Of course it is not working, because people who decide where these money should be spent never really want to solve this problem.
California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
471–480 of 1001 posts
Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#472I don't care anymore. Bus them out to the desert. Set up camp there. Provide food and busses into town for those with interviews and jobs. I really don't care, just get them out of the damn cities. I've seen too many people shit in the bushes or just peeing up against a building. Building tent cities on the beach and enjoyable areas, etc. I. Don't. Care. Get rid of them. I left California for this reason and housing…
I hope you never end up on the other side of the situation and have to see people on the Internet write about you in such contempt like this.
I hope you never end up in a situation where people decide not only to leave you in pool of your own urine on the sidewalk, but to feel righteous about their activism to make sure you're left there.
Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Dry shelters are arguably a massive part of the problem.
You fix the housing issue first, make their lives less fucking miserable, then it’s easier to get someone to accept help for their drug addiction.
You can’t “cure” an addict who isn’t ready to be “helped”.
Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#474Homelessness, in the volume it exists, is largely a result of social/cultural decay in my estimation.
It's the result of degradation of family and community and other important social structures.
On one hand we have made housing something like a Ponzi scheme so that some may realize profit without effort. Nothing is free. When someone gets without producing someone else loses. Housing isn't the only example of this either. Much of our economic reality is one make-money-at-the expense-of-the-other-guy-while-giving-as-little-as-possible scheme after another.
But also we have embraced "liberation ideology" largely starting in the 1960's. Yes, our former culture was oppressive, stiff and judgmental. Women stayed home and cooked. Get divorced, and everyone will give you the stink eye around town, so I hope he doesn't beat you too badly when drunk. Gays stayed in the closet. The mentally ill were forcibly confined and abused. "Bums" got beat up by the local sheriff and dropped outside the town limits instead of being given free needles and a pass to shoplift. Church ladies gossiped and judged and it was a very hard time being "different". Hope you belong to the right secret men's organization because that's how you get in with local banker and judge and get a start on the good job ladder.
But also people helped one another. Encouraged one another (even if it was through judgement and social pressure and occasionally violence). There was a greater sense of community. People at that time were culturally closer to the era when they had to band to together to travel to and settle a new land and build towns.
Now it's I have a credit card so I'll do what I want and move where I want and this place I live isn't a community and I don't talk to my neighbors anyway and one city is another really and everything is anonymous and transactional and no one goes to church anymore. Sexual freedom without regard to consequences (especially the resulting children and lack of long term relationships). Drug use is fine, it's a personal choice, and besides I'm dealing with so much inner pain and trauma and no pain should ever be. In fact the doctor may just give you something to numb you and shut you up altogether so you can keep being a good cog and not a squeaky wheel.
So, we are seeing the results of all this. What we had before wasn't good, but this isn't either.
I don't know what the answer is. I believe people should do what they want. I do what I want personally. Just observing and noting what I think the root cause might be.
Maybe our real culture in America hasn't developed yet but I can't believe it's ultimately sterile communities where people don't look out for their neighbors and people shooting up drugs on streets with a few rich hiding behind gated communities and controlling law makers. But maybe it is, maybe that is what we are about as a society. I like to think not.
Sorry for the rant, but this I believe is the root cause and until we solve it (somehow) the problem remains.
Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#475Earlier 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.
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.
Nah it's caused by poor family cultures that lead to mental illness and drug addiction. Short of rounding up families and forcing them to be responsible for their children, teens, and young adults, there's actually nothing we can do to get these people off the street.
You know it's funny. A lot of people look at the US and turn up their noses at our "poor infrastructure". Just a couple of months ago I watched a very tropey discussion take place on the lack of a robust US rail system. In another discussion, the lack of a robust US healthcare system.
All the armchair pundits come out to point to other countries as leaders in these areas, but when it comes to homelessness, I see a lot less of it pointing to places like Japan, Singapore and the APAC region, where homelessness is a cultural stigma placed not just on the individual but on the family. Family name and culture mean something. Generational safety nets are present because the family cares for the individual simply because they share a common genealogy. Families will go very far to avoid allowing a member of their heritage to become a vagabond.
Weird to me how this part is left out of the conversation. Perhaps this is a consequence of our indulgence in unrestricted libertarian individualism.
Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#476This 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…
Easier said than done. Dig into the data all you want. If you dig deep enough, you'll most likely find what you're looking for... Anything political like this is going to have competing "sources of truth" which are largely funded by Super PACs and essentially just arms of political parties. Either party can "show you the data" now to come to whatever conclusion they want. This is a useful gambit to game all the peopl…
> I’ll simply note - at the 1000 foot view - there are 115,000 homeless people, and $17B was spent on them.
Wrong.
The $17B spent on homelessness spent over several years on the problem of homelessness was not (even in a loose sense) divided across the set of people currently homeless, or a set the same size. It was spent on the set of people who were homeless or at risk of homelessness at some point during the period of expenditures, which is a much larger number.
Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#477Having 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…
In a way, the US "handles" it very efficiently, but only in terms of spending the money and funnel them to the related interest group, but not in terms of solving the homeless problem.
Because for them, problem is their opportunity.
Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
Simply giving the homeless, a lot of them addicted and with mental health original, a $4700/month home or the money directly does not help them. Without being presumptive, it irks me to see internet experts barge it with their own theories and expertise, rather than the people who have studied and dedicated themselves for decades.
Edit: Unlike the sibling poster I am saying it give it to them directly. I guarantee you it if you set the average homeless person up with a nice apartment and just gave them the change from that $4700 in a real bank account no strings attached in perpetuity the problem would get sorted real quick. Oh no they do drugs ?! like the heaviest drug users I've ever met aren't white collar. Even better offer them that same…
Definitely giving them $4700/month no strings attached will solve the problem quickly. I get it, white collar people are the heaviest drug users, but the fent will kill them in the street in a couple of months. That’s just $10,400 spent, which is much better than where we are now. It is, however, a very dark solution, and not humane at all.
Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then figure out what rules can and cannot work. I listened to a podcast were a vet's fucking service dog disallowed him from getting into rehab. A service dog!
Disallowed him is a neat framing for, he made a hard conscious choice.
You probably still won't get it, but replace "dog" with "kid" or "friend" and say that sentence again. That might give you a sense of how attached a lot of people are to their dogs.
Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working
#480Having 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…
> Billions going where, exactly? If the problems growing, and you are just sinking billions into it without making any measurable impact, where the fuck is the money going?
Well, that’s simple. Most of the money goes to politically well connected non-profits with missions around alleviating homelessness. The problem is that if you alleviate homelessness, the money goes away and everybody at that non-profit loses their jobs. I’m not specifically accusing anyone of corruption, but the incentives aren’t good.