Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk • Hacker News Board

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#211

Post by duped » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:58 PM UTC

hackeraccount wrote: post #123

dyingkneepad wrote: post #23

As a non-American person living in the US, I fail to understand one thing about its society. When I walk around town I see tons and tons of places advertising jobs, for simple stuff like kitchen, moving stuff around, etc. I even recently saw a store with a "talk to the manager and start working right now" sign. And then I walk around the streets and see all these homeless. It seems like a paradox to me, but I am obvi…

I'm not of the Left. So you know where I'm come from. That said people who are living on the street are frequently deeply alone in way that can be hard to understand. Substance abuse problems. Mental problems. Sure all of that. No place to live too. All of that's a huge burden. On top of that the jobs that get listed are frequently not going to be offering 30 hours or less a week. So the way to think of people in tha…

The people you're talking about are usually referred to as the "chronically" homeless and are a minority (but highly visible) section of the overall homeless population. We know that the best way to help these people that's been found so far are the so called "housing first" policies, which save taxpayer money in law enforcement and medical bills by finding permanent supportive housing for the people that need it.

A majority of people who are homeless are not drug addicts or mentally ill. They're just fucked over by an economy that has no floor with too few places for too many people to stay. Most people who find themselves homeless are only homeless for short stretches, and often have jobs and pay their taxes while they live out of tents, cars, and RVs.

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#212

Post by OlleTO » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:58 PM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #75

dyingkneepad wrote: post #23

As a non-American person living in the US, I fail to understand one thing about its society. When I walk around town I see tons and tons of places advertising jobs, for simple stuff like kitchen, moving stuff around, etc. I even recently saw a store with a "talk to the manager and start working right now" sign. And then I walk around the streets and see all these homeless. It seems like a paradox to me, but I am obvi…

First please note that America has fewer homeless people than many European nations or Canada. Per 10K: Germany......79 UK...........46 Sweden.......36 Canada.......36 Netherlands..23 France.......21 USA..........17 (via Wikipedia, stats for differing years unfortunately but gives a sense of magnitude) It's mostly that the US homeless population concentrates in very few areas. > How do you reconcile that with the fac…

I think presenting it like this is misleading since the definition of homelessness is different per country.

Breaking down the Swedish stats, of the reported 34000, the source says:

"4 500 people were in acute homelessness, of which 280 were sleeping rough. 5 600 people received institutional care or lived in different forms of category housing. 13 900 people lived in long-term housing solutions (the secondary housing market), provided by the social services in the municipalities. 6 800 persons lived in short-term insecure housing solutions that they had organized themselves."

Unfortunately the original source isn't archived so I haven't checked the exact definitions used here.

For the US numbers, we have:

"On a single night in 2018, roughly 553,000 people were experiencing homelessness in the United States. About two-thirds (65%) were staying in sheltered locations—emergency shelters or transitional housing programs—and about one-third (35%) were in unsheltered locations such as on the street"

I'll assume you'll get similar discrepancies for all of the other countries.

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#213

Post by xnyan » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

daenz wrote: post #54

dyingkneepad wrote: post #23

As a non-American person living in the US, I fail to understand one thing about its society. When I walk around town I see tons and tons of places advertising jobs, for simple stuff like kitchen, moving stuff around, etc. I even recently saw a store with a "talk to the manager and start working right now" sign. And then I walk around the streets and see all these homeless. It seems like a paradox to me, but I am obvi…

You're going to get a lot of replies indicating that the problem belongs squarely on society's shoulders (healthcare, capitalism, drugs). One cause that you will probably not see highlighted is the devaluation of autonomy and personal responsibility, and it's absolutely devastating effect on the human spirit to progress.

> One cause that you will probably not see highlighted is the devaluation of autonomy and personal responsibility

Besides the fact that not everyone agrees with this argument, it's not highlighted because it's not useful. Let's say your right, the reason people sleep under a highway underpass is because they have not taken so called "personal responsibility" for their situation. Done.

What's the plan now? Extending various forms of assistance is the both the moral as well as personal and social best option. Leaving these problems unchecked always exerts a cost on both society and individuals, and the use of solutions like violence and imprisonment have unwanted knock-on effects that are best avoided if possible.

First, when you can stop homelessness before it happens via widely available emergency rent assistance. It's a cheap no-brainer that would save tax dollars from the expensive work of helping (or jailing, if feel lack of personal responsibility warrants incarceration) people who have lost housing. Then, provide the already homeless who are willing and able to work with housing, life coaching and training to get back on track. Then, safe communities and residence programs for those who are physically or mentally incapable of supporting/taking care of themselves. I'm sure there will also be people who are a danger to others and may need to be imprisoned.

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#214

Post by mistercool » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #169

gwright wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how valid those stats are but those are per capita numbers not absolute numbers, so not twice as many total homeless: Sweden: 10,230,000/10,000*36 = 36,828 homeless US: 328,200,000/10,000*17 = 649,740 homeless

> those are per capita numbers not absolute numbers Of course they are. Why would you use anything else to compare countries?

I think the comment was in response to your phrasing:

> 2x the homeless of the US.

to me that reads as total homeless population, not a function of population.

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#215

Post by booleandilemma » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

backtoyoujim wrote: post #128

Gimpei wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think wikipedia is a good source of data in this case. For one German homelessness includes Syrian refugees. Second, it appears as if the definition of homelessness varies wildly across countries, making these numbers not really useful for cross-country comparison. https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC3-1-Homeless-population.pd...

What ethic background can the United States subtract from its total homeless population ? Because that reads _to_me_ like you are saying "homeless Syrians don't count". To which I would ask you, "Why not ?"

If a person arrives at a country as a refugee of course they’re going to be homeless.

It would be more interesting to see stats on people who have been living in the country, because these are people who shouldn’t be homeless, but they are.

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#216

Post by handrous » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

dyingkneepad wrote: post #23

As a non-American person living in the US, I fail to understand one thing about its society. When I walk around town I see tons and tons of places advertising jobs, for simple stuff like kitchen, moving stuff around, etc. I even recently saw a store with a "talk to the manager and start working right now" sign. And then I walk around the streets and see all these homeless. It seems like a paradox to me, but I am obvi…

If you talk to people hiring for very bottom-of-the-market workers, you'll find their #1 problem is finding people who actually show up, and also aren't (bluntly) crazy, dangerous, or frequently drunk/high. There's no shortage of candidates for $12/hr jobs who are not worth $12/hr of labor, since they don't show up half the time and are space-cases when they do.

The "actually show up" part is a combination of the fact that people who, as a personality trait, have trouble showing up to work, tend to cluster at the bottom of the employment market, and people without steady, fairly high income have a lot more challenges securing reliable transportation and otherwise arranging their lives so they can get to work on time and consistently (childcare, for example, or unexpected, sudden needs to care for or assist other relatives, or illness of their own) even if they have the best intentions and are reasonably responsible.

Part of this is probably that minimum wage needs to go up quite a bit and/or these employers just need to pay more, but I don't think that would entirely solve the problem.

[EDIT] source: I once worked on an app in this space, and had some visibility into the feedback & concerns of employers of this sort (not with the app, but generally with hiring in that market) and that was consistently something they talked about, at length, usually with tons of sad or amusing/surprising anecdotes—hire someone, then they just never, ever show up, or they come for their first shift then ghost after that, or you call them 30 minutes after their shift is supposed to start and they're like "oh yeah, that, I'm not coming in today, I might be in tomorrow, I dunno yet", or their car's always broken, obviously-high candidates in interviews, all that sort of thing.

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#217

Post by gwright » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

hackeraccount wrote: post #123

dyingkneepad wrote: post #23

As a non-American person living in the US, I fail to understand one thing about its society. When I walk around town I see tons and tons of places advertising jobs, for simple stuff like kitchen, moving stuff around, etc. I even recently saw a store with a "talk to the manager and start working right now" sign. And then I walk around the streets and see all these homeless. It seems like a paradox to me, but I am obvi…

I'm not of the Left. So you know where I'm come from. That said people who are living on the street are frequently deeply alone in way that can be hard to understand. Substance abuse problems. Mental problems. Sure all of that. No place to live too. All of that's a huge burden. On top of that the jobs that get listed are frequently not going to be offering 30 hours or less a week. So the way to think of people in tha…

I don't want to discount the challenges and pain associated with being homeless but your observations don't really explain the explosion of homelessness in some places.

Something else has changed in the last 4-5 years to make this problem much worse.

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#218

Post by cscurmudgeon » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 10:00 PM UTC

gwright wrote: post #165

chrisseaton wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First please note that America has fewer homeless people than many European nations or Canada Wow that's a real reality check right there. I would have never guessed that Sweden had 2x the homeless of the US. Thank you.

I don't know how valid those stats are but those are per capita numbers not absolute numbers, so not twice as many total homeless: Sweden: 10,230,000/10,000*36 = 36,828 homeless US: 328,200,000/10,000*17 = 649,740 homeless

We can flip that around and say US has much more housed people when you use absolute numbers.

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#219

Post by mc32 » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 10:00 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #181

mc32 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know, honestly. When I travel overseas and see people who don’t look down upon menial jobs but see them as a source of sustenance I have to admire them. I’ll see people doing lots of things like picking up recyclables, selling drinks, handyman type jobs, knife sharpener, shoe repair, mobile tailor, etc. Very seldom see homeless in Asia or Mexico (I don’t stay in tourist areas). People there hustle one way or…

> Very seldom see homeless in Asia or Mexico (I don’t stay in tourist areas). What on earth are you talking about? Even in Japan, famous in the Western imagination for societal cohesion and lack of crime, you can easily spot homeless people sleeping rough in Tokyo. I suppose they do a better job than American cities of keeping the problem out of sight but the idea that there are no homeless people at all in Asia is s…

Seldom doesn’t mean never. Yes, on occasion you come across a homeless person sleeping on the subway steps. But it’s not all urinated over and smelly. And, importantly many will engage in menial jobs, keep up appearances and try to be presentable.

Re: Woman sues L.A. after being struck by car on a street where tents block sidewalk

#220

Post by wahern » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 10:00 PM UTC

mfer wrote: post #186

Swizec wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are "homeless" defined in different countries? There was an eye-opening 99pi series of podcasts around homelessness in USA where I learned that the definition is ridiculously strict. Something like "If you slept anywhere other than the street last night , you do not qualify as homeless". I can't remember if tents count, but sleeping on a friend's couch, squatting a derelict building, or staying in your car disqua…

You can find the legal definition at https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/11302 Squatting in a derelict building counts as homeless per the US definition. It's not just people living on the street.

That definition is not necessarily applicable to actual research studies, homeless counts, or even government programs. You have to look to the actual study or program details. Unfortunately, the applied definition is rarely reported in the media.