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

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

#681

Post by suzzer99 » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 10:55 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #435

bluGill wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We got rid of institutionalization for very good reason. Many of them outright abused the people under their care. Cleaning up the system is hard. Many of the homeless have mental issues such that they cannot figure out how to report abuse even if it would be listened to, and of course institutions have easy means to ensure you can't report things. (or you can report, but the person doing the abuse investigates and f…

We had problems with abuse in many institutions (schools, churches, nursing homes) but we didn't get rid of all those. It would cost, but you can externally monitor and correct institutions if you have entirely separate people doing it. Or - livestream everything and let the public monitor it. (Obviously this can't be done for various reasons, but we now have the technology to literally record it all.)

The other argument is that it seems fundamentally wrong to incarcerate someone against their will who isn't a danger to society.

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

#682

Post by suzzer99 » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 10:56 PM UTC

ishjoh wrote: post #263

gamblor956 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On this note, LA has hundreds of shelter beds the remain empty every night because they're located in "sober" facilities (meaning that the facilities do not allow alcohol or drug use) and the putative residents would rather be able to drink and use drugs than to have shelter.

I live in a midsize city outside of California that has 3 shelters downtown. 1 shelter dropped the sober requirement trying to house those people. They had to reinstate the rules within 24h because 2 employees had been assaulted, and a serious fight had broken out that required hospital care for both people involved. It is sad state of affairs.

Yeah imagine if they allowed crack smoking or speed. No way. Heroin and fentanyl maybe.

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

#683

Post by aeternum » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 10:56 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…

The way 'housing first' has been implemented in SF is terrible. It is operated as a lottery helping a very tiny percentage of the homeless with a house/apt worth $1mil+. Those numbers will never solve the problem.

If I saw a reasonable housing first program where it actually provides cost-efficient housing for all that need it, I'd be a strong proponent.

The current system is not that, it's incredibly unfair, a tax-payer funded lottery in which residents provide accolades to homeless advocacy groups in return for inclusion on lists that make them more likely to win a spot in the residences. Huge amounts of tax-payer money is siphoned off into these non-profits throughout the process.

https://sfstandard.com/politics/san-francisco-nonprofits-con...

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

#684

Post by nulbyte » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 10:57 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #563

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…

It's very hard to work around human nature and the whole "why am I paying rent like a sucker when the drug addicts on the street are getting free apartments?" I also think that people who point out that a huge percentage of the people on the street are on drugs, so the drugs are the problem are not entirely correct either. The drug use is a symptom that also exacerbates the problem. One of the big contributing factor…

> It's very hard to work around human nature and the whole "why am I paying rent like a sucker when the drug addicts on the street are getting free apartments?"

Easy fix: Give them a free apartment, too. Let them see what it's like. If they do better there than paying rent or mortgage, great. But I bet they won't last more than a day or two before turning that key back in. They think a free apartment is some great thing to have, as if their neighbors won't be all the people they didn't want to be around in the first place.

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

#685

Post by ntonozzi » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 10:57 PM UTC

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 episode focuses on Utah’s housing first program, not California. They also bring up that it wasn’t a panacea and in practice it took more time than expected before the cost to the public went down.

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

#686

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 10:58 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…

[deleted]

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

#687

Post by seizethecheese » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 11:02 PM UTC

reillyse wrote: post #639

seizethecheese wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well one problem is once corporations get involved is money starts flowing to influence Politicians to do the Corps bidding. So, I wouldn't say it's neutral.

the single family home market is rigged in a million ways already, without much past corporate involvement…

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

#688

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 11:02 PM UTC

o1y32 wrote: post #470

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get the idea apartments.com is a source that can inform you about the market price of shared housing? As a long-time participant in the bay area rental housing market, $1000 is enough to rent a bedroom in many homes, but how would such a listing get onto apartments.com? If you’re paying more than $1000 to share a bedroom, you’re getting ripped off.

Your comment does not provide any concrete example. Even if what you say is true, access is a real issue. You think homeless people would know how to find those $1000 options if a random person cannot find them via a simple search?

Apartments.com seems very corporate, I doubt most people are even aware if they are allowed to post on there.

Check Craigslist, that’s the main place people who are looking for randoms to rent a room will post:

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/roo?max_price=1000&min_p...

Of course, most people would prefer to room with family or friends (especially if we’re talking about multiple people in the same room). That’s not an SF issue, it’s human nature. So a lot of roommate groups are going to be formed through word-of-mouth, or smaller community group chats/boards.

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

#689

Post by j2bax » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 11:04 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #611

adeon wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around year 2009-2010, I worked in public sector in Helsinki in the real estate department. I worked the phone handling tenants calling and needing repairs. A large portion of the tenants were people from the homeless program. At the time I did not know this program was unusual. My understanding of how it worked was that if you were functional enough and willing, you could walk into a certain building and they'd get…

> I wondered a lot why California seems to be failing at the homeless problem. My take on it (after living in SF for many years): 1. Many homeless people do have mental illnesses and/or drug addiction problems (for some, this is the result of their homelessness, for others it's in part the cause). California is very much against involuntarily putting people in psychiatric hospitals or drug treatment programs. This is…

I wonder if there are areas/towns that could use additional sources of revenue/jobs that larger cities could help subsidize with homeless relocation services and funding.

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

#690

Post by da39a3ee » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 11:07 PM UTC

atdrummond wrote: post #42

crooked-v wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, $1K a month in SF won't even get you a bed in a shared room. I mean that literally - I just checked apartments.com and there's exactly one listing out of 5,400 right now that's under $1000 and open to non-students.

They don’t need a bed or a room. You can camp quite comfortably throughout the city all year long thanks to the mild weather. It’s a very different situation than being homeless in cities with more typical seasonal weather patterns; I nearly lost a number of toes due to frostbite when I was homeless in Saint Louis during a major blizzard. San Francisco’s climate and permissive camping policies help absolve a lot of t…

> San Francisco’s climate and permissive camping policies help absolve a lot of the housing related issues that are involved with being homeless.

Of course they don't. Living out of a tent on a street makes it extremely hard to get your life onto target for rejoining the economically healthy portion of society. I'm sure you know that. I don't know what you were trying to say.