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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

#741

Post by shuckles »

reillyse wrote: post #715
shuckles wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the $5k/tent was in the services required for a high-needs population. As someone who has been impacted by a building set on fire by a meth addicted neighbor, simply placing high needs homeless people who often have serious mental health or drug abuse issues, in apartments isn't the end of the story. In many cases, it makes the lives of other residents of the building worse, as evidenced by the issues (includ…

You seem to be conflating drug use with homelessness. Lots of unhoused people are not on drugs and lots (the vast, vast majority) of drug users have homes. I think conflating the two is not productive.

70% of San Francisco’s homeless population self reports as struggling with drug abuse or mental illness in the Point in Time count. It’s not a conflation; it’s reality. That’s also why the tent camps cost $5k a month to staff security, medical workers, etc.

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

#742

Post by Nifty3929 »

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…

"... or $4750/mo. At those rates, we could be renting people market rate 1BD apartments"

A common misconception - but money is not housing. There are no extra 1BD units available. We could use this money to outbid other people to put the current homeless in those places, displacing others and somewhat increasing overall rent prices (and/or waiting lists). But I don't think that's what you intend.

In the end, if we want more people to have housing, then we have to allow more housing to be built. It's not (just) a money problem.

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

#743

Post by nwienert »

da39a3ee wrote: post #713
nwienert wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On my street in the Mission there were mostly illegal immigrants living on the sidewalk in tents, they told me as much.

Even supposing that is true, which seems very unlikely, it is clearly untrue of the SF homeless population in general and of the East Bay homeless population.

I speak Spanish, my real name is in my profile, I talked to a few of them pretty often. I’ll try not to baselessly insult you back.

More likely you don’t want it to be true.

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

#744

Post by screye »

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…

I am skeptical of podcasts which reach a conclusion that is always within the overton window of the era. "This incredibly complex question has a solution that perfectly fits within the moral-mores of this decade." It is the John Oliver phenomenon, that starts with a pre-determined conclusion and then exclusively looks at evidence supporting the pre-determined conclusion.

In SF you're either a local or a transplant. A person who gets evicted, is by definition financially insecure. A local when evicted, can always move back in with family/friend unless their community disowns them. A transplant in a low-income job, has no reason to continue living in SF if they moved here for work. They can always move back.

SF's homeless crisis (last 20 years) is entirely due to a rise in homeless people with mental illness & substance abuse. [1] The key issue is drugs. 100%. Housing is the 2nd most important issue, no doubt. But, any blindly adopted housing first policy from a place without the same drug issues will fail, and will fail miserably.

[1] https://dynomight.net/img/homeless-crisis/coc/CA-San%20Franc...

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

#745

Post by miked85 »

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…

> The drug use is a symptom that also exacerbates the problem.

Drug use may be a symptom in some cases, but very often is the cause. Either way, it isn't good.

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

#746

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #508
ryandrake wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even a lack of homes--its a lack of access to existing homes. There are already ~16 million vacant homes in the USA, a tiny fraction of which could house the homeless if there were political will. We all can say homelessness is a problem, but if you ask these people hoarding vacant homes if they'd be willing to house a homeless person on their property, or if you ask a politician whether they are willing to…

The vast majority of those homes are either being actively fixed/waiting for a tenant to move in or are in bumfuck where no one wants to live. If you can convince the homeless on the west coast to move to the vacant places in kansas congratulations, you just won California's governor election. The reality is that there are not nearly enough homes where people want to be. Until you can force the homeless to go to less…

When I was homeless, I was placed on a waiting list and sent to "my" freight elevator/park bench to count the days.

My number came up and I was called into an office. I was verbally introduced to a program that would take control of my finances and then send me wherever they had something available. Some of the cities mentioned might as well have been Kansas.

I said no thanks, I'll stay on the streets. I waited for a longer time and another program opened up. They didn't take control of my finances and they allowed me to choose exactly where I wanted to apply for a lease.

That was 20 years ago, and I have lived happily ever after.

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

#747

Post by prepend »

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.

> This idea of worrying about who gets what for free before actually solving the problem, is a major blocker in solving the homelessness problem.

For me, it’s not about “getting something for free” so much as it is about being efficient or inefficient.

Housing people in San Francisco instead of cheaper locations is like solving the carlessness problem by only buying teslas instead of hondas.

And then complaining that you don’t have enough money to buy everyone Teslas.

The plan is dumb. It won’t work. It’s stupid to fund such a plan. It’s not “never give free stuff to people” and “don’t give expensive stuff to people when cheap stuff does just as well, and especially if by doing so you incentivize more people to come and ask.”

I don’t think they want to solve the problem. I think they want to generate funds for consultants and NGOs that pay lots of people.

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

#748

Post by carom »

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 do not buy much real estate. Look how many homes Black Rock owns versus the total housing stock. Many people incorporate to limit liability. It is also very cheap to spin up new corporations. So there is nothing stopping a person from being part of unlimited corporations that own your capped number of homes.

The real issue is lack of supply and your enemy there are single family home owners. They do not want density near them.

The people and corporations who subdivide their land up for renters are generally very happy to build more units because they like money. Your proposal, if it worked, would make the situation worse.

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

#749

Post by meowtimemania »

kristofferR wrote: post #586
meowtimemania wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They use drugs because they live on the streets. Treating a symptom instead of the cause is stupid, especially if the symptom (drug use) will likely return as soon as they return to the streets after rehab/prison.

In many cases the drugs came before the homelessness.

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

#750

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

jiscariot wrote: post #125
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me just quality a bit further: homelessness is a failure of the neoliberal ideology (land free markets/privatization never worked, from the enclosures [1] to modern times, see Georgism for a solution [2]) and further a failure of the metaphysics of meritocracy based in desert-people's belief "by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground", which simply isn't the case today, and i…

If we're going to put the SF homeless problem on "neoliberal ideology", we should also give "neoliberal ideology" (e.g. free markets/trade/globalization) credit for lifting almost a billion people out of poverty in developing nations (mainly China, India) in the 00s.

For India, yes, the MGNREGA [1] is very "neoliberal", we all know how neoliberals care about social security, social equity, guaranteed wage employment, environment protection, women empowerment, and so on.

For China: "When the poverty headcount dropped below 10 percent of the rural population, targeted poverty alleviation and social protection systems started playing a more important role." [2], how neoliberal of them.

Meanwhile, "more than 800 million Amazon trees felled in six years to meet beef demand" [3], who needs oxygen anyway.

[1] Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guar... one of the main reasons for India's poverty reduction, "415 million people exited multidimensional poverty in the country in 15 years between 2005-06 and 2019-21", https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/india-lifted...

[2] "Four Decades of Poverty Reduction in China: Drivers, Insights for the World, and the Way Ahead", https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstrea..., p. 65

[3] https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-06-02/alm...

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