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

Post by emodendroket » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 9:41 PM UTC

ajmurmann wrote: post #464

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 bui…

Post by worik » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 9:41 PM UTC

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #506

robomartin wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

“Saying the issue is lack of homes implies these people could actually pay for a place to stay.” Or we could just… choose to house people, regardless of their ability to pay?

Post by no-dr-onboard » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 9:42 PM UTC

hnuser847 wrote: post #507

no-dr-onboard wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm glad you brought up Singapore, since they can actually force people with mental health or addiction issues into shelters. Imprisoning people for being mentally ill or addicts is a viable to solution to homeless and it clearly works for Singapore, however this will never happen in the West. For better or worse, individual liberty is sacred in our cultural tradition, and it will never be politically palatable to fo…

Post by specialist » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

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.

Post by ForOldHack » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

josho wrote: post #176

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem is that some groups have no problem taking facts and distorting them into untruths. We truly are living in an age of alternate facts. I’ve read papers put out by research groups that were easy to debunk. Most people won’t go to that effort and will take the glossy material and legitimate sounding author as being truthful when in fact every conclusion made in the report is a lie.