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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

#551

Post by ajmurmann »

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…

Are people homeless because they could afford rent, but rather be homeless if they cannot buy? Further, if the rental market was saturated, it wouldn't pay off anymore to buy rental units. If the demand for rental is just there because there is nothing to buy, it's a clear indicator that there just isn't enough housing (in the desired places). Ultimately the answer will always remain that we need to build more housing. We haven't built enough in decades and it will take a long time to catch up, especially if we don't start on it. We need to relax zoning, remove minimum unit sizes and make it quick and predictable to get approval for new construction. Right now, many of the neighborhoods we love so much would be illegal to build today.

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

#552

Post by jeremyjh »

kristopolous wrote: post #350
marcusverus wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is policy directed? I'm in Los Angeles and it's mostly by business and real estate interests. Republicans, like Rick Caruso, run as Democrats because that's how you get elected here. It's a meaningless label. They'll do culture war signaling like support for pride month to their Twitter feed but when it comes to actual policy, for instance, the "defunding" of the LAPD which just last month included 780 more polic…

There is only one party in the US: Business Money. There are two different culture war teams to keep everyone distracted from that fact.

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

#553

Post by matthew9219 »

tptacek wrote: post #122
guardiangod wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is absolutely insane how we’ve stopped treating homeless people as humans with potential and aspirations and assume that all they can be is a vacuum for drugs and cash. Vancouver has the same approach- warmest place in Canada. When I suggested active intervention (eg. force detox), the activists would accuse me of treating homeless people as sub-humans, that I am being cruel and inhumane and a monster, and that w…

There's a pervasive belief that homeless people in various comfortable climes are migrants from harsher locales, but when you do the research you apparently tend to find that they're overwhelmingly people who had stable living situations in those comfortable locations, and became homeless there: they aren't "imported". So the "warmest place in Canada" thing is unlikely to be meaningful, unless there's some reason a c…

It's a bit more complex than that. At the surface, it's true - only 15% of homeless people in Seattle lived out of county before becoming homeless. But a deeper look shows as many as 30% more never really could afford housing - they had marginal housing situations, living with a friend, relative, or romantic partner without paying a proportionate share for their prior living situation.

This is part of the discrepancy - one side shoves the 15% number at everybody while the other side shoves at 45% number at everybody - we can't agree on what we're measuring.

See e.g. http://allhomekc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Updated-7.11...

Edit: not to mention that these studies are all surveys and this political issue is pretty well known, so there is a strong incentive to lie.

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

#554

Post by seiferteric »

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…

IMO The issue is that anytime more money becomes available, CA government/bureaucracy sucks it up. Lots of state jobs created to run these programs that ultimately do little good. Seems more like middle class jobs program than actually attempting to solve the problem.

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

#555

Post by meowtimemania »

dv_dt wrote: post #492
meowtimemania wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree with you, I just feel like if I were working a minimum wage job busting my ass to pay rent to my landlord, I’d be deeply offended that you can be rewarded free housing essentially for being addicted to drugs.

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

#556

Post by worik »

aorloff wrote: post #181
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 are doing exactly what you propose. Many communities have "housing first" homeless strategies. Some people do in fact get off the street. But we also have some "service resistant" homeless populations that do not want to live in your rule-based housing, they want to live without those rules even if it means living on the street.

> But we also have some "service resistant" homeless populations

Plenty of peoples in the WSJ story were not "service resistant"

The services are inadequate

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

#557

Post by knowledge-clay »

meowtimemania wrote: post #488
felix_n wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I'm open to giving someone free housing if they aren't on drugs

Sobriety is not a condition of housing. Many housed people drink and do drugs and don't get kicked out of their apartments for it. Why should we apply a harsher standard to our most vulnerable population?

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

#558

Post by unethical_ban »

oh_sigh wrote: post #528
legitster wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not selfish to want the public to be able to enjoy public spaces.

I think you're on the same page with the person you're responding to.

@shepardrtc said people who get free housing should work for it, and @legitster is saying that it is in the taxpayer's self-interest to spend some taxes housing the unhoused. I took that to mean that a work requirement is secondary to getting them off the street in the first place.

I agree that we should be providing drug recovery mechanisms and promoting a work ethic in people who are long-term houseless, but our options seem to be (leave them on the streets, parks and front lawns of our cities), (put them in prison), or (put them in publicly funded housing ala halfway houses).

First one seems like none of us want it (unless you live in the suburbs and have fled the problem). Second one is too far, and even with good healthcare services, involuntary commitment should only happen for the severely ill. That leaves the third.

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

#559

Post by adamrezich »

oh_sigh wrote: post #528
legitster wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not selfish to want the public to be able to enjoy public spaces.

for some reason many people have stopped caring about the notion of societal trust and cohesion—even the idea of valuing it as something to be desired and strived for. it's an odd kind of defeatist nihilism, and I've seen it spread year after year.

these are the same people who will scoff when you suggest that stealing from Walmarts or Targets or whatever is wrong. they'll tell you, "dude, shrinkage is a thing, they build the cost of stolen or damaged goods into their budgets. and, anyway, why do you care so much about massive corporations' bottom lines, anyway?" obviously I don't, but I sure do care about living in a place where brazen broad-daylight theft is rare, and not something you see every time you go to the store!

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

#560

Post by ajmurmann »

throwaway049 wrote: post #378
JohnFen wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't personally mind the idea of not being able to buy a house. That's not a thing I'm interested in anyway. But only being able to rent from large corporations? That's nightmare fuel right there.

The two things are fairly tightly connected. If ordinary citizens can't buy house, how does some other citizen (not corporation) buy one and offer it for rent to you?

There are a lot of individuals who buy investment properties. I have friends who use this as their primary retirement vehicle and own a bunch of rental properties. They are just successful small-business owners and the properties are their private property, unrelated to the business. From last time I saw statistics on this, most rental units were still owned by small landlords.
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