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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

#511

Post by meowtimemania »

abeppu wrote: post #171

What's crazy is that we decide to spend on homelessness in such inefficient ways. A "housing first" strategy would be more humane, and pretty affordable compared to what we're currently doing. This article says $3.7B for an estimated 115k homeless population which yields around $32k per person per year, or $2700 per person per month, and that's only state money. In SF it may be more like $57k/yr, or $4750/mo. At thos…

We've tested housing first programs in SF. https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1659972231328583680?s=20

25% died (overdose on drugs), and 21% returned to the streets. We need to recognize that drug addicts don't make rational decisions for themselves. We shouldn't leave them on the streets to do drugs, we shouldn't give them free housing to do drugs, we should put them in rehab. If they don't want to go to rehab, charge them with possession of illegal substances and put them in a prison rehab system. This type of life crippling drug addiction shouldn't be tolerated.

I recognize that not all homeless are drug addicts, they should be supported in a much different way than we support drug addicts.

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

#513

Post by legitster »

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.

I want this person off of the streets for completely selfish reasons to myself.

Recovery program or not, they are going to have to live somewhere. If it's not a publicly funded home then it's going to be a tent in a public park that I am paying taxes for.

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

#514

Post by philwelch »

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.

You’re both sort of right.

The visible homeless—the vagrants you see in tent cities under the freeway or harassing pedestrians—are more likely to have drug addictions or other mental illnesses. And the more mentally ill they are, the more visible they become since they end up committing crimes and making a nuisance of themselves. If you’re mainly concerned about the externalities of homelessness—e.g. needles and human feces on the street, crime, harassment, etc—then you’d be well served addressing this problem in particular.

If you define “homeless” by people not having consistent housing, there is a much larger population of those people. Maybe they’re sleeping on a buddy’s couch, or they find a kind stranger to take them in, or they get by via stealth camping. On the margin, expanding public housing or making housing more affordable would help these people. But it wouldn’t do much about the more visible and troublesome ones.

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

#515

Post by Brainfood »

LA resident since 2015. I have a proposed solution that no one ever seems to bring up on here but I would love to know the HN response to this:

If a big essential part of the American Dream is home ownership, and we are short on homes, why do we allow corporations to own them all? How about we have a middle ground or cap on size of corporate entity and # of units or something?

Some of the argument seems to be stuck on free housing for everyone, and everyone else seems fine allowing faceless corporations to own everything and turn us all into renters.

I know I’m leaving out plenty of specifics of how this would work. But the basic concept is same - people (not companies) should own housing. Let me know your thoughts.

My first ever HN comment so hopefully this is seen.

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

#516

Post by paisawalla »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #500
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Data which is

1) based on self-reported status

2) fails to distinguish between temporary hardship homelessness and that resulting of addiction/illness

Should not be relied upon. For the first, there is an obvious incentive towards exaggerating one's stay in state, and no counter-incentive whatsoever. For the latter, these are two separate problems which need drastically different solutions.

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

#517

Post by acchow »

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…

On a national level, Housing First will help a lot.

If California tried this, it would probably attract too many people to the state and run out of money.

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

#518

Post by ZoomerCretin »

marcusverus wrote: post #305
josho wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think on this issues it’s conservatives that make a solution untenable. Conservatives are going to be against giving out living space. So that kills any housing first policies. The alternative has to be something that a politician can sponsor and be confident that in a few years when they are up for re-election that there won’t be any obvious fraud or abuse. Eg. If their policy is found to have housed a crack den t…

California has a democrat governor, a democrat Lieutenant governor, a state senate that's 80% democrat and a state house that's 75% democrat, and democrat mayors in all major cities. Conservatives are not the problem.

The Democratic party, especially at the local and state level, is almost always dominated by conservatives. Every election with low turnout skews conservative, and local elections frequently have <10% turnout.

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

#519

Post by jganetsk »

TexanFeller wrote: post #509
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…

> The only real solution is large scale construction of mixed use housing - some social, some affordable, some private. It's a LOT more than making affordable housing available. Most homeless where I am have severe mental health problems, drug addictions, or both. Some are also homeless in large part because of criminal records. Many many difficult social problems to fix before it's just a matter of affordability.

This is a common misconception. Actually the primary fix is indeed to make affordable housing available. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...

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

#520

Post by mastazi »

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.

I don't know, the article mentions people who work two jobs having to live in an RV because they can't afford rent. As an external observer, it seems to me that in some parts of the US, inequality is so bad that homelessness is eating the working class. In Europe or Australia[1], the lady working two jobs or the war veteran taking $1200/month in social security would definitely not be homeless. Would they live in government housing, in a sketchy part of town? Sure. But how can you even compare that to being homeless...

[1] Australia, though, is currently in the middle of a rental crisis and becoming much worse.

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