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California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

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Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#181

Post by aorloff »

abeppu wrote: post #171

What's crazy is that we decide to spend on homelessness in such inefficient ways. A "housing first" strategy would be more humane, and pretty affordable compared to what we're currently doing. This article says $3.7B for an estimated 115k homeless population which yields around $32k per person per year, or $2700 per person per month, and that's only state money. In SF it may be more like $57k/yr, or $4750/mo. At thos…

We are doing exactly what you propose. Many communities have "housing first" homeless strategies. Some people do in fact get off the street.

But we also have some "service resistant" homeless populations that do not want to live in your rule-based housing, they want to live without those rules even if it means living on the street.

Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#183

Post by cscurmudgeon »

quest88 wrote: post #148
tptacek wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California's homelessness problem is not caused by other states offloading their homeless to California.

Ok..then what is it caused by? Provide your sources.

Even if it is caused by other states, is it valid to complain about that? What is the solution to that? Borders between states (while having no borders between countries)?

Edit: I dug up some data:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-population.ht...

> As the data shows us, most of the homeless people you pass on the streets every day are in fact Californians.

> “This is a local crisis and a homegrown problem,” said Peter Lynn, the executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the agency that conducts the largest homeless census count in the country.

> L.A.H.S.A.’s 2019 homeless count found that 64 percent of the 58,936 Los Angeles County residents experiencing homelessness had lived in the city for more than 10 years.

CA considers you a resident for tax purposes if you live in the state for a year but in homeless studies they consider you a resident if you live here for more than 10 years. Really shows the bias.

Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#184

Post by gamblor956 »

godelski wrote: post #120

This 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…

Texas and Oklahoma openly bus their homeless to L.A. Rick Perry (former governor of Texas) openly bragged about it during his presidential campaign.

An LAT series of articles on homeless populations in Hollywood found that more than 60% of Hollywood's homeless, and more than 80% of the drug-abusing homeless, were not L.A. or even SoCal locals, and had come to L.A. from out-of-state. More than half of the homeless came from the Southwest, with the majority coming from Texas.

Even LAHSA's own survey of the homeless reveals that most of the homeless in L.A. weren't local to L.A. prior to becoming homeless in L.A. (However, because LAHSA's funding is based in part on the number of homeless, they characterize anyone that has been in L.A. for over a year as local, even if that individual has never had an actual residence in L.A. and was homeless upon arrival.)

Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#185

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #130
godelski wrote: post #120

This 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.

[deleted]

Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#186

Post by jrumbut »

guardiangod wrote: post #109
atdrummond wrote: post #8

That’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…

Active interventions is one thing, forced detox is another. This involves restricting someone's freedom of movement, subjecting them to a very unpleasant experience, and then dropping them back off in the same community with a massive drug craving and a lower tolerance.

You'd want to see evidence of incredible effectiveness to be willing to engage in something like that, but the evidence just isn't there: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095539591...

> Evidence does not, on the whole, suggest improved outcomes related to compulsory treatment approaches, with some studies suggesting potential harms. Given the potential for human rights abuses within compulsory treatment settings, non-compulsory treatment modalities should be prioritized by policymakers seeking to reduce drug-related harms.

Note that this systematic review looked at compulsory treatment methods besides just detox, but none of the results were that impressive.

Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#187

Post by DoreenMichele »

godelski wrote: post #120

This 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…

How does California have 50% of the homeless and 12% of the population?

It doesn't. It has 25 percent of the nation’s homeless. It has 50 percent of the unsheltered homeless -- i.e. people camped outside.

It has so many unsheltered homeless in part because parts of the state are temperate and dry. Much of the time, it's not a hardship to sleep outside in some parts of California.

Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#188

Post by NotYourLawyer »

kube-system wrote: post #156
zacharytelschow wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's a federal failure why are the homeless highly concentrated in certain areas?

People and resources are concentrated in certain areas https://xkcd.com/1138/

Yes, because obviously Houston has just as big a problem as SF.

Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#189

Post by boucher »

atdrummond wrote: post #24
skrebbel wrote: post #16

Earlier 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.

I’m not at all against unconditional cash grants. I work for a non-profit that does just that. What I am against is a totally unstructured program where they hand cash out knowing that 90% of it goes into an open air drug market that they make no attempt to shut down or control. I’m not arguing for work requirements or time limits. People who are legitimately struggling will fall through the cracks. But I don’t think…

I don't really understand the point you are making. "I'm not arguing for work requirements... But I don't think its insane to require people to work." So, you are in favor of work requirements then?

This article has an extremely click bait headline; it's entirely about one encampment and not at all about what the $17B is being spent on or any other aspect of the homelessness problem.

Nevertheless, one thing pointed out in this article is that some of the homeless do have jobs, so the issue of work requirements is not simple. And I think you need some evidence for your suggestion that anyone is being handed cash and spending 90% of it on drugs.

Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#190

Post by davidw »

pydry wrote: post #151
davidw wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High level, statistically speaking, there's a lot of evidence that homelessness correlates with housing prices. What's remarkable is how mad people get about the pretty self-explanatory notion that as a thing increases in costs, fewer people can afford it. They want to blame drugs or mental health or something. And while those do play a part for many people, the price of housing is what looms over it all: https://www…

>They want to blame drugs or mental health or something. Because the actual solutions involve taking a scythe to property prices and rents and thats the last thing investors want. They, and the media outlets they own, would prefer to see people dying on the street than that, but theyre not comfortable admitting it. Hence drugs, mental health crisis, yadda yadda anything except real solutions - 20ccs of rent control s…

There are a lot of different ways of building 'enough' housing:

https://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-your-...

Everyone has different preferences and ideas there, but the shortage is so, so damaging right now in so many ways.

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