Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 325 posts

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#51

Post by seesaw »

betwixthewires wrote: post #40

I agree with the premise of the article, that a large proportion of California's homeless move there because it's easier to he homeless for all the reasons listed, but that's about the substance of the article. It blames the problem on detached housing and demands solutions without an inkling of a hint at any. Our homeless problem is the result of 2 things: a mental health problem and to a much lesser extent the perv…

I wonder how much the moving of jobs outside has contributed to this. The few documentaries I saw had interviews with homeless, and the general theme was that they couldn’t land a job.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#52

Post by austinheap »

ummonk wrote: post #37
jefftk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The piece mentions Single-Room Occupancies (SROs), which used to be where a lot of people in similar situations would live. I agree that this doesn't solve the problem for everyone, and there's also a place for publicly funded mental health hospitals. But I also don't think everyone who is currently homeless in CA is in as bad shape as the ones you most notice.

"But I also don't think everyone who is currently homeless in CA is in as bad shape as the ones you most notice." There is a difference between the technically "homeless" and the visibly homeless who camp out on sidewalks etc. which is what most people are talking about when the "homeless problem" is mentioned.

Handful of interesting/data-driven organizations in the Bay Area dispel exactly this. It was eye opening to me to attend some of their public events where they run through their data.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#53

Post by legerdemain »

rubicon33 wrote: post #24
jefftk wrote: post #12

"Dumping ground" implies other places did this to CA, which isn't substantiated by the article. As it says, the vast majority of CA homeless are from within the state. In the cities of CA, as in other rich cities, homelessness and high housing prices come from the same problem: prohibitive regulations on housing construction.

I'm really not convinced that high housing costs accurately depict the source of the homelessness problem in CA. If it does, it certainly isn't describing the homeless people I see. Most of the homeless people I see, the ones who are literally pitching tents on the side walks, sleeping on boxes, defecating anywhere and everywhere, passed out on park benches at 3 in the afternoon, are almost certainly not going to be…

If one of your top complaints about the homeless is that they poop (an unavoidable bodily function you might be familiar with), then I'm not sure I trust your judgment about policy matters.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#55

Post by jason0597 »

rubicon33 wrote: post #36
settrans wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California already has a 1% income tax allocated just to mental health, and has collected $7.4 billion so far just from this tax[0]. How is that working? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Mental_Health_Servi...

Our government, either through corruption or incompetence, can somehow manage to spend billions in tax payer dollars with very little to show for it. When I advocate for something like a mental health program, it assumes a government which is functional enough to actually implement it. What we currently have here in CA couldn't be further from that.

Well, California is literally a single party state

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#56

Post by iJohnDoe »

Of course it is.

Does no one remember when other states were paying for bus fares to California to get the homeless out of their state?

Does no one remember states paying to fly the homeless to Hawaii?

The above might sound ridiculous, but what sounds cheaper? Solving California’s massive homeless problem or simply getting the homeless out of the state on the next plane or bus?

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#57

Post by austinheap »

sombremesa wrote: post #50
ransom1538 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have described why the housing "crisis" will never be solved in CA. The homeowners will vote down every new apartment complex, every new developer plan, every rezone. It will never end, ever. Current home owners will never vote for less money, ever. The only way CA can fix this is by a state wide vote - demanding housing to be allowed. Home owners in CA love new Panera Breads and new Chipotles - tie any new comme…

I lazily Googled and disproved you in five seconds: > San Francisco and the East Bay should see 7,872 new apartments open in 2021, an increase of 36% from the previous year. It's the highest number of apartments — 13,497 units — added to the region in the last five years. Surprised?

We can’t solve mental illness with more quarter million dollar condos. I don’t know why this is still being peddled.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#58

Post by AdrianB1 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #48
betwixthewires wrote: post #40

I agree with the premise of the article, that a large proportion of California's homeless move there because it's easier to he homeless for all the reasons listed, but that's about the substance of the article. It blames the problem on detached housing and demands solutions without an inkling of a hint at any. Our homeless problem is the result of 2 things: a mental health problem and to a much lesser extent the perv…

I'm the author. It's really not mostly mental health problems. I've studied this issue for years. I write about homelessness on Street Life Solutions. I try to write about housing and community development stuff elsewhere, like Eclogiselle.com and https://projectsro.blogspot.com/ . This post wasn't intended to be some opus solving everything. I wanted to make one point: California's extreme homeless problem is not so…

California is a honey pot for homeless people, that is not a national problem but a local reality.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#59

Post by MontyCarloHall »

Schnitz wrote: post #26

> Rather than asking "Who can we blame?" maybe we could start asking "How do we fix it?" Nobody talks about the hard truth: The homeownership rate in California is ~55% and therefore over half of Californians are heavily incentivized to keep the housing crisis going. For existing homeowners this isn't a crisis, it's a free paper money bonanza. Just by living in their houses home "owners" (most are heavily leveraged)…

> For existing homeowners this isn't a crisis, it's a free paper money bonanza. Just by living in their houses home "owners" (most are heavily leveraged) "earn" 100k in paper money year in year out - magic!

Is this appreciation consistent with the rest of the country, or areas with comparable quality of life? If you only have one home, real estate appreciation only makes you money if it’s higher for your house relative to other houses you’d actually want to live in, since if you sell your house and buy another house of comparable quality that’s also appreciated to a similar degree, you wouldn’t come out ahead.

So yeah, that starter house you bought for $300k 25 years ago that’s worth over a million now? Unless you’re willing to move to a much lower cost of living part of the country, you could sell that house and buy…another million dollar starter house.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#60

Post by mc32 »

epistasis wrote: post #45
LurkingPenguin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody talks about the harder truth: even with its exclusionary housing policies, California is increasingly not capable of supporting the population it has. The 2021 fires and worsening drought conditions are just a taste of things to come.

California is extremely capable of supporting its current population, and easily 50% more. The only thing stopping this is proper distribution of land and water. We let wealthy people hoard land and water (Prop 13 and our land rights system), rather than allocating them based on market systems or even more fair systems. We have feudalism baked too deeply into our laws.

California was a semi desert before we built the canals and aqueducts -which is why it was a backwater with few people till that was done and its fertile soil was able to sustain life.

People (city dwellers) came _after_ the farmers.

So, it might be in need of an update, but I think you're mischaracterizing how this happened.

Post reply on HN