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I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex

truthonthestreets.substack.com

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Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex

#31

Post by jppope »

Ajay-p wrote: post #19

I don't agree with this author at all. Housing First has proven to be very successful when implemented on the local and state level.[0] This author seems to be taking a strange economic view that just because it has worked doesn't it mean it will continue to work, or work on a national level. I hate to say it but he sounds very bitter and thinks this is just throwing good money after bad. IMO if it gets people off th…

Can you provide any data on California? It may just be the skeptic in me but using Utah, with its large Mormon population and climate, feels like an exception not a rule. I'm aware that New York City has done some good work, but that predates Housing First if I'm not mistaken.

Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex

#32

Post by [deleted] »

wombat-man wrote: post #5
shuntress wrote: post #3

This skirts pretty close to saying that homelessness is an issue of "personal responsibility" while claiming to be apolitical. Homelessness is a complicated issue but the core of the solution is very simple: Provide housing. Whether that is a short term stay in a shelter or a lifelong stay in permanent housing is going to depend on the individual. But either way, you need a safe place to sleep and live before you can…

Author seems to suggest that housing first won't work. I might have missed it but I don't know why. What do they suggest instead?

[deleted]

Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex

#33

Post by Simulacra »

edgyquant wrote: post #28
jupp0r wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of capitalist societies without any homeless. Maybe it's the inadequate social safety net after all.

What societies currently have zero homeless? Looking at western nations I can’t find a single country “without homelessness.”

The Holy Sea ;-)

Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex

#34

Post by major505 »

acover wrote: post #13
shuntress wrote: post #3

This skirts pretty close to saying that homelessness is an issue of "personal responsibility" while claiming to be apolitical. Homelessness is a complicated issue but the core of the solution is very simple: Provide housing. Whether that is a short term stay in a shelter or a lifelong stay in permanent housing is going to depend on the individual. But either way, you need a safe place to sleep and live before you can…

Housing costs have sky rocketed and vacancy rates for rentals are often under 1%. A 1 bedroom apartment often costs more than minimum wage earns. How is this not a failure of housing policy? The home owning majority have voted for restricted supply.

See SF for example. The city where the council fights against zoning laws that allows the building of high rises.

In the meantime the population complains about having to fight with meth addicts in the streets while active voting this this council members.

Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex

#35

Post by Eumenes »

shuntress wrote: post #3

This skirts pretty close to saying that homelessness is an issue of "personal responsibility" while claiming to be apolitical. Homelessness is a complicated issue but the core of the solution is very simple: Provide housing. Whether that is a short term stay in a shelter or a lifelong stay in permanent housing is going to depend on the individual. But either way, you need a safe place to sleep and live before you can…

> This skirts pretty close to saying that homelessness is an issue of "personal responsibility"

Can it not be personal responsibility? Does it _always_ have to be a systemic problem with our economic system? Believe it or not, there's always been segments of the population who can't cope with day to day responsibility and life. For every homeless person whose down on their luck or deeply involved in a drug addiction, there's 1000s who came from disenfranchised backgrounds who 'made it'

Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex

#36

Post by pdonis »

Ajay-p wrote: post #19

I don't agree with this author at all. Housing First has proven to be very successful when implemented on the local and state level.[0] This author seems to be taking a strange economic view that just because it has worked doesn't it mean it will continue to work, or work on a national level. I hate to say it but he sounds very bitter and thinks this is just throwing good money after bad. IMO if it gets people off th…

> Housing First has proven to be very successful when implemented on the local and state level

Your reference talks about one state (Utah). Even if Housing First was successful there, that doesn't mean it was successful anywhere else.

Also, the definition of "success" in the article you reference is that a person gets into housing provided by Housing First. But the article under discussion in this thread is not saying that doesn't happen. It's saying that getting into housing provided by Housing First doesn't necessarily improve the lives of the people--the author describes "Massive drug use, fights, assaults, despair and death" in a Housing First building. So your definition of "success" seems to be different (and less stringent) than the author's.

Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex

#37

Post by LindeBuzoGray »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #4

As I've said before, there is a counter-intuitive meta-problem with homelessness. Fixing homelessness doesn't require love, or honesty, or any other virtue. Like most problems, it requires money. But no matter how much money is allocated to fix the problem of homelessness, fixing it attracts more homeless. Their feet aren't nailed to the ground on the other side of the continent... if they hear of a magical place tha…

> But no matter how much money is allocated to fix the problem of homelessness, fixing it attracts more homeless. Their feet aren't nailed to the ground on the other side of the continent... if they hear of a magical place that solves homelessness, they go there.

The federal reserve is meeting today and tomorrow. They usually say implicitly (although sometimes explicitly) what an Australian real estate mogul recently came out and explicitly said - they're trying to drive unemployment up and wages down. If this isn't done, it's a threat to the aristocracy, to the heirs expropriating their rentier wealth in profits, interest etc. This is the real meta-problem. The heirs and their allies are working to generate poverty, homelessness, unemployment etc., in the case of the real estate mogul quite openly. The recent corporate response to writers, auto workers etc. is yet another side of that.

Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex

#38

Post by davidw »

jppope wrote: post #31
Ajay-p wrote: post #19

I don't agree with this author at all. Housing First has proven to be very successful when implemented on the local and state level.[0] This author seems to be taking a strange economic view that just because it has worked doesn't it mean it will continue to work, or work on a national level. I hate to say it but he sounds very bitter and thinks this is just throwing good money after bad. IMO if it gets people off th…

Can you provide any data on California? It may just be the skeptic in me but using Utah, with its large Mormon population and climate, feels like an exception not a rule. I'm aware that New York City has done some good work, but that predates Housing First if I'm not mistaken.

California has a huge homelessness generating machine: the housing market. There's no way that some charities and a few government programs can get people out of homelessness faster than the rising prices can generate people without a place to live.

Re: I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex

#39

Post by jonmayer »

The author gave up the game with the bald-faced assertion that "The reason why it was decided to make it voluntary is because all homeless people according to them are victims of capitalism and would not be fair to have any expectations of them."

This is a nonsense straw dog. The author bemoans the lack of "metrics" while neglecting to mention that metrics have shown that Housing First approaches have had a higher success rate than the alternatives.

I think the author's treatment at the hands of activists is deplorable but the arguments in the article don't hold water.

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