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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

#731

Post by dangwhy »

patall wrote: post #708
dangwhy wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are all the lofty examples from countries that are hostile to refugees/immigrants like Scandinavian countries. Would love to hear examples of great public welfare/healthcare programs from countries that accepts 6 million refugees / year like USA. In my head these are two opposing goals but curious to know if there are counterexamples.

I think you are mistaken, though I do not know how. Scandinavian countries accept quite many immigrants. I.e Sweden in 2022: 3.6/1000, compared to US (2020!): 3/1000. Both sources from wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_S...

> I think you are mistaken, though I do not know how.

see my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36172283

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

#732

Post by Nifty3929 »

It's working just fine. The point of spending the $17B is not to help homeless people. The point is to pay well-connected groups of people to say they are doing something to address homelessness. This sounds good when printed in the media, and is as good a reason as any to give those interests large sums of money. These interests are some combination of government departments, NGOs, and private companies. It comes full-circle, because these interests often are able to coordinate large voting blocks to keep the wheel turning.

Working perfectly and as designed.

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

#733

Post by crooked-v »

trailbits wrote: post #614
jandrese wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When wages go up, rents go up. For rents to go down you either have to have more housing or less people in a given area.

And put "California" and "more housing" together and you mostly get memes of YIMBYs laughing maniacally and crying while NIMBYs sit on piles of money.

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

#734

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

stale2002 wrote: post #102
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how much of a downtrend, seems rather stable [1]. There are also 0 countries that implement Georgist policies and most of the countries in the world are directly neoliberal or neoliberal-bent, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia [2], and friends included. Perhaps I am not correct, but what do you think will happen in a few years when we will have a 100 GB neural model able to drive any car in any environment, effect…

Ah, the Georgism fans. Thinking that every single problem in the world can be solved via a land value tax. It is actually one of the few groups I've found that are worse than the socialist class reductionists, who think that every problem exists "because capitalism". Yes, a land value tax can be a useful policy. But it simply has little relevance to the topic of people who are homeless because of mental issues. And y…

"Georgism is concerned with the distribution of economic rent caused by land ownership, natural monopolies, pollution rights, and control of the commons, including title of ownership for natural resources and other contrived privileges (e.g. intellectual property)" [1]. From a Georgist standpoint today's land is data. Do you have $30 million or more to be considered an ultra-high-net-worth individual [2]? If yes, congratulations, we are indeed enemies. If not, don't kid yourself, you are just as much hoi polloi as a homeless person. Do you even own a factory or you just embody bonded consciousness as a hobby [3]?

I just can't wait for the full consequences of automated statistics-based decision-making to develop into realtime embedded robotics, giving rise to the $100 trillion company, evaporating hundreds of millions of jobs, burning down the world as it is, but at least silencing these squeaky, visionless voices: fiat lucrum, et pereat mundus.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism#:~:text=Georgism%20is....

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-net-worth_individual

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%E2%80%93bondsman_dialecti...

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

#735

Post by givemeethekeys »

atdrummond wrote: post #8

That’s because Cali’s approach is insane. They give you hundreds a month in cash grants (some make $1k a month in SF) and require you to make NO alterations to your lifestyle. I was amazed when living in SF how many of the homeless are not locals. Not even Californians! I myself lived on the streets for a number of years and have dealt with addiction issues. It is absolutely insane how we’ve stopped treating homeless…

> They give you hundreds a month in cash grants (some make $1k a month in SF) and require you to make NO alterations to your lifestyle.

If you look up the amount spent per homeless person by SF on homelessness, you'll wonder how it is possible that they're giving away ONLY $1000 per month.

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

#736

Post by jrowen »

rcme wrote: post #428
jrowen wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they mean building mass affordable/free new housing rather than using existing stock.

The structures built on land usually depreciate over time. It’s the land value that appreciates. So building new stock would still increase demand for land which would increase prices everywhere.

Existing structures targeting lower density and higher cost per square foot could be repurposed and optimized for affordability. Even policy changes regarding what new projects are permissible would go a long way.

Are you making the argument that it's an economic/geographic impossibility to house more people for less money rather than an issue of political/social will?

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

#737

Post by arcticbull »

wonderwonder wrote: post #618
arcticbull wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Good climate: Absolutely. It's much tougher being homeless in the winter in Chicago than it is in California. - Legal weed: There's legal weed all over the country and the homeless aren't known for buying weed from legal shops are they lol. No 'open air drug market weed' for me, sir, I'm going to the Shambhala Healing Center, says the man strung out on fenty. [1] Missouri and Illinois have legal recreational weed a…

Legal weed as you are not going to get arrested for possession friend, not where they buy it.

lol, if that's the only thing you've got on a homeless person, you need to move along.

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

#738

Post by hourago »

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?"

A lot of people seems to accept tax cuts for billionaires much higher than anything spend on the poor. It is all about framing and repetition.

Humans like to help other humans. The problem is that there is a push towards selfishness from the people that has the most and profits more out of it.

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

#739

Post by milesvp »

gotoeleven wrote: post #315
milesvp wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure you can make such a bold claim. If California is spending money on homelessness, then all things being equal, it will attract more homeless people than if it didn't spend money on homelessness. Some percentage of these homeless will come from other states. For any two states there is going to be migration of homeless between the 2, and the attractiveness of the state is very much effected by the amount o…

Homeless people aren't stupid and they aren't immobile house plants, they respond to incentives like everyone else. If you want to live on the street and do drugs and be crazy the best place to do that is CA because the weather is great and they largely don't enforce vagrancy, shoplifting, and drug laws and they spend billions of dollars subsidizing homelessness (free needles etc etc etc). >>> "any locality that choo…

I certainly agree that how you spend money could just encourage people to become homeless, I’d hoped to convey that idea by talking about percentage increases in the homeless population, since not every new homeless is going to be a transplant. I wish there were better guides as to what spending actually helps. I suspect soup kitchens are a general positive good, but they may only make it easier to be homeless by allieviating some of the pain. I personally think access to housing should be a basic constitutional right, but I’m also weary of things like projects and tenements which may purpetuate more problems than they help.

But I think we agree that this is not an easy issue.

Unrelated, I thought I was using affect correctly, but seeing sic in your quote and spending a few minutes googling, I still don’t know if effect was more correct than affect :/

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

#740

Post by lefrenchy »

I find it hard to drive through the Tenderloin without thinking “there is no fix for this”. Once someone has been homeless and into drugs for long enough, it’s going to be incredibly difficult to get them to fix their lives (if possible at all) for a good portion of them.

Beyond some massive investment in housing and recovery, it’s just going to continue not working. Prevention is the solution, we have to prevent it at all costs and do our best to ease the suffering of those who are stuck there now.

Unfortunately I think we’ll continue with half measures and the problem will remain unsolved.

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