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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

#491

Post by nielsbot »

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.

Ok, call it handouts. But if you just care about the budget, providing housing is the cheapest way to solve the problem. Will some people "take advantage" of this arrangement? Sure. Does it matter that much?

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

#492

Post by dv_dt »

meowtimemania wrote: post #466
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…

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.

This idea of worrying about who gets what for free before actually solving the problem, is a major blocker in solving the homelessness problem. And not only do the homeless suffer for it, the people who have work or homes in the area suffer for the lack of pragmatism about it.

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

#493

Post by seanmcdirmid »

guardiangod wrote: post #230
derefr wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of small towns in northern BC have been gradually depopulating for decades, due to economic pressures similar to those in the Rust Belt of the US. (And plus, it's just damn cold up there, so it's hard to be homeless if you do end up homeless.) Their populations have to be going somewhere . Yes, homeless people don't actually sit on the streets of e.g. Quebec City, begging until they can fund a trip to Va…

>these folks would be much better off moving to another small-ish, lower-cost-of-living, but non-failing town in BC. Prince George, Vernon, Mission, etc. That's an interesting idea, but the smaller BC towns also have their own homeless issues. I don't think their municipal gov would be open to the province providing relocation resources to these people. Also East Hastings draws vulnerable in, and has an iron clad gra…

The small towns in BC don’t have their homeless issues, because without services, you either die or are in a bus to Vancouver. A common route for homeless people in Montana is to wind up in Spokane first and then Seattle later, since you can’t really survive in MT at all without a job, and while Spokane used to provide a bunch of flop houses (my grandfather owned one), those are gone now and it is too cold to live unsheltered there in the winter. Cities do pick up much of a national problem because of the social resources they can provide, and accordingly only national solutions have a chance of working.

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

#494

Post by Aunche »

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…

Looking at the transcript, I barely see any mention of California, and when it's mentioned there is nothing about their policies.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1112270/3883985-homelessness

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

#495

Post by jeremyjh »

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.

This is great if you don’t want to engage with the actual issues or solve the problem.

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

#496

Post by sroussey »

umvi wrote: post #421
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…

> If the problems growing, and you are just sinking billions into it without making any measurable impact, where the fuck is the money going? A lot of these programs are hard to stop paying into once you start. Say you are a political leader and you try to solve homelessness by pouring $X per year into some new program. 5 years later it's clear the program is not effective. However, if you axe the program, good luck…

And places like SF with a budget of about $100k/yr/person for homeless, make it effectively illegal to get an accounting of where the money goes.

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

#497

Post by Firmwarrior »

x0x0 wrote: post #442
apstls wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many homes could $17B make?

Not very many. Even if you could build a home for $400k and it only cost $100k in maintenance / utilities / upkeep for the next 10 years, that's still only 34k homes.

You could build a lot of them for $3.7B/year though.. split among 150,000 homeless, that's $24,000 per year each

'course, it's not hard to imagine those homes ending up like the free zone in The Wire or the housing projects in Judge Dredd...

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

#498

Post by legitster »

1. We need more public housing.

2. The housing has to be slightly worse than the lowest quality housing available on the market. (Think SROs or dormitory style).

3. You have to make access to some of the housing unconditional.

This was the solution in most cities until large bipartisan pushes in the late 90s sought to end "projects" and "slums".

I totally understand trying to make efforts to also solve drug and crime related problems. Or even get people into nice houses or jobs. But it seems like all for all of the money we are refusing to spend on actual homes, we may as well move the drugs and crime indoors and off the streets.

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

#499

Post by ZoomerCretin »

ryandrake wrote: post #489
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.

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…

The vast majority of those "vacant" homes are either very temporarily up for sale or rent, dilapidated, or in need of a lot of repairs. There are not 16 million habitable units sitting empty year after year.

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

#500

Post by cscurmudgeon »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #490
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.

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 problem,” said Peter Lynn, the executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the agency that conducts the largest homeless census count in the country.

> L.A.H.S.A.’s 2019 homeless count found that 64 percent of the 58,936 Los Angeles County residents experiencing homelessness had lived in the city for more than 10 years.

CA considers you a resident for tax purposes if you live in the state for a year but in homeless studies they consider you a resident if you live here for more than 10 years.

Edit: Reply to paisawalla

May I point out the post I replied to had no data. If you have data that addresses the two points you made, please post them. It is always easy to nitpick data when you have none.

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