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

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

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 1001 posts

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

#211

Post by gamblor956 »

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…

Look up the Skid Row Housing Trust's collapse for a detailed look at why housing first is doomed to failure.

In a nutshell: homelessness is a symptom, not a cause, and housing doesn't address the reasons that individuals are homeless. The SRHT focused on housing first, but now has hundreds of unoccupiable units that were damaged by drug-addicted and mentally-ill individuals and rendered inhospitable (and this ultimately led to the SRHT's financial collapse).

For the 90+% of homeless that are homeless due to mental illness or drug abuse, treatment first is the only viable solution, but we're not legally allowed to force someone into treatment until and unless they're an immediate physical danger to themselves or others.

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

#212

Post by russdill »

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 has a housing crisis and there is no political will to fix it. Not wanting low cost housing in your neighborhood is something that unites people very strongly across the political spectrum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_housing_shortage

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

#213

Post by pauldenton »

josho wrote: post #176
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easier said than done. Dig into the data all you want. If you dig deep enough, you'll most likely find what you're looking for... Anything political like this is going to have competing "sources of truth" which are largely funded by Super PACs and essentially just arms of political parties. Either party can "show you the data" now to come to whatever conclusion they want. This is a useful gambit to game all the peopl…

The problem is that some groups have no problem taking facts and distorting them into untruths. We truly are living in an age of alternate facts. I’ve read papers put out by research groups that were easy to debunk. Most people won’t go to that effort and will take the glossy material and legitimate sounding author as being truthful when in fact every conclusion made in the report is a lie.

I think there are alternate facts. Both left and right have sources of information and narratives as to what is helping this country and what is harming it. Alternative facts are like alternative religions. Alternative orientations and life goals

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

#214

Post by kube-system »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #188
kube-system wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Of course, not all cities experience homelessness at the same rate. However, Houston is in the top 25 cities for the total number of homelessness.

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

#215

Post by josho »

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…

I think on this issues it’s conservatives that make a solution untenable.

Conservatives are going to be against giving out living space. So that kills any housing first policies.

The alternative has to be something that a politician can sponsor and be confident that in a few years when they are up for re-election that there won’t be any obvious fraud or abuse. Eg. If their policy is found to have housed a crack den then their political ambitions likely get killed.

This has the consequence that checks and balances and overhead has to be put in place. So we get a solution that is less cost effective with worse outcomes.

My wish is for government to come out and say we accept 10% fraud out of this program if we can house Y number of people. But yeh that won’t happen either because their political opponents will distort that 10% and say the government purposely threw that money away.

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

#216

Post by EatingWithForks »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #149
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…

Easier said than done. Dig into the data all you want. If you dig deep enough, you'll most likely find what you're looking for... Anything political like this is going to have competing "sources of truth" which are largely funded by Super PACs and essentially just arms of political parties. Either party can "show you the data" now to come to whatever conclusion they want. This is a useful gambit to game all the peopl…

It's the job of the reporter to figure something resembling reality out from the competing sources of truth. Who is reporting what figures, and what is their background? Where do they meet? Why are they divergent in specific places-- what is their sampling methods, etc?

I've already heard 10000000 times the 1000 foot view. No one has told me the specific appointed people, the percentages of the total they've been distributed, and where those peoples' public records are for their own municipal budgeting.

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

#217

Post by russdill »

s1k3s wrote: post #209
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…

Non-american ignorant here. Why don't they just build the houses? 17B sounds like a lot.

Everyone wants that solution. No one wants that solution in their neighborhood. Even unsubsidized low cost housing.

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

#218

Post by s1k3s »

russdill wrote: post #217
s1k3s wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-american ignorant here. Why don't they just build the houses? 17B sounds like a lot.

Everyone wants that solution. No one wants that solution in their neighborhood. Even unsubsidized low cost housing.

That makes sense, thanks.

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

#219

Post by gamblor956 »

aorloff wrote: post #181
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.

On this note, LA has hundreds of shelter beds the remain empty every night because they're located in "sober" facilities (meaning that the facilities do not allow alcohol or drug use) and the putative residents would rather be able to drink and use drugs than to have shelter.

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

#220

Post by boucher »

stale2002 wrote: post #102
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how much of a downtrend, seems rather stable [1]. There are also 0 countries that implement Georgist policies and most of the countries in the world are directly neoliberal or neoliberal-bent, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia [2], and friends included. Perhaps I am not correct, but what do you think will happen in a few years when we will have a 100 GB neural model able to drive any car in any environment, effect…

Ah, the Georgism fans. Thinking that every single problem in the world can be solved via a land value tax. It is actually one of the few groups I've found that are worse than the socialist class reductionists, who think that every problem exists "because capitalism". Yes, a land value tax can be a useful policy. But it simply has little relevance to the topic of people who are homeless because of mental issues. And y…

Conflating homelessness with mental issues is as much a lack of real engagement on the issue as your critique of the OP.

Homelessness is primarily a function of housing costs, so I'd suggest the land value tax is a lot more relevant than you think.

Post reply on HN