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LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

npr.org

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Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#41

Post by waheoo »

sjg007 wrote: post #24
narrator wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the local government has tons of money doing nothing in their budget, they are going to find a way to spend it, and they're not going to care if they overpay because what else are they going to spend it on? In coastal California, the rule is never ever give that money back by lowering taxes. Taxes only go up. If there's too much money being generated by the taxes to spend, start spending it on homelessness…

What's the solution then? Utah built apartments for everyone. That seems to have worked.

Properly implementing OKRs.

Governments are completely run by monetary expenditure.

You don't spend all your budget cause you savy? Great, we'll put that money with someone else next year.

Spend all your money on junk? Great we'll give you more money next year because you clearly need it.

What needs to happen is to decouple monetary spend from incentives.

Incentivise saving money and use escape hatches to protect budgets from fluctuations (saving one year might not be recurring, this shouldn't affect your spend next year)

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#42

Post by wmf »

yalogin wrote: post #13

Comparing this to regular rents is not really fair isn't it? Even if the government chooses to pay rent instead of providing this camp, getting landlord's to rent to a homeless person cannot be counted on. On top of that they still need to find work and food. Granted may be not a daunting task if the housing and security is taken care of.

For this money the city could outright buy an apartment building or motel.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#43

Post by koolba »

jollybean wrote: post #32
ahelwer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why people believe NPR to be progressive. The joke name "Nice Polite Republicans" exists for a reason. Liberal news coverage of homeless issues rarely takes a progressive framing, anyway.

They are small-c conservative progressives. They are not into spectacles or aggressive populism, generally correct, a little effete, but are definitely progressive. They are like the 'Vermont' or 'Nice Schoolteacher' or 'Librarian' of Journalism.

Promoting an author who’s book is literally titled, “In Defense of Looting”[1] isn’t progressive. It’s promoting the breakdown of the rule of law. That wasn’t an accident either.

[1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178...

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#44

Post by ravenstine »

Won't these programs just expand ad infinitum if we don't address the root causes of homelessness? I'm glad we're helping the homeless, but the lack of housing is a symptom and less so a cause. LA has way more homeless people than it used to. Why don't we address that?

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#45

Post by ghufran_syed »

BelenusMordred wrote: post #38
sixdimensional wrote: post #28

I'm super impressed by what Pallet[1] is doing in this space. I think LA is talking with Pallet to implement their temporary housing, which would be amazing. [1] https://www.palletshelter.com

I don't want to diminish the link above and it's efforts but how a first world society has to resort to stuff like this is just mind-boggling. I'm an expat in a developing country and even for the poorest people a roof over their heads is affordable. Everytime I go back to Australia or visit Europe I'm always shocked at the level of homelessness, it's just not right. Why are dirt-poor countries able to house their ci…

Partly because of the rise in legally mandated standards - in california there are laws stating the minimum area of housing for a family of a given size which is way higher than the minimum that people would settle for if the price was correspondingly lower - most poorer people including me earlier in life would prefer to pay half or 1/3 the amount for half or 1/3 the space. The aim of the minimum is sometimes stated as “we don’t want people to live in slums”…and the result is that people either commute up to 2 hours each way, break the law, or end up on the street

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#46

Post by sida »

darth_avocado wrote: post #35

I think the main takeaway here is government, as usual, thinking short term and spending more money on bandaid solutions. Yes, the $2600 gets you services, meals, sanitation and staffing. But in reality, you can get a decent 1BR apartment for $1500 that is waaay bigger than a tent, sanitation for free since it is an apartment, and have almost $1000 for groceries left over. And, you can fit more people in the apartmen…

As a landlord, I would definitely not rent to this program though. I mean, would you?

But yes looking at this, the program cost is indeed insanely high

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#47

Post by fakename11 »

yalogin wrote: post #13

Comparing this to regular rents is not really fair isn't it? Even if the government chooses to pay rent instead of providing this camp, getting landlord's to rent to a homeless person cannot be counted on. On top of that they still need to find work and food. Granted may be not a daunting task if the housing and security is taken care of.

Comparing this to the cost of rent is very fair. Other states don't pay these exorbitant costs and are fine.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#48

Post by wyager »

advisedwang wrote: post #2

> the per-tent cost covers services, meals, sanitation and staffing OK, so $2600 gets a fair bit. Also looking at the report [1] this rate is calculated by dividing the total cost of the pilot by the duration and number of clients. So that is including one-time set up, planning and evaluation in the cost, which is probably a decent fraction of the cost as it's only an 8 month pilot. The recurring cost for extending m…

$31,000/yr is already pretty shit, and it’s even worse when you consider the opportunity cost of not using that space on a person who’s actually going to gain a productivity benefit from living in SF.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#49

Post by icelancer »

BelenusMordred wrote: post #38
sixdimensional wrote: post #28

I'm super impressed by what Pallet[1] is doing in this space. I think LA is talking with Pallet to implement their temporary housing, which would be amazing. [1] https://www.palletshelter.com

I don't want to diminish the link above and it's efforts but how a first world society has to resort to stuff like this is just mind-boggling. I'm an expat in a developing country and even for the poorest people a roof over their heads is affordable. Everytime I go back to Australia or visit Europe I'm always shocked at the level of homelessness, it's just not right. Why are dirt-poor countries able to house their ci…

>> I'm an expat in a developing country and even for the poorest people a roof over their heads is affordable.

It's affordable here, too. Just not in one of the wealthiest and thus most expensive cities in the United States.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#50

Post by graderjs »

I'm not an expert and I admit my views on this are pretty extreme...but surely there's inefficiency there. What if we didn't judge what they were doing (it occurs anyway so we "tacitly approve" in effect), but instead provide the same service for them: tents on the street, muck-about area, access to food, drugs, but do so in an efficient way but at a better price. It seems the quality of things they get and the outcomes for the general public represent a pretty low ROI for 2600 a month/tent. A providor model might also enable a measure of control not in the sense of "controlling them" but more in the sense of we're able to maybe "improve" some things (maybe better food, better tents, better drugs, better outcomes for other non-vagrants who share the streetspace).

edit: I should have read the article. That's exactly what they were doing. I incorrectly assumed it was a "measured cost" of homelessness. I suppose what I imagined tho was less like a refugee camp with fences and guards, and more like a re-use of some of the old port/industrial area close to where many of the LA camps used to be anyway. A more NGO/adhoc style approach. But maybe the current model is working, apart from cost, I don't know :p :) xx

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