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Homeless Mortality Data

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Re: Homeless Mortality Data

#51

Post by jkman »

tdudhhu wrote: post #49
Exoristos wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've volunteered with the homeless for years. Someone doesn't get laid off from a corporate job and go live on the street. These are folks who exhausted the social safety nets, ran out of family members to impose on, ran out of friends' couches -- they're alcohol and drug addicts who burned all their bridges. Many of them have never held jobs at all.

What are you trying to say? It's their own fault? I also volunteered working with the homeless. There is nobody who chooses to live on the streets. Those who do have mental health issues. I am 100% sure it is a society problem, not an individual problem.

Yes, there absolutely are individuals whose homelessness is their own fault - every case is unique, some definitely did it to themselves and the majority did not. But placing all homeless on some sort of pedestal of morality is a really bizarre opinion from my view.

Re: Homeless Mortality Data

#52

Post by didgetmaster »

kelnos wrote: post #23
didgetmaster wrote: post #2

If I read that right, the mortality rate in the general population in 2020 (1027 per 100k); was higher than that found in the homeless community in 2011 (814 per 100k). Who says the world is not becoming more dangerous (and not just among the homeless)?

I'm a little confused why you chose those two not-particlarly-comparable data points. More notable -- and horrifying -- is the large rise in the homeless mortality rate between 2011 and 202.

It was in the article. I am more interested in knowing why the author of the article chose those two particular years. Was 2011 the lowest number out of the last 25? Was 2020 the highest?

If they were chosen to cherry-pick the data in order to better support a predetermined conclusion, then the whole study is suspect. Too many people do that on a wide variety of topics and then wonder why readers are so skeptical.

Re: Homeless Mortality Data

#53

Post by rickydroll »

roenxi wrote: post #10
didgetmaster wrote: post #2

If I read that right, the mortality rate in the general population in 2020 (1027 per 100k); was higher than that found in the homeless community in 2011 (814 per 100k). Who says the world is not becoming more dangerous (and not just among the homeless)?

It might "just" be the homeless population is ageing. We really need a model prediction of how we expected the homeless population death rate to change over time. I doubt it is in a steady state. "The number of Californians 55 and older who sought homelessness services soared 84% between 2017 and 2021" (from the article), so something demographic is changing. It'd be interesting to know what happened to their retirem…

> It'd be interesting to know what happened to their retirement savings.

Multi-year medical problems leading to bankruptcy and divorce.

Re: Homeless Mortality Data

#54

Post by dang »

c048 wrote: post #44
tacocataco wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could legalize all drugs so people can have access to clean drugs of a known potency.

[flagged]

Please make your substantive points thoughtfully and avoid snark, as the guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: Homeless Mortality Data

#55

Post by mistermann »

deepspace wrote: post #25

When we look back at the history of the US, the one practice that stands out is slavery. Today, we can only shake our heads and wonder how so-called civilized people allowed that abomination to continue for as long as it did. How can so many people have looked upon so much human suffering for so long, without lifting a finger? Today, we are forcing people out into the street through low wages and callous layoffs to i…

> This attitude will likely be viewed in a similar light a hundred years from now as we view slavery today.

A fun (when done right, for some people at least) activity is contemplating various strategies one could execute to accelerate this process, and thousands of other much needed cognitive optimizations.

Re: Homeless Mortality Data

#56

Post by betaby »

latenightcoding wrote: post #19

>> For many people, living on the streets of California is a death sentence. Canada had few -40C nights this winter, homeless shelters were completely full.

Canada de-facto banned most type of homes/appointments due to regulations and zoning. Both in conjunction makes building housing expensive and slow. Canada is ways past of useful regulations. Over-regulation costs lives.

Re: Homeless Mortality Data

#57

Post by misja111 »

tacocataco wrote: post #42
dzink wrote: post #27

Garry Tan has a lot of X/Twitter posts on the subject. 68% of SF overdose deaths seem to happen inside shelters. Recently one of the shelter workers overdosed as well. There seems to be a massive disconnect between intention and consequences of policies. https://x.com/garrytan/status/1750566946201047218?s=46&t=bGA...

We could legalize all drugs so people can have access to clean drugs of a known potency.

Aren't most opiods legal already?

Re: Homeless Mortality Data

#58

Post by daft_pink »

I just wonder in this data if people who are homeless have mental disorders or addiction problems that make them way more likely to die and the problem isn’t that they are homeless, but that they are addicts or have untreated mental illness. Correlation is not causation.

Re: Homeless Mortality Data

#59

Post by c048 »

dang wrote: post #54
c048 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please make your substantive points thoughtfully and avoid snark, as the guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html .

A poor statement gets a poor response. Start looking at the head of this comment thread before you choose to chide me.

And there is nothing snarky about this. We've seen this exact scenario happen recently in certain areas of the US (e.g. Oregon) and Portugal where they eased off on criminalizing drugs use. You're talking about an economic weak group, where legality is less of an issue than cost. Them being 'homeless' is BY DEFINITION an indication of their poverty.

If you still want to double down on considering my post 'snarky', how can you also not say the same about 'https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=39580412&goto=item%3Fi...' in this very thread.

Re: Homeless Mortality Data

#60

Post by c048 »

catlifeonmars wrote: post #50
c048 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good, so let's do that first before making an already terribly exploitative system even worse.

This where I think criminalization actually serves to increase exploitation and increase the incentives for exploitation.

I heavily disagree with that. Most legally available drugs are already out of reach for most of the homeless people (even more so in the US). These people are primarily defined by their financial status, if nothing else.
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