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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

#371

Post by screye »

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…

It is multi causal.

Part of it is the routine stuff around activist-abolitionist DAs, lack of housing, NIMBY-ism, weather, decriminalization of drugs, etc. The review Shellenberger's comprehensive book on west-coast homelessness is nice level-headed take [3]

But one major cause is the rise of potent p2p meth & fentanyl in the populace. [1][2]

So not only are the homeless un-shelter-able (shelters require residents to be clean), but the nature of drugs lead to irreversible mental health issues and irreversible (ie. chronic) homelessness.

[1] https://dynomight.net/homeless-crisis/#:~:text=To%20get%20mo...

[2] https://dynomight.net/p2p-meth/

[3] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-san-fransi...

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

#373

Post by fn-mote »

josho wrote: post #215
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 t…

> Conservatives are going to be against giving out living space

To play the devil's advocate to my sibling commentators: if you equate "conservative" politics and NIMBY politics, this claim could certainly hold some substance. (The argument: NIMBY = conservative in the sense that they oppose change.)

Also, just off the cuff I'm going to bet the overhead/fraud rate is more like 50% than 10%. Basis: think of the overhead regular companies budget, about 30% of salary.

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

#374

Post by majormajor »

mullingitover wrote: post #348
majormajor wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The majority of people who vote in elections and show up to city council meetings want housing to be an investment that grows in value by 10% annually. Building more houses is a direct threat to that investment. Guess which group wins. It isn't purely financial. After all, the most expensive land is in areas with higher population density. You want cheap housing? Go out to where nobody else lives. Tons of it availa…

> So, no, what people who don't want upzoning don't want is change. Change in traffic, change in privacy, change in noise, etc. These are also great fig leaf talking points when your real reason to oppose new development is financial, but you don't want to sound greedy.

> These are also great fig leaf talking points when your real reason to oppose new development is financial, but you don't want to sound greedy.

You could make the exact opposite claim that "my property values!!" is the fig leaf around "I don't want [certain people] to have the chance to move near me."

And that one agrees with the numbers of how property values go up with city growth and development, not down. Would the property values in Malibu be lower or higher if LA had taken Detroit's path?

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

#375

Post by option »

droptablemain wrote: post #115

I know a lot of this discussion focuses on the Bay Area, but I live in central LA and the situation is totally out of control here as well. Needles, human feces, trash everywhere, people sleeping in front of storefronts. Walking around parts of LA at night feels like you're in a neo-noir dystopian film. It's literally ghastly.

make sure you vote against incumbents in local and state elections. There are no other peaceful and humane ways out of this.

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

#376

Post by floren »

atdrummond wrote: post #79
heavyset_go wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of homeless people are homeless for economic reasons, like loss of income, cost of living increases, or lack of affordable housing, or changes in co-living situations caused by break-ups/divorce/abuse/loss of partner's income/etc. Families are the fastest growing homeless demographic.

And that group is hurt the most by having to share the streets with people whose uncivil and dangerous behaviour puts their life and well being in danger. Treating unhoused persons as a homogenous population is probably the original sin of modern American homeless policy.

> Treating unhoused persons as a homogenous population is probably the original sin of modern American homeless policy

It gives you some useful tricks, though. E.g. if somebody complains about the chronically homeless addicts assaulting people downtown? Why, you just point out that X% of "the homeless" are actually just regular non-addicted people temporarily down on their luck, who just need a free hotel room for a couple weeks.

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

#377

Post by convolvatron »

bluGill wrote: post #277
bombcar wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

taps the sign https://xkcd.com/1138/ There are always more homeless people in the city than in tiny rural towns, because the homeless people in the tiny rural towns move toward the city or get chased out. It's also true that there are numbers of people in those far rural communities that would end up quite homeless if you forced them into the city. Imagine someone on social security living in a dilapidated trailer on…

The the tiny rural towns take care of their own. There are no homeless because everyone knows "joe" is messed up, and so they ignore him living in an otherwise abandoned house (they are around) thus making "Joe" not homeless, and plant a larger garden so he can harvest something. They won't allow someone new move in, but Joe grew up there and so they let him continue to live there. In the city you can't know everyone…

I don't completely agree. From talking with them, a fair number of the homeless in SF are from Lake County and the Central Valley. Went to a shitty school with no job prospects. started on crank. ended up in SF because this is a place where a methhead can enjoy their lifestyle and get by.

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

#378

Post by throwaway049 »

JohnFen wrote: post #356
KennyBlanken wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The two things are fairly tightly connected. If ordinary citizens can't buy house, how does some other citizen (not corporation) buy one and offer it for rent to you?

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

#379

Post by acchow »

youreincorrect wrote: post #112
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…

> I was amazed when living in SF how many of the homeless are not locals. Not even Californians! My least favorite part of this was the local media pretended this wasn't true. They pretended it vociferously despite this being such an obvious lie.

The statistic thrown around is something like “About 70 percent of people who are homeless became homeless while living in the Bay Area.” I’m not sure how to interpret this. I cant find the question they actually asked or how they collected people to survey.

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

#380

Post by ttonkytonk »

doctorwho42 wrote: post #201
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prob…

Two words: Federal Support. If the problem is exacerbated by active policy or indirect action/non-action, then as a collection of people/states it is the burden of every state to shoulder it. And the federal government is just that, the collective power of all states combined.

Exactly. The logistics may not be simple (i.e. actually getting the federal government's support) but the logic should be obvious: piecemeal support results in the ones that are doing the most to help get "penalized" with more people seeking help.
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