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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

#881

Post by HWR_14 »

bombcar wrote: post #872
coffeebeqn wrote: post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finland also has a very robust social safety network unlike California/US. Homelessness is usually a symptom of something else. Addiction, mental health issues, financial crisis of some sort, etc. Most of these are escapeable given the right support. But once you pile them all on with no escape - well then you have market street. If you don’t fix any of the other issues then you just end up throwing money in a bottom…

I suspect if you rounded up all the homeless in California and dumped them in Finland you’d quickly overload their systems. After all the entire country of Finland has fewer people than the SF metro area (5m vs 7m).

The systems in Finland wouldn't be overloaded if Finland got the SF tax base as well as the homeless problem.

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

#882

Post by seanmcdirmid »

HWR_14 wrote: post #880
Fatnino wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say $1mil+ house and most people think we are putting up a select one or two homeless guys in mansions. 1 million dollars in San Francisco real estate is a one room (maybe two room if it's in extra bad shape) hovel. And that's the real problem. San Francisco is not a place for the poor to try to raise their lives to middle class. It's a place for middle class to struggle to stay above water. The homeless in sf ne…

No one who lives in a $1mil+ home (absent subsidies) is middle class.

Anyone who lives in just a $1 million house in LA or SF is more than likely middle class, not even on the upper end of it.

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

#883

Post by fallingknife »

Fatnino wrote: post #815
aeternum wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-p…

You say $1mil+ house and most people think we are putting up a select one or two homeless guys in mansions. 1 million dollars in San Francisco real estate is a one room (maybe two room if it's in extra bad shape) hovel. And that's the real problem. San Francisco is not a place for the poor to try to raise their lives to middle class. It's a place for middle class to struggle to stay above water. The homeless in sf ne…

Then get them housing outside SF

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

#884

Post by jonhohle »

whimsicalism wrote: post #656
poorbutdebtfree wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Greater Boston Food Bank CEO cleared a $500K salary this year, for a job that's largely remote because the area is too dangerous for the non-profit white collar workers. Do you think she wants "food insecurity" to be solved? https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/427...

this seems fine to me, managing the greater boston food bank sounds like it needs a good manager to better spend the other 99.8%

That’s feeding 81k people a day. A huge job, for sure, but that’s the equivalent of a reasonably large town. Something has already gone wrong upstream if that many people cannot acquire food via their own means.

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

#885

Post by ransom1538 »

dangwhy wrote: post #620
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…

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.

Well, also sprinkle in thousands of pounds of cheap fentanyl and dealer networks.

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

#886

Post by bombcar »

candiodari wrote: post #561
jeremyjh wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great if you don’t want to engage with the actual issues or solve the problem.

Fortunately San Francisco has had decades of social workers "dealing with the actual issues" and "solving the problem". To put it mildly, they didn't solve the issues. This is a lot better than social workers "helping" people on the street with "treatment".

They did deal with and solve the problem, mainly that people didn’t think enough was being done and that the social workers wanted jobs.

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

#887

Post by matchbok »

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…

But still, blaming the issue on conservatives when they make up such a small portion of the state is an odd tactic. Perhaps it could be that some of your proposed "left" positions are just... not popular (or don't work, like rent control or defunding the police).

On the other than, CA has the most government rules for housing and "leftist" policies in that regard and it has been nothing but an unmitigated disaster.

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

#888

Post by anonygler »

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…

It doesn’t trigger me. But the idea that you can give them housing without judgement or constraints is absurd. Drug use is bad and is the overwhelming cause of their problems. The ones who succeed with this approach are also the ones not abusing drugs.

In addition, I’m not convinced you need to buy them housing in the worlds most expensive region—and one that’s deeply permissive about drug use and theft.

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

#889

Post by HWR_14 »

bombcar wrote: post #875
hourago wrote: post #738

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?" 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 t…

The US federal government spends a trillion dollars a year on social programs (likely more when you include the states) - and some work exceptionally well, and others not so much. And much of it is effectively subsidizing Walmart and friends anyway.

That was true in 2020-2022 due to COVID. That was not true in 2019.

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

#890

Post by fallingknife »

neilk wrote: post #826
ibeckermayer wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea that the "homeless problem in SF" is primarily a problem of "people being unable to afford homes in SF" is just laughable. All you need to do is walk down almost any street in San Francisco and take a secondary glance at the homeless people you see, and its obvious that "can't afford a home" is just one of their many problems. Most of these people couldn't hold a job because they're addicted to really hardc…

Those are the homeless you can see. You're right that people who have several physical or mental health issues would be hard to help, in any system. But the number one cause of homelessness isn't addiction; it's poverty. And for that matter, the overwhelming majority of people who are substance-addicted don't become homeless. Lots of the people you work with are addicted to something. There are so many steps before p…

But when people say "homeless" that's who they mean. Not saying that you are wrong about there being 10x as many people living in camper vans or whatever, but that's just not who anybody means when they talk about homeless people.

Also not saying that it isn't a problem which should be solved, because it absolutely is. But if you did solve it, and you told people that homelessness was down by 90%, they would look at you like you were crazy, because it's only the other 10% they were complaining about in the first place.

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