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

wsj.com

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

#351

Post by [deleted] »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #291
EatingWithForks wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dis…

The reporter did exactly what their job is and it is not to figure out reality from competing sources of truth.

[deleted]

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

#352

Post by mupuff1234 »

last_responder wrote: post #222
mupuff1234 wrote: post #182

Just build more housing ffs.

Building housing for someone who has addiction issues or other mental issues is not going to do much of anything.

No, but having housing being affordable would stop a lot of people from going down darker paths from the start.

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

#353

Post by scrum-treats »

We need universal basic income. We just introduced AI that will take millions of people's jobs. We must reframe how we view humans now. We're no longer work mules. AI can do it. So now, if we want humanity to remain a species on Earth, we have to take proactive measures to ensure humans can live. It's time.

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

#354

Post by km3r »

abeppu wrote: post #237
aorloff wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not a binary. SF gets described as 'housing first', but it certainly does not act like it. In SF, we actually have unspent funds from our 2018 "Prop C" ballot initiative which dedicated funding to specific categories, the largest of which was for permanent housing. I.e. there has been money available for 5 years for permanent housing, but the city is not willing to buy available units -- it will only consider de…

I'm glad they aren't just buying up existing housing stock. We have a housing shortage, and subsidizing demand will just further send prices up for everyone else. Net new housing, even if more expensive, will do far more good overall.

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

#356

Post by JohnFen »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #298
DoreenMichele wrote: post #187

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.

Add to that California's very high cost of living and tight/expensive housing market which making it very easy to fall from employment and housing to homelessness, coupled with the country-wide massive drop in home ownership, skyrocketing housing costs, near total stagnation of wages for lower classes, and unprecedented concentration of wealth. I don't know why anyone is shocked that the US homeless population is sky…

I don't personally mind the idea of not being able to buy a house. That's not a thing I'm interested in anyway.

But only being able to rent from large corporations? That's nightmare fuel right there.

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

#357

Post by bsder »

cjpearson wrote: post #288
sovnade wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

15% of the homeless in SF have a traumatic brain injury. That statistic means almost 1 in 5 right off the top need long term medical care. "Mere housing" won't do jack for those people.

Even more have mental health issues. Some have physical health issues. The number of homeless who are perfectly healthy and just need housing is vanishingly small--those homeless are generally hiding from someone and won't want to be part of a tracked program.

We know what needs to be done: long term healthcare that needs lots of money.

We know what happened in the past: those facilities were horror shows because of underfunding.

We know what the "solutions" were in the past: shut the facility down and throw those people out onto the streets and let the prision system deal with them.

The starting point for solving homelessness is universal healthcare. Nothing less. Without universal healthcare, everything else to "solve" homelessness is just rearranging the deck chairs.

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

#358

Post by hackerlight »

MentallyRetired wrote: post #208
apsec112 wrote: post #145

There is a very very strong correlation between homelessness in a state and housing prices, far more than any other factor: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Qz9GvoPbnFwGrHHQB/visible-ho...

But not causation. There's also a strong correlation between homeless people and parking garage density. Housing prices are high where there are people. People are homeless where there are people. It comes with the territory. Throw in amazing weather and states bussing their homeless to CA and it becomes a very attractive proposition for someone without a home. If there was a correlation then sending the homeless to…

> But not causation.

Evidence for this claim?

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

#359

Post by bsder »

zehaeva wrote: post #283
sovnade wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Finland already has universal healthcare, no? Don't remove that from your calculations.

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

#360

Post by georgeecollins »

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.

But relative to a lot of the US-- Chicago, New York.. it is very survivable.
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