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

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

#951

Post by matchbok » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 5:22 PM UTC

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #22

rottencupcakes wrote: post #3

Homelessness is a failure of the Federal government that nobody there is even willing to talk about. This can't be solved at a local or state level in a country with unrestricted freedom of movement.

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…

There is no free market in housing, so, you're just wrong. Rules upon rules upon zoning.

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

#952

Post by cscurmudgeon » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 5:30 PM UTC

paisawalla wrote: post #516

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-population.ht ... > As the data shows us, most of the homeless people you pass on the streets every day are in fact Californians. > “This is a local crisis and a homegrown problem,” said Peter Lynn, the executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the agency that conducts the largest homeless census count in the country. > L.A.H.S.A.’s 2019 homeless…

Data which is 1) based on self-reported status 2) fails to distinguish between temporary hardship homelessness and that resulting of addiction/illness Should not be relied upon. For the first, there is an obvious incentive towards exaggerating one's stay in state, and no counter-incentive whatsoever. For the latter, these are two separate problems which need drastically different solutions.

May I point out the post I replied to had no data.

If you have data that addresses the two points you made, please post them.

> For the first, there is an obvious incentive towards exaggerating one's stay in state, and no counter-incentive whatsoever.

Nothing obvious or even true about it. Using the word obvious just hides the fact it isn’t.

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

#953

Post by kerkeslager » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 5:49 PM UTC

jrowen wrote: post #950

kerkeslager wrote: post #341

As far as I can tell, California has spent exactly $0 on homes for the homeless, and therefore has spent exactly $0 trying to solve homelessness. California has spent $17b on theater to make people feel better about doing nothing for the homeless. Shelters are not homes. If you don't have privacy, a right to who is allowed into the space, the ability to store your possessions, to have pets, etc., you're homeless, and…

In thinking more about this, I'm starting to feel like developing solutions specifically for the most mentally ill/unstable individuals is important. 1) They're a danger to everyone including other homeless. 2) They have an outsize impact on people's frustration with and perception of homeless people. Walking down the street and worrying about being accosted by the guy yelling at himself is a powerfully bad experienc…

No, it doesn't make sense, and yes, most of this has been tried.

1. The vast majority aren't. The few that are, aren't going to be fixed by mental health services, because as I said, mental health services are totally ineffective when someone is experiencing the ongoing trauma of being homeless. And the fact that you said "including other homeless" doesn't fix the fact that your #1 concern is that homeless people are dangerous, not that homeless people are suffering.

2. Again, your concern is that someone will be traumatized by hearing someone talk to them in a way that they don't like, rather than that someone will be traumatized by being homeless?

3. Everyone knows that homeless people are mentally ill and is happy to talk about it: that's not the elephant in the room. The elephant in the room is that they are mentally ill because we as a society are unwilling to give them the only help that is effective: homes.

4. The results of forcibly imprisoning people are predictably bad. I'm not aware of any forcible treatment programs for the homeless, but this has never worked for anything else and I'm not sure why you'd think it would work for this. It again sounds a lot more like you're trying to help people who are scared of homeless people, rather than help homeless people.

Why on earth would you think this would work? What, you imprison someone for 6 months or a year and force them to act "normal" in a situation that's not normal, then throw them back on the street and somehow they'll be able to cope with being homeless long enough to pull themselves up by their bootstraps?

5. Alternative hypothesis: the homeless people you encounter aren't interested in the help you're offering because the help you're offering is of the flavor you've proposed in this post, i.e., not help.

* You seem absurdly confident that homeless people don't need what literally everyone else by definition has: a home. Why? What habit do you think you'll be able to build in them that will overcome lack of privacy or inability to keep their possessions safe?

Why are the funds even a concern here when we have people so rich that one of them could literally build homes for every homeless person in the US and still be in the top 10 richest people in the world? We have enough resources to house the homeless right now, but we will never have enough resources to satisfy rich people's greed.

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

#954

Post by kerkeslager » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 6:19 PM UTC

WirelessGigabit wrote: post #433

kerkeslager wrote: post #341

As far as I can tell, California has spent exactly $0 on homes for the homeless, and therefore has spent exactly $0 trying to solve homelessness. California has spent $17b on theater to make people feel better about doing nothing for the homeless. Shelters are not homes. If you don't have privacy, a right to who is allowed into the space, the ability to store your possessions, to have pets, etc., you're homeless, and…

I don't think homes will help on their own. A more comprehensive system is needed. You get a place to stay and a living wage, even for doing absolutely nothing. Because otherwise, how are you going to recover? The second part that I think is really important is that we should look at this large country and do these things in places where there is space. Once can easily imagine a stretch of land north of Palmdale, CA…

I'm mostly on board with what you're saying, but I'm not sure why the busywork component is necessary.

If the concern is that they'll be bored if unoccupied, there are other activities that are more therapeutic.

If the concern is that they won't be able to build self-esteem without a sense of purpose, then having them do purposeless work is just trying to "trick" them into feeling self-esteem, and most people won't be fooled.

I suspect the underlying thing here is a fundamental problem in our society, which is that we believe people only have worth if they can provide some sort of tangible resources or service through work, and that's fundamentally wrong. First off, the richest and most valued people in our society don't work and aren't providing value, they just profit off of other people's work. And looking at the arc of technological progress, there has been less and less need for human labor--at some point human labor will be unnecessary as the machines are able to operate themselves. At that point, I hope we aren't forcing everyone to perform busy work so we can justify letting those who own the machines live in lavish excess while everyone else lives in squalor; I'd hope we would all benefit from technology and be able to live lives of leisure.

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

#955

Post by krainboltgreene » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 6:27 PM UTC

labcomputer wrote: post #449

lr4444lr wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dept. of Homeless Services doesn't track this? It is done in NYC, and it was a major bone of contention that the high level of service was effectively magnetizing the city for homeless in other parts of the country to come here, or for cities even to bus them here. The law is a little vague on the matter, but the prevailing belief by the NYC administration is that anyone who can make it to the agency's doorstop a…

They do, and if you dig into them, the numbers show that most people are not from SF. https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-PIT-Co... By the agency's own numbers, only 72% of SF's homeless population "became homeless while living in SF." Additionally, among those 72% who "became homeless while living in SF", only 35% have lived in SF for more than 10 years at the time of the census (the agency only ha…

> 65% are not really "from SF" in any meaningful way

Only 17% reported being in SF for less than a year, what are you talking about?

> as in, became homeless while here and have been here >10 years

ahahaha oh okay you are insane.

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

#956

Post by krainboltgreene » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 6:29 PM UTC

junofan wrote: post #103

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.

Yeah you can just go talk to them to find out where your local homeless are coming from.

I'm glad HN has decided anecdotal evidence is more powerful than data. This is exactly what the tech sector needs to thrive.

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

#957

Post by georgeplusplus » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 6:30 PM UTC

Let's try 34B and see how that's works /s

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

#958

Post by dionidium » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 7:05 PM UTC

makeitdouble wrote: post #801

dionidium wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want citations for, "if you make something easier to consume, more people will consume it?"

So, "If you make people's life better, more people will want a better life ?"

No, because this formulation assumes we're starting with a fixed number of homeless people whose lives we're only making better. This is erroneous on two grounds: 1) it's not obvious that it makes their lives better in the long run, if it means they're less motivated to personally improve; 2) but second, and more important, the number of people who "need" these services is not fixed and policy can create more of them.

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

#959

Post by ncr100 » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 7:06 PM UTC

rank0 wrote: post #624

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…

Why isn’t moving out of the most expensive city in the world an option? I believe the biggest factor is mental illness. The addiction and homelessness are the symptoms/results. (Obviously not in every case) We’re at record low unemployment. If you’re able and willing to work you can 100% make enough money to pay rent somewhere…it just might not be in SF. Idk why people feel that everyone should be entitled to live in…

Eugene, Oregon is worse. It's not San Francisco.

It's a United States problem.

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

#960

Post by ncr100 » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 7:07 PM UTC

hellojesus wrote: post #599

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…

What I haven't understood is: why don't people move away if they're doing min wage jobs in a place where they are clearly incapable of delivering any quality of life? Bring labor supply down and suddenly the market has to pay more. This seems to be simple oversupply in a saturated market.

Moving won't solve their problems.

It creates new problems, including lack of a job.