California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working • Hacker News Board

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

#541

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

legitster wrote: post #513

shepardrtc wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Without a recovery program, some people will still just spend their day smashing car windows to get money for drugs, then go home to their free apartment

It might still be worth it regardless, but keep that in mind

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

#542

Post by nfw2 » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 9:45 PM UTC

jonny_eh wrote: post #443

hnuser847 wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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...

I agree blaming the homeless is oversimplifying a complicated issue, but I don't think it's evident that shortage of housing is the primary cause.

There are plausible explanations for non-causal correlations between housing costs and homelessness. For example:

- homeless tend towards warm climates, which have higher housing costs because most people prefer warm climates

- homeless tend towards cities, where they can more easily find support. Cities also have higher costs of living because they are densely populated

Looking at the list of cities with the most homelessness per capita, the vast majority of them are temperate year-round. http://www.citymayors.com/society/usa-cities-homelessness.ht...

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

#543

Post by Animats » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 9:45 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…

> There is strong local resistance to construction especially if it's for poor people, or worse, homeless,

The US used to do that. It led to high-rise ghettos.[1] And that was before drugs were big.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes

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

#544

Post by bombcar » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #468

bombcar wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a "missing middle" that we cannot provide in our current society. Nobody can provide "flop houses" where drugs and alcohol use are ignored unless you're harming someone, so there's nothing between sleeping rough under the bridge and being sober in a shelter. The liability alone would prevent any non-government agency from doing it, and even the government is scared.

The problem with flop houses that don’t have drug and alcohol restrictions is that the other residents suffer and things fall apart quickly. These aren’t people with great self control. Even homeless with drug and alcohol abuse problems will stay away from these places because they are too dangerous.

Maybe they need to be separated by some distance.

It won’t be cheap (likely with security and other support staff you’re looking at one or to staff per “homeless”) but at some point something has to be done, or the status quo continues forever.

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

#545

Post by hotpotamus » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

HDThoreaun wrote: post #529

hotpotamus wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What jobs do you imagine these people will be compelled to do?

Most homeless people are just normal people who dont have a home. They can pick up garbage or dig ditches or plant trees at the very least. Plenty of menial labor that needs to be done.

And if they don't want to do this menial labor?

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

#546

Post by delusional » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

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…

> What people don’t consider is that when “we”, the people with houses, don’t spend our dollars housing homeless people, we pay sooner or later in other ways whether we want to or not when society around us partly disintegrates and additional effects start stacking up: substance abuse, violent crime, healthcare costs etc.

There's a different way to look at it as well. I don't so much pay for housing as I pay for my choice of housing. If I couldn't afford housing I'd just get whatever was deemed enough for me, the system would essentially make the choice. What i pay for is the privilege of choosing something that I want, instead of what's convenient for the system.

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

#547

Post by worik » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

meowtimemania wrote: post #511

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, cha…

> 25% died (overdose on drugs), and 21% returned to the streets

You are cherry picking statistics

Housing first has been shown over and over again to be a better solution than expecting people to recover their lives before they get any help

What are your counterfactuals? How many die with no help?

Where do those numbers even come from?

Basically I am calling this out as disinformation. Lies

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

#548

Post by HDThoreaun » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

Brainfood wrote: post #515

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 o…

Large corporations don't actually own many homes. It is true that they started buying them during covid, but that is mostly because they realized they are extremely good investments due zoning making it hard to build them. In order for housing to be affordable it can't be an investment. It needs to maintain its real value over time, meaning the wage to price ratio remains constant. If housing wasn't a good investment it wouldn't be owned by corporations. So I'd say your idea is on the right track, but just misses the last step which is just make housing affordable by allowing it to be built.

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

#549

Post by cppenjoyer » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

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.

[dead]

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

#550

Post by specialist » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

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?

What percentage of the unhoused are on Skid Row?