All these detailed, complicated arguments. Why is homelessness not the same level of problem in the UK? Maybe think about that then consider why it's such an issue in the US.
California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
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Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#122That’s because Cali’s approach is insane. They give you hundreds a month in cash grants (some make $1k a month in SF) and require you to make NO alterations to your lifestyle. I was amazed when living in SF how many of the homeless are not locals. Not even Californians! I myself lived on the streets for a number of years and have dealt with addiction issues. It is absolutely insane how we’ve stopped treating homeless…
>It is absolutely insane how we’ve stopped treating homeless people as humans with potential and aspirations and assume that all they can be is a vacuum for drugs and cash. Vancouver has the same approach- warmest place in Canada. When I suggested active intervention (eg. force detox), the activists would accuse me of treating homeless people as sub-humans, that I am being cruel and inhumane and a monster, and that w…
There's a pervasive belief that homeless people in various comfortable climes are migrants from harsher locales, but when you do the research you apparently tend to find that they're overwhelmingly people who had stable living situations in those comfortable locations, and became homeless there: they aren't "imported". So the "warmest place in Canada" thing is unlikely to be meaningful, unless there's some reason a comfortable climate makes housing less stable.
Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is giving people money unconditionally not treating them as “humans with potential and aspirations”? I’m not entirely sure what your point is. Are you saying that adding more rules and conditions and whatnot is better? I don’t have a well-formed opinion here myself, just that most people arguing for treating benefit recipients humanely argue for fewer rules, not more. So I’d like to understand your point better.
> How is giving people money unconditionally not treating them as “humans with potential and aspirations”? If access to money is not their actual impediment then you may be making their situation worse. > I’m not entirely sure what your point is. Are you saying that adding more rules and conditions and whatnot is better? You are drowning. I throw $1000 at you. Are you saying I should have done more? > argue for fewer…
>You are drowning. I throw $1000 at you. Are you saying I should have done more?
What if we apply your logic to your own scenario?
You are drowning. I will jump in and help you get to safety only after you have taken a blood and piss test. Are you saying I should have done more?
Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#124That’s because Cali’s approach is insane. They give you hundreds a month in cash grants (some make $1k a month in SF) and require you to make NO alterations to your lifestyle. I was amazed when living in SF how many of the homeless are not locals. Not even Californians! I myself lived on the streets for a number of years and have dealt with addiction issues. It is absolutely insane how we’ve stopped treating homeless…
> I was amazed when living in SF how many of the homeless are not locals. Not even Californians! My least favorite part of this was the local media pretended this wasn't true. They pretended it vociferously despite this being such an obvious lie.
The Dept. of Homeless Services doesn't track this? It is done in NYC, and it was a major bone of contention that the high level of service was effectively magnetizing the city for homeless in other parts of the country to come here, or for cities even to bus them here. The law is a little vague on the matter, but the prevailing belief by the NYC administration is that anyone who can make it to the agency's doorstop and claim homelessness is entitled to emergency shelter up to 6 months, with no residency check (let alone U.S. citizenship), and there is no clear regulation preventing renewal. Even before the current foreign migrant crisis, about 10-15% of the shelter population came from outside NYC as their most recent stated prior address.
Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#125Homelessness is a failure of the Federal government that nobody there is even willing to talk about. This can't be solved at a local or state level in a country with unrestricted freedom of movement.
Let me just quality a bit further: homelessness is a failure of the neoliberal ideology (land free markets/privatization never worked, from the enclosures [1] to modern times, see Georgism for a solution [2]) and further a failure of the metaphysics of meritocracy based in desert-people's belief "by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground", which simply isn't the case today, and i…
If we're going to put the SF homeless problem on "neoliberal ideology", we should also give "neoliberal ideology" (e.g. free markets/trade/globalization) credit for lifting almost a billion people out of poverty in developing nations (mainly China, India) in the 00s.
Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#126That’s because Cali’s approach is insane. They give you hundreds a month in cash grants (some make $1k a month in SF) and require you to make NO alterations to your lifestyle. I was amazed when living in SF how many of the homeless are not locals. Not even Californians! I myself lived on the streets for a number of years and have dealt with addiction issues. It is absolutely insane how we’ve stopped treating homeless…
> I was amazed when living in SF how many of the homeless are not locals. Not even Californians!
I visited the Bay Area a number of times and only met one person who was born locally. "Not even Americans!" in many cases.
Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#127Homelessness is a failure of the Federal government that nobody there is even willing to talk about. This can't be solved at a local or state level in a country with unrestricted freedom of movement.
I don’t think the feds are to blame. SF and similar CA cities have set up a program that encourages people to move there because it makes being “homeless” an actual possible lifestyle choice. Even an enjoyable one.
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Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#128You can get high on fentanyl ~$1 USD ... there is no stopping a sedative crisis at these prices. It's effectively a reverse Opium War consuming lives and our communities.
These two accounts have provided a gripping POV of this utter humanitarian crisis in SF:
https://twitter.com/bettersoma https://twitter.com/war24182236
Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#129Everyone already knows that the more money California spends on homeless, the more of them will come to California. It's a service. The state/city that provides the best service for homeless people - that's where I will try to go if I don't have a home. Politicians don't seem to understand this. Or maybe they do, but they do the wrong thing in order to drum up politically correct votes. Take San Francisco. It spends…
Very frustrating to see the right blame the left for the homeless problem when the left are the only ones attempting to do anything about it.
Houston has gotten more people off the streets in the last decade than San Francisco or Los Angeles.
Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#130This reads as a political ad, not a news story. The ad is good at pulling heart strings and getting people riled up (see comments here) but does not do any actual reporting. How did California spend the money? Were there leaky buckets? How does California have 50% of the homeless and 12% of the population? Are people being bussed in, making this a federal problem? Who's responsible? Don't just tell me the governor, t…
California's homelessness problem is not caused by other states offloading their homeless to California.