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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

#461

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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.

Why do the unhoused have to be housed in high cost SF? The nice thing about doing this as a country is that they can place people not in their highest cost cities.

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

#462

Post by hotpotamus »

shepardrtc wrote: post #454
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…

> 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.

What jobs do you imagine these people will be compelled to do?

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

#463

Post by robomartin »

jonny_eh wrote: post #419
fullspectrumdev wrote: post #413

Having lived/spent time in a few places with varying homeless problems and approaches to homelessness, I find it fucking depressing every time I read about how badly - and inefficiently - the US handles it. Probably because I see alarming parallels with my own country. Billions going where, exactly? If the problems growing, and you are just sinking billions into it without making any measurable impact, where the fuck…

> 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.

> Homelessness is caused primarily by a lack of homes.

That is absolutely not true. Not even close.

Mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse are major factors. Dozens of studies show this. I've seen numbers as high as 76% having substance abuse and severe mental illness.

One study from 2017 says 80% mental illness, 88% drug abuse and 59% alcohol addiction. There are studies with lower numbers. In most, if not all, of these, the government entities who publish them will typically change the definition of "homeless" to artificially reduce the numbers and make themselves look good. There are two ways to fix homelessness: You make them disappear (put them in a building, creative counting, etc.), or actually address the real root causes --which nobody is doing or even talking about.

Saying the issue is lack of homes implies these people could actually pay for a place to stay. They cannot. They are sick and/or addicted to something. They likely cannot work or earn even the legally minimum wage without a massive intervention to get them back to functional status.

In a free society we do not have the legal means to round-up sick people, get them cleaned-up, help them, rebuild them as necessary and then put them back in circulation. We just don't have that legal power. People do as they wish and there's very little society can really do to help them.

Throwing them into a buildings merely (and conveniently) hides the real problems: Mental illness and addiction.

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

#464

Post by ajmurmann »

fullspectrumdev wrote: post #413

Having lived/spent time in a few places with varying homeless problems and approaches to homelessness, I find it fucking depressing every time I read about how badly - and inefficiently - the US handles it. Probably because I see alarming parallels with my own country. Billions going where, exactly? If the problems growing, and you are just sinking billions into it without making any measurable impact, where the fuck…

"Zoning and planning issues can be dealt with trivially by the state almost anywhere, they just aren’t fucked doing so (we have this issue in Ireland)."

This seems to not reflect reality in the US. There is strong local resistance to construction especially if it's for poor people or worse homeless, leading to tight zoning and rejection of projects during the byzantine approval process. If the government tries to build something, the EPA (environmental protection act) also allows anyone to request that a environmental impact study needs to take place. The study can take about a year and there are no teeth, other than causing delay and cost through the study. Nothing needs to change based on the findings, it's just another way to drag things out and increase cost on projects someone doesn't like.

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

#465

Post by GeoAtreides »

guardiangod wrote: post #109
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…

>It is absolutely insane how we’ve stopped treating homeless people as humans with potential and aspirations and assume that all they can be is a vacuum for drugs and cash. Vancouver has the same approach- warmest place in Canada. When I suggested active intervention (eg. force detox), the activists would accuse me of treating homeless people as sub-humans, that I am being cruel and inhumane and a monster, and that w…

> force detox

Forcing people to detox is a grave violation of their right to body autonomy. In general people tend to react very badly when their body autonomy is violated: the results are trauma, CPTSD, suicide. I suggest we try other solutions first, starting from a place of compassion, empathy and scientifically tested medical advice.

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

#466

Post by meowtimemania »

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…

I like the idea, but I don't think a homeless person should be entitled to free housing in one of the most expensive real estate areas of the world. Why work full time at mcdonalds to pay rent when you could just be a drug addict with a free house? Maybe we could create free housing communities where real estate is a bit cheaper.

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

#467

Post by bullen »

Good to see that the archive link is now posted on top but why not replace the original URL?

I understand that you need to avoid multiples but still should be possible to do both at the same time.

I don't know which posts need a paywall workaround before I click the comments.

So like it works now, I will always click comments first.

----

And to the subject, journalists (and humanists in general) don't understand that homelessness is sometimes a self inflicted predicament.

It's a moral fight for respect and responsibility and money can buy neither.

Basically governments need money to have value, even if it is proven to be useless.

They can't solve the real problem which is that moneys value is backed violence.

And energy backs that violence today more than ever previously in history and in the future.

The society we have has to change now because we don't have the coal, oil and gas to feed the violence that backs the value of money.

Ultimately war is money and money is war.

Eventually as energy peaks, kings will be beggars and beggars will be kings.

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

#468

Post by seanmcdirmid »

bombcar wrote: post #228
gamblor956 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On this note, LA has hundreds of shelter beds the remain empty every night because they're located in "sober" facilities (meaning that the facilities do not allow alcohol or drug use) and the putative residents would rather be able to drink and use drugs than to have shelter.

There's a "missing middle" that we cannot provide in our current society. Nobody can provide "flop houses" where drugs and alcohol use are ignored unless you're harming someone, so there's nothing between sleeping rough under the bridge and being sober in a shelter. The liability alone would prevent any non-government agency from doing it, and even the government is scared.

The problem with flop houses that don’t have drug and alcohol restrictions is that the other residents suffer and things fall apart quickly. These aren’t people with great self control. Even homeless with drug and alcohol abuse problems will stay away from these places because they are too dangerous.

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

#469

Post by palmer_fox »

vore wrote: post #447
palmer_fox wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I a part of the society you are talking about? Or are only homeless people a part of it? I and hundreds of thousands of other residents of my city want to live in a clean and safe city. Is that completely irrelevant?

Where did I say anything like that? In any case, if you're shipping these homeless people out somewhere else, aren't you just making this someone else's problem but at least you don't have to look at it anymore?

I am not advocating for shipping anyone off to anywhere (it wouldn't be effective). However, the prevalent opinion that we just need to throw more money on this problem, or just silently suffer in the name of compassion is/will make things worse.

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

#470

Post by o1y32 »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #53
crooked-v wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, $1K a month in SF won't even get you a bed in a shared room. I mean that literally - I just checked apartments.com and there's exactly one listing out of 5,400 right now that's under $1000 and open to non-students.

Where do you get the idea apartments.com is a source that can inform you about the market price of shared housing? As a long-time participant in the bay area rental housing market, $1000 is enough to rent a bedroom in many homes, but how would such a listing get onto apartments.com? If you’re paying more than $1000 to share a bedroom, you’re getting ripped off.

Your comment does not provide any concrete example. Even if what you say is true, access is a real issue. You think homeless people would know how to find those $1000 options if a random person cannot find them via a simple search?
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