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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

#481

Post by HWR_14 »

hnuser847 wrote: post #441
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.

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.

The vast majority of people who are homeless don't suffer from mental illness or drug addiction. The most visible do, but not most of them. And of those, a bunch didn't suffer from drug addiction when they become homeless.

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

#482

Post by dragonwriter »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #406
tlogan wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think it is Democrat. It think it is because it is one party state.

Exactly. As much as Republicans and Democrats may not want to admit it, we need each other for accountability.

We need viable political choices with incentives to compete on something other than alienating voters who would be expected to vote for the other side for accountability (which mostly means we need proportional representation.)

That is not the same as needing the opposing party in America’s duopolistic system.

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

#483

Post by chrisbrandow »

Forgive me for the vast oversimplification, but…

17 billion over 4 years (per the article)

17 billion dollars => 113 million square feet @ $150/sqft 113 million square feet => 113,000 housing units @ 1000 square feet

This is not a realistic comparison, but thinking about it as an upper bounds could be a useful yardstick by which to compare actual outcomes.

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

#484

Post by recursive »

ricardobayes wrote: post #322
thebigwinning wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF and further north are hardly nice weather locations.

Definitely, the winter I visited Mountain View it was 2C (35F) and ground frost.

I think above freezing in winter might generally be considered nice weather.

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

#485

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#486

Post by ZoomerCretin »

khazhoux wrote: post #451
jonny_eh wrote: post #443

Earlier 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?

1. Homeless are drug addicts.

2. Therefore, the homelessness is caused by drug addiction.

Not exactly sound reasoning. Plenty of people with mental illness and drug addiction still manage to pay rent.

No one disputes the rates of addiction and mental illness among the homeless. California has neither the highest rates for drug addiction/overdoses nor the highest rates of mental illness, yet it has the highest rate of homelessness.

There is no correlation between rates of mental illness and rates of homelessness. There is no correlation between drug addiction rates and homelessness. There is a strong Correlation between rents and homelessness.

Why? Being mentally ill and a drug addict doesn't automatically make you homeless in an area where rent for a room is $400/month.

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

#488

Post by meowtimemania »

felix_n wrote: post #458
x0x0 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm open to giving someone free housing if they aren't on drugs. I just can't wrap my head around why we should reward people with free housing for being drug addicts.

I have lots of sympathy for the drug-free homeless community. I think the drug addicted should be put in treatment programs or charged for possession of these drugs so that they can be treated in prison. I'm angry that we allow people to smoke fentanyl out in the open in SF. It's bad for everyone including those who are addicted.

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

#489

Post by ryandrake »

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.

It's not even a lack of homes--its a lack of access to existing homes. There are already ~16 million vacant homes in the USA, a tiny fraction of which could house the homeless if there were political will.

We all can say homelessness is a problem, but if you ask these people hoarding vacant homes if they'd be willing to house a homeless person on their property, or if you ask a politician whether they are willing to nationalize those properties to provide homes, suddenly their response will be "Uhh... Ohh... Hrrmm... I guess it's not that big a problem." The rubber is not hitting the road.

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

#490

Post by RhodesianHunter »

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…

It's a very simple cycle.

The state spends money to help the homeless.

The broad availability of help for the homeless increases the likelihood that homeless will migrate to and stay in the state.

Repeat.

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