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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

#571

Post by boucher »

ripberge wrote: post #395
boucher wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Less than a fifth (18 percent) said they had lived out of state before becoming homeless.

I'm not sure that LAHSAs homeless count is a good source of data. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-24/doubts-r...

I don’t know how relevant this story is to the question of whether people who are homeless in California are from California.

In any case, the claim was made that the LAHSA data showed something which I found no evidence of, and in fact found that it showed something quite different. Lots of other data also suggest that a large majority of homeless do not come from other places.

If someone wants to share other data about this issue I’m happy to read it.

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

#573

Post by jlawson »

commandlinefan wrote: post #565
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…

> overall the cost was less that not having some housing and services This is always the justification for socialist-style programs. It makes for a great red herring, but it's always misleading. What it ignores (willfully or not) is that if you start to incentivize homelessness, you're going to suddenly find yourself with a lot more homeless than you used to have. Your studies assume a stable population of homeless,…

Otherwise known as, "If you subsidize something you get more of it."

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

#574

Post by smadge »

ajmurmann wrote: post #510
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 gets to one of the core issues. The homelessness issue, as well as mental health issues, are all left to counties in the US. This leads to bussing the homeless and it's not even clear if the cause for the homelessness is in the area the homelessness is felt. I might become homeless in New York and get on a bus to San Francisco because the weather is nicer and I hear they are nicer to homeless there. This would b…

There was a survey (San Fransisco Homeless Count and Survey, 2022) which says 71% of the homeless in San Fransisco were living in San Fransisco at the time they became homeless, 24% were in another California county, and only 4% were out of state. But generally it makes sense that if a single county adopted housing first at a large scale these numbers might change. Additionally, the primary cause of homelessness is the severe housing shortage and the high cost of housing. So homes for the homeless should not be implemented in only cheap areas, but the expensive areas with the highest homelessness rates. This should be combined with a large increase in general housing production in these areas to mitigate the cause of the homelessness in the first place.

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

#575

Post by mafribe »

specialist wrote: post #537
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.

Which happens first? Do the unhoused become addicts? The addicts become homeless? A mix?

Hard drug addicts prefer using their limited income for drugs rather than rent. (Note that as of Jun 2023, hard drug addiction has no known cure.)

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

#576

Post by seizethecheese »

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…

Corporations buy homes to rent them out. This is neutral for housing supply.

The real issue is a growth in households but a lack of growth in housing stock. We need to build more housing.

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

#577

Post by meowtimemania »

worik wrote: post #547
meowtimemania wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm quoting a tweet from the president of Y Combinator. I'm not against giving people housing, but I think there needs to be a sobriety requirement. Why would putting someone in a house cure them of their addiction? Put them through rehab, then give them a house when they leave rehab.

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

#578

Post by ajmurmann »

tlogan wrote: post #339
godelski wrote: post #120

This reads as a political ad, not a news story. The ad is good at pulling heart strings and getting people riled up (see comments here) but does not do any actual reporting. How did California spend the money? Were there leaky buckets? How does California have 50% of the homeless and 12% of the population? Are people being bussed in, making this a federal problem? Who's responsible? Don't just tell me the governor, t…

Sadly, I think the problem is much simpler: corruption. Given that California is essentially governed by a single party, it is subject to corruption and inefficiency. Lets take just example from this week: an announcement was made stating that the construction of a tiny house costs $1,600 per square foot [1]. All I can say is this: somebody is pocketing this money. I don't know who, how, or why. Regardless, it's clea…

How much of the cost was just the process of getting all the permits? Looking at this crazy toilet in SF that cost $1.25m after the toilet itself was donated: https://abc7news.com/sf-bathrooms-noe-valley-public-toilet-1...

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

#579

Post by jjcon »

josho wrote: post #215
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…

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…

> I think on this issues it’s conservatives that make a solution untenable

Uhhh it’s been a while since I lived in the states but isn’t homelessness much much worse in states dominated by liberals?

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

#580

Post by kristofferR »

worik wrote: post #547
meowtimemania wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is a good article, with his cherry picked stats:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/san-francisco-sros...

Housing First is clearly the best strategy to solve homelessness, but it should not be confused with Housing Only, which the article has plenty of examples of.

Using a mismanaged Housing First program to argue against Housing First is also borderline absurd, I agree with you there.

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