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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

#451

Post by khazhoux »

jonny_eh wrote: post #443
hnuser847 wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, it’s caused by mental illness and drug addiction. Short of rounding them up and forcing them to get help, there’s actually nothing we can do to get these people off the street.

It's certainly an element, but that's largely washing your hands and victim blaming. There's a direct correlation between housing costs and homelessness rates. Update, here's a reference: https://endhomelessness.org/blog/new-research-quantifies-lin...

Where’s the “victim-blaming”?

From the reporting I’ve seen, the vast majority of folks on Skid Row or on the street in SF are heavy addicts. And they refuse shelters because then they couldn’t use.

How does more housing help them?

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

#453

Post by dragonwriter »

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 have 50% of the homeless and 12% of the population? Are people being bussed in,

Yes. States are known to literally ship out their homeless problem to other states and also do so figuratively by criminalization and persecution to drive the homeless out.

If you are less aggressive at those things, or provide better services, the net flow of homeless people is going to be in to your state, all other things being equal.

This isn’t, of course, the whole of the problem. Housing supply issues and income inequality issues produced by the fact that California has some very successful industries that reward a narrow set of people very well also play a big role, and these are self-inflicted policy problems [0] (both not adequately increasing housing supply, and not leveraging narrow prosperity better for the general good.)

[0] Not simple policy problems to resolve, the housing one for political reasons, the improving distribution without killing the prosperity you are trying to improve the distribution of one is actually tricky in policy.

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

#454

Post by shepardrtc »

hnarn wrote: post #416
freddybobs wrote: post #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 remov…

The strategy is called “housing first” and has been proven to work in Finland: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle... The idea that homeless people need homes to be able to advance further seems to trigger some people — after all, most of us pay for our housing, so why should they get it for free? What people don’t consider is that when “we”, the people with houses, don’t spend our dollars ho…

> why should they get it for free?

They shouldn't get it for free. They should be required to be in recovery programs and have jobs. Create state or federal jobs for them if necessary.

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

#455

Post by mgbmtl »

hobo_in_library wrote: post #165
mgbmtl wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some cases, these are indirect corporate subsidies. After all, who will work in low-paying jobs in SF, if they have to live far far away? Where could people move that would give them more opportunities? Rural areas often lack the social resources to support people in more precarious situations, and big cities is where the opportunities are.

Interesting idea, but do homeless folks actually end up working for corporations? They have a hard enough time getting any job in the first place (and remaining presentable enough for their job if they do get one)

Homelessness affects a ton of people, but I'm also including who live in subsidized housing (and otherwise might be homeless).

It could be a family with kids, who need a subsidy to live in a big-enough place, or an old person living off a tiny pension. etc

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

#456

Post by vondur »

hnarn wrote: post #416
freddybobs wrote: post #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 remov…

The strategy is called “housing first” and has been proven to work in Finland: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle... The idea that homeless people need homes to be able to advance further seems to trigger some people — after all, most of us pay for our housing, so why should they get it for free? What people don’t consider is that when “we”, the people with houses, don’t spend our dollars ho…

There are some housing near my house that was simply repurposed motels. Seems to work, I don't notice any people just hanging around. Seems to work better than the standard homeless shelters we have here, that are pretty restrictive and they force the homeless to leave during the day and return at night.

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

#457

Post by abeppu »

km3r wrote: post #354
abeppu wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm all for net new housing. And I think we should green-light new residential projects faster. But telling currently homeless people to _wait_ for new projects to be planned and built, when there's already a glut of vacant condos struggling to sell seems cruel. I'm not saying the city needs to bid aggressively -- but when the market slows down, why not get a deal?

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

#458

Post by felix_n »

x0x0 wrote: post #445
hnarn wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The strategy is called “housing first” and has been proven to work in Finland: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle... The idea that homeless people need homes to be able to advance further seems to trigger some people — after all, most of us pay for our housing, so why should they get it for free? What people don’t consider is that when “we”, the people with houses, don’t spend our dollars ho…

What people do consider is that it's extraordinarily unfair for many people who struggle with housing costs -- imagine what eg SF-area rents do to a cook or cleaner earning even $50k annually -- if we're going to provide that for free to junkies. Until there aren't large segments of SF who work very hard and are housing insecure anyway, it's just going to be politically impossible to provide homeless free housing.

Are _you_ saying that it's unfair, or are you speaking for the working class?

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

#459

Post by ajmurmann »

apstls wrote: post #425
jonny_eh wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s no easy fix for homelessness True, but that's only because there's no easy way to add housing in modern society. Homelessness is caused primarily by a lack of homes.

How many homes could $17B make?

Where are you gonna build? It's illegal to build pretty much anything in CA cities with high homelessness

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

#460

Post by dragonwriter »

throwaway049 wrote: post #378
JohnFen wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There are things besides individual citizens and corporations that could, in theory, own and rent housing.
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