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The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

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Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#221

Post by ddingus »

Retric wrote: post #160
ddingus wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither one of those actually speaks to our spend.

I was more acknowledging it's not that easy to put a single number on that spend. The low number is a little over half that 11 billion I mentioned, but you can easily come up with other metrics which provide vastly larger figures.

Okay got it. :D That's totally fair. Honestly, I don't think we are spending, or the problem wouldn't be where it is right now.

Two things are needed. One, attack the root cause. To remedial spending to beat back this problem that we're now faced with.

We need those things, because Downstream effects from all of this will be very very expensive.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#222

Post by asdff »

booleandilemma wrote: post #161

I think part of the problem is that there is a certain percentage of homeless people that are just completely irredeemable. Anyone that’s spent some time riding on the NYC subway can attest to this. No matter how much money you throw at them, they will keep begging or acting crazy. Short of locking them up, what do you do with those people?

> Short of locking them up, what do you do with those people?

Give them access to mental health services.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#223

Post by angersock »

harlanji wrote: post #125
Alex63 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested to hear how homelessness can be meaningfully addressed in a humane way by the federal government (especially if it is constitutional).

I’ve been in SF for about 7 years and became homeless in June. The #1 thing that helps me is cash in my pocket, from day labor (odd jobs) and boosters from family and friends who know I’m not a drug addict/alcoholic. Obviously the latter can’t be offered by a gov because it would be abused, but work for cash saved my life. IME cash in hand is the biggest help. #2 by far is bathroom access... followed by water and foo…

Why are you still in SF? There are day jobs available pretty much everywhere.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#224

Post by weeksie »

Fix the high price of housing. Expensive places push more people into homelessness. Sure, services are still needed but by fixing housing you'll make the biggest dent and do good for the most people. We need to upzone the near ring suburbs of these cities at the very minimum.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#225

Post by tuesdayrain »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #204
spookthesunset wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> endless money pits The reason they are money pits is because they aren't something that will be solved by a city or even a state. Any attempt to solve the problem locally in a "humane" way has a high risk of just attracting more folks in the same circumstance to the area. The most effective way for a city or state to "solve" the local homeless problem is to simply pay for one-way bus tickets to somewhere else. But…

It's an endless money pit because if you subsidize something, you get more of it. The massive increase in subsidies for low-income single parents has resulted in a massive increase in children born into single parent families over the last 50 years.

So that means if we want to solve homelessness, we need to start taxing homeless people.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#226

Post by AnimalMuppet »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #205
reaperducer wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mormon Church played a big role in it because that organization is involved in its community. But it's not like it only helped Mormons. Everyone was helped, regardless of religion or lack thereof. Why can't the Utah success be replicated elsewhere? There are no religion-specific aspects to the Utah plan. Are you implying that atheists are incapable of compassion, generosity, or the need to help their fellow man?

I didn't say it only helped Mormons. From what I gather, the Mormon church has a very complex and well developed infrastructure for deciding who gets help, what kind of help they get, etc. This seems unlikely to be readily and easily replicable without the Mormon church. It has nothing to do with whether or not one believes in god. It has to do with social infrastructure.

It's a bit more than that. It's also a mindset that, yes, we really will give real money and effort to help people.

A government agency could eventually build the social infrastructure (though they might make a mess of it). But building the consensus that we're going to solve this problem, even if it costs us a lot is... difficult. As you said, probably not reproduceable elsewhere.

I'm a non-Mormon living in Utah. I don't praise the Mormon Church very often. But on this I think they have done well, to have the desire and willpower to address the issue.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#227

Post by gre »

prostoalex wrote: post #157
gre wrote: post #86

I stayed a night in LA a few weeks ago at an AirBNB in a condo in a prime location near Little Tokyo and can't stop thinking that society would be better off if this condo were owned and occupied by a family instead of being basically a for-profit hotel. I don't know how to stop this de facto rezoning except by imposing huge taxes on housing that is not the owner's primary residence and closing all the loopholes that…

It’s ironic considering that DTLA of all Los Angeles sub markets is the one with virtually no zoning restrictions and has some of the highest numbers of construction cranes in the nation. But before we all go onto AirBnB rampage, have you looked at any available properties in that zip code? The schools are complete garbage (an elementary school kid was recently stabbed by a homeless drug addict), the crime rate is hi…

I don’t know about the schools there, but imagine if families instead of rentals occupied the condos—I bet the schools would shape up real fast. I admittedly haven’t researched/thought about how to fix schools, but getting parents raging seems obvious to start.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#229

Post by asdff »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #44

I fairly often comment on the topic of homelessness. I am routinely told on HN that the high cost of housing is unrelated to the rise in homelessness. This article states otherwise and I quoted it here: https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-clear-c... Some things I routinely talk about: This country tore down up to 80 percent of SROs over the course of a couple of decades, probably because the Baby Boo…

I don't know why you are vilifying government housing, it is very obviously the solution. Housing initiatives have always been a target for budgetary looting by politicians looking to solidify their legacy with more glamorous and superficial endeavors, but properly managed they are the only way for affordable housing to happen in cities that are already grossly affordable even for full time workers.

The market will never fix this, either. Why should a developer spend money to build something and wait far longer (if ever) to recoup their initial investment from affordable rental rates, when they can just price right along with the market and be out of the red sooner? Real estate booms and crashes, no one wants to wait for their goose to lay its first egg a decade after the local real estate market cools off. The market always favors the most rapid turn around on investment, and in cities like SF where tech companies gladly hand 22 year olds more money than they've ever seen, the quickest and safest buck for a developer are these cheap, fast, luxury builds that can command rents at the top of the market because the units smell like new paint.

The current favorite strategy among local governments is to offer developers large tax incentives to tack on a small percentage of low income units along with the luxury build. It is hardly even a half measure, as the rest of the luxury build will surge the rest of the local real estate market. Instead of offering tax incentives to attract luxury developers, local governments should instead let the market dictate what level of luxury building will be profitable, and focus on building low income municipal housing that is properly managed, and it's budget protected from raiding. Maybe something modern, and modular such that a family unit can be cheaply reconfigured into studios as demand dictates. In my city, the downtown YMCA has low income apartments in the dozen or so floors above the recreation facilities, and it works to keep these residents off the streets and employed.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#230

Post by thoughtexplorer »

cco wrote: post #206
thoughtexplorer wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the end of the day, everything is political. It only is if you view everything through a political lens. Science and psychology, for example, are not political. Plus you can affect change without the political system. Starting with improving oneself. Then family members. Then local community. If enough people did that, that would be a societal change and maybe we wouldn't have such a crisis in the first place.

>Science and psychology, for example, are not political. Could you clarify? Do you mean to say that these fields of study don't yield results that have political implications? Or that these fields are impervious to political influence because...well I don't know, they aren't performed by humans?

I mean they aren't political by definition. They exist at a lower layer and are apolitical by default. They can be used or corrupted by politics - and are.
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