California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by WeylandYutani » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 7:39 PM UTC

beerpls wrote: post #192

quest88 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s a warm climate with large cities which provide sufficient incentive for people to choose to be homeless over other avenues of living Homeless people obviously want to live somewhere like Cali over Canada for the winter. California also provides massive welfare to homeless. They also have a very open arms policy to illegals who are often poor and homeless These aren’t exhaustive reasons why, but it’s a core part…

You think people choose to be fucked up? And what's the solution here, shoot the homeless?

Guess what you're in a never ending war. Every day new crazy people are born or made by our wonderful society, poverty keeps spreading (where's my replicators!).

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

#282

Post by ModernMech » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 7:41 PM UTC

realjhol wrote: post #67

mschuster91 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The left's idea or "doing something about it" is making the problem worse not better. It would be better to do nothing than actively facilitate and incentivize homelessness and drug addiction with cash payments. It at least keeps people alive. The problem is that the causes of homelessness are not addressed at all - there is nowhere near enough affordable housing stock.

> It at least keeps people alive. It may well keep people alive - in a way, but it's no solution if it creates a mass of people who are destroying themselves and the city community. It's still death - just in slow motion. > The problem is that the causes of homelessness are not addressed at all - there is nowhere near enough affordable housing stock. Yes, and that's not going to change, so alternative solutions are r…

> It's still death - just in slow motion.

Also known as life.

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

#283

Post by zehaeva » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 7:41 PM UTC

sovnade wrote: post #247

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.

Homelessness isn't just caused by someone not having a home. There is a massive overlap of mental illness and substance abuse/addiction. Just giving a homeless person a house will not solve the underlying problems that caused them to be homeless in the first place. There needs to be movement on multiple fronts - mental health, physical health, rehab, job training, personal finance, etc. If the solution was easy, some…

Strangely that's not what Finland[0] has found to be the case. By using a housing first approach they've been able to severely decrease the number of homeless people.

You are absolutely correct that other interdictions are needed as well.

[0]https://world-habitat.org/news/our-blog/helsinki-is-still-le...

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

#284

Post by bluGill » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 7:42 PM UTC

goatlover wrote: post #196

guardiangod wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you give housing to mentally unstable people, they are just going to trash the place. Vancouver has been building and rebuilding support housing because the units get trashed and literally ripped apart after a week. Vancouver is doing a lot more for homeless people than SF/LA and it is still not working.

Then incarceration in mental institutions and long term drug rehab facilities seems like the only answer.

That has been tried before. We stopped doing it because of how horrible it was. The homeless are better off than in the institutions of old.

I don't know if modern institutions could be better. However we know they failed in the past. If you want to propose them again, you need to provide some proof that they new ones will be better than the old.

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

#285

Post by bombcar » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 7:42 PM UTC

bluefirebrand wrote: post #163

ribosometronome wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

You are drowning. I jump in and help you to shore. You immediately jump back in and start drowning again. Someone else helps you to shore You jump back in and start drowning again. Eventually everyone who would help you wants some kind of evidence that this time you won't just jump back in before they help you. You drown. Are you saying they should have done more?

At some point you put up a fence, either around the drowning pond or around the jumper.

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

#286

Post by bobthepanda » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 7:42 PM UTC

thebigwinning wrote: post #264

giantg2 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar to what I've seen in HI. I imagine there would be more in HI if it didn't cost an expensive plane ticket.

SF and further north are hardly nice weather locations.

SF isn’t a tropical paradise, but temperature extremes that cause death aren’t very common.

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

#287

Post by alephnerd » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 7:43 PM UTC

guardiangod wrote: post #180

soperj wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vancouver isn't just the warmest place, it's also the most expensive. There definitely have been cases of other parts of the country paying for a bus ticket out to the coast, just like they did to homeless people in Vancouver, sending them to Victoria during the Winter Olympics.

Victoria, Nanaimo etc. also have significant homeless issues, and I fully support out of province homeless people moving to Vancouver for whatever reason they might have. Freedom of movement is important to democracy. But just as Oakland/LA/SF and California are passing the bucks, the federal and provincial government are pretending they are deaf and expect the local BC municipals to handle the national homeless cris…

I used to live in Nanaimo as a kid (Go McGirr!). The city's economy was royally fucked in the 2000s. There were no jobs other than Provincial services like VIHA or the one paper mill that I think ended up shutting down. Hells Angels were also always a thing back there, and there was a reservation nearby which had some persistent social issues. I still have family there who ended up making a killing in construction thanks to Chinese money and idk if Nanimo will ever get better.

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

#288

Post by cjpearson » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 7:43 PM UTC

sovnade wrote: post #247

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.

Homelessness isn't just caused by someone not having a home. There is a massive overlap of mental illness and substance abuse/addiction. Just giving a homeless person a house will not solve the underlying problems that caused them to be homeless in the first place. There needs to be movement on multiple fronts - mental health, physical health, rehab, job training, personal finance, etc. If the solution was easy, some…

There's a compelling argument [0] that the biggest driver of homelessness is a shortage of housing. Mental illness and addiction can lead to homelessness, but homelessness can also lead to mental illness and addition. There are lots of places suffering severely from the fentanyl crisis, but where homelessness is less of a problem.

The solution may be simple, but it's not easy. (And it's not the entire solution either) Building large quantities of housing is a difficult problem, especially in California.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homeles...

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

#289

Post by splitstud » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 7:43 PM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #184

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 cam…

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

#290

Post by abeppu » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 7:44 PM UTC

hackernewds wrote: post #239

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…

Simply giving the homeless, a lot of them addicted and with mental health original, a $4700/month home or the money directly does not help them. Without being presumptive, it irks me to see internet experts barge it with their own theories and expertise, rather than the people who have studied and dedicated themselves for decades.

I'm _not_ saying give them the money directly.

> Without being presumptive, it irks me to see internet experts barge it with their own theories and expertise, rather than the people who have studied and dedicated themselves for decades.

I will also defer to experts who do not have a financial stake in the game. My understanding is that "housing first" has a lot of expert proponents. My frustration is that even when housing can be acquired for less than the cost of clearly inferior services (again, $5k/mo per tent in SF parking-lot safe sleeping sites), we refuse to do it. I have not heard any expert on homelessness argue that safe sleeping sites were a "good" solution. I do know that we paid a lot for them.