are spending, if all of the apartments were built to the spec of a roadside mote…

This...is not wrong. Pioneer Square in Seattle used to have a lot of flop houses, part of it being the original "skid row" (logs skid to the saw mill, really muddy and not a desirable place to live). My grandfather in Spokane unwittingly ran a rooming house we cousins called the "empty arms" (inherited from his sister), which housed a lot of people who were just barely getting by. Seattle's flop houses are mostly gon…

I'm not convinced this isn't done intentionally to prevent a deflationary market.

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#254

Post by spaetzleesser » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 7:35 PM UTC

My ex used to do some auditing at LA city. Usually these contractors are vehicles to give tons of money to well connected friends of the city council or mayor for services like “consulting” and “management”. They also have large amounts of middle management. In one case social workers couldn’t handle the number of required visits per week (I think they each had 30 clients or more). The solution was to hire more consultants and project managers to analyze the situation instead of hiring people to reduce the workload to reasonable levels.

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#255

Post by holbrad » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 7:38 PM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #176

holbrad wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally for most goods markets work really well. There's two intrinsic failure cases: externalities and monopolies. So arguably housing fits into the monopoly bucket, especially if you lean towards a land value tax. Safety and a monopoly on force most would argue are the domains of government. But the rest of your examples seem fine to be market based, though the devil is in the detail.

> Generally for most goods markets work really well. There's two intrinsic failure cases: externalities and monopolies. I agree, but you are omitting two other cases: Equity and availability. Again, markets are built to serve those who provide the highest profit. That's fine for iPhones, but not for health, safety, education, basic food, and basic shelter. Everyone should have those, regardless of how much profit the…

Markets provide availability of goods, as long as you can accept price variability.

I'll reiterate for safety and land I think these things fail for the reason I mentioned originally.

Healthcare I could certainly see working in a mostly market led way, I'm personally from the UK (So extra heretical to say)

Food is a bad example, as availability is ultra high. Fresh produce is scarce in areas due to low demand. Low demand leads to higher prices.

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#256

Post by legitster » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 7:38 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #116

legitster wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a great point, but may still disagree with it. To put it another way, we are taking people out of homelessness, and putting them in houses that are more expensive than 30-40% of units on the market. So the members of the program are getting a much worse deal than if they were just given money directly to pay rent. The cost to house homeless shouldn't be slightly below median. Realistically, it should…

Remember these are new units and those median prices are for all units regardless of age and condition. It is really impractical to build new units in the 1st percentile. Those are almost always going to be old units that are poorly maintained. You also can't just give this money to homeless people and let them buy or rent their own places because the fundamental problem is a lack of supply. Simply giving them money…

This is that classic "you can't grow old forests" problem.

If someone needed a car to get to work, you would never think of providing them with a brand new one. But we are kind of in that situation with housing.

I think the city could have saved a bunch of money here sourcing existing housing, then putting the savings into funding general new construction. But a $100 million kickback to a developer to add 1500 units is somehow less politically popular than $1 billion dollars for 1200 units.

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#257

Post by myfavoritedog » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 7:40 PM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #218

quartesixte wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God. And it was Democrats who pushed for it too IIRC. Corruption deep on both sides of the aisle.

To be fair, the republican party trashed its brand so thoroughly that it essentially doesn't exist in California, so we're under one party rule. There is no other side of the aisle. It's a shame because Schwarzenegger gave the party a winning formula when he was governor, but the party swung so far off the rails that his centrism makes him a bolshevik to the party as it exists now. One party rule isn't good, but we d…

No post body was provided.

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#258

Post by boredumb » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 7:41 PM UTC

sfe22 wrote: post #159

jvanderbot wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely this. In LA there are constant referendums about homelessness, in CA massive budget increases, and yet, nobody will allow a shelter or multi-family unit to be constructed in their neighborhood, lest their soaring land value peak. In CA, it's my firm belief that people have a tad too much power over the minutae of government operations. What did we even elect people for if we are going to try to solve everyt…

So CA is too democratic in your opinion? It should slide more towards tyranny?

Total democracy is mob rule of the majority.

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#259

Post by rhizome » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 7:42 PM UTC

1024core wrote: post #204

rhizome wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The city isn't spending $837K to house one homeless person, they've spent that on housing the first homeless person in that unit. Unless they're planning on these people never improving their situation to the point of moving out and for the unit to be destroyed in the process, the units can be reused. We'll see if the paper writes a story on how the cost of housing a homeless person has been cut in half after the uni…

> Unless they're planning on these people never improving their situation to the point of moving out and for the unit to be destroyed in the process, the units can be reused. You'd be surprised to learn how little planning is done for the next step. Authorities (at least here in SF) are myopically focused on moving people into housing; there is no step 2 after that. That's why we have to keep building more housing, a…

No, I wouldn't be surprised, that's why I used the word "planning" instead of "assuming" or "leaving them to..." As the saying goes, "Failing to plan is planning to fail."

In SF you have to account for the fact that the city is de facto prohibited from spending money on anything other than piecemeal programs, not to mention the upkeep and staffing to alleviate the deterioration of existing housing options. Every few years somebody manages to convince enough Supervisors that they've found a silver bullet and to give them some money for a meager pilot program to help a hard problem that requires actual money, experts, and priority. Oh, but there's pushback from $300K/yr techbros who have lived in SF for over two years and are sure it's all gone out of control ever since they had to step over a needle once. There are lots of knowledgeable and motivated people working in homeless and drug outreach along with related organizations that have like zero dollars. I'm not one of these experts and experienced people, but I'm pretty sure they should be funded and integrated more into an overall program.

In Sacramento they're preparing to kick people out of their hotel program, but the Sheriff is waiting with bated breath right outside the door: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article258051333.html I half expect them to describe putting the homeless in jail as a savings.

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#260

Post by rhizome » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 7:44 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #208

rhizome wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The city isn't spending $837K to house one homeless person, they've spent that on housing the first homeless person in that unit. Unless they're planning on these people never improving their situation to the point of moving out and for the unit to be destroyed in the process, the units can be reused. We'll see if the paper writes a story on how the cost of housing a homeless person has been cut in half after the uni…

> The city isn't spending $837K to house one homeless person, they've spent that on housing the first homeless person in that unit. Unless they are housing functioning tenants (the easier homeless cases that don't involve mental illness or substance abuse, the ones that can get back on their feet with some help), those units are likely to get damaged quickly and require extensive refurbishment within a year or two. H…

An effective homeless program probably has to include rehab, occupational therapy, and related services, yes.