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This is Real, That's Not

streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com

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Re: This is Real, That's Not

#351

Post by jelliclesfarm »

bsder wrote: post #346
kelnos wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't, but we can certainly judge that perspective to be counter-productive. I'm concerned about outcomes. Let's stop for a minute and assume that I'm an unfeeling, non-empathetic person who doesn't care about anyone but himself. Even then, I would advocate to allocate more money to homeless services, regardless of how that money is used, because doing so would benefit me: I don't want to see human feces on the si…

> They're making their lives actively worse just to "teach a lesson" to those "undeserving" homeless people. The last US election showed us that there are a LOT of these kind of people. Most of them call themselves religious, too.

What does the election has anything to do with this? We have only spent more on homelessness since the last election?

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#352

Post by tpoacher »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #237
tpoacher wrote: post #166

Dear Doreen (hopefully you spot this), thank you for an amazing article -- and also congrats on your recent first pull request, no small feat! :) I have a question for you; I've been hoping for an opportunity to ask a person who could answer this genuinely (something that I could not guarantee by asking just anyone off the street). What is the best way for someone like me (a non-homeless person who wants to help), to…

Thank you. The pull request was a big moment for me. When I was homeless, random acts of kindness were a godsend and I generally preferred cash, but sometimes a jacket or blanket in cold weather was hugely helpful and even better than cash at that moment. Occasionally, someone gifted me a hotel stay and it made a big difference. I wrote some about those ideas here: http://whathelpsthehomeless.blogspot.com/2015/01/ran…

Thank you! I read your links with great interest, they're an amazing resource (even though I'm sorry you had to go through them to be able to share them).

Buying a stay at a hotel is something I'd never thought of. I'll be looking into this. I wonder if local hotels might be willing to come to some sort of 'coupon/giftcard' arrangement...

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#353

Post by IanCal »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #339
IanCal wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6-7 years on standard repayments would require a salary of around £100k straight out of uni. On £40k you'd end up with them cancelled and likely repay less than you borrowed (45k typical borrowing, £38k repaid over 30 years).

1. The amount that you "borrowed" is a fake number, though, with no correspondence to the true cost of the course and is non-existant for e.g. Scottish students in Scotland. 2. Your salary will (is expected to) inflate; the repayment threshold currently does not, so the "time value of money" has something to say about how much you repay. Someone whose salary remains constant on the equivalent of £40k will find their…

The repayment threshold is expected to rise with average earnings so someone on an equivalent salary of £40k would be expected to pay back less in real terms than that calculation if wages rise above inflation.

The amount you borrow is not a fake number, whether it is related to the course cost or not, just as the price of a car is not a fake number even if it was cheaper to produce. It also includes literal cash payments to you.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#354

Post by DoreenMichele »

tpoacher wrote: post #352
DoreenMichele wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. The pull request was a big moment for me. When I was homeless, random acts of kindness were a godsend and I generally preferred cash, but sometimes a jacket or blanket in cold weather was hugely helpful and even better than cash at that moment. Occasionally, someone gifted me a hotel stay and it made a big difference. I wrote some about those ideas here: http://whathelpsthehomeless.blogspot.com/2015/01/ran…

Thank you! I read your links with great interest, they're an amazing resource (even though I'm sorry you had to go through them to be able to share them). Buying a stay at a hotel is something I'd never thought of. I'll be looking into this. I wonder if local hotels might be willing to come to some sort of 'coupon/giftcard' arrangement...

I wonder if local hotels might be willing to come to some sort of 'coupon/giftcard' arrangement...

I would love to see this become some kind of trend. If you are able to arrange anything, I would be very interested in hearing from you and/or seeing a published write-up (like a blog post).

Even if you can't arrange anything with hotels, I would still be keenly interested in reading some write-up a la 'The the past x months, I have gifted hotel stays to homeless people. Here's what I learned." and going into what did work, what didn't work, some best practices you developed, etc.

That would be a potential gold mine of information. It could help solve the shower problem: https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2020/01/solving-sho...

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#355

Post by tchaffee »

timeeater wrote: post #349
tchaffee wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I could imagine many people... Yes, that's the entire problem I've been encouraging you to stop doing. You don't need to imagine. It's an extremely well researched subject. I was sincerely hoping you'd put a little work into the research yourself (like I asked you to) instead of continuing to create mental fantasies about why homelessness might happen. We already know why it happens. Without any cherry picking on m…

On the contrary, YOU should start thinking for yourself. All the articles you quoted merely repeat the same correlation of high housing prices and unemployment that started all the speculation. They don't give any insights at all, and they don't even mention rising rents as a cause (which was what we are actually discussing). Only the solutionsdfl site mentions "foreclosures" as a reason for more homelessness, withou…

You're moving the goal posts. You asked for this:

> If you are so well read, then provide some convincing evidence for your claims. None of the three links you provided tell us anything about the cause of homelessness.

I gave you five articles listing the causes of homelessness. Now you're claiming the articles aren't enough.

> If you could give everybody a free house, there would probably be less homeless people.

In many cities they have in fact done this and it works pretty well. It's significantly cheaper than the hospital visits and the extra burden on the police force.

You want to keep inventing theories out of your own imagination, while I have actual experience working with homeless people, in several major cities around the world. If you don't want to believe that gentrification in general and specifically rents going from $1000 to $2300 in a few years causes homelessness for those who were barely able to afford rent in the first place, that's certainly your choice. You can have the last word as I don't see this going in a useful direction.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#356

Post by timeeater »

tchaffee wrote: post #355
timeeater wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, YOU should start thinking for yourself. All the articles you quoted merely repeat the same correlation of high housing prices and unemployment that started all the speculation. They don't give any insights at all, and they don't even mention rising rents as a cause (which was what we are actually discussing). Only the solutionsdfl site mentions "foreclosures" as a reason for more homelessness, withou…

You're moving the goal posts. You asked for this: > If you are so well read, then provide some convincing evidence for your claims. None of the three links you provided tell us anything about the cause of homelessness. I gave you five articles listing the causes of homelessness. Now you're claiming the articles aren't enough. > If you could give everybody a free house, there would probably be less homeless people. In…

"I gave you five articles listing the causes of homelessness. Now you're claiming the articles aren't enough."

Um yeah, because they are not? They don't say anything about rising rents causing homelessness, they only mention the same correlation you also mentioned (rich city has many homeless), which doesn't provide any causation. In fact most of them don't provide any evidence at all. Some web site claiming "x causes y" is not actually evidence for anything.

"In many cities they have in fact done this and it works pretty well. It's significantly cheaper than the hospital visits and the extra burden on the police force."

Sure, but that was not what we are discussing. We are discussing the claim that rising wealth increases homelessness. That's an entirely different question. In fact wealthy regions would probably be better able to provide free housing for homeless people than poor places.

If you have actual experience working with homeless people, give us some real information.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#357

Post by RickJWagner »

riskable wrote: post #238
RickJWagner wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Father of 3 here, one recently graduated and one about to start US college. With reasonable preparation, college is very affordable. Scholarships are easily obtained with a good ACT or SAT score. Both of these are well documented, a few months of self-study practically guarantees a good score. My experience has been that good preparation puts out of pocket costs below $10k per year. (I think that's actually on the hi…

> Scholarships are easily obtained with a good ACT or SAT score. For the children of people that read Hacker News, I could see that. For normal American kids? No way. Not even close. The average american kid is not going to be able to get an SAT or ACT score good enough to get a scholarship. It's just not going to happen. You're vastly overestimating how smart and committed they are. How much effort do you expect a k…

You raise an excellent point. My kids (and others like them) are being raised in a 2-parent household. We encourage the kids to study, and help them where needed.

It's a form of privilege, but I don't feel guilty about it. We take part in programs that help other kids outside the family (including after-school homework help for ELS kids). IMHO, we all should become 'privilege factories', helping first our own kids and then other kids. It advances quality of life for everyone involved.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#358

Post by _xnmw »

None of the top comments here address the most obvious reason for homelessness (for those without addiction/mental issues): the ridiculous of cost of housing in the West. I moved from Toronto, Canada to Kiev, Ukraine last year. There's far less homelessness here, despite the lack of social safety nets, and it's obvious and palpable (much safer streets - I feel completely safe walking around at night). Simple reason? If you speak the local language (Russian/Ukrainian), you can find a basic apartment for $200 / month, or a room-sharing agreement for much less. A university dorm room sharing with 3 people costs about $30/month. Yep, $30. It's not subsidized.

Although salaries are much lower here too (average $500/month), rent is still so affordable that any basic wage labourer or taxi driver can afford to put a roof over their heads for themselves and a partner (even 1 kid). No wonder there's so little homelessness, and even my taxi driver is happily married with kids.

There's something wrong with Western society when you need to work multiple minimum-wage jobs just to pay rent.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#359

Post by mistermann »

kelnos wrote: post #332
mistermann wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just your perception of what "we're" talking about. Think about it as you would when debugging software: how might you (an instance of a class in a complex system) know what other people (instances of classes within the system) are "talking about" (where talking derives from thinking/computation that takes place within those object instances)? Are you obtaining this knowledge via the calling of public interfac…

I do agree that it's ironic that a subthread on a post called "This is Real, That's Not" has devolved into conspiracy theories about secret cabals of businesspeople in smoky rooms scheming to cut public services in order to keep people on the streets so that the people not on the streets will be scared into continuing to pay their rent and mortgages. I don't doubt that there are some people who want this, but the ide…

And yet, The System seems to reliably produce this outcome in the USA to a much larger degree than elsewhere.

The full spectrum of causation is often (strongly) asserted to be very specific things, but rarely does one encounter any person or organization asserting that the problem is complex and not fully understood. It does not seem unreasonable at all to me that some wrongdoing may indeed be happening here and there.

That said, the highly inconsistent (other than confidence levels of assertions) approach to conspiracy theories is indeed wonderfully ironic.

Today is a good example of this...one one hand we have a thread about the abstract notion of CIA deception:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25329913

When discussing this sort of topic abstractly, it seems the HN hivememind has no problem whatsoever conceptualizing it.

However, if one changes the topic to a specific, object level news event (Jimmy Wales & Wikipedia), the ability (to conceptualize deceit) seems to vanish, as ~always:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25333197

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#360

Post by jeegsy »

bberrry wrote: post #173
riffraff wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

while not the norm, there are places in Europe where student loans are relatively common, e.g. Norway[0] and Sweden[1]. Just mentioning because I was very surprised when I discovered it, and it offers an interesting alternative on how student loans could work. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_loans_in_Norway [1] https://www.collegefinancinggroup.com/student-loan-repayment...

There is literally no tuition in Sweden. The loans are for rent and general cost of living. You can have literally zero means and still go to university in another city.

There is no such thing as 'no tuition'. In Sweden's case, the public is paying the tuition
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