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

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301–310 of 1001 posts

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

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disallowed him is a neat framing for, he made a hard conscious choice.

Service animals are medical equipment my dude. It would be as immoral as claiming someone can only go to rehab if they give up their insulin or their wheelchair.

It really depends on if it’s an actual service dog or one of the emotional support animals.

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

#302
There is an episode of the "you're wrong about" podcast, that discusses homelessness. In that episode there are several discussion about several projects in California around homelessness. Those projects provided housing. The studies based on those projects showed that overall the cost was less that not having some housing and services. The podcast goes into more details, but as I remember this was because

* It removes much of the medical and police cost

* If people who are struggling don't have a roof over their head, it makes it incredibly hard for them to get a job. Having some stability meant that many could pick them selves up and get a job and so forth.

The end of the episode points out even though the programs were a success by most metrics - including being cheaper overall to tax payers - they were shut down.

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/youre-wrong-about/id13...

Here's the one on homelessness

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/homelessness/id1380008...

Theres a good one about the "wellfare queen" that is related and rather eye opening

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/ronald-reagan-and-the-...

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

#303
post #215
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 t…

[dead]

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

#304
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

The majority of small towns in northern BC have been gradually depopulating for decades, due to economic pressures similar to those in the Rust Belt of the US. (And plus, it's just damn cold up there, so it's hard to be homeless if you do end up homeless.) Their populations have to be going somewhere . Yes, homeless people don't actually sit on the streets of e.g. Quebec City, begging until they can fund a trip to Va…

Prince George as non-failing? Have you been there? I've never seen so many zombified homeless junkies wandering aimlessly than I have in Prince George. Not in Vancouver, San Francisco, Portland, or Seattle. Not in any other city. Prince George is horrific. Honestly the worst town or city I've ever had the displeasure of visiting. All of the 'normal' people inside businesses had thousand yard stares, shell shocked, and asked why I would even visit their town.

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

#305
post #215
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 t…

California has a democrat governor, a democrat Lieutenant governor, a state senate that's 80% democrat and a state house that's 75% democrat, and democrat mayors in all major cities.

Conservatives are not the problem.

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

#306
post #209

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.

San Francisco put the homeless in vacant hotel rooms during the pandemic. They destroyed the hotel rooms. The two main problems facing the homeless are substance abuse followed by mental health.

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-homeless-national-... >In the City of Vancouver’s 2019 homeless count, based on those who responded, 16% (156 people) of the homeless reported they were from an area elsewhere in Metro Vancouver, while 31% (299 people) were from another area of BC, and 44% (435 people) from another area of Canada. Where is the data backing up your claim?

If you go to the actual report[1] instead of whatever this site is, you'll see that question (3.9) was asking where they lived before they moved to Vancouver, not before they became homeless or whatever that site is attempting to imply.

If you scroll down slightly (3.11) you'll see 81% of respondents had a home in Vancouver before they became homeless, which is the data to match the claim ("overwhelmingly people who had stable living situations in those comfortable locations, and became homeless there").

[1] https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/vancouver-homeless-count-2019...

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

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I found this chart[1] and I do wonder how Oregon and Washington have such a high unsheltered population; I'm not familiar with the PNW, are parts of the states mild? The rest of that chart is pretty much in line with how I perceive winters to be. 1: https://www.thecentersquare.com/florida/article_67aeebc1-e7b...

The coast is relatively mild compared to inline Oregon or Washington, but winters are still wet and cold (especially in Washington).

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

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reagan hasn't been governor of California or president of the US for a long time.

That's why it's called a "legacy". It lingers after you've been gone.

Democrats must be remarkably ineffective to have someone that long ago still disrupting them after decades of unquestioned control.

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I found this chart[1] and I do wonder how Oregon and Washington have such a high unsheltered population; I'm not familiar with the PNW, are parts of the states mild? The rest of that chart is pretty much in line with how I perceive winters to be. 1: https://www.thecentersquare.com/florida/article_67aeebc1-e7b...

I'm not first-hand familiar with Oregon, but some parts of Washington have moderate temps. Coastal Washington gets a lot of rain but rarely freezes and -- anecdotally -- at least one city in Coastal Washington has vastly worse rates of homelessness on a per capita basis than some of the cities infamous for it, like Seattle and SF. And, yes, they are mostly camped outside, not in shelters.
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