Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Homelessness is primarily a housing problem

noahpinion.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 56 posts

Re: Homelessness is primarily a housing problem

#21

Post by whitemary »

zumu wrote: post #18

Why should issues like homelessness be reducible to one 'primary' cause? Highlighting housing costs as a significant contributing factor is an important point to make, but there's no need to undermine the other contributing factors through bad faith arguments and cherry picked statistics. Yes, homelessness clusters in cities with robust social programs, esp. those with temperate weather. These same cities are also th…

> We should absolutely look to provide more subsidized housing to the needy, but it's clear we aren't aren't able to do it in the most in demand real estate markets in country.

Who will you hold responsible when they can’t find jobs where they live?

Re: Homelessness is primarily a housing problem

#22

Post by notjulianjaynes »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #8

I wonder how much mental illness and drug abuse contribute to staying in a place you can't afford a roof?

20 million Americans have a substance use disorder.

About half a million people in the United States are currently experiencing homelessness.

So the overlap in those populations is like 2%.

Source: couple lazy google searches.

Re: Homelessness is primarily a housing problem

#23

Post by Aloha »

We also make it very hard to climb back out of homelessness - if you've had an eviction, it's very hard to find a place to take you.

I have a friend in Portland, he's a single, male, with no kids, in Portland - and there is no program to help, hopefully you make 3x the rent and can save up first/last, and a months deposit.

What's worse, he has mental health issues, but he makes too much for medicaid and too little to buy insurance, so he can either work, or have healthcare, and those are the options - either way, the only place he can find to live is in a minivan.

Re: Homelessness is primarily a housing problem

#24

Post by exabrial »

> we can build an ample supply of housing and subsidized housing.

Sigh. That’s the conclusion? Land is cheap. Literally most of the US is empty. Housing is stupid cheap. Housing is crowded coastal cities is not.

What the article did highlight really well (maybe accidentally) that homelessness sticks around for multiple reasons: 40% substance problem, mental illness problem, etc. maybe there’s always two factors, maybe that’s why efforts aren’t ending it?

Re: Homelessness is primarily a housing problem

#25

Post by Aloha »

zumu wrote: post #18

Why should issues like homelessness be reducible to one 'primary' cause? Highlighting housing costs as a significant contributing factor is an important point to make, but there's no need to undermine the other contributing factors through bad faith arguments and cherry picked statistics. Yes, homelessness clusters in cities with robust social programs, esp. those with temperate weather. These same cities are also th…

We choose not to do it - and I dont believe its calls for subsidy alone, if you build 100,000+ market rate units in SF Bay, PDX, or SEA - the price for market rate housing will drop, by some measurable amount. You keep letting developers build housing until there is no more demand to build more, even if it's the foo-foo luxury apartments - they will put downward price pressure on the 3rd floor walkups.

Re: Homelessness is primarily a housing problem

#26

Post by Aloha »

exabrial wrote: post #24

> we can build an ample supply of housing and subsidized housing. Sigh. That’s the conclusion? Land is cheap. Literally most of the US is empty. Housing is stupid cheap. Housing is crowded coastal cities is not. What the article did highlight really well (maybe accidentally) that homelessness sticks around for multiple reasons: 40% substance problem, mental illness problem, etc. maybe there’s always two factors, mayb…

There are no jobs in those places, and if there are, little housing, or little way for the people sleeping in a tent somewhere to go there. Furthermore people are afraid of moving to places they know no one, further away from their support network and familiarity - so they dont.

Re: Homelessness is primarily a housing problem

#27

Post by Aloha »

bombcar wrote: post #3
jdaggers wrote: post #2

While I don't doubt the statistics brought up in this article, I am skeptical about how the underlying data was sampled. The majority of "homeless" people are not necessarily who everyone is talking about when they think "homeless" (e.g. people dressed in rags sleeping on the streets/doing drugs in public.) I personally suspect that there's quite a difference in that sub-population.

There’s a big crosstalk that happens because almost everyone is referring to the chronically homeless (or whatever the technical term is) whereas the vast majority are homeless for 6 months or less.

I believe firmly they are two different cohorts, and if you stay homeless longer and longer, you start to homogenize into the other cohort and pick up there comorbidities of that cohort.

Re: Homelessness is primarily a housing problem

#28

Post by Aloha »

29athrowaway wrote: post #6

"Homeless" refers to many things. It can refer to a person living in a car, a person living in a shelter, a person living a tent, a person living in a homeless camp, a person living under a piece of cardboard, etc. Some people become homeless at a point and manage their way out, others stay homeless. If you are an alcoholic, or a drug addict, and want to get drunk or high or both in a regular basis, you don't like th…

A homeless shelter is not solving homelessness -

Furthermore - lets just look at some of the common rules imposed on the homeless seeking housing -

* No Pets

* No Visitors

* Curfew Time

* Limits on the number of people per unit (meaning, families and couples cannot always be accommodated together)

- and a host of others. Also in some places there is a requirement that you have a social worker, and/or receiving mental healthcare treatment - except there are long waiting periods.

For most long term homeless people telling them "you have to give up your dog" will keep them on the streets - we need "housing, no questions asked" rather "housing with rules". Most short term homeless do not qualify for these programs - it turns into a kind of License Raj to try to get in, and maintain your status in these programs.

If you want to impose your moral vision on people, thats fine and dandy, the jesus-people have been doing it for decades with their missions on skid row, but that wont solve homelessness.

I believe there is no such thing as 'unworthy poor' all poverty is worth solving, because the broader societal costs in not solving poverty is corrosive on wider society - and the first step to solving poverty is attacking the homelessnes problem.

Re: Homelessness is primarily a housing problem

#29

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Aloha wrote: post #25
zumu wrote: post #18

Why should issues like homelessness be reducible to one 'primary' cause? Highlighting housing costs as a significant contributing factor is an important point to make, but there's no need to undermine the other contributing factors through bad faith arguments and cherry picked statistics. Yes, homelessness clusters in cities with robust social programs, esp. those with temperate weather. These same cities are also th…

We choose not to do it - and I dont believe its calls for subsidy alone, if you build 100,000+ market rate units in SF Bay, PDX, or SEA - the price for market rate housing will drop, by some measurable amount. You keep letting developers build housing until there is no more demand to build more, even if it's the foo-foo luxury apartments - they will put downward price pressure on the 3rd floor walkups.

You are assuming that the economics of house building is such that developers would do as many projects as they could if only they were allowed to, but even in the current market, property developers are still very picky and have to make sure they can make a decent profit; land costs are only one part of that. If you let developers build 100,000 market rate places in one city, (a) they actually don’t have the resources (labor, capital) to do that in some reasonable time frame and (b) they would pull back if sale prices began dropping below their costs plus profit margin.

Re: Homelessness is primarily a housing problem

#30

Post by Aloha »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #29
Aloha wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We choose not to do it - and I dont believe its calls for subsidy alone, if you build 100,000+ market rate units in SF Bay, PDX, or SEA - the price for market rate housing will drop, by some measurable amount. You keep letting developers build housing until there is no more demand to build more, even if it's the foo-foo luxury apartments - they will put downward price pressure on the 3rd floor walkups.

You are assuming that the economics of house building is such that developers would do as many projects as they could if only they were allowed to, but even in the current market, property developers are still very picky and have to make sure they can make a decent profit; land costs are only one part of that. If you let developers build 100,000 market rate places in one city, (a) they actually don’t have the resourc…

First, I mentioned regions, and do be clear, I'm referring to regions - Thats the point, there is a point where is does reach equilibrium and the price of lower tier and less desirable housing starts to fall.

The Bay Area has 7m people in it, SF proper 800k, you could grow the number of housing units by 10% every decade, or less - and it's more than feasible. Seattle Metro is 4m people, and Portland is 2m. That works out to 700k housing units in SF Bay, 400k in Seattle Metro and 200k in Portland Metro - those while seemingly giant numbers are absolutely feasible to build.

Why do you think Houston is so cheap to live in? or for that matter DFW? one, we have 100 miles of prairie in every direction to build in, so building is cheap - two, we impose few structural barriers to prevent new construction.

Post reply on HN